bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Missing Premise in the Ontological Argument
Authors: Geisler Norman L.
Published: October 2008

It appears to me that most traditional criticism of the Ontological argument misses the mark because the proponents imply a premise which, if true, would validate their argument on precisely the point attacked by the opponents. In view of this possibility, I propose the following analysis:

(1) state the traditional ontological argument without the implied premise;

(2) state the traditional criticisms, showing how they miss the mark;

(3) restate the ontological argument with the implied premise made clear;

(4) offer a defence of the implied premise;

(5) show how the ontological argument is still invalidated by another criticism;

(6) argue that the only way to avoid this other criticism is to borrow another premise from the cosmological argument, and

(7) that when these premises are borrowed the result is a valid form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary being.
Anselm's Definition of Freedom
Authors: Kane Stanley G.
Published: October 2008

In the philosophical world Anselm is known almost exclusively for the work in his two earliest writings, the Monologion and Proslogion, which, of course, includes his celebrated ontological argument for the existence of God. It is unfortunate that the rest of his work is not more widely known, for he makes some important contributions to western thought in later treatises that are virtually unknown to present-day philosophers and theologians. One such contribution is his concept of freedom, which he explains and defends primarily in De Libertate Arbitrii (hereafter DLA), written somewhere between 1085 and 1090. Anselm's concept of freedom is important for a number of reasons. First, he argues for a definition of freedom which is significantly different from others found in the history of western thought. Second, in his investigation of freedom he makes use of a methodological procedure which in certain respects has striking similarities (though there are also important differences) to certain analytic techniques well-known today. And finally, the single definition that Anselm provides is intended to include in its compass two major and seemingly different senses of ‘freedom’.
Early Christianity and Pagan Thought: Confluences and Conflicts
Authors: Simon Marcel
Published: October 2008

‘What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What accord is there between the Academy and the Church? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who has himself taught that the Lord must be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with those who have brought forward a Stoic, or Platonic or dialectic Christianity. As for us, we need not be concerned to know anything but Jesus Christ, in quest of anything but the Gospel. Inasmuch as we have faith, we need not believe anything else.’ Such are the thoroughly uncompromising terms in which, about the year 200, Tertullian defined an entirely negative relationship—what he at least considered the utter incompatibility—of Christianity and pagan philosophy.
Religion as Projection: A Re-appraisal of Freud's Theory
Authors: Banks Robert
Published: October 2008

To mount a critique of Freud's views on any polemical issue is almost always a risky business. This is partly because one remembers the fate of so many of his earlier critics. As Phillip Rieff so delightfully puts it, ‘much of Freud's polemical writing is so superior to that of his opponents, that it takes on the character of a totem feast in which the most powerful sons are carved up with swift clean strokes, the father, meanwhile, justifying his action at every stroke’. There is also the possibility that exposure to psychoanalytic theory of one's own presuppositions and views will result in their being transformed into something quite different or to their being quite psychoanalysed away. Nevertheless the task must be undertaken. Freud's approach to religion has had too pervasive an influence upon modern thought to be ignored. Also, its complexity and potential have not always been sufficiently discerned by those who, especially from a Christian point of view, have sought to grapple with it.
Religious Disagreement
Authors: Meynell Hugo
Published: October 2008

People not only disagree about religious belief, but they disagree about what it is to disagree about religious belief; and consequently about what it would be for one religion to be uniquely true. What I shall try to do first is to characterise the nature of religious disagreement; and next to suggest in what the uniqueness of Christianity might consist.
A Problem in Ludwig Feuerbach's Theory of Religious Language
Authors: Foard Lawrence C.
Published: October 2008

The late Karl Barth once wrote that no one can hope to overcome Ludwig Feuerbach ‘…with whining or with angry criticism of his views of religion.’ This is plainly correct, for Feuerbach's argument that religious language is always anthropological is an argument of great attractiveness—and, apparently, of great explanatory utility to psychologists, historians, and philosophers. Barth's solution to the problem raised by Feuerbach is less satisfactory. It just will not do for Christian believers simply to cleanse Christian theology of anthropological foundations by admitting ‘…that even in our relation to God,… we can lay claim to his truth, his certainty, his salvation as grace and only as grace’. Nor will it do for Christian believers, secure in the promise of divine succour, to ‘… laugh… at Feuerbach’ for his naive view of human possibilities. Even though a cleansing of theology may be helpful to the Church, it will have little (more likely, no) effect upon the widespread popular and scholarly acceptance of Feuerbach's conclusions.
Passion and Faith: A Study of Unamuno
Authors: Sobosan Jeffrey G.
Published: October 2008

Miquel de Unamuno, a thinker perhaps too large and passionate to yield to easy labelling, has been characterised in different ways by many of his most brilliant compatriots. Julian Marias spoke of him as a man obsessed by the proud thirst to know, a passionate man who in spite of a ‘problematic intellectual adherence’ was nonetheless able to live and think within a vital Catholic tradition. Ortega y Gasset wrote that all of Unamuno's work was dominated by one theme, that of death; it was one monumental meditatio mortis. It was Madariaga, not an original philosopher but undoubtedly as penetrating a critic as either Marias or Ortega, however, who most faithfully portrayed the often convoluted but always profound man Unamuno was. In most if not all of the main characters of his novels and short stories, he rightly observes, ‘we can trace the dominant passion which is their whole being to a mere variety of the one and only passion which obsesses Unamuno, the hunger for life, a full life, here and after’. This passion, assailed as it was by the constant probings of his critical intellect ought to have made his existence precarious at best.
Hegel on the Sublime
Authors: Saxena S. K.
Published: October 2008

Hegel's treatment of the Sublime is both self-consistent and distinctive. He not only defines sublimity, but discovers and ranks its types or stages from one select point of view—the viewpoint of God-world relation; and the way he does this, on the one hand, distinguishes him from many others who have contributed to an understanding of the concept, and, on the other hand, enables him to suggest, if but implicitly, a criterion for distinguishing the sublime from allied concepts. Besides, he discusses the matter in the wide context of diverse cultures, making quite a few insightful references to Eastern literature; and, consistently with his own conception of philosophy, also from the viewpoint of historical necessity, so that the sublime appears, in his Aesthetik, as a specific stage which the evolving story of art must in fact traverse.
Religious Experience and Rational Appraisal
Authors: Yandell Keith E.
Published: October 2008

Appeal to experience for rational justification of religious belief is probably as old as the question whether religious belief has any rational support. The issues relevant to such appeal range widely, and I will have to be content to deal with only a few of them.
On Kaufman's Problem God
Authors: Wiebe Don
Published: October 2008

Kaufman's God The Problem is a stimulating and important book in so far as it raises for us the problem ‘God’ has become for modern theology (theologians, believers, etc.). In its attempt to bring clarity and precision to our understanding of ‘God’ however, I am much less sure as to its value. Indeed, it seems to me that Kaufman more often confuses the issues than clarifying them—although he does so in a very stimulating manner. The inconsistencies in his argument and the tensions between earlier and later pieces of work are more than trivial as Kaufman suggests in the preface (xi). For example, in his discussion of ‘God as symbol’ he claims that it is possible to conceive God as living and active, one to whom men can pray with conviction and to whom they can cry in their hour of need (113 f). Yet in his discussion of the meaning of ‘act of God’ he denies the same. As he puts it in the latter essay, God is not one who,

‘“walks with me and talks with me” in close interpersonal communion, giving his full attention to my complaints, miraculously extracting me from difficulties into which I have gotten myself, by invading nature and history with ad hoc rescue operations from on high.’ (196)
Impossible Knowledge and Belief in God
Authors: Langford Glenn
Published: October 2008

In ‘The Turning Point in Philosophy’ Moritz Schlick expressed the following view: ‘Everything is knowable which can be expressed, and this is the total subject matter concerning which meaningful questions can be raised. There are consequently no questions which are in principle unanswerable, no problems which are in principle insoluble.’ (page 56 in Logical Positivism edited by A. J. Ayer.) I will refer to this as Schlick's principle, although it is shared by many others. What it amounts to is the view that all meaningful questions can be answered by rational procedures, that is by logical argument or appeal to evidence. It is this view which I wish to challenge, at the same time relating what I have to say to belief in God. For it follows from Schlick's principle that provided the question ‘Does God exist?’ can be meaningfully asked, it is in principle possible to answer it either affirmatively or negatively. Having done so, we would then know, and not merely believe, that God does or does not exist. I will try to show that provided the question ‘Does God exist?’ can be meaningfully asked, no such consequence need be taken to follow.
Existence and God's Attributes
Authors: Tomberlin James E.
Published: October 2008

The purpose of the present paper is to formulate and (hopefully) resolve a certain puzzle surrounding God's existence and the standard attributes traditionally assigned to God (omnipotence, perfect goodness, omniscience, and the like).
Eliade on Buddhism
Authors: Gombrich Richard
Published: October 2008

Mircea Eliade's book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom has deservedly become a classic, and has reached, as he intended, a far wider audience than the narrow circle of Indologists. The book's popularity may justify the following remarks. It was originally published in French in 1936, then in an enlarged French version in 1954, and in English translation in 1958. There has thus been ample opportunity for revision, and indeed in the second English edition (1969), which we are taking as our text, Eliade notes (p. xi) that he has made ‘numerous minor corrections’. However, the accuracy of his observations on early Buddhism still leaves much to be desired. Let us try to set the record straight.
Mysticism without Love
Authors: Zaehner R. C.
Published: October 2008

‘Mysticism means to isolate the eternal from the originated.’ This is not my definition of the word ‘mysticism’ but that of the founder of the ‘orthodox’ school of Muslim mysticism, Al-Junayd of Baghdad who flourished in the ninth century a.d. In actual fact it is not a definition of mysticism at all but of the Arabic word tawḥīd which means primarily ‘the affirmation of unity’; and that surely is an essential ingredient of any form of mysticism: it is the affirmation through personal experience of unity either absolutely or in some qualified sense.
Saying and Showing: Radical Themes in Wittgenstein's On Certainty
Authors: Gill Jerry H.
Published: October 2008

There are themes in Wittgenstein's later work which are extremely radical. By ‘radical’ I mean both that they cut to the very root of crucial philosophical issues, and that they tend to be ignored by the established philosophical positions of the day. More specifically, these themes focus on the understanding of epistemological bedrock, and they lead in directions about which it is difficult to get a hearing in major philosophical circles.
Once More on the Free Will Defence
Authors: Steuer Axel D.
Published: October 2008

In responding to the problem that evil poses for belief in the existence of an omnipotent and all good deity, a number of Christian philosophers have followed Augustine in making the free will defence (FWD) the foundation of their theodicies. The FWD seems to be well suited for the important role it has played in Christian religious thought. Not only does it admit the reality of evil in God's world, but it also proposes to free God from moral responsibility for at least a considerable portion of that evil. A few philosophers, e.g. Terence Penelhum, have even argued that ‘… the Christian theist is committed to some form or other of the free will defence …’ because of the Christian understanding of the nature of God and man. Whether or not this is true, the argument that it was not possible for God to create free human beings without permitting some degree of evil in his world (the FWD) has been sufficiently influential that those sceptics who have intended to show that the reality of evil makes theism an intellectually indefensible position have usually felt compelled to treat it. For similar reasons, a number of theistic philosophers have felt obligated to defend the FWD against such sceptical attacks.
Mr Young on Miracles
Authors: Wei Tan Tai
Published: October 2008

In two recent papers, Mr Robert Young maintains that all attempts by philosophers to bolster the-violation-of-law concept of miracles are bound to fail and propounds what he claims to be a novel non-reductivist concept of miracles which avoids the conceptual difficulties of the violation-model. His view of miracles is of god being ‘an active agent-factor in the set of factors (out of perhaps several sets sufficient for the event's occurrence) which actually was causally operative’ [p. 123] in an event dubbed a miracle. God is put in among ‘the plurality of causes’ [p. 122, S p. 33] that could determine the event, but if he acts in a miracle, then ‘his presence…alters the outcome from what it (perhaps) would have been if, contrary to fact, he had not been present’ [p. 122]. Young claims that his concept ‘is neither a violation of … laws nor is it a coincidental occurrence religiously interpreted’ [p. 122, S p. 33], and so it avoids the difficulties, which he thinks are faced by the violation-model, of having an intelligible notion of an occurrence of the physically impossible, and also the reductivism inherent in taking mere coincidences as miracles. He also suggests a procedure of settling the epistemological issue regarding particular alleged miracles, an inquiry he thinks he has made possible by having first given a sense to miracles. [p. 126]
The New Testament in Religious Studies
Authors: Morgan Robert
Published: October 2008

The aim of this essay is to show the significance for a new situation of Barth's attack upon some of the historical scholarship of his day over fifty years ago. Barth was motivated by Christian theological concerns, but what he stood for has important implications for New Testament studies generally, and in particular for its purpose and place within a Religious Studies syllabus. If what is written has a mildly polemical edge this will betray the scarcely veiled theological interests which prompt the warning against New Testament studies that spurn theology and a theology that spurns the New Testament. But the argument depends upon considerations arising from the character of the New Testament material and the educational reasons for studying it outside the Christian church. Within the theological circle, liberal protestantism is at last emerging from under the cloud cast over it by the dialectical theology. The rediscovery of Schleiermacher is rightly being followed by a rediscovery of Troeltsch. But for reasons for which dialectical theology is itself partly to blame this is being accompanied in some quarters by a failure to insist upon the importance of the Bible for Christian theology. Despite all their differences, liberals and dialectical theologians agreed in defending biblically rooted theologies. Some of those engaged in revising the map of recent theological history need reminding that the emphasis upon the theological use of the New Testament which has dominated the work of Barth and Bultmann has more than a narrowly confessional interest. It is directly relevant to the recent swing towards Religious Studies in British universities and colleges of education.
The Tradition and the Traditions: The Confrontation of Religious Doctrines
Authors: Sherrard Philip
Published: October 2008

One of the consequences of the breakdown of physical barriers between the various peoples of the world has been that the question of the relationships between the major religious traditions still actively functioning at the present time has become more acute than it ever has been before. Previously a degree of exclusivity, either partial or total, could be maintained without adherents of one particular tradition being seriously troubled by the fact that elsewhere men worshipped ‘other gods’ through other forms. To maintain a rigorous exclusivity today in the name of one particular tradition is a far more difficult matter, for it means denying the validity of what appear to be manifestations of the Spirit outside this particular tradition; and to go to these lengths would be a sign of an extreme prejudice. But how, on the other hand, is one to account for these manifestations? Are they simply to be regarded as evidence of the Spirit blowing where he wills? Or do they indicate the intrinsic sacred quality of the traditional forms through which they occur, with the implication that each tradition within which they do occur is equally and fully with each other such tradition a divinely-instituted way of spirituai realisation? It is to this latter point of view that many most seriously concerned with the question are now tending to subscribe. Yet it does have serious implications. One of these is that it appears to involve the assumption, tacit or explicit, not only that there are the particular traditions themselves but also that there is something which one can only describe as the Tradition: a body of doctrine or form of revelation which is intrinsically superior to other religious traditions and which in some manner completes or subsumes them. How does this come about and what does it amount to?
Religion and Religions
Authors: Franklin R. L.
Published: October 2008

When philosophers approach philosophy of religion, they typically ask two questions: (a) are there any sound arguments to prove the existence of God; and (b) is talk about God even rationally intelligible? Theologians, for their part, primarily expound the meaning and relevance of Christianity. I am by profession a philosopher, but apart from Secs. VI and VII I am here writing as a puzzled twentieth-century man. My prime worry is whether we philosophers and theologians are beginning with the right questions.
Buddhist Causality and Compassion
Authors: Beane Wendell C.
Published: October 2008

KarmaandSaṁsāraare ideas common to both Hinduism and Buddhism. They cannot be properly applied to the latter, however, without a critical modification of their significance. For at the heart of Buddhism lies an apparent ethico–metaphysical accountability which implies an ‘agent’ who is accountable; yet the personal existence of such an agent has not been held as philosophically admissible. While a familiar moral emphasis and relative freedom are integral to the faith'sdukkhamotif, one scarcely exaggerates in saying that ‘perhaps one of the hardest of the Buddhist doctrines is that of Karma’.
Hume's Tacit Atheism
Authors: Echelbarger Charles
Published: October 2008

A recent paper, ‘Hume's Immanent God’, (in (I))* by George Nathan, contains an insightful interpretation of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (henceforth, briefly, D). Insight is no guarantee against error. I shall argue that Nathan's interpretation is mistaken, and then offer my own.

Nathan observes that the general tendency in scholarship on D has been to focus on its sceptical side. He proposes to ‘bring out Hume's positive contribution’. Nathan's thesis, briefly, is that D best supports a modestly theistic interpretation according to which God is the ultimate cause of order in the universe.
Bishop Robinson and Christology
Authors: Robert Butterworth S.J.
Published: October 2008

‘A book’, says Lichtenberg, ‘is a mirror. If an ape looks into it, then obviously what looks back out is not an apostle.’ It may be hoped that these reflections on looking into Dr Robinson's book on Christology will not entirely obscure either the sound points he frequently makes in criticism of traditional Christology, or still less, the good intentions that have led him to write his book. I shall simply be trying to point the way towards how God's human face might possibly be revealed still more clearly in Jesus than it is in Dr Robinson's Christ.
On Studying Comparative Religion
Authors: Werblowsky R. J. Zwi
Published: October 2008

The Dutch writer Menno ter Braak once observed that when there is no bacon in the larder you tend to spend your time sharpening your knives. In a different context a somewhat similar remark concerning his preoccupation with the sharpening of his analytical tools was made by the philosopher Husserl. Applying these remarks—without the least intent of facetiousness—to the comparative study of religions, we might say that concern with methodology should be an occasional pastime, in which we may indulge at moments when we take an occasional respite from our substantive labours—but with plenty of bacon, as it were, in the larder. The quinquennial congresses of the International Association for the History of Religions are undoubtedly an appropriate occasion for such critical and reflective introspection. In fact, some of the best methodological clarifications come not froma priorilegislators but from active researchers stepping back for a moment, putting some distance between their nose and the grindstone, and asking themselves what exactly they and their colleagues have been and are doing, and how they should best proceed. (I am thinking, e.g., of J. Schwab's penetrating and profound essay ‘What do Scientists do?’ as an outstanding example of such reflection by a natural scientist.) Whilst the sterility of abstract discussions about the definition of religion is generally admitted, it should be acknowledged that some exceedingly helpful suggestions have been made by practising field-workers and historians of religion. I am thinking of e.g., C. Geertz, M. Spiro, and Th. van Baaren. Other examples of the theoretical clarifications resulting from the interaction—addicts of the currently fashionable jargon would say ‘feedback’—between attempts at definition and the actualpraxisof historians of religion are H. Ch. Puech's short introduction and A. Brelich's majorProlégomènesin vol. i of the PléiadeHistoire des Religions(1970), as well as U. Bianchi's thoughtful and thought-provoking recent contribution. Clearly students of religion continue to be very much exercised by the double problem of the nature of their subject-matter and of the proper methods of studying it.
Religion and its Three Paradigmatic Instances
Authors: Findlay J. N.
Published: October 2008

The aim of this paper is to give a characterisation of religion and the Religious Spirit, basing itself on the Platonic assumption that there are Forms, salient jewels of simplicity and affinity, to be dug out from the soil of vague experience and cut clear from the confusedly shifting patterns of usage, which will give us conceptual mastery over the changeable detail in a given sector. It will further be Platonic in that it will not seek to discount the deep gulfs between the species into which religion qua genus divides itself, i.e. its theistic, polytheistic and atheistic subvarieties, taking it to be of the essence of a true genus to extend itself over mutually exclusive species, only being what it is by including in its sense the alternatives which are thus mutually exclusive. (The genus of Living Creature in Plato's Timaeus has this sort of disjunctive universality, and no theory of universals is adequate which does not recognise their inherent disjunctivity.) And my treatment will be Platonic, thirdly, in that it will endeavour to delimit the Religious Spirit by, on the one hand, setting it over against what it excludes, all purely this-world talk and life which is quite irreligious, and by, on the other hand, opposing it to forms of talk and life which fall short of it in various ways or which deviate from it variously, thereby likewise contributing to our understanding of what it is. The practice of Plato, which could study the deviations from his ideal city in order to confirm his notion of its structure and excellence, and which also paired every ideal pattern with its opposite— piety with impiety, justice with self-interested tyranny, etc.—is plainly one to be followed: Plato, as we know from a citation from his contemporary Hermodorus in one of the Aristotelian commentators, always set beside the ‘in itself’ of the pure Form the deviant and the wholly negative which were nonetheless part of its sense. Religion will therefore stand before us as a target that it is possible to fall short of or miss altogether as well as to hit squarely, and we shall try by a series of glancing darts to end by hitting it squarely.
A. C. Ewing—A Critical Survey of Ewing's Recent Work
Authors: Knox John
Published: October 2008

Is the existence of God a reasonable metaphysical hypothesis? So asks A. C. Ewing in his important posthumous work, Value and Reality. Thus the topic of the book is theistic religion, not in its entirety, but rather merely in its intellectual part. That it does have such a part, and further that it makes claims ‘to objective truth in the field of metaphysics’ (p. 24), is defended on the grounds (a) that a fictional ‘story’ about God has what religious or ethical impact it may have because, or at least mainly because, it is taken precisely not as fictional, but as expressing an objective theological truth; and (b) that a story, or an account, can constitute a good reason for one's acting in a certain way only if the account is, in fact, objectively true. Bearing on both points is Ewing's observation that ‘emotion, at least except in pathological cases, requires some objective belief about the real, true or false, to support it for long, and if it exists without knowledge or rationally founded belief with which it is in agreement, it is to be condemned as irrational or unfitting, as it would be unfitting to rejoice at something disastrous or be angry with an inanimate thing’ (p. 27). The claim is not, we are told, that religious statements are literal as distinguished from symbolic. The door would seem to be left open, in fact, to their all being symbolic. What is essential is that some of them symbolise distinctively metaphysical truths, or truths ‘going beyond the realm of science’ and ‘throwing some light on the general nature of the real’ (p. 30). We should indeed distinguish, Ewing notes, ‘belief in’ from ‘belief that’. Yet the former is not possible without the latter. ‘Unless I believe that God exists I cannot believe in God’ (p. 28). So in Ewing's opinion, statements of metaphysics—if not concerning God, then at least concerning certain general aspects of reality—are most important for religion as a whole, and are, in being true, conceptually necessary to its validity, or to its ‘fittingness’.
Religious Obedience and Moral Autonomy
Authors: Quinn Philip L.
Published: October 2008

It has become fashionable to try to prove the impossibility of there being a God. Findlay's celebrated ontological disproof has in the past quarter century given rise to vigorous controversy. More recently James Rachels has offered a moral argument intended to show that there could not be a being worthy of worship. In this paper I shall examine the position Rachels is arguing for in some detail. I shall endeavor to show that his argument is unsound and, more interestingly, that the genuine philosophical perplexity which motivates it can be dispelled without too much difficulty.
On the Idea of a Form of Life
Authors: Sutherland Stewart R.
Published: October 2008

Recent writing on the idea of a form of life has tended to be critical of the use made of this notion by writers such as Peter Winch, D. Z. Phillips and Norman Malcolm. Rightly or wrongly these writers have been regarded as meaning by ‘a form of life’, something like ‘a way or style of life’, and recent explicatory work on the notion has largely tended to discount this as a plausible interpretation of what Wittgenstein meant in his use of the expression. The intention of this paper is not that of direct intervention in this particular dispute, though the conclusions drawn, if correct, would have some bearing on it. The intention is rather to develop, in order to make use of it, the idea of a form of life within the context of a number of philosophical difficulties. I should certainly claim to be drawing upon the remarks made by Wittgenstein in his own use of the expression: but I should not claim to be expounding Wittgenstein. Hence I do not wish to enter into the disputes referred to above about what precisely Wittgenstein meant by the expression, though again, what I say, if not wholly misguided, should have some bearing on these disputes.
Theology as Grammar: Is God an Object of Understanding?
Authors: Bell Richard H.
Published: October 2008

i. In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein yoked together these remarks:

Essence is expressed by grammar.

Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar) (Inv. I, 373).
The Argument from Religious Experience
Authors: Attfield D. G.
Published: October 2008

The purpose of this article is to make yet another attempt to defend and restate as convincingly as possible the argument for God's existence based on religious experience. In its simplest form the argument is an inference from the fact that men experience God to the conclusion that God exists. Experience is always experience of something, it is alleged, and if that something is of the kind to have independent, objective existence and if a given experience is really of that thing, then that thing must exist. The clearest sort of case, where this type of existential argument from experience is used, is that of normal perception: a man sees a tree, therefore the tree exists. The deduction works because the man's seeing is non-delusive. He sees the tree because it is there to be seen.
The Rationalist and his Critics
Authors: Robinson N. H. G.
Published: October 2008

In his article ‘Professor Bartley's Theory of Rationality and Religious Belief’ Mr W. D. Hudson has brought considerable clarification to the rather confused situation occasioned by Professor W. W. Bartley's book The Retreat to Commitment (London, 1964) and its subsequent discussion; but the process can, I think, be carried still further.
Criteria of Truth in Science and Theology
Authors: Hesse Mary
Published: October 2008

Faced with what he saw as the danger to society in the ascendancy of natural science and decline in religion and morals, the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim sought the origins of both religion and science in their function in primitive societies as guarantors of social solidarity. In contrast to Frazer, Tylor, and other early anthropologists, he looked for the internal intelligibility of myth and ritual in social terms, rather than regarding them just as failed attempts to state objective truths about the natural world of the same kind as those later arrived at by natural science. One does not have to accept Durkheim's ultimately atheistic identification of God with Society, nor the politically authoritarian consequences which have some-times been held to follow from this identification, to see that Durkheim has raised a set of issues of crucial importance for a discussion of science and the myths and doctrines of religion. For what he has done is to reintroduce a third factor into the perennial and by now rather frustrating dichotomy between science and religion, namely society and the sciences of man. It is some consequences of this approach that I want to explore in this paper.
Scientific and Religious Metaphors
Authors: MacCormac Earl R.
Published: October 2008

For quite some time, critics have attacked religious language on the grounds that theologians employed metaphors that were irreducible. By irreducible, they meant metaphors that could not be paraphrased in literal language. And any such language that could not be reduced to words that can be taken in a literal sense, would be devoid of cognitive meaning or truth value. Since theologians claimed that statements like ‘God is love’ cannot be reduced to a literal sense without robbing the concept of God of its transcendent status, sceptics replied that such failures merely indicated the meaninglessness of religious language. Or, if apologists did assert that ‘God is love’ can be paraphrased by statements describing the love of one man for another, the sceptic claimed that such a move reduced religious language to anthropological language where terms like ‘God’ were superfluous. Critics argued that metaphors of religion posed the following dilemma: either religious metaphors could not be reduced to literal paraphrases and were, therefore, meaningless; or, religious metaphors could be reduced to literal paraphrases, but the method by which they were reduced eliminated the necessity for theological terminology.
Freedom and God: The Meeting of East and West
Authors: Sontag Frederick
Published: October 2008

Speaking for the theology of the East, Masao Abe says: ‘I do not see the ontological ground on which (in the West) being has priority over non-being’. Professor Abe is speaking of Tillich's assertion (in The Courage To Be, p. 34, 40) that there is an ‘ontological priority of being over nonbeing’, but Abe's question is more or less directed to the whole Western metaphysical tradition and illustrates the fundamental philosophical point at issue between the East and West. Nonbeing can be ruled out of consideration as Parmenides and Wittgenstein have done (what cannot be said clearly should not be spoken about). Or, like Plato and Tillich, being can be said to embrace both itself and nonbeing, even if this is not explained in detail very clearly. Yet the challenge of the East still stands: What embraces both being and nonbeing may not be ‘Being’ but ‘that which is neither being nor non-being’. If the East and the West are to meet metaphysically, we can no longer simply assume the priority of being over nonbeing. We must begin by considering the alternative of the East and then justify any choice between competing first principles by prior metaphysical argument.
Hell and the God of Justice
Authors: Adams Marilyn McCord
Published: October 2008

Christians have often held that on the day of judgment God will condemn some persons who have disobeyed him to a hell of everlasting torment and total unhappiness from which there is no hope of escape, as a punishment for their deeds up to that time. This is not the only way that hell has been or could be conceived of, but it has been the predominant conception in the Christian church throughout much of its history and it is the one on which I shall focus in this paper.
What do we Study When we Study Religion?
Authors: Martin J. Arthur
Published: October 2008

In ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy’ Laurence Sterne writes:

That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
‘Mediated Immediacy’ in the Thought of John E. Smith: A Critique
Authors: Londis James J.
Published: October 2008

When trying to understand the nature of religious experience as ‘mediated immediacy’ I am reminded of Professor J. N. Findlay's description of Hegel's thought as a kind of ‘philosophical Buchenwald’ specialising in intellectual tortures. Nevertheless, recent literature on the subject of religious experience reveals an increasing number of thinkers expressing confidence in the viability of this notion, John E. Smith of Yale being the most outstanding. This is not to say that all the thinkers categorised by ‘mediated immediacy’ have no important differences. They do. Infact, Smith might not even accept the phrase as accurately describing his position, despite the fact that J.B. Stearns applied it to his thought in a recent article.
Theological Originality
Authors: Burke T. E.
Published: October 2008

In contemporary discussion of the philosophy of religion, or for that matter of any branch of philosophy, the names of Whitehead and Wittgenstein are not often linked. Whitehead's later work is, for the most part, treated as a rather specialized interest, an attractively under-cultivated field for the enterprising thesis-writer perhaps, but well away from the main centres of current philosophical activity. And what he has to say about specifically religious or theological issues (apart from the often quoted or misquoted ‘Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness‘)1 becomes simply one ramification of an ingenious but somewhat eccentric system. Nonetheless, there is at least this much justification for considering it in relation to the much more influential and widely discussed views of Wittgenstein. Whitehead has some original things to say about God, Wittgenstein some original reasons for thinking that Whitehead's brand of originality is here radically misplaced. And the possibility or otherwise of such theological originality is an issue of very considerable importance for the philosophy of religion.
The Reconciliation of Jñāna and Bhakti in Rāmacaritamānasa
Authors: Allchin F. R.
Published: October 2008

Rāmacaritamānasais a truly remarkable work, and the celebration of the fourth centenary of its composition calls for some recognition. Consider the artless guile of its author: at the start he protests that he is no poet, without skill in letters, lacking in all arts and sciences, lacking in all literary skills; and yet he has presented us with a creation of extraordinary skill and beauty, revealing, within the Indian context, a broad grasp of learning and a zeal to reconcile divergent doctrines. On the one hand Tulsīdās protests that he has done the work simply for his own personal satisfaction (svāntaḥ sukhāya), and on the other he proclaims that its virtue is the infiniteness of its theme. This is whyRāmacaritamānasadeserves attention, and why its study can be so rewarding.
Facts and Meanings
Authors: Nicol Iain G.
Published: October 2008

Ever since its relatively late arrival on the theological scene the historical-critical method has been cast in a wide variety of roles. It is unfortunate that it has seldom made its appearance as one of theology's handmaids. Only recently, with the gradual retreat of the theologies of the Word, has it been enabled to terminate its prolonged contract to play court jester to a series of sovereign directors.
The Humanity of the Theologian and the Personal Nature of God
Authors: Pailin David A.
Published: October 2008

In his autobiographical-biographical study, Father and Son, Edmund Gosse describes how one evening, during his childhood, while his father was praying at - or, rather, over - his bed, a rather large insect dark and flat, with more legs than a self-respecting insect ought to need, appeared at the bottom of the counterpane, and slowly advanced… I bore it in silent fascination till it almost tickled my chin, and then I screamed ‘Papa! Papa!’. My Father rose in great dudgeon, removed the insect (what were insects to him!) and then gave me a tremendous lecture.1
Otto and Numinous Experience
Authors: Bastow David
Published: October 2008

The basic position of Otto in The Idea of the Holy2 may be stated as follows:

All religions involve and rest on experience of the numinous, which affords a positive knowledge of the central object of religion - God. This position is what may be called a Theory of Religion: like Freud's explanation of religion in terms of father figures, and Durkheim's claim that religion is society's celebration of itself, it claims to give an explanation of the phenomenon of religion - the fact that men belong to religions etc. Unlike some of its rivals, this Theory of Religion does not explain religion away; the explanation is intended to be compatible with religious belief; the explanatory concepts are supposed to be concepts from within religion. If Otto had just argued that religion was, or some religions were, true, his claims would have been only of theological interest. But what makes his writings especially important is that he looks at religion not merely as a theologian, but also as a phenomenologist; he is concerned to explain religion and religions as they are; even to explain the diversity of religions (with a version of evolutionism). It would be over-simple, but not entirely wide of the truth, to say that he first looks at religions in the sensitive but neutral manner of the phenomenologist, to decide what are the central phenomena of religion; and then puts forward a theological explanation of these phenomena. At least, this is what for much of his book he aims to do.
Eschatological Falsification
Authors: Kavka Gregory S.
Published: October 2008

In a well-known article,1 John Hick argues that the proposition ‘God (as conceived by Christians) exists' is, in principle, verifiable but is not falsifiable. Essentially, his argument is that while no experience in this life could conclusively disprove the existence of the Christian God, certain experiences one might have in the after-life would conclusively verify the existence of the Christian God. In particular, he argues that post mortem experiences of Christ ruling in the Kingdom of God would constitute a verification of the existence of the Christian God. In this paper, I shall argue that on Hick's own assumptions, the existence of the Christian God turns out to be falsifiable, in principle, as well as verifiable.
The Essence of Christian Belief
Authors: Shepherd John J.
Published: October 2008

In his powerful anti-Christian polemic, The Misery of Christianity, J. Kahl charges Christianity with suffering from a rock-bottom lack of identity. ‘Theologians…have been looking for a continuous thread which will lead them out of the maze of contradictory forms of Christianity…into the open. They would like to be able to say with binding force what Christianity really is.’1 But, he urges, they cannot. P. van Buren agrees, but sees in this no cause for concern. ‘Christianity has been changing since its beginning, the religion of the past constantly being adapted to the conditions of each new present. Once we see this character of Christianity, we are released from the misconceived task of trying to identify its unchanging essence.’2 Again more recently J. Hick has urged, in effect half agreeing with van Buren, that although there is an unchanging element in Christianity, it is restricted to ‘the originating events from which the moving stream of christian history has flowed’. ‘Christianity is an ongoing movement of life and thought, defined by its origin in the Christ-event and by its consciousness of that origin. It cannot be defined in terms of adherence to any doctrinal standard, for its doctrines are historically and culturally conditioned and have changed as the church has entered new historical and cultural situations.’3
Ayer's James
Authors: Wernham J. C. S.
Published: October 2008

In his The Origins of Pragmatism,1 A. J. Ayer unveiled a new James; and, clearly, he found his new one a good deal more attractive than the received ones. That is hardly surprising, for in some ways the new James looks remarkably like Ayer himself. The important question, however, is how far Ayer's James resembles the real one, and that is the subject of this paper. But let us see, first, where the new James looks different from the older ones.
Omniprescience and Divine Determinism
Authors: Croix Richard R. La
Published: October 2008

In this essay I will try to show that there are what would appear to be some unnoticed consequences of the doctrine of divine foreknowledge. For the purposes of this discussion I will simply assume that future events (while future) are possible objects of knowledge and, hence, that foreknowledge is possible. Accordingly, I will not be concerned with discussing such questions as the status of truth-values for future contingent propositions or whether knowledge is justified true belief. Furthermore, I will not be concerned with the issues involved in the claim that the doctrine of divine foreknowledge conflicts with doctrines concerning the properties of created beings, e.g., the doctrine of voluntary human action.
Do Theists Need to Solve the Problem of Evil?
Authors: Dore Clement
Published: October 2008

The problem of evil may be characterized as the problem of how precisely to specify a property, P, about which it is possible for a morally sensitive man to believe that (I) a person who possesses it would be morally justified on that account in not preventing instances of intense innocent suffering and (2) it is neither impossible nor unlikely that if there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, he possesses it. Atheists have typically claimed that P cannot be precisely specified. Moreover, they have maintained that in view of our inability to give a precise specification of P, it is irrational to believe that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is perfectly good and, hence, irrational to believe that God exists. In the remainder of this paper, I want to discuss the question whether there is any good reason for believing that this latter thesis is true.1 If there is no such reason, then no matter how much he may busy himself with an attempt at formulating a precise specification of P, the theist can be justifiably contented with the thought that it doesn't much matter whether he succeeds.
The Coherence of God-Talk
Authors: Daher Adel
Published: October 2008

God, as viewed by Muslims, Jews and Christians, is a transcendent being. To say that God is transcendent is to say, among other things, that spatiotemporal predicates do not apply to him. He is disembodied and absolutely immutable. God, nevertheless, is on this same view an agent. He makes things happen, he answers prayers, he judges, he forgives, he punishes, he guides, etc. The concept of God as a being worthy of worship seems to require that God be an absolutely eternal being on the one hand with all that this entails and a being that is absolutely just, merciful, forgiving, loving, good, on the other. It is the predication of such attributes of God that yields the concept of transcendent agency. This means in effect that for a being to be God this being must be, at least, a disembodied agent. But the concept of a disembodied agent, it is argued, is a contradiction in terms.