The world sees a shift in people’s religious identity, moving away from the orthodox centre to either the extremes of religious fundamentalism or the religious identity of being ‘spiritual, but not religious’. This article investigates the latter religious identity and asks whether Schleiermacher’s theology may be of any value to it. The argument is that the context of disillusionment experienced during the Enlightenment and South Africa’s transition to a post-secular constitutional democracy created the environment for a religious search beyond orthodoxy. (...) The article then describes the tension between being conscious of the self and an awareness of dependence on the other, found in Schleiermacher’s thinking and the notion of ‘spirituality’. The article concludes by questioning how sin and evil, and the place of Jesus in Schleiermacher’s theology and the stated form of religious identity, can be understood. (shrink)

In God and Phenomenal Consciousness, Yujin Nagasawa bridges debates in two distinct areas of philosophy: the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. First, he introduces some of the most powerful arguments against the existence of God and provides objections to them. He then presents a parallel structure between these arguments and influential arguments offered by Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson against the physicalist approach to phenomenal consciousness. By appealing to this structure, Nagasawa constructs novel objections to (...) Jackson's and Nagel's arguments. Finally, he derives, from the failure of these arguments, a unique metaphysical thesis, which he calls 'non-theoretical physicalism'. Through this thesis, he shows that although this world is entirely physical, there are physical facts that cannot be captured even by complete theories of the physical sciences. (shrink)

In _Consciousness and the Existence of God_, J.P. Moreland argues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness provides evidence for the existence of God. Moreover, he analyzes and criticizes the top representative of rival approaches to explaining the origin of consciousness, including John Searle’s contingent correlation, Timothy O’Connor’s emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn’s mysterian ‘‘naturalism,’’ David Skrbina’s panpsychism and Philip Clayton’s pluralistic emergentist monism. Moreland concludes that these approaches should be rejected in favor of what he calls ‘‘the Argument (...) from Consciousness.’’. (shrink)

This work addresses the challenge of contemporary materialism for thinking about God. The book examines contemporary theories of consciousness and defends a non-materialist theory of persons, subjectivity and God. A version of dualism is articulated that seeks to avoid the fragmented outlook of most dualist theories. Dualism is often considered to be inadequate both philosophically and ethically, and is seen as a chief cause of denigrating the body and of promoting individualism and scepticism. Charles Taliaferro defends a holistic understanding (...) of the person-body relationship in which the two are distinguishable yet integrally related. This integrated dualism is spelled out in a way that avoids the ethical and philosophical problems associated with other dualistic accounts, especially in its Platonic and Cartesian forms. A defence is then made of the intelligibility of thinking about God as non-physical, yet integrally present to creation. Charles Taliaferro is co-editor of the forthcoming A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, with Philip Quinn. He has had work published in, among others, The Philosophical Quarterly, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophia. (shrink)

While nobody will ever know what it may be like to be God, there is a more basic question one may try to answer: does God have phenomenal consciousness, does He have experiences within a conscious point of view (POV)? Drawing on recent debates within philosophy of mind, I argue that He doesn’t: if God exists, ‘He’ is not phenomenally conscious, at least in the sense that there is no ‘divine subjectivity’. The article aims at displaying an incompatibility between (...) God’s being truly omnipresent on the one hand, and God’s having a genuine conscious POV on the other. This is shown by introducing the concept of ‘experiential location’ to clarify what shall be meant by ‘conscious POV’, then by exposing an inconsistency in the traditional concept of omnipresence, and finally by arguing that a consistent though weaker understanding of omnipresence is incompatible with God’s having a conscious POV. This paves the way for a ‘processual’ or computational conception of God, which may have its own metaphysical benefit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol "God" 1 Gordon D. KaufmanHarvard UniversityI am a Christian theologian. This does not mean, however, that I understand my work as being essentially a matter of explaining and defending Christian faith and the Christian set of symbols for interpreting human life and the world. The task of the Christian theologian is rather, as I (...) understand it, to scrutinize carefully, critically evaluate, and reconstruct (in whatever ways seem appropriate and necessary) the central Christian symbols, so they will encourage and support a faith and life appropriate for today. 2 In our time it is no longer sufficient for theologians simply to take it for granted that the basic structure and commitments of traditional Christian faith are--in all of their main lines--right and proper; and to proceed, then, to expound and reinterpret them in whatever ways seem intelligible and persuasive. Whatever may have been the value and justification of this sort of theologizing in the past, the crises of the twentieth century (to many of which Christian symbols, institutions, and practices have themselves contributed) have made it clear that thorough reassessment of the traditional Christian symbol-system, with an eye to its (possibly drastic) reconstruction or even to the total rejection of some of its principal features, is required--if it is to continue to contribute to human well-being, and to the well-being of the rest of life, on planet Earth. It is with this thoroughly critical and open understanding of the task of Christian theologians today that this contribution to our Buddhist-Christian dialogue has been prepared. And I hope a similar spirit will animate the responses to this paper, whether offered from the Christian or the Buddhist side of our conversation. I My assignment here is to examine the topic of "Christianity and Ecology." This is, of course, a very broad topic, much too large for a paper of this sort. I have taken the liberty, therefore, to confine my discussion to only one of the many questions that might be considered under this heading. The central symbol in terms of which Christian faith and Christian life (as well as most other western religious traditions) understand and order themselves is God, usually thought of as designating the creator and governor of the world, the only One to whom unqualified devotion, love, [End Page 3] and service are due. If we can come to some understanding of how this symbol has functioned in the past, and might be conceived properly to function today with respect to ecological concerns, we will have made a large step toward understanding the overall topic of Christianity and ecology. I am devoting this paper, therefore, to the question of "Ecological Consciousness and the Symbol 'God.'"Throughout my professional life I have been concerned with the problem of the continuing viability (or lack of viability) in our contemporary world of the symbol "God," as that symbol has been understood through most of western history (not only by Christians and Jews, but also by many humanists and secularists). And for the last thirty years or so, I have been reflecting on the issues which our growing ecological consciousness poses for our understanding of--and our ordering of life in terms of--this symbol. My earliest writing directly concerned with this question is in a paper entitled "The Concept of Nature: A Problem for Theology" published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1972. 3 In that paper I attempted to show that there is a fundamental tension--indeed, a conceptual and logical incompatibility--between, on the one hand, the understanding of God, and of the intimate relation of humanity to God (as seen in our western religious and philosophical traditions), and on the other hand, our growing awareness that human existence is essentially constituted by, and could not exist apart from, the complex ecological ordering of life that has evolved on planet Earth over many millennia. 4The main emphasis in that paper remains largely correct in my view. Hence, I would like to... (shrink)

Recently, Daniel Lim has published a thoughtful critique of one form of my argument for the existence of God from consciousness (hereafter, AC). After stating his presentation of the relevant contours of my argument, I shall present the main components of his critique, followed by my response. Since one purpose of my publications of AC has been to foster discussion about a neglected argument for God’s existence, I am thankful to Lim for his interesting article and the chance to (...) further the discussion. (shrink)

With substance dualism and the existence of God, Swinburne (2004, The Existence of God, Oxford University Press, Oxford) and Moreland (2010, Consciousness and the Existence of God, Routledge, New York) have argued for a very powerful explanatory mechanism that can readily explain several philosophical problems related to consciousness. However, their positions come with presuppositions and ontological commitments which many are not prepared to share. The aim of this paper is to improve on the Swinburne-Moreland argument from consciousness (...) by developing an argument for the existence of God from consciousness without being committed to substance dualism. The argument proceeds by suggesting a solution to the exceptional-point-of-view problem, i.e., the question how it can be explained that there is a conscious being lucky enough to experience the point of view of a relatively tiny brain amidst a giant universe that is indifferent about which physical entities it brings about according to the laws of physics. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is known for his analysis of human consciousness. Surprisingly, however, he never takes seriously what it might mean to theorize God’s existence through that same understanding of consciousness. In this paper, I endeavor that analysis and outline the Sartrean conscious God, where nothingness haunts God’s own being. My argument is not to prove God’s existence through a Sartrean theology. My argument is only that a Sartrean theology centered on the conscious God is fully consistent within Sartre’s (...) existentialism and that such a conception of God should appeal to the Christian. (shrink)

It has been argued that God is omnipresent, that is, present in all places and in all times. Omnipresence is also implied by God's knowledge, power, and perfection. A Kantian argument shows that in order to be self-aware, apply concepts, and form judgments, in short, to have a mind, there must be objects that are external to a being that it can become aware of and grasp itself in relationship to. There can be no external objects for an omnipresent God, (...) so he cannot have a mind. (shrink)

In his two first-rate books, ’Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument’ and ’The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism’, J. P. Moreland argues that our existence as conscious beings presents insurmountable problems for naturalism and evidence for theism. In this review, I summarize Moreland’s treatment of three issues in scientific theory acceptance, which he claims are relevant to determining which worldview, theism or naturalism, is better able to explain the existence of conscious (...) mental entities. I then raise some questions about their supposed relevance and conclude with some thoughts about the simplicity and immateriality of the soul. (shrink)

"Vedic gods, religion, psychology, mythology, tradition, yoga.".

In this paper, I will argue that the best explanation for the origin of embodied human consciousness is grounded in God as understood through the doctrine of divine simplicity. First, I will present a modern expression of Aquinas’ understanding of divine simplicity. I will focus on one of Aquinas’ main contentions, namely, the impossibility that God possesses any spatial or temporal parts. Second, I will offer a modern version of a cosmological argument that will fortify the doctrine of divine (...) simplicity with respect to the implied transcendent cause. Third, for embodied consciousness to arise, given modern science, it must arise through an evolutionary process of some sort. I will take a theistic evolutionary approach. Such an understanding will be explored while providing a connection to Jacques Maritain’s view of human evolution as expressed in his sixth chapter of Untrammeled Approaches titled “Toward a Thomist Idea of Evolution.” From there I will tie the main three threads of this paper together. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a theory of personhood which leaves open the possibility of construing the universe as a person. If successful, it removes one bar to endorsing pantheism. I do this by examining a rising school of thought on personhood, on which persons, or selves, are understood as identical to episodes of consciousness. Through a critique of this experiential approach to personhood, I develop a theory of self as constituted of qualitative mental contents, but where these contents (...) are also capable of unconscious existence. On this theory, though we can be conscious of our selves, consciousness turns out to be inessential to personhood. This move, I then argue, provides resources for responding to the pantheist’s problem of God’s person. (shrink)

A talk delivered at the conference “Science and Religion: The Religious Beliefs and Practices of Scientists—20th Century,” Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, 28 May 2002.

According to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic theological tradition, or "classical theism," disembodiment (or non-physicality) and psychologicality are two of God’s necessary or essential attributes. This paper mounts a case for the thesis that these attributes are incompatible. More exactly, it provides compelling evidentiary support for the claim that, given the basic structure of consciousness, it is impossible for a psychological being to be disembodied (and vice versa). But if it is impossible for a psychological being to be disembodied (and vice versa), (...) then, since psychologicality and disembodiment are both essential to God under classical theism, the God of classical theism does not--and cannot--exist. (shrink)

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s (...) knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

One of the primary and most consequential properties of consciousness is that it is absolutely isolated. One’s consciousness cannot be shared by anyone else. Self- consciousness about this condition can give rise to a debilitating sense of loneliness. One important task of culture is to manage this sense of loneliness, to defer and diminish it. Religion supplies ideas that function in this way. Literature supplies imaginative experiences to the same ends. After introducing the general topic through a (...) literary example, the paper takes up the problem of other minds and solipsism, considering aspects of the issue treated by Wittgenstein, Moore, Heidegger and Descartes. The possibility of solipsism both demonstrates and results from the unbridgeable isolation of consciousness. The second section turns to the mind/body relation. It argues that intentionality is irreducible to a purely physical explanatory account. This is not because the mind is a brain-like entity that interacts with the body. Rather, it is because any physical explanatory account presupposes an observer or speaker outside the system being observed or described. The irreducibility of that observer is, so to speak, the flip side of solipsism. The unobserved observer is, precisely, each one of us. Each of us is removed in just this way from the world he/she is perceiving and addressing hence, our isolation. The third section turns to the varieties of loneliness here called ‘longing’, ‘grief’ and ‘despair’ relating these to the inevitability of death, primarily the death of others. The fourth part takes up the feeling that makes loneliness intense, love. It goes on to consider the thematization of loneliness in the most common narrative structure cross- culturally, romantic tragi-comedy. The concluding sections examine the ways in which religion and literature serve not only to represent loneliness, but, what is more important, to inhibit or manage it. (shrink)

To talk of God is almost a presumption, for who can say with any certainty that it is or if it is, in what sense of “is” it is, and what is its nature. And, perhaps, of all those who talk of God, the philosopher is the least qualified, as by temperament and training he lives in a world where concepts and arguments and ratiocinative thought are more real than anything else. And God, whatever it may or may not be, (...) is not an idea or a concept or the conclusion of a well-reasoned chain of argumentation. Nor is it even a hypothesis to be tested or a necessary postulate without which our experience would make no sense and life cease to have a meaning. (shrink)

The early 20thcentury works of Kurdish Islamic thinker Said Nursî explore how cinema can provide access to the divine. Yet, considering the periods of Nursî’s life that were spent in prison, or in exile in remote locations, it is likely that the cinema he was discussing was, very specifically, the early silent cinema of attractions. Thus the distinctive format of this cinema can be uncovered in, and seen to structure, Nursî’s formulation of ‘God's cinema’. With this proposition in mind, this (...) article indicates something of the potential that an engagement with Nursî’s cinematic writing offers for reconsidering topics already much discussed in film-philosophy, such as that of time in the works of Gilles Deleuze. (shrink)

Today we face the consequences of ‗God's death‘, or falling out of heaven, and with him the collapse of many ideologies and values. We witness the disintegration of the Other, the dissolution of prohibition, and the confusion and angst it creates. Also we witness a growing movement back to dogmatic religion and the emergence of persecuting fathers or small Gods: like the rise of totalitarianism of the laws of the market and rating, and the compulsion to enjoy. Is there another (...) alternative? Can psychoanalysis deal with these changes in new ways? This paper addresses these issues through clinical observations which show the tangent points of psychoanalysis, and spiritual and religious concepts. Examples include two cases of orthodox Jews, a man and a woman who obeyed the ceremonial aspects of religion to the letter; but there was no presence of god or spiritual experience whatsoever in their discourse. Therefore, they were struggling with broken identity, suffering and cynicism, and lost their defined place in the world. Two others: secular, atheistic man and woman discovered god and its representatives and found a new "name of the father". (shrink)

_From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great faiths_ Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic (...) faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

Have you ever thought about how self-consciousness (self-awareness) originated in the universe? Understanding consciousness is one of the toughest "nuts to crack." In recent years, scientists and philosophers have attempted to provide an answer to this mystery. The reason for this is simply because it cannot be confined to solely a materialistic interpretation of the world. Some scientific materialists have suggested that consciousness is merely an illusion in order to insulate their worldviews. Yet, consciousness is the (...) most fundamental thing we know, even more so than the external world since we require it to perceive or think about anything. Without it, reasoning would be impossible. Dr. Scott Ventureyra, in this ground-breaking book, explores the idea of the Christian God and Creation in order to tackle this most difficult question. He demonstrates that theology has something significant to offer in reflection of how consciousness originated in the universe. He also makes a modest claim that the Christian conception of God and Creation provide a plausible account for the origin of self-consciousness. He integrates philosophy, theology, and science in an innovative way to embark on this exploration. (shrink)

Arguments from consciousness to God’s existence (ACs) contend that physicalism is too problematic to explain the mind’s ultimate source. They add that theism probably better explains this source in terms of God making us in his own image (with conscious, unified, rational minds). But ACs are problematic too. First, physicalism has various competitors beside theism. Russellian monism and dual-aspect theory are examples. Second, all these theories, including theism, are seriously flawed. For example, it’s tied to traditional dualism, which has (...) causal issues (according to Murphy, Churchland, and other physicalists). But we argue that this theistic dualism can be refined to avoid its issues—and the issues in all other theories. So, it probably explains the mind’s origin better than other theories. We rely here on Lowe’s dualism, where the mind’s subject exists immaterially yet spatially, and is a unified, simple entity (unlike neural aggregates with their quite separate parts). This turns the tables on Churchland, Murphy, and other advocates for scientism. -/- . (shrink)

This article offers a comparative reading of the ontologies of David Bentley Hart and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as their respective appeals to phenomenology as a philosophical method. While it may seem odd to compare one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated atheists with one of contemporary Christianity’s most highly-acclaimed critics of atheism, this article shows that there are many surprising parallels between the ontological outlooks of Hart and Sartre, namely their conceptions of God as the unity of being and (...) consciousness and their accounts of human consciousness as a desire to ‘become God’. By examining the similarities and differences between Sartre’s and Hart’s philosophical and theological works, this article seeks to highlight the phenomenological aspects of Hart’s theological outlook and consider how Hart’s appeal to the phenomenological analysis of intentional consciousness in his theological work can illuminate our understanding of the ongoing engagements between theology and phenomenology. (shrink)

William Paley in his famous statement in 1800 of the Argument from Design, imagined that he found a watch lying on a heath and set to wondering how it came to be there. “The inference is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which.

In the twentieth century, the Russian Empire acted as a country where the state religion - Orthodoxy - was legally established. According to the census of 1897, the number of Orthodox Christians was 87.3 million, or 69.5% of the population. The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in its report for 1902 stated: "The Orthodox Russian people, who by nature deeply believe, consider all phenomena of life not only family and social, but also state life only in the light of (...) faith" However, already in 1916 the Synod in the definition No. 676 acknowledged that a mass fallout from faith began. And a year later the "deeply religious people" will betray their Church and, on the whole, enthusiastically accept the communist ideology that proclaimed religion as "the opium of the people", "the heart of the heartless world", "the spirit of soulless order", "the sigh of the oppressed creature". In this case, if "the sufferers for the faith were thousands, then the apostates are millions". (shrink)

How do humans ‘register’ God: attain knowledge or revelation of God? Analysis is familiar in terms of explanatory hypothesis, necessity, authority and commitment. However individuals speak also of ‘experience’ or ‘consciousness’ of God/Christ/grace – received widely, not just by an esoteric few. But may we properly hold that people can be cognitively aware of God?Undoubtedly such speech has problematic aspects. Not only do psychosis, self‐deception, gullibility recur. Commentators are liable to enlist what may be termed the A‐conceptual Lucidity picture, (...) which critically fails.Various positions urged by thinkers rule out by definition the very possibility of cognitive awareness of God. Some analysts assert: a person’s experiencing x is constituted throughout by the person’s use of concepts in toto reached previously and independently. But, why adopt any a priori dismissiveness?We should favour a portrayal of people’s epistemic situation respecting God called the Consciousness Portrayal. Phrases therein include: ‘God’s gracious, guiding activity’; ‘a person’s access to God’; ‘attentive consciousness/conceptualization/knowledge of God’; ‘diverse levels or modes of consciousness’; ‘God’s guidance in a person’s creatively picking out concepts’; and ‘“cognition” which, as regards meaning, is not just a function of calculative reasoning’. Alertness to usage in non‐religious contexts aids our finding the religious phrasing intelligible. The Portrayal is approachable from an internal and external angle.Opponents’ challenges to the Portrayal invoke some broad epistemological theses, often pronounced intrinsic to ‘rationality’. But we fittingly espouse certain contrasting epistemological views. And these prove to fortify the Consciousness Portrayal. (shrink)

The anthropocentric orientation of traditional understandings of Christian faith and life, further accentuated by the existentialist terms in which theology was articulated in mid‐century by Tillich and others, produced theologies no longer appropriate in today's world of evolutionary and ecological thinking about human existence and its embeddedness in the web of life on planet Earth. This problem can be addressed with the help of several new concepts that enable us to understand both humanity‐in‐the‐world and God in ways in keeping with (...) these present conceptions, thus providing a more intelligible and illuminating way of understanding Christian faith and life today. (shrink)