The Number of Gods

This article explores the divergent views between and the possible consequences of various cosmocentric understandings including that of Astronism and the geocentric/biocentric concerns of contemporary pagan spirituality. These contrasting religious positions are discussed using the sociological measuring tool of the ideal-type. In actuality, no religion conforms fully to its ideal conception. Instead, the device is employed as an analytic. Vis-à-vis humanity itself, however, the question turns to whether we attempt ultimately to escape our earthly confines or rectify and restore our (...) terrestrial conditions. (shrink)

From a Quantum Cosmic perspective, a new theology is developed based on the doctrine that humans have an energy code and a biological code that allow us to achieve direct contact with the cosmic energies permeating the universe and flow in with the Alpha Energy, namely, the energy of the Creator or God. The energy codes of human beings transcend physical death as energy never ceases to exist, only to transform. Moreover, our ‘energy body network’ produces new energy through biophotons (...) which allow beings to be in total command of their existence and communicate with the cosmos through a cosmic language. Patient and consistent practice of cosmic meditation and mental physics will lead to an awakening and evolution to a Cosmic Quantum Consciousness that resembles the ultimate connection with the Alpha Energy. This article will explore the perennial approach of Quantum Cosmic Theology which suggests that all people can be united under one fundamental creed while concurrently respecting relatively minor differences in religious belief and practice. (shrink)

This paper challenges the claim that the traditional Christian (Augustinian, Thomistic, Anselmian) idea of hell as a form of eternal punishment (damnation and torment) for human sin cannot be made consistent with the idea of proportionate punishment, and it raises concerns with the notion that divine justice requires divine forgiveness and mercy. It argues that divine justice entails or at least permits retribution as the meting out of punishment by God to those who deserve it in proportion to the degree (...) and amount of harm unduly and responsibly caused by sinners to others. For God to fail to punish those who deserve it in proportion to their harmful wrongdoings would imply God’s failure to be both just and omnibenevolent. (shrink)

It is my contention here that the chapter “Of Power,” in John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is not a metaphysical pronouncement upon the liberty-necessity debates but more along the lines of what those like James Harris portray it to be: a description of our experience of freedom of the will. It is also prescriptive since it is descriptive of the right use of the will. My claims are based upon two key pieces of evidence that are responses to (...) William Molyneux’s oft noted critique of the first edition of the chapter: 1) an admission by Locke in his correspondence: at least part of the reason he is attempting to avoid metaphysical pronouncements is that trying to reconcile divine and human agency is too difficult; and 2) the theological message of “Of Power”—the truly free agent is reasonable, and the truly reasonable agent will have her eyes fixed on the afterlife, thus aiming for herself to be a slave and determined, therefore, by her ever-cultivated desire for righteousness and not by her fleshly desires—and his development of it throughout the chapter eludes sectarian categorization by the avoidance of theological issues that are not unrelated to the metaphysical question of human free agency. To frame his chapter otherwise makes him out to be a theological novice or, perhaps, unconcerned with the religious background of his readership. (shrink)

Could Christians and Muslims be referring to the same God? Consider Gareth Evans’s causal theory of reference, on which a name refers to the dominant source of information in the name’s “dossier”. I argue that information about experiences, in which God is simply the object of acquaintance, can dominate the dossier. Thus, this "demonstrative" use of names offers a promising alternative avenue by which users of the divine names can refer to the same referent despite having different conceptions of God.

Although it became customary to warn against confusing postmodernism with deconstructionism, it seems plausible to suggest that their central agendas are not dissimilar. Moreover, from the philosophical point of view, it is the idea of the 'deconstruction of meaning' that can be said to constitute the foundation of postmodernism understood here as an intellectual movement. It is true that grounded in the poststructuralist language analysis, deconstructionism seeks primarily to challenge the attempts inherent in the Western philosophical tradition to establish ultimate (...) meaning in a text. However, as one might have anticipated, the deconstruction of meaning of texts provided a basis for a large scale project leading to deconstruction of all 'truths', as conceived in the mainstream philosophical tradition. And it did it by questioning the coherence of the very concept of 'truth'. Eclectic as postmodernism is, it can be recognized by the fundamental assumption that there is no common denominator that guarantees the one-ness of the world, or the possibility of objective or neutral thought. This assumption would suffice to make one expect that postmodernism will challenge the very foundations of any metaphysical or religious system of beliefs. And so it does. In this paper I would like to ellucidate just one way this challange may be construed, poiting to the example of Don Cupitt, the leading exponent of the 'antirealist' critique of the discourse of theism. (shrink)

I argue that the following two claims provide us with sufficiently strong reason to conclude that God came into existence from nothing a finite time in the past: that God is omnitemporal; and that there is a first moment of time. After defending the possibility of God beginning to exist ex nihilo from various objections, I critique two alternative attempts at providing an account of the relationship between an omnitemporal God and the beginning of time. I show that these either (...) fail to be an alternative to my own model or are less supported by the relevant evidence. (shrink)

The main question of this short monograph is how the existence, supremacy, and uniqueness of an almighty and immaterial God bear on our own nature. It aims to uncover lessons about what we are by thinking about what God might be. A dominant theme is that Abrahamic monotheism is a surprisingly hospitable framework within which to defend and develop the view that we are wholly material beings. But the resulting materialism cannot be of any standard variety. It demands revisions and (...) twists on the usual views. We can indeed learn about ourselves by learning about God. One thing we learn is that, though we are indeed wholly material beings, we’re not nearly as ordinary as we might seem. (shrink)

Friendly atheists hold atheism to be true, and believe that theists may be rational when holding theism to be true. Theists may be rational, they claim, either because they lack the evidence for atheism, or because they are mistaken regarding the evidential force of the arguments for theism. Both these reasons can be interpreted as suggesting that theists are making a mistake, and perhaps even that they are blameworthy for having made that mistake. In this paper, I argue that friendly (...) atheists might even say that the most intellectually oriented theists are rational and blameless for holding theism to be true. I give two reasons for this. The first reason is based on the denial of doxastic voluntarism regarding at least some of our beliefs. Theists might not have voluntary control with respect to their belief that God exists. The second reason is based on a meta-epistemological consideration. Often, we choose our epistemology by looking at paradigm examples of knowledge. Growing up in a theistic context might lead one to regard the belief that God exists as a paradigm example of knowledge, and a theist could be considered perfectly rational and blameless for doing so, even though they may be aware of reasonable arguments for atheism. With these modifications, I suggest that Friendly Atheism is very friendly indeed. (shrink)

The traditional common consent argument for the existence of God has largely been abandoned—and rightly so. In this paper, I attempt to salvage the strongest version of the argument. Surprisingly,...

In this paper, I defend the suggestion that to be God is just to be the one and only god, where to be a god is to be a supernatural being or force that has and exercises power over the natural world but that is not, in turn, under the power of any higher ranking or more powerful category of beings or forces. I then go on to defend the following further claims: (1) there can be no more than one (...) God; (2) ‘God’ is not a title-term; and (3) the use of the name ‘God’ by non-believers is not parasitic on the use of this name by believers. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager has to face the many gods objection. The wager goes wrong when it asks us to chose between Christianity and atheism, as if there are no other options. Some have argued that we’re entitled to dismiss exotic, bizarre, or subjectively unappealing religions from the scope of the wager. But they have provided no satisfying justification for such a radical wager-saving dispensation. This paper fills that dialectical gap. It argues that some agents are blameless or even praiseworthy for ignoring (...) all but one religion as they face the wager. The argument leads us to multiple Pascals: a Jewish one, a Christian one, a Muslim one, and more. (shrink)

These volumes are reprinted without change, revision, or comment from the 1928 edition. Tennant set out with a largely empirical method to investigate the presuppositions of Christian theology. In the back of his mind was an arbitration between theology and science. His ethical theism makes room for a purposive creator and sustainer of the world. It makes room for an enduring soul but not for original sin. In a scheme that brings to mind some modern efforts at "natural theology," he (...) sees God, man, and the world as mutually requisite.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This anthology is intended primarily to provide students of theology with some of the basic writings of the major thinkers who have contributed to the development of the movement known as "process theology." Because of the content students of philosophy will likewise find it useful. The editor begins the work with an introduction in which he ably traces in broad perspective the various ways in which a mental attitude stressing process is reflected in contemporary culture, philosophy, and theology. The first (...) part of the volume then provides essays that center on process thought as this has emerged from the writings of Alfred North Whitehead and his American disciples. Two essays in this part are concerned with tracing the development of process thought, the one by Norman Pittenger centering on its historical evolution from Whitehead through Hartshorne and others into a distinct theological movement, whereas the one by Charles Hartshorne is concerned with the inner development of process thought as a noetic capable of dealing with relational reality. In other essays in this part Bernard Meland comments on the value of process thought in providing an imagery and concepts congenial to contemporary man in his struggle to understand his experience, and Bernard M. Loomer examines in detail the empirical basis and methodology central to Whitehead’s philosophy. The essays in the second part focus on the relationship between God and the world as this relationship is interpreted by process thinkers. Here selections include the final chapter of Whitehead’s Process and Reality, Hartshorne’s suggestive account of the philosophical and religious uses of the term "God," Schubert Ogden’s attempt to defend a concept of God modeled on process thought as more conformable to biblical testimony than the concept of God classical in Christian thought, Walter Stoke’s endeavor to integrate features of process thought within a more Thomistic framework relative to the being of God, and two essays by Daniel Day Williams and John B. Cobb, Jr. on the relationship between God and world and God and man. Essays in the third part, called "Christ and Redemption," reflect the efforts of three Whiteheadian-inspired theologians, Meland, Pittenger, and Henry Nelson Wieman, to rethink the Christian doctrine of the incarnation within the framework provided by process thought. In the fourth part of the work attention is directed from Whitehead to another major source of contemporary process theology, Teilhard de Chardin. The essays include Theodosius Dobzhansky’s lengthy critical appreciation of the major directions in Teilhard’s vision of the universe, Teilhard’s own views on a cosmic Christology, a development of his views on this topic by Henri de Lubac, and other studies of aspects of Teilhard’s thought by N. M. Wildiers, George Crespy, and Christopher F. Mooney. An appendix includes a comparative study of the metaphysics of Teilhard and Whitehead by Ian G. Barbour. A useful bibliography completes the anthology.—W. E. M. (shrink)

Philosopher William Lane Craig of the Talbot School of Theology has published three other Kluwer books on time and eternity and God’s relationship to them. In this book, Craig draws some important strands together regarding the concept of God and relativity theory. He notes the striking “paucity of integrative literature” in this regard: “I am convinced that this lack is largely due to the fact that theologians and philosophers of religion do not understand Einstein’s theories and so are reduced to (...) merely parroting what they read in scientific popularizations,” resulting in “a superficial and uncritical interaction”. (shrink)

One rarely encounters a work of such metaphysical breadth and ambition. Ford offers no narrowly focused criticism or proposal, but, as the title claims, a transformation of process theism. This is no maverick project, but one based on careful critical analysis and appropriation of the thought of Whitehead and his major interpreters. Ford’s commitment to Whitehead’s thought, although evident, is not uncritical. He is prepared to make modifications, even radical ones, so long as the general tendency of Whitehead’s thought is (...) not abandoned. Thus, Ford seeks to develop Whitehead’s process theism but holds that Whitehead’s mature notion of God is inadequate and that his successors have not successfully addressed this inadequacy. Ford therefore undertakes the current project. His transformation of process theism involves jettisoning Whitehead’s notion of God’s primordial nature and reconceiving God as pure everlasting concrescence, indeed, as future activity. This last notion constitutes Ford’s most radical development. Fully aware that the notion initially appears perplexing, perhaps unintelligible, Ford devotes much attention to developing it and drawing out its implications. He divides his project into three parts: Whitehead’s thought and the unresolved problem in his notion of God; responses to that problem by Whitehead’s interpreters and followers; and Ford’s own transformative project. (shrink)

We simply have no better account of Hobbes's religious thinking and religious projects than Martinich's excellent new book about Hobbes's Leviathan. According to Martinich, Hobbes was not an atheist, and his political theory was not that of a secularist. Rather he was a Calvinist, a monarchist, and an advocate of an episcopal church. Like so many others in the seventeenth century, Hobbes sought to meet the challenges which the scientific revolution posed for a Biblical faith. Hence, Leviathan has two goals, (...) " to show that the distinctively religious content of the Bible could be reconciled with the new science and to prove that religion could not legitimately be used to destabilize a government". (shrink)

Nevertheless, the work is not a standard handbook of religious information. It is written with intelligent passion, and is stamped with the urgency of an author who senses the importance of his inquiry. Professor Dupré advances a thesis with implications not always easy to discern in the complex discussions that propose it. Moreover, he clearly means us to use caution in applying his interpretation to data which have not formed the basis of his thesis. He writes most about what he (...) knows best, and places his emphasis upon the Christian religion. The book is not simply a study of a particular religion, however, because the author undertakes to interpret themes that are fundamental to most religions. Followers of other religions as well as non-believers may agree with much of what he has written, but he leaves to others the manner and extent to which his views may be extrapolated to non-Christian religions. To sum up, then: the context within which he writes includes his understanding of the religious past, the plurality of world religions and the emergence of secularism; his focus is upon Christian religious experience; and his intention is to formulate a comprehensive and contemporary view of the meaning of religion in modern life. (shrink)

Ross describes his work as "the beginnings of an analytic reconstruction of scholastic natural theology". The heart of the book consists of the arguments for God's existence, at least those which Ross takes to be satisfactory. This is then supplemented by a discussion of God's omnipotence and of the problem of evil.

... belief that every creature is a manifestation of God pantheism – belief that everything is divine phenomena – (Kantian) reality-as-it-appears polytheism ...

Scott Davison has raised some challenges to my case against the commensurability of meticulous providence and what I call Scheme-B Molinism, the view that God formulates his plan for the course of history consequent to his cognizance of the true counterfactuals of freedom. In this rejoinder, I attempt to clarify certain points of my argument and respond to his criticisms by showing that he has not dealt adequately with the relevant biblical texts or alleviated the worry that the Molinist view (...) of providence reduces God to just “choosing which movie to play.”. (shrink)

The Soviet government utilized a variety of tactics while attempting to secularize the U.S.S.R. Oppression of the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrates how interconnected faith and the former tsarist regime were. It is ironic that while trying to wipe out religion, the Bolsheviks replacement methods carried religious-type qualities as well.

Philosophical atheism claims not only that there are no sufficient reasons for believing there is a God, but also that there are sufficient reasons for thinking no such deity exists. The purpose of this article is to explicate the typical commitments of this position. After distinguished several related views, the article will then consider typical grounds for the rejection of theistic commitments, first by showing that the theistic position makes a stronger claim and therefore carries the burden of proof. The (...) article will then consider rejections of theistic attempts to shift this burden and atheist responses, including considerations of both natural and revealed theology. The intent is to present the general shape of rejections and commitments rather than proffering conclusive refutations and defenses. (shrink)

Many theist as well as many atheist philosophers have maintained that if God exists, then every instance of undeserved, unwanted suffering ultimately benefits the sufferer. Recently, several authors have argued that this implication of theism conflicts with ordinary morality. I show that these arguments all rest on a common mistake. Defenders of these arguments overlook the role of merely potential instances of suffering in determining our moral obligations toward suffering.

According to Markus Gabriel, the world does not exist. This view—baptised metametaphysical nihilism—is exposited at length in his recent book Fields of Sense, which updates his earlier project of transcendental ontology. In this paper, I question whether meta-metaphysical nihilism is internally coherent, specifically whether the proposition ‘the world does not exist’ is expressible without performative contradiction on that view. Call this the inexpressibility objection. This is not an original objection—indeed it is anticipated in Gabriel’s book. However, I believe that his (...) response to it is inadequate and that I have something illuminating to say about this state of affairs. My claim is that we can distinguish between two senses of ‘the world’, one of which is benign and acceptable, the other not. The acceptable sense of ‘the world’ suffices to answer the inexpressibility objection—at a certain theoretical cost, of course. To explain what this cost is, I turn briefly to an examination of Martin Hägglund’s radical atheism. (shrink)

Raphael Lataster and Herman Philipse present an argument which they think decisively demonstrates polytheism over monotheism, if theism is assumed. Far from being decisive, the argument depends on very controversial and likely false assumptions about how to treat infinities in probability. Moreover, these problems are well known. Here, we focus on three objections. First, the authors rely on both countable additivity and the Principle of Indifference, which contradict each other. Second, the authors rely on a particular way of dividing up (...) the possibility space, when there are equally as reasonable alternative divisions which give different answers to the one the authors arrived at. Third, the authors’ argument proves too much, giving us an argument against many positions we should not be able to argue against so easily. (shrink)

This article continues a discussion initiated by Edgar Towne,2 Vaughn McTernan,3 and others, concerning divine-human interactivity. Both Towne and McTernan expressed concern about the overemphasis of the God-world dichotomy in traditional theology and thus proposed alternative conceptions of divine action, human interaction, and human interpretation of such interaction. In this article, contemporary theologians such as Wiles, Farrer, and Brümmer are consulted and integrated with contemporary religion-science dialogue, including the work of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and the (...) Vatican Observatory project. Moreover, contemporary investigations into divine action are synthesized and categories .. (shrink)

Chapter One Divine Predication, Direct Reference, and the Attributes of Classical Theism The Church’s affirmation of statements predicating certain positive attributes to God is central to Christian doctrine. However, important biblical and doctrinal predications include ascriptions of emotion, mental states and even movement to God. It is contested whether divine predications should understood metaphorically, analogically, or univocally. The situation is further complicated when one takes into account divine attributes such as impassibility, immutability, and aseity. If classical theists are right in (...) attributing aseity and impassibility to God, it is difficult to see how predications like “God is loving” or “God is angry” should be understood. In this paper I show that contemporary philosophy of language is a surprisingly good bedfellow for religious language. I argue that language, understood in light of contemporary work on public meaning and direct reference, enables us to make meaningful predications of God while not undermining our commitments to some of the most difficult theological ascriptions. This view of divine predication in light of public meaning and reference turns out to be theory of univocal predication, one I call predication by attributive univocity. vi Chapter Two Hectoring Hector: A Thoroughgoing Critique of Hectorian Semantics Divine predication has long proved a problem for theologians and philosophers of religion. Religious speech acts are difficult to explain, as many doctrinal propositions seem to run aground on the metaphysical implications of divine reference and predication. Determining how words refer and describe God is difficult when one considers the attributes that God orted to have: transcendence, simplicity, and holiness, among others. Theology just is the practice of explaining the nature of God in terms humans can understand, and yet God’s nature seems to imply that human language will forever be inadequate to the task of divine description. Attempts to explain theological language have made use of metaphorical, analogical, or univocal predications, and more recently theologians and philosophers have resorted to explaining how theology might be worthwhile even when one accepts that humans cannot, in principle, accurately speak of the divine. Kevin Hector’s recent project, Theology without Metaphysics, is an attempt to restore theological speech acts’ status as meaningful and intelligible. This work has been well-received by theologians and philosophers alike, but it is not without its critics. In this paper, I defend Kevin Hector's Theology without Metaphysics against Sameer Yadav's criticisms. However, I ultimately argue that Hector's version of semantic externalism fails; I also argue that Hector’s rejection of “essentialist-correspondentist” metaphysics is really not the source of the problems with which he is concerned. vii Chapter Three Metaphor and the Mind of God in Nevi’im In The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Yoram Hazony contrasts the uses of metaphor in Nevi’im and the New Testament. According to Hazony, metaphor is employed by Jesus to obscure teachings, but the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures use metaphor to make teachings intelligible. However, this understanding of metaphor is too simplistic to capture the scope of metaphorical statements made by the Hebrew prophets. In this paper, I suggest that an important set of philosophical arguments are advanced by the prophets in ways not captured by current interpretive methodologies. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first half, I argue against Hazony’s assessment of Nevi’im. In the second, I forward my position on the philosophical dimensions of Nevi’im: that prophetic writings reveal important moral facts about God’s nature and the ways in which we should respond to him in both action and emotion. Appealing to the works of Dru Johnson, Eleonore Stump and Linda Zagzebski, I show that the writings of the Hebrew prophets may in fact advance certain arguments about the emotions and motivations of God. Through the collected writings of Nevi’im, God functions as an exemplar for those receiving the words of the prophets. viii Chapter Four Transitive Speech Acts and Melting Away Wax-Nose Anxieties in Wolterstorff’s Divine Discourse In Divine Discourse, Wolterstorff offers five patterns that interpreters can use to deal with problematic passages of Scripture. Two strategies recommended by Wolterstorff include changing the rhetorico-conceptual structure of a text, and interpreting the passage as what Wolterstorff calls “transitive discourse.” However, anytime the interpreter takes these steps away from the most likely intended meaning given to the text by the human author, he leaves himself open to what Locke called “wax-nose anxieties.” Despite Wolterstorff’s best efforts to limit the threat posed by wax-nose anxieties, Maarten Wisse argues that the two aforementioned strategies leave Wolterstorff especially open to wax-nose concerns. In what follows, I will recount both Wolterstorff’s view and Wisse’s assessment. I will then show that there is no plausible way to save Wolterstorff from Wisse’s criticisms and offer an alternative interpretative strategy for problematic passages that are often considered transitive discourse. I argue that one of Wolterstorff’s existing strategies is sufficient for dealing with problematic passages once proper attention is given to genre, and it does so without invoking transitive discourse readings or changes in rhetorico-conceptual structure. (shrink)