The most important thing to know about this book is that it is mostly not by Rorty. Twenty pages of this small book were transcribed from an audio recording of a public lecture by Rorty including portions of his discussion with the audience, in Turin, Spain, in 2005. A Spanish translation appeared in 2008, followed by this English version in 2011. Jeffrey W. Robbins wrote a foreword, “Richard Rorty: A Philosophical Guide to Talking About Religion,” (vii–xxii). The introduction at the (...) lecture was by Gianni Vattimo (1–5). Rorty’s section is twenty pages long (7–26). By far the largest portion of the book is the conclusion, by G. Elijah Dann, “Philosophy, Religion, and Religious Belief After Rorty” (27–76, including .. (shrink)

The great strength of process theism is also its tragic flaw. It avoids the weaknesses of more traditional theologies--e.g., the problem of evil and conflicts with science--by envisioning a God so thoroughly interwoven with nature and history that there is nothing left which they cannot do without God. Even if we can understand what process theologians mean by their claims (per Antony Flew), there seems to be no empirical method to distinguish the work of God from the work of nature, (...) history, or culture. (shrink)

Zhihe Wang (Wang Zhihe in Chinese order) is the primary mover of process thought in China today. While John B. Cobb Jr. and David Griffin are poster scholars of the movement, it is Wang who makes things happen, from the Process Academies to international conferences on topics ranging from ecological civilization to education. At my last count, there were six “Whitehead Wisdom Education Kindergartens” in Beijing. While Wang Zhihe has contributed to three other books in the Ontos Verlag Process Thought (...) series, this is his first monograph there, and it is a valuable contribution. While I want to survey the flow of the book, it is the concluding chapters that I think especially warrant our attention, for .. (shrink)