Introduction i. Character of the Book The central thesis of this book is that experiential awareness of God, or as I shall be saying, the perception of (...) God, ... (shrink)
Modal basics -- Some solutions -- Theist solutions -- The ontology of possibility -- Modal truthmakers -- Modality and the divine nature -- Deity as essential -- Against deity theories -- The (...) class='Hi'>role of deity -- The biggest bang -- Divine concepts -- Concepts, syntax, and actualism -- Modality: basic notions -- The genesis of secular modality -- Modal reality -- Essences -- Non-secular modalities -- Theism and modal semantics -- Freedom, preference, and cost -- Explaining modal status -- Explaining the necessary -- Against theistic platonism -- Worlds and the existence of God. (shrink)
Sets of contingent objects, perhaps, are as contingent as their members; but properties, propositions, numbers and states of affairs, it seems, are objects whose non-existence is (...) class='Hi'>quite impossible. If so, however, how are they related to God? Suppose God has a nature: a property he has essentially that includes each property essential to him. Does God have a nature? And if he does, is there a conflict between God's sovereignty and his having a nature? How is God related to such abstract objects as properties and propositions? These are the questions I want to explore. - Introduction. (shrink)
Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most original philosophers in the twentieth century. In this book, continuing his thought on obligation, he investigates the possibility that the (...) word God can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. The thirteen essays collected in this volume offer an introduction to the wide range of Levinas's thought, addresses philosophical questions concerning politics, language and religion and the philosophies of, amongst others, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Marx and Derrida. The essays also touch on the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding. Nine of the essays appear in English for the first time. (shrink)
Herman Philipse puts forward a powerful new critique of belief in God. He examines the strategies that have been used for the philosophical defence of religious belief, (...) and by careful reasoning casts doubt on the legitimacy of relying on faith instead of evidence, and on probabilistic arguments for the existence of God. (shrink)
God and moral obligations -- What is a divine command theory of moral obligation? -- The relation of divine command theory to natural law and virtue ethics -- Objections (...) to divine command theory -- Alternatives to a divine command theory -- Conclusions: The inescapability of moral obligations. (shrink)
Most of the reports on synthetic biology include not only familiar topics like biosafety and biosecurity but also a chapter on ‘ethical concerns’; a variety of diffuse (...) topics that are interrelated in some way or another. This article deals with these ‘ethical concerns’. In particular it addresses issues such as the intrinsic value of life and how to deal with ‘artificial life’, and the fear that synthetic biologists are tampering with nature or playing God. Its aim is to analyse what exactly is the nature of the concerns and what rationale may lie behind them. The analysis concludes that the above-mentioned worries do not give genuine cause for serious concern. In the best possible way they are interpreted as slippery slope arguments, yet arguments of this type need to be handled with care. It is argued that although we are urged to be especially vigilant we do not have sufficiently cogent reasons to assume that synthetic biology will cause such fundamental hazards as to warrant restricting or refraining from research in this field. (shrink)
Mark C. Murphy addresses the question of how God's ethics differs from human ethics. Murphy suggests that God is not subject to the moral norms to (...) class='Hi'>which we humans are subject. This has immediate implications for the argument from evil: we cannot assume that an absolutely perfect being is in any way bound to prevent the evils of this world. (shrink)
It is common to appeal to governing laws of nature in order to explain the existence of natural regularities. Classical theism, however, maintains the sovereignty thesis: everything (...) distinct from God is created by him and is under his guidance and control. It follows from this that God must somehow be responsible for natural laws and regularities. Therefore, theists need an account of the relation between regularities, laws, and God. I examine competing accounts of laws of nature and conclude that dispositional essentialism provides the most satisfactory explanation of the relation between, and. (shrink)
God, the Best, and Evil is an original treatment of notable problems about God and his actions towards human beings. Three main topics are investigated in detail. (...) First, if God exists, is God in some sense necessarily a value-maximizer? Second, Does a serious difficulty for the existence of God arise from the apparent fact that if God exists then God could have actualized a better possible world than this one? Thirdly are there strong objections top the existence of God based on evil? In the course of tackling the problem of evil, Langtry provides a partial theodicy for evil -- one that is neutral between Theological Compatibilism, Molinism and and Open Theism. (shrink)
Can belief in God be rationally justified? Reviewing in detail traditional and modern arguments for and against the existence of God, Professor Plantinga concludes that they must (...) all be judged unsuccessful. He then turns to the related philosophical problem of the existence of other minds, and defends the so-called analogical argument against current criticisms. He goes on to show, however, that although this argument affords us the best reasons we have for belief in other minds, it finally succumbs to the same malady that afflicts the teleological argument of God. (shrink)
In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience, William P. Alston argues that the perception of God—his term for direct experiential awareness (...) class='Hi'>of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience. (shrink)
It is difficult to evaluate the role of activity - of force or of that which has causal efficacy - in Descartes’ natural philosophy. On the one hand, (...) class='Hi'>Descartes claims to include in his natural philosophy only that which can be described geometrically, which amounts to matter (extended substance) in motion (where this motion is described kinematically).’ Yet on the other hand, rigorous adherence to a purely geometrical description of matter in motion would make it difficult to account for the interactions among the particles that constitute Descartes’ universe, since the notions of extension and kinematical motion do not in themselves imply any causal agency. There is, after all, no reason to expect that a particle whose single essence is extension, even if we suppose it to be moving, should impart motion to another particle, while conversely, there is no reason to expect a resting particle to hinder the motion of an impinging one. Descartes' hankering for an austere ontology of matter in motion is in danger of excluding causal agency (force, conceived dynmically) from matter. To the modern reader it may seem obvious that Descartes did not get himself into such a fix, since matter in motion so readily reminds us of kinetic energy or of some more primitive notion of force. Yet by no means is it obvious that Descartes attributed causal efficacy to matter in motion per se. Serious scholars have held opposite positions on this issue. Westfall, Gabbey, and others’ have argued that although on the metaphysical plane Descartes attempted to eliminate force from his mechanical universe, nonetheless ‘force is a real feature’ of his mechanical world. The thrust of this view is that Descartes conceived of force as ‘the capacity of a body in motion to act’, by means of impact, upon other bodies. An opposing interpretation, defended here, is that Descartes did in fact deny causal agency to moving matter per se, restricting agency to immaterial substances such as the human mind, angels, and God. The intention of this interpretation is not to de-emphasize the role of matter in motion in Descartes’ explanation of nature, but rather to stress the fact that Descartes did not conceive of this moving matter dynamically. -/- Reprinted in Descartes, ed. by J. Cottingham, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 281–310. (shrink)
Based on the Wilde Lectures in Natural Religion given by Anthony Kenny at Oxford from 1970 to 1972, here revised in light of recent discussion and reflection, (...) this provocative book examines some of the principal attributes traditionally ascribed to God in western theism, particularly omniscience and omnipotence. From his discussion of a number of related topics, including a comprehensive treatment of the problem of the relations between divine foreknowledge and human freedom, Kenny concludes that there can be no such being as the God of traditional natural theology. (shrink)
Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine (...) class='Hi'> command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations. (shrink)
It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into (...) an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms apply to gods. (shrink)
"At once rigorous, insightful, and accessible.... the most thorough study yet available on the phenomenological treatment of God as gift in Marion and Derrida. Invaluable reading for (...) those concerned with the theological promise of contemporary Continental philosophy."-Thomas A. Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara. (shrink)
Alasdair MacIntyre has written a selective history of the Catholic philosophical tradition, designed to show how belief in God informed and informs philosophical enquiry in different historical (...) and social settings. (shrink)
Yujin Nagasawa presents a new, stronger version of perfect being theism, the conception of God as the greatest possible being. Nagasawa argues that God should be understood, (...) not as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, but rather as a being that has the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence. (shrink)
Three very prominent arguments for atheism are (1) the argument from sub-optimality, (2) the problem of no best world, and (3) the evidential argument from gratuitous (...) class='Hi'>evil. To date, it has not sufficiently been appreciated that several important criticisms of these arguments have all relied on a shared strategy. Although the details vary, the core of this strategy is to concede that God either cannot or need not achieve the best outcome in the relevant choice situation, but to insist that God must and can achieve an outcome that is good enough. In short, this strategy invokes divine satisficing in response to these arguments for atheism. (The widespread use of this strategy may have gone unnoticed because the appeal to divine satisficing is usually implicit.) In sections 1–3, the three arguments for atheism will be set out, and it will be shown that the relevant replies all employ this shared strategy. Section 4 will show that those who invoke divine satisficing have failed to establish that this is a coherent notion. Accordingly, these replies to three important arguments for atheism are, at present, incomplete. (shrink)
Strangers, Gods and Monster is a fascinating look at how human identity is shaped by three powerful but enigmatic forces. Often overlooked in accounts of how we (...) think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skillfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters. Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how strangers, gods and monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them. (shrink)
The standard view in epistemology is that propositional knowledge entails belief. Positive arguments are seldom given for this entailment thesis, however; instead, its truth is typically assumed. (...) Against the entailment thesis, Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (Noûs, forthcoming) report that a non-trivial percentage of people think that there can be propositional knowledge without belief. In this paper, we add further fuel to the fire, presenting the results of four new studies. Based on our results, we argue that the entailment thesis does not deserve the default status that it is typically granted. We conclude by considering the alternative account of knowledge that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel propose to explain their results, arguing that it does not explain ours. In its place we offer a different explanation of both sets of findings—the conviction account, according to which belief, but not knowledge, requires mental assent. (shrink)
Engaging some of the most recent and more urgent issues in the philosophy of religion today, in this lively book Richard Kearney proposes that instead of thinking (...) of God as "actual," God might best be thought of as the possibility of the ... (shrink)
The emergent new science of synthetic biology is challenging entrenched distinctions between, amongst others, life and non-life, the natural and the artificial, the evolved and the (...) class='Hi'>designed, and even the material and the informational. Whenever such culturally sanctioned boundaries are breached, researchers are inevitably accused of playing God or treading in Frankenstein’s footsteps. Bioethicists, theologians and editors of scientific journals feel obliged to provide an authoritative answer to the ambiguous question of the ‘meaning’ of life, both as a scientific definition and as an explication with wider existential connotations. This article analyses the arguments mooted in the emerging societal debates on synthetic biology and the way its practitioners respond to criticism, mostly by assuming a defiant posture or professing humility. It explores the relationship between the ‘playing God’ theme and the Frankenstein motif and examines the doctrinal status of the ‘playing God’ argument. One particularly interesting finding is that liberal theologians generally deny the religious character of the ‘playing God’ argument—a response which fits in with the curious fact that this argument is used mainly by secular organizations. Synthetic biology, it is therefore maintained, does not offend so much the God of the Bible as a deified Nature. While syntheses of artificial life forms cause some vague uneasiness that life may lose its special meaning, most concerns turn out to be narrowly anthropocentric. As long as synthetic biology creates only new microbial life and does not directly affect human life, it will in all likelihood be considered acceptable. (shrink)
Can God Be Free? is a penetrating study of a central problem in philosophy of religion: can it be right to regard God as free, and as (...) praiseworthy for being perfectly good? Allowing that he has perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely, and we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since he couldn't do otherwise. William Rowe proposes the need for some substantial revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God. (shrink)
God in the Age of Science? is a critical examination of strategies for the philosophical defence of religious belief. Herman Philipse argues that the most promising for (...) believers who want to be justified in accepting their creed in our scientific age is the Bayesian cumulative case strategy developed by Richard Swinburne, and goes on to present an in-depth analysis of this case for theism. Using a 'strategy of subsidiary arguments', Philipse concludes that theism cannot be stated meaningfully; that if theism were meaningful, it would have no predictive power concerning existing evidence, so that Bayesian arguments cannot get started; and that if the Bayesian cumulative case strategy did work, one should conclude that atheism is more probable than theism. Philipse provides a careful, rigorous, and original critique of atheism in the world today. (shrink)
Suppose that God exists, and that God does not violate the laws of nature he created for the world. God can nevertheless act in the world, by (...) acting at the indeterministic quantum level. This chapter makes two specific points about God’s quantum action. First, on some ways of understanding quantum mechanics (specifically, the GRW theory, and the associated Continuous Spontaneous Localization theories), God’s actions are almost unlimited, contrary to those who say that God would be quite constrained in his action, if he only acted at the indeterministic quantum level. Second, on these ways of understanding quantum mechanics, God’s actions in the world need not be episodic, contrary to what for example John Polkinghorne has claimed about God’s quantum action. This discussion builds on discussions by Al Plantinga about noninterventionist special divine action. (shrink)
The question of whether God exists has long preoccupied philosophers. Many accounts of God have been proposed, and many arguments for and against God’s existence have (...) class='Hi'>been offered and discussed. But while philosophers have been busy trying to determine whether or not God exists, they have generally neglected to ask this question: "Does it _matter _whether God exists?" _Does God Matter?_ features ten original essays written by prominent philosophers of religion that address this very important, yet surprisingly neglected, question. One natural way to approach this question is to seek to understand what difference God’s existence would—or does—make to the value of the world and the well-being of its inhabitants. The three essays in Section I defend versions of _pro-theism_: the view that God’s existence would, or does, make things better than they would otherwise be. The three subsequent essays in Section II defend _anti-theism_: the view that God’s existence would, or does, make things worse than they would otherwise be. The final four essays in Section III consider the interplay between the existential and axiological debates concerning the existence of God. This book presents important research on a growing topic in philosophy of religion that will also be of keen interest to scholars working in other areas of philosophy, and in other disciplines. (shrink)
Abstract Charles Darwin, in his discussions with Asa Gray and in his published works, doubted whether God could so arrange it that exactly the desired contingent events (...) would occur to cause particular outcomes by natural selection. In this paper, I argue that even a limited or neo-Leibnizian deity could have chosen a world that satisfied some arbitrary set of goals or functions in its outcomes and thus answer Darwin's conundrum. In more general terms, this supports the consistency of natural selection with providentialism, and makes “theistic evolutionism” a coherent position to hold. (shrink)
Does God exist? The question implies another: Who is God? This book is meant to give an answer to both questions and to give reasons for this (...) answer. Does God exist? Yes or no? Many are at a loss between belief and unbelief; they are undecided, skeptical. They are doubtful about their belief, but they are also doubtful about their doubting. There are still others who are proud of their doubting. Yet there remains a longing for certainty. Certainty? Whether Christians or Jews, believers in God or atheists, the discussion today runs right across old denominations and new ideologies - but the longing for certainty is unquenched. Does God exist? We are putting all our cards on the table here. The answer will be "Yes, God exists, " As human beings in the twentieth century, we certainly can reasonably believe in God - even more so in the Christian God - and perhaps even more easily today than a few decades or centuries ago. For, after so many crises, it is surprising how much has been clarified and how many difficulties in regard to belief in God have melted into the Light that no darkness has overcome. (shrink)
In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" but, more importantly, from the idolatrous (...) tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving God in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death. (shrink)
God is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this paper we want to show that God (...) cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams’ article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons. (shrink)
Introduction: God and Freedom John Martin Fischer Imagine that in some remote part of Connecticut there is a computer that has stored in its memory all truths (...) about your life — past, present, and future. The computer contains all the ... (shrink)
Jean-Luc Marion advances a controversial argument for a God free of all categories of Being. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of (...) class='Hi'>both metaphysics and neo-Thomist theology: that God, before all else, must be. Rather, he locates a "God without Being" in the realm of agape, of Christian charity or love. This volume, the first translation into English of the work of this leading Catholic philosopher, offers a contemporary perspective on the nature of God. "An immensely thoughtful book. . . . It promises a rich harvest. Marion's highly original treatment of the idol and the icon, the Eucharist, boredom and vanity, conversion and prayer takes theological and philosophical discussions to a new level."--Norman Wirzba, Christian Century. (shrink)
Can or should God be considered a managerial stakeholder? While at first glance such a proposition might seem beyond the norms of stakeholder management theory or traditional (...) management practice, further investigation suggests that there might be both theoretical and practical support for such a notion. This paper will make the argument that God both is and should be considered a managerial stakeholder for those businesspeople and business firms that accept that God exists and can affect the world. In doing so, part one of the paper first discusses the growth of religion and spirituality within the business and academic communities. Part two raises several arguments based on stakeholder theory and business reality to support the notion of God as a managerial stakeholder. Part three addresses the arguments against God as a managerial stakeholder. Part four discusses the managerial implications of considering God as a managerial stakeholder. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)
The most discussed and most significant issue on the religious scene today is whether it is possible, or even desirable, to believe in God. Mr. Kaufman's (...) class='Hi'>valuable study does not offer a doctrine of God, but instead explores why God is a problem for many moderns, the dimensions of that problem, and the inner logic of the notion of God as it has developed in Western culture. His object is to determine the function or significance of talk about God: how the concept of God is generated in human experience; the special problems in turn generated by this concept (for example, the intelligibility of the idea of transcendence, the problem of theodicy) and how they are met; and under what circumstances the idea of God is credible or important or even indispensable. He does not try to prove God's existence or nonexistence, but elucidates what the concept of God means and the important human needs it fulfills. Four of the eleven essays have been previously published, at least in part; seven are completely new. (shrink)
Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest among analytic philosophers in life's meaning, but this surge of work is nearly all by naturalists (...) class='Hi'>theorizing from non-theistic starting points. To answer the need for a theistic philosophical perspective, God and Meaning features leading thinkers in analytic philosophy of religion and theology exploring important issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and biblical theology that intersect with life's meaning. (shrink)
It is widely claimed in recent years that science and theology can and do interact harmoniously. This chapter, however, explores some areas of potential conflict. Specifically, it (...) asks whether the relationship between science and metaphysical naturalism is sufficiently close to cause trouble in the marriage of science to theistic religion, trouble that supports a decision to divorce even if it does not logically require it. Several popular positions about “methodological naturalism” are examined. While metaphysical naturalists claim there are no supernatural entities, methodological naturalists claim only that, when scientists attempt to explain natural phenomena, they should do so without appealing to any supernatural entities. One popular position about methodological naturalism is that it cannot be reconciled with the traditional theistic view of divine action in the world. A second position is that God’s power and wisdom or God’s faithfulness or even God’s generosity makes divine intervention in the world unlikely at best and thus supports methodological naturalism. A third position is that methodological naturalism can be justified by an appeal to the nature or goals of science. Powerful objections can be raised to all three of these positions. Of course, if neither the nature of God nor the nature or goals of science support methodological naturalism, then it is tempting to conclude, as many conservative Christian thinkers do, that the commitment of contemporary science to methodological naturalism is grounded in a prior commitment, perhaps even an irrational one, to metaphysical naturalism. The chapter ends by rejecting this conclusion in favor of the view that the past success of both non-scientists and scientists in discovering natural causes for natural phenomena justifies a modest methodological naturalism and at the same time provides significant support for metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)
The fundamental constants that are involved in the laws of physics which describe our universe are finely-tuned for life, in the sense that if some of (...) class='Hi'>the constants had slightly different values life could not exist. Some people hold that this provides evidence for the existence of God. I will present a probabilistic version of this fine-tuning argument which is stronger than all other versions in the literature. Nevertheless, I will show that one can have reasonable opinions such that the fine-tuning argument doesn’t lead to an increase in one’s probability for the existence of God. (shrink)
This book assembles the evidence for what the Greek Fathers, the men whose contructive thought underlies the creeds, really thought and taught about the nature of God. (...) It shows that they were original thinkers, with a profound reverence for the text of the Scriptures, and minds keenly tranined to discuss what ultimate truths were expressed in the scriptural text and what reality should be ascribed to Christian religious experience. The results indicate that a good deal which is assumed in current theological text-books needs to be revised. The Fathers had to reconcile monotheism with faith in a Trinity of divine Persons. In the process, they pursued many lines of inquiry, often only to discard them after trial, but after following various clues and making various intellectual adventures they reached a solution of the problem, which was both true to their data and philosophically reasonable. Though the bulk of the book is concerned with the third and fourth centuries, during which the creeds were in the process of formulation, the story is carried down to the eighth century where the progress of original thought came to a standstill. It is shown that a great change came over the philosophical tradition during the sixth century, and owing to the consequent growth of formalism, a genuine outbreak of tritheism occurred. The book ends with the account of how this outbreak was met and overcome, largely through the efforts of a thinker whose very name is unknown, and whose book has only survived under the name of another man. (shrink)
In this paper, I introduce a problem to the philosophy of religion – the problem of divine moral standing – and explain how this problem is distinct from ( (...) class='Hi'>albeit related to) the more familiar problem of evil (with which it is often conflated). In short, the problem is this: in virtue of how God would be (or, on some given conception, is) “involved in” our actions, how is it that God has the moral standing to blame us for performing those very actions? In light of the recent literature on “moral standing”, I consider God’s moral standing to blame on two models of “divine providence”: open theism, and theological determinism. I contend that God may have standing on open theism, and – perhaps surprisingly – may also have standing, even on theological determinism, given the truth of compatibilism. Thus, if you think that God could not justly both determine and blame, then you will have to abandon compatibilism. The topic of this paper thus sheds considerable light on the traditional philosophical debate about the conditions of moral responsibility. (shrink)
Paul Helm presents a new, expanded edition of his much praised 1988 book Eternal God, which defends the view that God exists in timeless eternity. Helm argues (...) that divine timelessness is grounded in the idea of God as creator, and that this alone makes possible a proper account of divine omniscience. (shrink)
Cutting God in Half argues that, in order to tackle climate change, world poverty, extinction of species and our other global problems rather better than we are (...) doing at present we need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more generally. We need to put our problems of living – personal, social, global – at the heart of the academic enterprise. How our human world, imbued with meaning and value, can exist and best flourish embedded in the physical universe is, the book argues, our basic problem. It is our fundamental philosophical problem, our fundamental problem of knowledge and understanding, and our fundamental practical problem of living. It is this problem that we fail, at present, to recognize as fundamental – to our cost. It can be understood to arise as a result of cutting God in half – severing the God of Cosmic Power from the God of Value. The first is Einstein’s God, the underlying unity in the physical universe that determines how events occur. The second is what is of most value associated with human life – and sentient life more generally. Having cut God in half in this way, the problem then becomes to see how the two halves can be put together again. This book tackles outstanding aspects of this problem, and in doing so throws out original ideas about science, education, religion, evolutionary theory, free will, quantum theory, and how we should go about tackling our impending global crises. It transpires that bringing our basic problem into sharp focus has revolutionary implications. It becomes clear how and why many aspects of our social and cultural world urgently need to be transformed. Cutting God in Half is written in a lively, accessible style, and ought to be essential reading for anyone concerned about ultimate questions – the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the future of humanity. (shrink)
Traditional monotheism has long faced logical puzzles. We argue that such puzzles rest on the assumed logical truth of the Law of Excluded Middle, which we suggest (...) there is little theological reason to accept. By way of illustration we focus on God's alleged stone problem, and present a simple but plausible ‘gappy’ framework for addressing this puzzle. We assume familiarity with the proposed logic but an appendix is offered as a brief review. (shrink)
