bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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.
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.
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.
Flew and the Free Will Defence
Authors: Purtill Richard L. 
Published: October 2008

In a recent paper Anthony Flew gives an argument which can be outlined as follows:1. Any attempt to give a ‘free will defence’ (to rebut the argument from evil against God's existence) must be based either on a compatibilist notion of free will or a libertarian, incompatibilist, notion of free will.2. A free will defence based on a compatibilist notion of free will must fail, for on a compatibilist view of free will, God could make creatures who were free but never chose evil.3. A free will defence based on a libertarian notion of free will might have other difficulties, but on a libertarian view of free will God could not both leave men free and bring it about that they never chose evil.4. But a free will defence based on an incompatibilist, libertarian notion of free will can be rejected, since:(a) It is not clear that the ordinary use of such key terms as ‘action’ and ‘choice’ carry any implications of libertarian free will.(b) If such terms did carry the implication of libertarian free will it becomes hard to see how anyone could be in a position to know that a choice had been made or an action performed.(c) The possession of libertarian free will by created beings seems to be incompatible with the essential theistic doctrine that all created beings are always utterly dependent on God as their sustaining cause.5. Therefore the free will defence fails.
Would a satanic resurrection world falsify Christian Theism?–Reply to Gregory S. Kavka
Authors: Gregory Donald R. 
Published: October 2008

In a recent article in Religious Studies, Gregory S. Kavka argues that John Hick was wrong when he said that the statement ‘God (as conceived by Christians) exists’ is verifiable but not falsifiable. Kavka constructs an imaginary `resurrection world' ruled by Satan and inhabited by such resurrected evildoers as Hitler and Stalin. In such a world, those who had been virtuous in earthly life in the hopes of a Christ-dominated resurrection world discover that virtue is inversely rewarded, with the ‘living’ intolerable for them and worst of all for those among them who had lived especially virtuous lives, i.e. the saints. Further, they are told by presumably knowledgeable inhabitants of this world that:…the historical Christ was an agent sent by Satan to raise in good people false hopes of eternal salvation. This story is confirmed by Satan himself who demonstrates through a huge telescope-like device how he continues to send false saviours to other planets inhabited by intelligent beings in a cruel plan to make such beings miserable in the long run.
Statements of Religious Belief
Authors: O'hear A. 
Published: October 2008

A well-trodden approach to statements of religious belief takes the following course:Religious believers call upon God as their loving Father. Clearly God, being a spirit, is not a Father in the straightforward biological sense. What is claimed is that he is the creator and sustainer of all things, and that he has moreover a special father-like care for his human creatures. But this claim does not seem to be subject to any modification in the face of apparent lack of parental care on the part of God to his children. In fact believers are unwilling or unable to specify any actual or potential state of affairs that counts or would count towards deciding the truth value of their belief. In the light of this, it is hard to see the belief as having any meaning at all. The conclusion is that however much we may want to accept religious statements on faith, we cannot, because we are unable to discover what it is we are being asked to believe.
Is Religion Psychotherapy? – An Indian View
Authors: Ravindra R. 
Published: October 2008

A related question to the one posed in the title is: ‘Is religion psychology?’ In order to make this question a little sharper, let us raise two parallel ones: ‘Is religion physiology?’ and ‘Is religion physiotherapy?’I have the impression that the answer to any of the above four questions is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. What I propose to do below is to try to find out how we might understand these questions in the light of the Bhagavad Gītā and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with occasional help from other sources. These two texts are of paramount importance in Indian religion and psychology, and may be considered representative of the classical Indian view.
‘Meaning’, experience and the ontological argument
Authors: Wald Albert W. 
Published: October 2008

There is a theory about knowledge of the meanings of words which has been held by philosophers as different as existentialists and crude empiricists.1 It may be called the empiricist theory, and is stated thus:If anyone fully understands the meaning of ‘x’, then the object(s) denoted by ‘x’ must have been experienced or ‘encountered’ by that person.
Eastern and western empiricism and the ‘no-self’ theory
Authors: Lesser A. H. 
Published: October 2008

Several recent writers, of whom the most important and accessible, for English readers, are probably K. N. Jayatilleke and W. Rahula, have drawn attention to the fact that Buddhism, unlike many other religious philosophies, regards personal experience as the only valid source of knowledge. The Buddha himself is said to have distinguished between those who base their religion, or world-view, on tradition, those who base it on reasoning and speculation, and those who base it on personal experience, as he does himself:I am one of those who profess the basis of a religion after finding a final and ultimate insight in this life by gaining a higher knowledge personally of a doctrine among doctrines not traditionally heard of before. (Quoted by Jayatilleke, p. 171)
Divine Omniscience and Human Freedom
Authors: Davis Stephen T. 
Published: October 2008

Theists typically believe the following two propositions:(1) God is omniscient,and(2) Human beings are free.Are they consistent? In order to decide, we must first ask what they mean. Roughly, let us say that a being is omniscient if for any proposition he knows whether it is true or false. Since I have no wish to deny that there are true and false propositions about future states of affairs (as some philosophers have done), omniscience includes foreknowledge, which we can say is knowledge of the truth value of propositions about future states of affairs. For example, I believe the proposition ‘Davis will wear shoes tomorrow’ is true today, and if it is true today, i.e. if I will wear shoes tomorrow, an omniscient being knows today that it is true – and, if this being is eternally omniscient, he knew it millions of years ago.
Human freedom and divine providence: some new thoughts on an old problem
Authors: Basinger David 
Published: October 2008

Christian theists have not normally wished to deny either of the following tenets:T1 God creates human agents such that they are free with respect to certain actions and, therefore, morally responsible for them.T2 God is an omniscient, wholly good being who is omnipotent in the sense that he has (sovereign, providential) control over all existent states of affairs.
Faith and Reason: a False Antithesis?
Authors: Mitchell Basil 
Published: October 2008

‘I can't believe that,’ said Alice.‘Can't you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.’Alice laughed. ‘There's no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can't believe impossible things.’‘I dare say you haven't had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
Can I Die?–An Essay in Religious Philosophy
Authors: Kesarcodi-Watson Ian 
Published: October 2008

Often we feel there is something odd about death, and especially about our own. This latter at least we often feel beyond our ken. Well, I think in a sense it may be; but in another, clearly is not. Among those who have felt this strangeness is Ramchandra Gandhi who, in an excellent recent work, The Availability of Religious Ideas (Macmillan, 1976), maintained –There is no difficulty in seeing that I cannot intelligibly conceive of my own death – the ceasing to be, for good, of myself, my consciousness. I can conceive of temporary lapses into unconsciousness, always overcome by a return to consciousness. The difficulty is this: in asking myself the question 'What will it be like to be irreversibly unconscious?' (and the state of affairs here sought to be visualized would exclude all dream activity and dream-thinking of all types), I want both to remain self-conscious and visualize actual loss of capacity for self-consciousness. This cannot be done (p. 39; italics mine).
The Logical Status of ‘God’
Authors: Walker Ian 
Published: October 2008

We are all of us by now familiar with the argument that God's existence is necessary. The argument takes many and varied forms but generally contains a premiss to the effect that our conception of God, or God's nature, entails necessary existence. Professor H. D. Lewis writes:It is not part of the nature of anything normally that it must exist. We find that there are certain things — we could not deduce this from the concept of them. We also sense that in the last resort nothing could just be by chance, but the element of necessity here is not to be found directly in finite things themselves but in a Reality beyond themselves and in their dependence, in some way we cannot further comprehend, upon it. It is thus part of the nature of this Ultimate Reality that it must be; and this, along with the perfection which this kind of existence carries with it, is all that we can know directly about God. He is a Being who exists by necessity.
Why the Incarnation is a Superfluous Detail for Kierkegaard
Authors: Levine Michael P. 
Published: October 2008

Why does the paradox (i.e. the incarnation) play such a crucial role in Kierkegaard's notion of truth as subjectivity? Richard Schacht explains it as follows:Eternal happiness is possible for a man only if it is possible for him to relate himself to God. A man, however, is a being who exists in time; and it would not be possible for such a being to enter into a ‘God-relationship’ if God had not also at some point existed in time. Through the ‘leap of faith’ in which one affirms the proposition that God did exist in time, one is able to enter a ‘God-relationship’ and thereby attains ‘an eternal happiness’.
A Neglected Argument For Immortality
Authors: Sherry Patrick 
Published: October 2008

The claim has often been made over the centuries that the presence of the spirit of God, seen especially in saintly people, is an anticipation of immortality. My purpose in this paper is to see why this claim is made and to lay bare the structure of the argument which underlies it. Although there has been a renewed interest in the question of immortality, both among philosophers and theologians in recent years, this particular aspect of it has been neglected.The claim being discussed is not, as we shall see, restricted to Christianity; and even within the Christian religion it is expressed in many different ways. John Wesley, for instance, says in his sermonOn the Holy Spirit:
Divine transcendence
Authors: Kvanvig Jonathan L. 
Published: October 2008

Christians hold that God is transcendent, that He is other than all else that exists. For example, Paul Tillich claims,The divine beings and the Supreme Being, God, are representations of that which is ultimately referred to in the religious act. They are representations, for the unconditioned transcendent surpasses every possible conception of a being, including even the conception of a Supreme Being … It is the religious function of atheism ever to remind us that the religious act has to do with the unconditioned transcendent, and that the representations of the Unconditioned are not objects concerning whose existence … a discussion would be possible.
Coleridge's philosophical and theological thinking and its significance for today
Authors: Roberts Martin 
Published: October 2008

He went like one that bath been stunned.And is of sense forlorn:A sadder and a wiser man.He rose the morrow morn.(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)In this paper I wish to explore Coleridge's approach to the study of philosophy and theology and ask whether and in what respects it can contribute to present discussions about the nature and the possibility of a philosophical theology.
Rammohun Roy and the Baptists of Serampore: Moralism vs. Faith
Authors: Chatterjee Shyamal K. 
Published: October 2008

Some historians of modern Indian religious thought claim that, in respect of a pure monotheism free from pagan or polytheistic myth and a morality free from taboos and superstition, Rammohun was indebted to the Christian missionaries of his time and more particularly to the Baptists of Serampore. Thus, E. Daniel Potts, in his British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837, observes:The Brahmo Samaj or Sabha (or Theistic Society) founded by him [Rammohun] in 1828 after he disassociated himself from Adam's Unitarian Association used a congregational form of worship utterly unknown to the ancient form of Hinduism he believed he was restoring; any many of its teachings, particularly ethical, were drawn from those of the Precepts of Jesus. Related organizations to reform Hinduism sprang up in the 1830–s and after, and in the process propagated, though their leaders would not always admit this, the idea of Christian morality – both enterprises begun by Roy's direct response to missionary and particularly Baptist endeavours.’
The Slippery Slope of Religious Relativism
Authors: Kellenberger J. 
Published: October 2008

Among the questions facing the religious there is one that is becoming particularly pressing in our contemporary world of mingled cultures. Expressed as religious people sometimes put it to themselves, it is: How does my religion relate to other religions? There are two very different answers abroad. One is: mine is true and all others, to the extent that they depart from mine, are false and are to be rejected. The other is: mine is valid-for-me, and those of others are valid-for-them. The first answer has the virtue of being utterly straightforward and not mealy-mouthed, but it seems parochial and myopic, for, as John Hick points out:In the great majority of cases, the tradition within which a religious person finds his relationship to the Real depends to a very great extent upon where and when he or she is born…In view of this situation, can one be unquestionably confident that the religion which one happens to have inherited by birth is indeed normative and that all others are properly to be graded by their likeness or unlikeness to it?
Buddhism in Recent British Philosophy and Theology
Authors: Collins Steven 
Published: October 2008

One of the more popular bedtime stories in our house just now is Horton Hears a Who by Dr Seuss. Horton is an elephant, and unlike the other animals in the jungle, he is capable – thanks doubtless to his large ears – of hearing the faint sounds made by some minute beings called Whos, who live in a town called Whoville on a tiny speck of dust. The other animals think Horton is mad when he talks to the Whos: they take the speck of dust from him and attempt to get rid of it. After a series of adventures Horton retrieves the speck of dust, gets the Whos to shout loudly enough to be heard by the other animals, and so everyone lives happily ever after. In the course of the story, before the speck of dust is taken from him, Horton is walking along and worrying:‘Should I put this speck down?…’ Horton thought with alarm.‘If I do these small persons may come to great harm.I can't put it down. And I won't! After allA person's a person, no matter how small.’
The Autonomy of Reason, Revealed Morality and Jewish Law
Authors: Sokol Moshe Z. 
Published: October 2008

I have found that religious philosophers sometimes commit what might be called the fallacy of misplaced argumentation. Permit me to explain.Any fully developed system of thought contains many assertions about the world. Yet this proliferation of assertions can be traced back to several underlying propositions which are their logical forebears. This is because large-scale theories generally grow out of fundamental intuitions or conceptual stances. These fundamental intuitions become formulated into theory-embedded, second-order propositions. Understanding the centrality of second-order propositions is essential to understanding the theory which they generate, with its numerous first-order assertions about the world.
History, Humanity and the Activity of God
Authors: Pailin David A. 
Published: October 2008

Towards the end of Way to Wisdom, after noting how specialization has fragmented modern thought, Karl Jaspers writes thatOne might wish for a philosophy that would encompass and assimilate the whole tradition, that would be equal to the intellectual situation of our time, that would express the contents common to all of us, and this both in sublime intellectual constructions and in simple propositions capable of finding resonance in every man.
Noumenon and Phenomena
Authors: Loughlin Gerard 
Published: October 2008

How is Christian theology, as the self-understanding of the Christian life, to understand the world religions? How is it to understand them in relation to itself? In recent years Professor John Hick has proposed a pluralist paradigm of the world religions which would, if acceptable, answer these sort of questions. In this article we are going to consider the acceptability of Hick's paradigm to Christian theology. The question we want to put to it is simple: Will it do as a model for how Christian theology may begin to think its relation to the world religions?Our discussion is in three parts. In the first part we present Hick's paradigm in, what we take to be, it's strongest form, defending it against certain criticisms. In the second part we consider its phenomenological foundations and the possibility of its judicious evaluation. Finally, in the third part, we offer a critique and come to a conclusion about it's acceptability to Christian theology. However, our answer is only a small contribution to a much larger task: ‘the theological understanding of non-Christian religions’.
Biography, Individuality and the Study of Religion
Authors: Hutch Richard A. 
Published: October 2008

During June, 1836 Soren Kierkegaard attended a soiree in Copenhagen where the wine flowed, witty conversation bubbled from every corner, and he himself was at the centre of merriment – sparkling, acerbic, enormously witty. After the party he returned home and penned the following lines in his journal:I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away – yes, the dash would be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit…and wanted to shoot myself.
The Logic of God Incarnate–Two Recent Metaphysical Principles Examined
Authors: Durrant Michael 
Published: October 2008

In his recent work Professor Morris writes: ‘I am suggesting that, armed with a couple of fairly simple metaphysical distinctions we can begin to see how the doctrine of the Incarnation can possibly be true.’What are these ‘metaphysical distinctions’ and do they stand up to critical examination? My answer to the latter part of this question in regard to the first distinction is a reserved ‘Yes’; in regard to the second distinction a definite ‘No’. If my criticism of the second distinction holds good, then Morris's defence of the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation fails, for his defence crucially relies on the validity of that distinction.
The Use of Symbols in Religion from the Perspective of Analytical Psychology
Authors: McGlashan A. R. 
Published: October 2008

The consecration of Dr David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham, and many of his public utterances before and since, have concentrated public attention on the resurrection of Christ. What happened on the first Easter Day? Can we ever know for sure? If not, is that a bad or a good thing? What do Christians mean by their credal professions of faith? Do we, must we, all mean more or less the same thing when we repeat them? If that mysterious but constitutive event was not just a conjuring trick with bones, what else may it have been?What is central to the debate around such questions is the symbolic character of the resurrection story. That is to say, the resurrection was not just a dead person coming to life, although it may include that. It concerns also who the dead person was, and what his coming to life again might be believed to effect. So the resurrection story is the symbol, and the meaning to which it points is what is symbolized. A symbol is an event, act, story, object which essentially points beyond itself to such ulterior meaning, and also participates in the reality to which it points, according to Tillich's definition. The question at issue in this debate centres on the relation between the symbol and the symbolized. One extreme view tends to affirm the literal facticity of the symbolic event, and to assume that its meaning is ipso facto incontrovertibly established. The other extreme regards the precise nature of the event as irrecoverable, and as anyway irrelevant to the validity of the symbol's meaning.