Martin, G. R. Prevailing Worldviews of Western Society Since 1500. [Liberty University Online Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://libertyonline.vitalsource.com/#/books/978-1-931283-69-4/

8
PROCESS PHILOSOPHY (1870s–PRESENT)

Our twentieth century has turned out to be more cruel than those preceding it.…
Let us not forget that violence does not and cannot flourish by itself: it is inevitably intertwined with lying.… In Russia, proverbs about truth are favorites. They persistently express the considerable, bitter, grim experience of the people, often astonishingly:
“One Word of Truth Outweighs the World.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn1
We will now discuss the view which has predominated during the last century and a quarter. This view came to be known as process philosophy. We will begin with its nature, then its presuppositions, followed by a look at one of its major expressions, Marxism, from among the four I usually discuss: Darwinism, Pragmatism, Marxism, and Freudianism. We will then be in a position to examine and summarize the institutional structure and procedure of process philosophy.
THE ABANDONMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL
Process philosophy emerged out of the failure of Romanticism-Transcendentalism, a failure which resulted in a very profound theological shift. The reader will recall that with Romanticism-Transcendentalism (1830s-1860s) there had been a restatement of pantheism—the view that God, man, and Nature (so-called) are one and the same. Those who subscribed to Romanticism-Transcendentalism had anticipated that, as this view was implemented, given the presupposed reality that man is God or part and parcel of God, the result would be progress if not ultimately perfection.
Instead, it resulted in the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe—during which thousands of lives were lost and many people fled (emigrating, by the way, most significantly to the United States)—and in the First American Revolution, known as the Civil War and Reconstruction (1855-1877), in the United States—during which more than a million lives were lost, both military and civilian. Indeed, the loss of life and the destruction wrought during the Civil War and Reconstruction was unprecedented in the post-Classical West.
The intellectual community was devastated. Faced with the obvious failure of Romanticism-Transcendentalism, it struggled to begin to explain the nature of the flaw in Romanticism-Transcendentalism and to find a new faith and vision by which to live. Ultimately, it found itself forced to conclude that the basic problem must be the very idea of God. Viewing it as something of an all-or-nothing proposition, the prevailing view shifted from pan- (or all) theism to a- (or non) theism.
This produced the view which has prevailed for the last century and a half—which I call the theology of non-theism and the religion of non-theism. Instead of returning to the Biblical God and embracing the tradition beginning with God, the intellectuals of the world eschewed the very idea of God, necessitating an even greater repudiation of Biblical Christianity.
This shift was articulated in a very influential book by the German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), published in 1843, titled The Essence of Christianity. In this book, Feuerbach (who had a profound influence on Marx and Engels) proved to his satisfaction the mythology of the supernatural and of Christianity. His arguments satisfied most of the leading intellectuals of that day. Indeed, Feuerbach came to be worshipped by the intellectual community, and many of the brightest young people went to Berlin to study with him.
The Migrating Intellectual Center of Western Civilization
It is helpful to keep in mind that, as we had moved out of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth century, the intellectual center of the West had shifted. Where had been the intellectual center during the eighteenth century (1700s)? In France, obviously. Voltaire, for example, was probably the best known person in the world during his lifetime. One could argue that the previous century, the seventeenth century (1600s), had been intellectually centered in England. As we move, then, into the nineteenth century (1800s), the intellectual center will shift from France to the German states (so called in the recognition that Germany was not united until 1871). Throughout the nineteenth century most intellectuals, including Americans, went to one or more of the German universities to complete their graduate work, including their terminal degrees. (United States institutions did not grant terminal degrees until 1876 when Johns Hopkins University, modeled after the German universities, offered a Ph.D.)
Thus, as early as 1843, we have Feuerbach arguing quite persuasively among the intellectual community the non-existence of God and the mythology of the supernatural and of Christianity. Feuerbach presaged the existence of process philosophy.
By the way, regarding the tradition beginning and ending with God, although his work did not become internationally known, there was a Biblical Christian in Holland by the name of Guillame Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876) who published in 1847 a penetrating, Biblical Christian analysis of the nature of revolution and its consequences; indeed, it is the best treatment of which I am aware. The work became a Dutch classic (Ongeloof en Revolutie) but was not made available in English until 1989: Groen Van Prinsterer’s Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution, edited by Harry Van Dyke (Wedge Publishing Foundation, Jordan Station: Ontario, Canada).
Abandonment of the Supernatural Yields: Naturalism, Materialism, Historicism, Socialism, Relativism
What are the intellectual consequences of concluding that there is no supernatural, no God? They are inescapable. If there is no God the only remaining possibility becomes Nature or the natural which, when absolutized brings us to Naturalism. If there is no supernatural, there most certainly can be no Biblical supernatural—no Biblical God—and if there is no Biblical God, there can finally be nothing spiritual and the only remaining possibility becomes the material, which when absolutized brings us to materialism. If there is no Biblical supernatural, there can finally be nothing eternal and the only remaining possibility becomes the temporal or the historical, which when absolutized brings us to historicism. If there is no Biblical supernatural there can finally be nothing personal and the only remaining possibility is the social, which when absolutized brings us to socialism. If there is no Biblical supernatural then there can finally be nothing absolute—permanently fixed—and the only remaining possibility is the relative which when absolutized brings us to relativism.
If one understands what has just been stated, one can understand the modern world; however, a failure to understand what has just been stated is a complete failure to understand the modern world because what has happened, particularly during the last century and a quarter, is a direct consequence of the abandonment of the supernatural and all that is necessitated by such in thinking and behavior. Ultimately, as we shall see, there will be efforts to implement views which are the convergence and conglomeration of naturalism, materialism, historicism, socialism, and relativism.