Intellectual history, philosophy, and science’s own self-understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need even tend toward atheism. By definition a radically transcendent creator-God is inaccessible to empirical investigation. Denials of the possibility or actual occurrence of miracles depend not on science itself, but on naturalist assumptions that derive originally from a univocal metaphysics with its historical roots in medieval nominalism, which in turn have deeply influenced philosophy and science since the seventeenth century. The metaphysical postulate of naturalism (...) and its correlative empiricist epistemology constitute methodological self-limitations of science -- only an unjustified move from postulate to assertion permits ideological scientism and atheism. It is entirely possible that religious claims consistent with the empirical findings of the natural and social sciences might be true. Therefore, historians of religion not only need not assume that atheism i. (shrink)

Challenging the assumption that the concept of divine action is necessarily paradoxical, on the grounds that God is radically transcendent of finitude, or can perform only a master act of creating and sustaining the universe, Frank Kirkpatrick defends as philosophically credible the Christian conviction that God is a personal Agent who also acts in particular historical moments to further the divine intention of fostering universal community. Kirkpatrick claims that God and the world are distinct realities "together bound" in a mutual (...) relationship of reciprocal historical action. In this relationship, God both acts upon and responds to human beings in specific moments in their history. The implications of this claim for understanding the biblical narrative, the problem of evil, cosmological theories, and the realism of Christian community are pursued. (shrink)

Biochemical geneticist Gerhard Meisenberg takes readers on a fascinating excursion into human nature - our genes, brains, behaviour, evolution, intelligence and cultures.

THE PRE-SOCRATIC ORIGINS OF NATURAL THEOLOGY § INTRODUCTION St Augustine informs us that pagan philosophers divided theology into three parts: () civic ...

Explores different ways in which the Bible portrays God and shows how people's understanding of God has changed and developed over the course of history.

A history of the concept of God through the lens of process thought.

Over 700,000 copies of the original hardcover and paperback editions of this stunningly popular book have been sold. Karen Armstrong's superbly readable exploration of how the three dominant monotheistic religions of the world—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have shaped and altered the conception of God is a tour de force. One of Britain's foremost commentators on religious affairs, Armstrong traces the history of how men and women have perceived and experienced God, from the time of Abraham to the present. From classical (...) philosophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism into one compelling volume. (shrink)

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived as a humanlike creator, lawgiver, and king, a being both accessible and actively present in history. Yet there is a concurrent tradition of a God who actively hides, leading to a tension between a God who is simultaneously accessible and yet inaccessible, both immanent and transcendent, present and absent. Western Gnostic, esoteric, and mystical thinking capitalizes on the hidden and hiding God. Histories of the Hidden God explores this tradition from antiquity (...) to today. The essays focus on three essential themes: the concealment of the hidden God; the human quest for the hidden God, and revelations of the hidden God. (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.

_God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.

A groundbreaking new look at the story of America At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look. Thomas Jefferson himself collected books on all religions and required that the brand (...) new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians. One Nation, Under Gods shows how much more there is to the history we tell ourselves, right back to the country's earliest days. Dazzling in its scope and sweep, it is an American history unlike any you've read. (shrink)

_God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.

Comprises the Charles F. Deems Lectures delivered at New York University in 1968. Discusses the significance of the Holocaust, emphasizing theological issues, and its uniqueness in history. An authentic response to it - religious or secular - is a commitment to the autonomy and security of the State of Israel. Refers to Jewish midrash to explore the meaning and significance of the Holocaust and relates Jewish thinking about the Holocaust to Jewish thinking about earlier catastrophes. Jewish particularism remains a (...) scandal to modern secularism. Pt. 3 (p. 67-104), "The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz", states that the death of God occurs in the inward realm of the spirit alone and nowhere else. The imperative for Jews is not to flee being Jewish: "Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews". (shrink)

_God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.

The thrilling and terrifying history of genetic engineering. In 2018, scientists manipulated the DNA of human babies for the first time. As biologist and historian Matthew Cobb shows in As Gods, this achievement was one many scientists have feared from the start of the genetic age. Four times in the last fifty years, geneticists, frightened by their own technology, have called a temporary halt to their experiments. They ought to be frightened: Now we have powers that can target the (...) extinction of pests, change our own genes, or create dangerous new versions of diseases in an attempt to prevent future pandemics. Both awe-inspiring and chilling, As Gods traces the history of genetic engineering, showing that this revolutionary technology is far too important to be left to the scientists. They have the power to change life itself, but should we trust them to keep their ingenuity from producing a hellish reality? (shrink)

The article discusses the history of monotheism from the earliest times to the present. It begins with arguments against the notion of monotheists as an evolutionarily early stage in religion and then proceeds to characterize monotheism in the Old testament. The view that there was every a pre‐monotheistic phase of one ‘national God’ is called into question, along with the priority of the ‘God of history’ over the creator God. Association of the divine with social justice is shown (...) to be common to the ancient Near East as a whole; however, Israelite monotheism, it is argued, was associated with a kind of conservatism which preserved more features of an oral and gift‐exchange culture, while calling into question the more fetishistic aspects of such culture. Monotheism, it is claimed, is what refutes both myth and rationalism, while the superiority of one God to many gods is defended in connection with the theme of peace. The final section deals with the three monotheistic faiths, and argues that Christianity, with its doctrines of incarnation and the Trinity, is not qualifying monotheism and its distinctive features as just adumbrated, but on the contrary developing it in the purest and most consistent form. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between Wolfhart Pannenberg's idea of God and his conception of history, with the intention of determining the precise nature of the link that, in his view, connects both philosophical and the theological reflection on the meaning of history. We shall first analyze Pannenberg's response to the traditional criticism of Christianity as an anthropomorphic projection of the human being. Then we shall pay attention to the features of any possible (...) fundamentum of history. We will show that, according to Pannenberg, a transition from a philosophical into a theological consideration of history is needed in order to provide a rationally acceptable foundation for both the unity and the meaning of universal history. (shrink)

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to (...) a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading. (shrink)

The Evil‐god challenge has enjoyed a flurry of attention after its resurrection in Stephen Law's, 2010 paper of the same name. Intended to undermine classical monotheism, the Evil‐god challenge rests on the claim that the existence of all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐evil god (Evil‐god) is roughly as likely as the existence of an all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐good god (Good‐god). The onus is then placed on those who believe in Good‐god to explain why their belief should be considered significantly more reasonable than belief in (...) Evil‐god. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive exposition of the Evil‐god challenge by exploring its history and recent developments. The forthcoming part II paper will present and address the main objections that have been posed to the Evil‐god challenge and consider its implications for classical monotheism. (shrink)

This article discusses critiques raised by historians of religion concerning Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), offering some defense of Norenzayan's position, but also discussing in detail the more substantive challenges. It concludes with some reflections on the current position of the history of religion within the Academy, and an argument for why large-scale explanatory projects and interdisciplinary collaboration should be part of the future of our field.

William Kirby and William Spence’s Introduction to Entomology is generally recognized as one of the founding texts of entomological science in English. This essay examines the ideological allegiances of the coauthors of the Introduction. In particular, it analyzes the ideological implications of their divergent opinions on animal instinct. Different vocational pursuits shaped each man’s natural history. Spence, a political economist, pursued fact‐based science that was shorn of references to religion. Kirby, a Tory High Churchman, placed revelation at the very (...) heart of his natural history. His strong commitment to partisan sectarianism cautions against reference to a homogeneous “natural theology” that was an agent of mediation. Fissures in the “common intellectual context” reached beyond the clash between natural theologians and radical anatomists to render the intellectual edifice of natural theology structurally less sound for the future. (shrink)

This article reviews Reza Aslan's book God: a Human History of Religion, published in 2018 by Transworld Publ., Corgi Edition, London.

A great irony abounds in much of the current literature on historicism.1 As William Dean began to detect over two decades ago, a good majority of historicists, although placing an ontological and epistemological premium on historicity, promulgates a historicism that ignores most of history, the history of nature. In particular, today’s historicist theologies, especially those of the postmodern and postliberal variety, are so fixated on human histories—and, even more narrowly, on the socially, linguistically, and narrativally constituted particularities of (...) very localized religiocultural histories—that they remain disconnected from, irrelevant to, and unconstrained by what we know about the history of humanity as a .. (shrink)

The God of the Machine presents an original theory of history and a bold defense of individualism as the source of moral and political progress.

Paul Helm examines some of Stephen Hawking's scientific arguments concerning God, and finds them unpersuasive.

LANDSCAPING THE HUMAN SOUL In 1996 Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with stage-four testicular cancer. Doctors gave him a forty percent chance of survival. ...

Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook (1865-1935) served as the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Erets Israel during the period of the British mandate. Rav Kook was a polymath, equally talented as a Talmudic legalist and rationalist philosopher, on the one hand, and as a mystic and poet, on the other. Today, we would say that he was both "left and right hemisphere." The present collection brings together in English translation Rav Kook's contributions to the field of Jewish history, though perhaps "historiosophy" (...) would be the better word. Rav Kook joins the ranks of those great Jewish thinkers who preceded him in interpretation of history: Maharal of Prague, Moses Hayyim Luzzatto and Zadok Hakohen of Lublin. If Rav Kook's philosophy were to be summed up in a single word, it would be: Kelaliyut or universality. Whereas most of us are held captive by individual events, Rav Kook has a great gift for the overview of history. He brings this gift to bear in his ability to provide perspective on the modern rebirth of Israel against the backdrop of mankind's ongoing spiritual evolution. In the latter regard, his vision has sometimes been compared to that of Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobido, or more recently Ken Wilber. Contained in this collection are Rav Kook's eulogy for Herzl and Rav Kook's remarks at the opening of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The essays are placed in historic context and provided with copious scholarly endnotes. (shrink)

It is well known that the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century posed problems for Christian theology. Less well known is the fact that the new understanding of history, developed in the same period, also created a number of difficulties. The realization that Christianity possessed a history of its own, and had changed and developed, raised numerous important questions for theologians and Christians alike. Newman's revised Essay on the Development of Doctrine provides the starting-point for this new and (...) comprehensive survey, in which Peter Hinchliff discusses the ideas of a wide range of theologians from the full spectrum of British Christianity - from Roman Catholics through to theologians from the Churches of England and Scotland, and the Free Church - and their attempts to tackle these questions in the period leading up to the Great War. He proves that this hitherto little studied period in the development of theology is in fact an area of considerable interest and pertinence to historians as much as theologians. (shrink)