The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.

There are two main groups of essays in this volume. The first centres on Locke's theories of religion and their relation to contemporary scientific thought and the work of Descartes, Leibniz and Hume. The second group explores the relation between biology and physiology, and the science of man.

An expanded & revised version of Religion in an Age of Science. Three new chapters on physics & metaphysics in the 18th century and biology & theology in the 19th century. Other new sections included.

Key terms: cosmogenesis, evolution, consciousness, noosphere, religion, science, technology. The question whether religion and science can be reconciled is still under discussion today. Philosophical naturalism rejects such a possibility, at best treating these fields as a non overlapping magisteria (Stephen Jay Gould). However, the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955) has created an original vision of an evolutionary universe in which science and religion present themselves as two meridians, which are autonomous (...) but slowly converge to form a complete union at the pole, that is, in the far future. What are the ontological foundations of this optimistic vision? Can the collective heritage of human thought be considered as a further stage of the universal evolution? Is the main task of religion to activate human energy? Is the concept of cosmic Christ compatible with Christian dogmas? Such and similar questions are the content of the article. My aim in this paper is not so much a detailed analysis of Teilhard’s thought as a review of some of his main theses, especially regarding science and religion. I also devote some space to a critique of these theses, and in the closing part I ask if they are in any way falsifiable. (shrink)

This essay explains the rationale behind a series of reviews on interactions between knowledge and values, science and religion, in different countries or regions around the world. The series will run in Zygon for the whole of 2015 and beyond. In the literature, it may seem that discussions in the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom are typical of the issues, but they need not be. David Livingstone showed that the reception of evolution differed, (...) even among Calvinists in different countries. Thus, rather than an export model, we should take time to learn from scholars rooted in different contexts how in their situation issues on knowledge and values arise and are dealt with. In this interplay of global processes and local contexts, indicated with the term glocalization, we should be alert to the migration of concepts and the transformations that ideas undergo. (shrink)

Intellectual and religious problems in religion and science are traced back to three assumptions: symmetry between the two enterprises, concentration on explanatory plausibility, and the assumption of harmony or consonance. In contrast, it is argued that by acknowledging the (re)constructive nature of our religious life in an imaginative and technological culture, consonance becomes a constructive project rather than a descriptive claim. Plausibility is served better; it is claimed, by exploring religious options in relation to successes and limitations of (...) a naturalistic understanding of the world than by advocating religious understanding as an alternative to such a naturalistic one. And the asymmetry of religion and science can be addressed fruitfully by considering carefully the character of theologies as ways of holding together, in tension perhaps, a cosmology and an axiology. (shrink)

By tracing the trajectory of his own personal and professional life, the author provides a perspective on how intellectual and religious or spiritual growth, while often seemingly at odds with each other, can nonetheless advance in a mutually enhancing manner. The historical conflict between literature and science is briefly outlined as a parallel to that between religion and science, and the importance of metaphor as a common element in all three fields is explored. Emphasis is placed on (...) metaphor as a means of challenging absolutism, encouraging humility, and promoting a sense of wonder about the universe. (shrink)

Religion and science are arguably the two most powerful social forces in the world today. But where religion and science were once held to be compatible, most people now perceive them to be in conflict. This unique book provides the best available introduction to the burning debates in this controversial field. Examining the defining questions and controversies, renowned expert Philip Clayton presents the arguments from both sides, asking readers to decide for themselves where they stand: (...) class='Hi'>science _or_ religion, or science _and_ religion? Intelligent Design vs. New Atheism the role of scientific and religious ethics – designer drugs, AI and stem cell research the future of science vs. the future of religion. Viewpoints from a range of world religions and different scientific perspectives are explored, making this book essential reading for all those wishing to come to their own understanding of some of the most important debates of our day. (shrink)

Many intellectuals wrote texts on the relations between Islam and science in the nineteenth‐century Ottoman Empire. These texts not only addressed the massive social and cultural changes the Empire was going through, but responded to European authors’ claims about the extent to which Islam was compatible with the modern world. Focusing on several texts written in the second half of the nineteenth century by the influential Muslim Ottoman authors Namik Kemal, Ahmed Midhat, and Şemseddin Sami, this article shows the (...) influence of these exigencies on arguments on Islam and science. In order to represent Islam as a respectable religion in harmony with science, these intellectuals defined a “pure Islam” that was a set of basic principles that could be found in the Qur'an. Rather than an embedded way of life, Islam in these texts was an objectified, delimitable entity that could be imagined as having relations with other entities, such as science. (shrink)

With a new introduction by Michael Ruse, this book will reintroduce Bertrand Russell's writings to readers and students of philosophy and religion. Russell provides an insightful study of the historical conflicts between science and traditional religion until the beginning of the Second World War. In a wide range of topics, including evolution, demonology and medicine, sould and body, determinism, mysticism, and science and ethics, Russell provides historic events in which scientific breakthroughs clashed with Christian doctrine. Through (...) these examples, we find in history a constant upheaval and re-evaluation of our systems of belief, and identify where similar debates between modern science and the Church still exist today. (shrink)

“Religion and science” often is understood as being about the relationship between two given enterprises, religion and science. I argue that it is more accurate to understand religion and science in different contexts differently. (1) It serves as apologetics for science in a religious environment. As apologetics for technology the role of religion‐and‐science is more ambivalent, as competing and contrary responses to modern technology find articulation in religious terms. (2) In the (...) political context of the modern university, some invoke religion‐and‐science in arguing for a place of theology alongside the sciences. In this context, secular studies of religion are a major challenge, which is hardly addressed. (3) Within the religious communities, religion‐and‐science is a battleground between revisionist and traditionalist ways of understanding religion. (shrink)

This essay proposes a Cognitive Process Model of the Mind and a Cognitive Sub-Model of Causal Thought to explain how our minds produce religion and science. Our purpose here is to explore how the findings of cognitive science, as expressed in these models, may be applied to improve the social effectiveness of the humanist movement.

These are reflections on the Arkansas creationist trial by a witness for the American Civil Liberties Union. The following points are stressed: First, religion took the lead in defending science at the trial. Second, the appearance of creation science is a function not only of Protestant fudamentalism but also of the establishment of science in our wider culture. It represents a “deviant science” in such a culture. Third, our century has manifested many such bizarre unions (...) of ideological religion and modern science. This shows that science is dependent upon its humanistic, moral, and religious matrix for its social and historical health. Fourth, part of the cause of the rise of creation science has been the power, status, and self–assurance of science that it represents “the only form of truth.” Fifth, religion in turn tends both to increase and to become fanatical in advanced and precarious cultures; religion, therefore, needs rational and moral criticism if it would help in the creation of social health. (shrink)

In this paper I present a model of analysis of religion and science as forms of social construction of knowledge from the perspective of postmodern sociology. Numerous works have been recently published on the possible relations between religion and science. Most authors address this relationship from the perspectives of theology, philosophy, or selected disciplines of natural sciences . My goal is to add to that discussion a voice from the perspective of social sciences, specifically postmodern sociology. (...) The model I propose brings the religion‐science conversation down to earth, that is, to the level of people who “live” religion and science on a daily basis. The theoretical frame‐work for my analysis of religion and science and of their relationship is constructed on the basis of selected works of leading postmodern sociologists Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, and Piotr Sztompka. I begin with a brief summary of the basic ontological and methodological presuppositions of the postmodern approach to reality. This summary is followed by a clarification of meanings of certain concepts that are crucial for the understanding of my model. Then, I present the model of analysis of religion and science and, finally, make some suggestions for sociology of religion and sociology of science that might open new opportunities and challenges for future research of the interface between religion and science in the postmodern culture. (shrink)

During the last fifty years, the dialogue between science and religion in Germany has gained momentum. This essay briefly describes the academic setting in Germany with denominational theology at state universities and explains the development of secularization in reunified Germany. Twenty-five years after reunification, East Germany is one of the most secular societies in the world, and religion is seen as a strange relic. This poses challenges to the interaction between science and religion in both (...) parts of Germany. The essay then presents important institutions and contributors to the interaction between science and religion in Germany over the past fifty years, emphasizing the importance of private institutes at the intersection of the academy with society, churches, and ethical challenges. (shrink)

A one-stop resource for undergraduate students examining the many complexities of the relationship between religion and science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion and Science: Nishitani’s View of Nihility and Emptiness–A Pure Land Buddhist CritiqueRyusei TakedaIn general, philosophical critique of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, the so-called Kyoto school, has been mainly conducted from a Zen Buddhist perspective. One should not, however, overlook the fact that a profound regard for the philosophical aspects of Pure Land Buddhist thought, another major stream of Mahayana Buddhism, is deeply intertwined in the foundation (...) of their philosophies. But the ways in which they interpret it and the position they give it within their philosophical systems are not the same: they have taken different forms, often giving rise to original terminology, in accord with each thinker’s metaphysical speculation.As Alfred N. Whitehead critically argues in his Religion in the Making, the fundamental reason for the decay of both Buddhism and Christianity is that “each religion has unduly sheltered itself from the other. The self-sufficient pedantry of learning and the confidence of ignorant zealots have combined to shut up each religion in its own forms of thought. Instead of looking to each other for deeper meanings, they have remained self-satisfied and unfertilized.” Further, “both have suffered from the rise of the third tradition, which is science, because neither of them had retained the requisite flexibility of adaptation.” 1In this contemporary situation, the philosophies of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, in which the issue of religion and science has been brought into fundamental question and examined on the dimension of origin of their development, have extremely important implications for the critical interpretation of Pure Land Buddhist doctrines, particularly in the postmodern world. 2There are two points I want to make in this paper. First, the fundamental structure of Pure Land Buddhism, in a way an antipode to Zen, will be examined in light of Nishitani’s metaphysical analysis of the relationship between human experience and the laws of nature, particularly bringing into focus his existential realization of ‘nihility.’And second, I want to challenge Nishitani’s understanding of ‘emptiness’ from my perspective as a Pure Land Buddhist, and also to uncover some fundamental [End Page 155] problems underlying his view of ‘emptiness’ by attempting to relate it to Nagarjuna’s negation of ‘substance’ in his concept of ‘non-self being,’ or ‘nih-svabhava.’ 3What is Religion for Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani?Before getting into those two topics, I want to make a rough sketch indicating about where Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani see that religious experience is to be truly realized.The starting point of Nishida’s understanding of religion is found in his argument that “it is on the ground of fact that religion ought to be considered.” The fact of religious experience is in his view none other than self-awareness of ‘absolute nothingness,’ which is also the foundation of what we consider as objective knowledge. The self-awareness manifests itself in the midst of such fact and serves to reveal that fact. He argues that the ultimate goal of Mahayana Buddhism is to penetrate into the depth of this fact.In Tanabe’s philosophy, one’s resurrection and return to the world (genso) and self-renunciation through ‘metanoetics’ (zangedo), a philosophy of absolute Other-power, are required and witnessed to in order for one to establish a genuine religious standpoint. Neither/nor, instead of both/and, is the only relationship in which the self negates itself by means of contradiction, so that at the same time as the self is extinguished in the negation, the contradiction of that which opposes the self is also extinguished. Converted into the neither/nor relationship, both self and contradiction cease to be contradictory opposites. 4 This is Tanabe’s criticism directed at Nishida’s notion of the self-identity of absolute contradiction. Nothingness can never be intuited as such self-identity. The self-consciousness of nothingness is only in resurrection and return to the world, which is witnessed to through practice based upon faith and performed in obedience to Other-power. 5For Nishitani the question of the essence of religion must be answered through tracing the process of the genuine pursuit of true reality. He attempts to interpret the religious quest... (shrink)

This groundbreaking volume casts light on the long shadow of naturalistic monism in modern thought and culture. When monism's philosophical proposition - the unity of all matter and thought in a single, universal substance - fused with scientific empiricism and Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, it led to the formation of a powerful worldview articulated in the work of figures such as Ernst Haeckel. The compelling essays collected here, written by leading international scholars, investigate the articulation of monism in (...) class='Hi'>science, philosophy, and religion and its impact on a range of social movements, from socialism and early feminism to imperialism and eugenics. The result is a broad and comprehensive chronological, disciplinary, and geographic map of a century of monism, as well as a bellwether for innovative new directions in the interdisciplinary study of science, religion, philosophy, and culture. (shrink)

Taking an 1893 exchange between Charles S. Peirce and Open Court editor Paul Carus as its point of departure, the paper explores the relation between religion and science while making the case that the attitude that scientists have to their subject is akin to a religious devotion. In this way it is argued that a reconciliation between science and religion cannot be confined to religion blindly accepting the results from science, but that such a (...) reconciliation is possible only when both (re)connect with what truly inspires them, the experience of reverent wonder about the world within which they find themselves. (shrink)

An increasing number of contemporary scientists, philosophers and theologians downplay their professional authority and describe their work as simply 'telling stories about the world'. If this is so, Stephen Prickett argues, literary criticism can be applied to all these fields. Such new-found modesty is not necessarily postmodernist scepticism towards all grand narratives, but it often conceals a widespread confusion and naïvety about what 'telling stories', 'description' or 'narrative', actually involves. While postmodernists define 'narrative' in opposition to the experimental 'knowledge' of (...) science, some scientists insist that science is itself story-telling ; certain philosophers and theologians even see all knowledge simply as stories created by language. Yet story telling is neither innocent nor empty-handed. Prickett argues that since the eighteenth century there have been only two possible ways of understanding the world: the fundamentalist, and the ironic. (shrink)

In considering this perennial question of the relationship between science and religion it is important to avoid any appearance—or reality—of burking the facts. When one speaks of science one speaks of science as it is understood, and as research is carried out in it, by specialists in the various fields; and it is the most honest and the wisest course to consider in each separate science what exactly the results amount to and what the theories (...) represent. (shrink)

This is the first major response to the new challenge of neuroscience to religion. There have been limited responses from a purely Christian point of view, but this takes account of eastern as well as western forms of religious experience. It challenges the prevailing naturalistic assumption of our culture, including the idea that the mind is either identical with or a temporary by-product of brain activity. It also discusses religion as institutions and religion as inner experience of (...) the Transcendent, and suggests a form of spirituality for today. (shrink)

This article deals with the design argument for the existence of God as it is discussed in hume's "dialogues concerning natural religion". Using bayes's theorem in the probability calculus--Which hume almost certainly could not have known as such--It shows how the various arguments advanced by philo and cleanthes fit neatly into a comprehensive logical structure. The conclusion is drawn that, Not only does the empirical evidence fail to support the theistic hypothesis, But also renders the atheistic hypothesis quite highly (...) probable. A postscript speculates upon the historical question of hume's own attitude toward the design argument. (shrink)

The author draws upon his experience in teaching courses in religion and science in Taiwan, as well as more traditional sources in the history of Chinese religions and the history of science in China, to discuss the relationship of religion and science in contemporary Taiwan. Various aspects of Chinese and Taiwanese understandings of both science and religion are discussed. It is suggested that the nexus for the science‐religion dialogue does not lie (...) in a doctrine of creation, which is noticeably absent in Buddhism and most Chinese religions, but rather in the human person who seeks personal health and wholeness, right relations with fellow human beings, and harmony with the cosmos. The author notes that many of these ideas are not unique to China and Taiwan and that in considering other cultures, our understanding of our own culture is enriched. (shrink)

Many contemporary atheists find support in what they take to be the methodology and findings of science. In response to this, it is often suggested that these atheists are wrong‐headed, and that religion and science are completely compatible. It is often claimed by critics that the widespread acceptance of philosophical naturalism by scientifically informed people results from a simple mistake. Evolutionary theory is best regarded as a sort of atheistic religion. This myth crops up frequently, as (...) does the idea that evolutionary theory is inherently antireligious. The essentials of contemporary evolutionary theory are robust—they have so much empirical support that they are almost certainly true. Miracles are the subject of endless popular debate between religious apologists and religious skeptics, and there is a more specialized academic debate about this in philosophical journals. (shrink)