Abstract.Reflecting on the future of the field of science-and-religion, I focus on three aspects. First, I describe the history of the religion-and-science dialogue and argue that the emergence of the field was largely contingent on social-cultural factors in Western theology, especially in the United States. Next, I focus on the enormous influence of science on Western society and on what I call cultural scientism, which influences discussions in science-and-religion, especially how theological notions are taken up. I illustrate by sketching the (...) way divine action has been studied in science-and-religion. The divine-action debates may seem irrelevant to theologians because the way divine action is dealt with in science-and-religion is theologically problematic. Finally, I analyze the quest for integration and unity of science and religion that underlies much of the contemporary field of science-and-religion and was stimulated particularly by the efforts of Ian Barbour. I argue that his quest echoes the logical positivist vision of unification and has a strong bias toward science as the sole source of rationality, which does not take theology fully seriously. (shrink)

Of the questions concerning the many great minds of the European Enlightenment, the question of what constitutes right and proper government perhaps had the most enduring influence on the world stage. Both Thomas Jefferson and Immanuel Kant attempted to answer the question of what constitutes right government, in particular by basing the system upon the idea of human freedom as an inalienable right. This project is an attempt to compare the systems proposed by these two authors, as well as to (...) critique each on its ability to protect and foster individual freedom. It is my opinion that neither manages to do what it is constructed to do, as each fails to fully protect individual freedom, and each has as part of it a component which conflicts with individual freedom. (shrink)

Adapting Western self-critical discourse, the Arab Egyptian intellectual Abdelwahab Elmessiri attempted to Islamize modernity; however, he did this ironically via Western critique itself. This paper follows a comparative approach to show how Elmessiri’s construction of the duality of immanence and transcendence is based on the critiques introduced by Eric Voegelin and Zygmunt Bauman. However, while Bauman saw the role of critical theory as the modest comment on human experience, Elmessiri and Voegelin uncovered the dominance of immanence in Western modernity so (...) as to contrast it with Islamic monotheism and the Christian humanistic legacy, respectively. The critiques introduced by Elmessiri and Voegelin reach their climax when modernity is compared to a form of heretical Gnosticism. (shrink)

Digital media has become an integral part of people’s lives, and its ubiquity and pervasiveness in our everyday lives raise new ethical, social, cultural, political, economic and legal issues. Many of these issues have primarily been dealt with in terms of what is ‘right’ or ‘just’ with digital media and digitally-mediated practices, and questions about the relations between digital media and the good life are often left in the background. In short, what is often missing is an explicit discussion of (...) the relations between digital media and the good life. Under the label of ‘Net recommendation’, the present study aims to offer a balanced and constructive normative analysis of digital media, focusing on the relations between digital media and the good life. The project of Net recommendation aims to (re)assert the importance of actual discourses in our normative analysis of the relations between digital media and the good life. I pursue this project with a Walzerian approach to digital media and the good life that takes seriously (and, ideally, also interacts with) actual discourses. This approach allows us to have a better understanding of our normative judgements on the impacts of digital media has (or will have) on the good life and, at the same time, allows us to answer the question of ‘how should we live with digital media?’ more adequately. Moreover, the Walzerian approach is useful in both an intra-cultural and an inter¬cultural context. Using China’s Internet as a case study, I show that the relations between digital media and the good life in each culture should be examined in its own right. Together, I hope, this study provides an adequate illustration and defence of the project of Net recommendation that does not start with the assumption of digital media being a source of moral problem and strives to recommending specific ways to reform and/or transform digital media and digitally-mediated practices that allow us to have better relations with digital media and enable us to live better lives with them. (shrink)