The questions that guide our research arise from the changes that contemporary science has introduced in the approach to an issue with a long philosophical tradition: the debate on determinism/indeterminism of nature. The first question seeks to clarify the notion of determinism currently employed by physics, biology and the neurosciences. The second one concerns the ontological constitution of nature in the view of contemporary science. The third question evaluates the bearing of indeterminism in nature to admit the existence of a creator and provident God.

1^st: How do we understand determinism in physics, biology and the neurosciences?

Sub-questions: Is it possible to distinguish between determinism, law-likeness, predictability, necessity, causality and fatalism? Can the adjective ‘determinist’ be applied to theories, to physical laws, to scientific models or to nature? Is biological determinism a kind of physicalism? Do cognitive science, psychology and the neurosciences approach the problem of determinism in the same way?

2^nd: Does contemporary physics provide a deterministic or an indeterministic picture of nature? Which is the impact of this picture on biology and the cognitive sciences? Are matter, life and intellectual consciousness just levels of an increasing complexity or do they respond to ontologically different principles?

Sub-questions: Do recent quantum mechanics interpretations introduce an ontological indeterminism in microphysics? Do chaotic phenomena admit the co-existence of determinism and indeterminism in different levels of reality? Which is the role of genetic information in determining the development of the living organisms? Do systemic perspectives in contemporary biology introduce indeterminism in the context of complexity? Is indeterminism in nature a condition for a non-reductionist mental causation?

3^rd: Do physical laws exclude a creator and provident God? Is an indeterministic nature a necessary condition for divine action?

Sub-questions: Is any cosmological model compatible with divine creation? Does the origin of life and consciousness demand a direct intervention of God or is life a property which emerges from the inorganic? Is it necessary to introduce an ontological indeterminism in nature to admit divine providence?