In this chapter, I have been at pains to show that Clayton’s pluralistic emergentist monism is not an appropriate version of a positive naturalism that does not rest content in denying theism, but which seeks to justify its claim of explanatory superiority relative to rival worldviews. I have also argued that there are serious difficulties with Clayton’s views that justify a rejection of his emergentist monism, and more specifically, its claim to superiority over a theistic dualism that embraces substantial minds regarding human persons and also employs the classic notion of substance in the category of individual when unity considerations justify it. The merits of the mereological hierarchy relative to such a substance ontology are vastly over-rated and regularly over-stated.
Given this background and the fact that Clayton is a theistic dualist, it is hard to see why his views of emergence are superior to those of theistic dualism coupled with AC. Three brief points should be noted: First, Clayton acknowledges that
much of the suspicion about emergence within the scientific community stems from the sense that emergence is sometimes used as a ‘‘magic pill.’’ That is, scientists complain that in certain treatments emergence seems to represent a strange mystical power within evolution that constantly works to lift the universe to new levels of reality.85
Scientists and, more generally, naturalists have been correct in this concern, because it is obvious that neither evolution nor the other processes constitutive of the Grand Story can plausibly give rise to simple emergent properties. All science can do is to label emergent phenomena as such, and leave them as brute facts.
So as far as natural processes are concerned, there must indeed be a ‘‘strange mystical power’’ responsible for them, strange and mystical in that it is not a natural entity and for which there is no evidence whatever that the cause of emergence is within the natural order. It must be kept in mind that AC does not require special creation of each emergent at the time it appears. Indeed, Howard van Till has argued that a theistic perspective best explains emergent phenomena and he holds that at the beginning of creation God placed within the stuff he made all the potentialities that would eventually emerge.86 It is the inadequacy of strong naturalism or the other approaches mentioned in this book, including Clayton’s, that justify a theistic explanation for the existence of such (contingent) potentialities in minimal physical duplicates of our world and the fact that they are (contingently) actualized at the time certain physical phenomena obtain.
There is no naturalistic explanation—Clayton’s or otherwise—for the reality and constancy of these phenomena. Moreover, it seems implausible that the Big Bang created matter such that when myriads upon myriads of small atomic simples come to stand in certain external relations with each other, some sort of striving potentiality within each member is finally brought to a critical mass and, presto, a new simple property emerges. Naturalism ‘‘explains’ such data only by committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Certainly, Clayton's emergentism does not solve the problem of emergence; it merely labels it. G. K. Chesterton once noted that magic requires a Magician, and Clayton's ‘‘solution'' amounts to embracing a shopping list ontology without a Shopper, accepting magical emergence without a Magician.
Clayton’s ‘‘solution’’ is quite curious in light of two further points. For one thing, he acknowledges that there really is no adequate naturalistic account for the emergence of consciousness or its regular correlation with neurological states.87 For another, Clayton actually argues that the existence of objective ‘‘oughts'' and ethical obligation cannot be made sense of within the constraints of naturalistic explanation and, thus, he opts for a theistic explanation of such. Surely, Clayton knows that there are moral realists who have advanced naturalistic emergentist arguments for the appearance of intrinsic value-making properties quite similar to his emer-gentist approach to consciousness and other areas of ‘‘emergence.''88
It is hard to see how he can have it both ways. By accepting an emer-gentist line in other areas, including consciousness, how can Clayton avoid embracing a similar strategy regarding moral realism and emergent value? It is more consistent to employ AC in all areas of genuine emergence rather than choose according to one's liking. By quantifying over a plurality of emergent properties, Clayton actually provides more data for arguments for God's existence than those who merely accept consciousness and AC.