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Omnipotence
Dean Zimmerman, Negative Nelly, and the Divine Delegates
By Samuel Lebens, University of Haifa
Should an omnipotent being be able to limit its own power? Along with Swinburne, Dean Zimmerman answers in the affirmative. My intuitions push in the opposite direction. The ability to limit one's own power constitutes a vulnerability. In this paper, I argue that a great deal hangs on this issue. If God cannot revoke His own omnipotence, then only a necessarily existent being can ever create anything truly ex nihilo. Moreover, if God cannot revoke His own omnipotence, then it turns out that theism entails idealism. No wonder that Zimmerman resists. I prefer to take the plunge and endorse idealism!
Link: https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v8i2.77743
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Tags: #Religion #Metaphysics #Idealism #God
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Who We Are and Where We Came from: Divergent Views on Human Origins
By Rachel S. A. Pear, University of Haifa
In this article, I respond to Malik’s analysis of positions on common descent (“Creationism, Human exceptionalism, Adamic exceptionalism, and No exceptions”), regarding their metaphysical and hermeneutic compatibility with al-Ghazali’s approach. As a “no exceptions” proponent, I offer a number of Jewish theological sources that support this position, and argue with Malik’s assessment of this stance as scientistic. Due to my divergence from Malik on this fundamental issue, I then go on in the article to explore possible conceptualizations of disagreement, dialogue and the interaction of diverse views regarding fundamental matters.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255946
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Tags: #Religion #Science #Evolution #Creationism
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Sacred and Profane in Music Therapy
By Joscelyn Godwin, Colgate University
The widespread belief that music has some therapeutic potential rests partly on demonstrable, practical results. But explaining how such therapy works depends on the belief system of the explainer or practitioner. This survey of the literature shows how strongly a discipline is affected by its underlying metaphysical presuppositions. Traditional explanations, from antiquity through the nineteenth century, include participation by God or the gods; music as a bearer of sacred and harmonic numbers; the doctrine of correspondences and occult sympathies; the presence of animal spirits, subtle fluids, and other non-material elements in the human compound. The official belief system of the modern medical establishment cannot allow for any of these, hence its attempt to find materialistic explanations of how music therapy works. In the late 20th century some therapists, rejecting this constraint, returned to a more spiritual approach
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101229
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Tags: #Music #Spirituality #Psychology #Metaphysics
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Attitudes towards Religions: The Impact of Being Out of the Religious Group
By Alessandro Indelicato, University of Eastern Finland; Juan Carlos Martín, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Religious beliefs are a highly debated topic in the scientific literature. Various authors have approached this issue qualitatively and quantitatively. This study examines the attitudes towards out-religious groups, considering individuals’ socioeconomic characteristics. A new approach is introduced, utilising the Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS method applied to the WZB—Berlin Social Science Center database. Four items that measure the general attitude towards (a) Jews, (b) Christians, (c) Muslims, and (d) atheists, are used, and a synthetic indicator is obtained to represent the individual attitude towards religions of Torah, Koran and Bible followers. Eight countries are analysed, encompassing diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds, including Germany, Cyprus, the United States, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and Kenya. The results reveal that Germans are more open towards other religious and non-religious groups, while Lebanese citizens demonstrate the lowest levels. The findings show that Jews are the most tolerant towards other religious groups, whereas Muslims have the lowest attitudes level. Also, individual socioeconomic factors determine the attitudes towards other religious groups, such as age, education, income levels, and experiences of discrimination based on religion.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101218
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Tags: #Religion #Sociology #Atheism #Muslims
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Abū Yaʿrub al-Marzūqī and His Critique of the maqāṣid Theory
By Abdessamad Belhaj, University of Public Service
The purpose of this essay was to examine and evaluate Abū Yaʿrub al-Marzūqī’s criticism of the maqāṣid theory. Al-Marzūqī is mostly concerned with epistemology and ethics. He contends that the maqāṣid theory is insufficient to assert access to God’s meaning in Islamic law, since it is based on shaky processes of knowledge, particularly that of ratiocination, taʿlīl. On the other hand, he challenges the maqāṣid jurists’ authority to define the goals of the law in the absence of popular support. Additionally, he charges the maqāṣid jurists with endorsing political authority so that it can utilize the maqāṣid method to defend specific policies in the name of upholding the public interest. His primary claim is that the maqāṣid theory exhibits arbitrariness.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091212
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Tags: #Islam #IslamicLaw #Shariah #Ethics
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‘IMPLANTED IN US BY NATURE’: THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION AND ITS IMPORTANCE FOR THEOLOGY
By Dr Ruth Gornandt, University of Oxford
The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) holds that religion emerges from human cognition and its intuitions. Hence, it describes religion as a ‘natural’ belief in ‘supernatural agents’. Traditional theology also maintained that there is an ‘innate’ or ‘implanted’ knowledge of God or gods. It will be argued that CSR and theology can be related, yet not in a straightforward manner. After sketching out in what sense CSR calls religion ‘natural’ and how it describes ‘supernatural agents’, this article explores some examples of the traditional theological doctrine of an ‘implanted’ knowledge of God. It shows that the reliability of such an ‘implanted’ knowledge of God was disputed among theologians and, even if it was affirmed, had an ambiguous position in theology. This also applies to CSR if it is to be related to the traditional theological doctrine. There are illuminating convergences between CSR and theology but also considerable divergences. Both, however, prove significant for theology.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14256
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Tags: #CSR #Psychology #Religion #Fitrah
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God’s Moral Perfection as His Beneficent Love. Comment on Craig (2023). Is God’s Moral Perfection Reducible to His Love? Religions 14: 140
By Kevin Kinghorn, Asbury Theological Seminary
William Lane Craig insists that I am wrong in reducing God’s moral goodness to his beneficent aim of drawing all people to himself. For Craig, God’s moral goodness, best conceived in terms of righteousness, must also include God’s retributive justice toward the wicked, who deserve the punishment they receive. My response is that Craig’s argument rests on two assumptions about value, neither of which, I argue, Christian theists have good reason to affirm.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091205
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Tags: #God #DivinePerfection #Christianity #WLC
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ISLAMIC ETHICS AS ALTERNATIVE EPISTEMOLOGY IN INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION: EDUCATORS’ SITUATED KNOWLEDGES
By Hamza R’boul, The Education University of Hong Kong; Osman Z. Barnawi, Royal Commission for Yanbu Colleges and Institutes; Benachour Saidi, Mohammed First University
This paper explores the epistemological affordances of Islamic ethics as alternative knowledge within intercultural education. Despite the calls for epistemological plurality in intercultural education that centre epistemologies of the South, educators may find it hard to reaffirm their situated knowledges and practices because they may have been overwhelmed by the wide endorsements of the mainstream literature. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 EFL teachers, this study aims to (a) unpack educators’ perspectives around the adoption of alternative knowledges anchored in local epistemologies and sensibilities, (b) foreground educators’ epistemic positioning around alternative knowledges and how they are perceived as sites for cognitive and pedagogical renewal to account for local particularities and conditions and (c) examine inter-epistemic tensions within educators’ reasoning in terms of how they navigate (in)congruencies between the mainstream and Islamic philosophy at the conceptual, pedagogical and practical levels. Findings reveal that educators acknowledge the legitimacy of Islamic ethics and their epistemological/pedagogical significance in intercultural education. However, some factors may problematize educators’ attempts at making use of Islamic ethics including the additional burden of reflecting alternative knowledges while attending to contextual factors (class size, the course’s orientation, exams, time constraints, etc.) and the lack of sufficient training in intercultural education.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2023.2254373
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Tags: #Pedagogy #Islam #Religion #Sociology #Ethics
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Scientism and the value of scientific evidence for religious belief
By Jack Warman and Leandro De Brasi, University of La Frontera
This article presents a novel argument against an application of evidential scientism to religious belief. In particular, our target is those arguments at whose core lies the claim that it ought to be the case that, if one holds religious beliefs, then those beliefs are based on the best scientific evidence. Moreover, rather than focussing on the philosophical puzzles that usually fall within the purview of philosophers of religion, we are interested in the mundane beliefs of ordinary believers about their everyday interactions with God. Our argument combines recent work on epistemic partiality in close personal relationships with insights from analytic theology on the personal nature of believer's relationships with God. We argue that it's inappropriate for believers who take themselves to have a personal relationship with God to base their religious beliefs about God's nature on scientific evidence. In particular, it's precisely because these believers are in a personal relationship with God that it's sometimes inappropriate for them to form their beliefs about God's nature on the basis of scientific evidence.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412523000744
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Tags: #God #Scientism #Religion
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WILL WE KNOW THEM WHEN WE MEET THEM? HUMAN CYBORG AND NONHUMAN PERSONHOOD
By Léon Turner, University of Cambridge
In this article, I assess (1) whether some cyborgs and AI robots can theoretically be considered persons; and (2) how we will know if/when they have attained personhood. Since our discourses of personhood are inherently pluralistic and our concepts of both humanness and personhood are inherently nebulous, both some cyborgs, and some AI robots, I conclude, could theoretically be considered persons depending on what, exactly, one means by “person.” The practical problem of how we distinguish them from nonpersonal AI entities is, however, both more important, and much more difficult to solve. In conversation with various secular and theological accounts of relational personhood, I argue that only by treating AI entities as persons by default might we avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of mistakenly denying personhood to an entire group of eligible entities.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12923
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Tags: #AI #Metaphysics #Theology
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A BROADER PERSPECTIVE ON “HUMANS”: ANALYSIS OF INSĀN IN TWELVER SHĪʿĪ PHILOSOPHY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ASTROTHEOLOGY
By Adbullah Ansar, Shahbaz Haider
This article explores the essence of the human (insān) as it is understood in Twelver Shīʿī philosophy and mysticism. It presents a Shīʿī philosophical elucidation regarding the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligent lifeforms and what their relationship with “humanhood” might be. This line of reasoning is presented with a general sketch of how, in Shīʿī Islamic thought, a “human being” is characterized by specific traits and the relationship of human beings with the archetype of the Perfect Human (al-Insān al-Kāmil). Following this is a review of Shīʿī Imāmī traditions regarding extraterrestrial intelligent life and the plurality of worlds. This sequence ultimately allows for a unique analysis of humanhood according to the Shīʿī philosophical viewpoint and helps determine if the term “human” can be used for other intelligent beings with similar ontological features and intelligence levels.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12926
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Tags: #Shiasm #Metaphysics #Mysticism
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Asking God for Help: Children’s Views on What to Pray for When
By Rebekah A. Richert and Alisha Conover, University of California; Anondah Saide, University of North Texas; Nicholas Shaman, University of Houston
By the end of early childhood, children indicate that prayer is more effective than wishes or magic to prevent an unwanted, negative outcome from occurring. However, research has not yet delineated whether children would ask God to resolve a problem by changing the internal state of the person facing the problem (e.g., changing someone’s desires or emotions) or changing the external state of the world (e.g., physical or biological change). The current study examined if children request God to act through psychological or physical mechanisms. The participants were 122 4-to-8-year-old children (M = 6.160, SD = 0.918; 63.0% female) who returned to be interviewed for the third wave of a six-wave longitudinal study. The sample was racially–ethnically and religiously diverse. Children heard stories about characters facing two different problems. The results revealed that the children demonstrated a preference for petitioning for physical solutions, rather than biological, psychological, or emotion regulation solutions. The preferences did not vary by religious affiliation, religious exposure, or age. However, children with a more sophisticated social cognition ranked petitioning for physical changes higher. These findings suggest that children’s understanding of prayer (in this case, the most efficient ways for God to answer prayers) involves their coordination of developing folk theories about the world.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091164
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Tags: #Religion #God #Spirituality #Sociology #Psychology
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Divine Design and the Creation-Evolution Debate as Questions for Christian-Muslim Dialogue
By E. V. R. Kojonen, University of Helsinki
Inter-religious discussion on science and religion can help focus on neglected theological and metaphysical aspects. Here, I consider two examples of this: (1) the effect of models of divine action on design arguments, and (2) the effect of theological hermeneutics on the creation-evolution debate. Regarding design arguments, I analyze and respond to Shoaib A. Malik’s four Ashʿari criticisms of the design argument. Regarding theological hermeneutics, and building on Malik’s analysis, I use the debates over the Age of the Earth and the Flood as a test case of the differences between Christian and Muslim ways of interpretation.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255950
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Tags: #Evolution #Islam #Creationism #IntelligentDesign #Christianity
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Faith and Faithfulness
By Daniel Mckaughan, Boston College; Daniel Howard-Snyder, Western Washington University
Can faith be valuable and, if so, under what conditions? We know of no theory-neutral way to address this question. So, we offer a theory of relational faith, and we supplement it with a complementary theory of relational faithfulness. We then turn to relationships of mutual faith and faithfulness with an eye toward exhibiting some of the ways in which, on our theory, faith and faithfulness can be valuable and disvaluable. We then extend the theory to other manifestations of faith and faithfulness, we propose a way to unify them under a theory of faith and faithfulness simpliciter, and we explain how they can be neo-Aristotelian virtues and vices. We close with our solution to the value problem and avenues for further research.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.1.1
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Tags: #Faith #Religion #Religiosity
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THE RELATIONAL TURN IN UNDERSTANDING PERSONHOOD: PSYCHOLOGICAL, THEOLOGICAL, AND COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
By Fraser Watts, University of London; Marius Dorobantu, VU University Amsterdam
From the middle of the twentieth-century onwards, there has been a growing emphasis on the importance of relationality in what it means to be human, which we call a “relational turn.” This is found in various domains, including philosophical psychology, psychoanalysis, and theological anthropology. Many have seen a close connection between relationality and personhood. In the second half of the article, we consider the implications of this trend for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. So far, AI has largely neglected relational intelligence, though that could perhaps be about to change. Cybernetics was rendered more open to assumptions about the contextuality of intelligence by its rather different assumptions from AI. Social robotics increasingly requires relational intelligence, and promising steps might be found in computational modeling of human relationships. Questions about whether robots can achieve personhood are difficult to resolve, though the possibility should not be ruled out.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12922
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Tags: #AI #Psychology #Theology
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Why Does Anything Exist?
In Search of the Best Possible Answer
By Joshua Rasmussen, Azusa Pacific University
Rasmussen develops a new answer to the question, "Why does anything exist?" He begins by describing a puzzle about how anything can exist. The puzzle motivates the quest to explain things as far as one can. To solve the puzzle, Rasmussen describes a sequence of scenes in a story about existence. The story brings to light a three-pronged explanation of existence: (i) things exist because it is impossible for nothing to have existed, (ii) it is impossible for nothing to have existed because there is a foundational reality that cannot not exist, and (iii) such a foundation would have a certain nature—to be specified—that allows it to be foundational. Rasmussen considers how this theory of fundamental reality can incorporate other large scale theories, including Platonism, axiarchism, and naturalism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v8i2.77433
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Tags: #Religion #Metaphysics #Naturalism
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An Historical Overview of Jewish Theological Responses to Evolution
By Daniel Langton, University of Manchester
While a systematic comparison of the similarities and differences between Jewish and Muslim approaches to evolution is beyond the scope of this study, it is possible to note some of the most striking observations. Among the key differences highlighted by an historical perspective on Jewish approaches in the late-nineteenth to present day are the phenomenon of panentheistic tendences among Jewish commentators and the practice of defining the position of Judaism against that of Christianity. In response to Malik’s theological approach, which attempted to identify medieval traditions as potential resources for contemporary Muslim evolutionists, it proved to be an interesting counter-factual exercise to generate a comparable list of pre-modern theological resources for Jewish evolutionists.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255948
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Tags: #Judaism #Religion #Science #Evolution #Creationism
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Spiritual but Not Religious? French Muslim Discourses on Spirituality
By Abdessamad Belhaj, University of Public Service
This article explores the possibility of a spiritual Islam in the West as a viable alternative to traditionalist and political Islam. It looks at the capabilities and limitations of two French Muslim voices, Abdennour Bidar and Éric Geoffroy, who are the most vocal Muslim intellectuals in favor of spiritual Islam in France. A careful examination of their writings reveals that post-modernism, French secularism, and religious freedom all support the spread of spiritual Islam. However, because of its elitism, overemphasis on individualism, and lack of formal religious institutions for knowledge and practice, spiritual Islam struggles. Overall, spiritual Islam flourishes in a secular society, but it is too intellectual to truly oppose political and conservative Islam.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101222
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Tags: #Islam #Spirituality #Sufism
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Oppy on arguments and worldviews: an internal critique
By Bálint Békefi, Central European University
This paper develops an internal critique of Graham Oppy’s metaphilosophy of religion – his theories of argumentation, worldview comparison, and epistemic justification. First, it presents Oppy’s views and his main reasons in their favor. Second, it argues that Oppy is committed to two claims – that only truth-conducive reasons can justify philosophical belief and that such justification depends entirely on one’s judgments about the theoretical virtues of comprehensive worldviews – that jointly entail the unacceptable conclusion that philosophical beliefs cannot be justified. Third, it briefly argues that of his two claims, it is his thoroughgoing coherentism that should be rejected.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-023-09891-0
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Tags: #Religion #Metaphilosophy #Atheism
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Pelagianism Redivivus: The Free Will Theodicy for Hell, Divine Transcendence, and the End of Classical Theism
By Roberto J. De La Noval, Mount St. Mary's University
This article argues against the “free will theodicy” for hell. It demonstrates how St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas considered this theodicy to be Pelagian and opposed to divine transcendence. It is shown that by claiming that God cannot cause the conversion of sinners without violating their freedom, the free will theodicy denies divine omnipotence, empties divine predestination of meaning, undermines the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, and implicitly abandons key tenets of classical theism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.12894
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Tags: #Theodicy #FreeWill #Aquinas #God #Theism
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The Human Being as the Mystery of Kun fa Fakān: An Engagement with Shoaib Ahmed Malik’s Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm
By Mansur Ali, Cardiff University
The theory of evolution has supposedly displaced human beings from their lofty positions as unique special creatures and placed them within a process of evolution where they are nothing more than a species that has evolved from primitive ones and will be eclipsed by more superior ones. In this article, I engage with Malik's book using a plain sense reading of Islamic scripture. I single out “human exceptionalism” as the optimum view that fits a plain sense reading of scripture as well as one that has the potential to pacify Muslim concerns about evolution.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255954
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Tags: #Evolution #Islam #Ghazali #Creationism
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What's Gained from Depression? A Proposal on Theodicy and Epinosic Gains
By Jessica Coblentz, Saint Mary's College
Many depression-sufferers testify to experiences of goodness that arise from their depression, or ‘goodness because of depression’. These realities often inspire efforts to reconcile suffering and divine benevolence. Yet some sufferers who experience ‘goodness because of depression’ reject theodical thinking and therefore seek other frameworks for reflection on their suffering and its accompanying goods. This essay draws from psychology's notion of epinosic gains to propose an analogous framework that aids sufferers in discussing and interpreting instances of ‘goodness because of depression’ apart from theodical justifications. While the proposed framework is grounded in first-person reflections on depression and is articulated in relation to another Christian framework for depression from Tasia Scrutton, this constructive proposal has the potential to serve theological reflection on a wider range of suffering beyond depression.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14257
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Tags: #Theodicy #Religion #Psychology
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Shoaib Malik’s “Islam and Evolution”: Sociological Reflections on the Developing Engagement of British Muslim Leadership with Science
By Saleema F. Burney, University of Birmingham
Sociological studies of Islam and science in the West have developed in the past two decades. This response is positioned in the light of one such study (https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/ptr/projects/science-british-muslim-religious-leadership.aspx). It argues that Malik’s work is part of emerging transatlantic networks of learning and authority in Islam and science discourses. It suggests that Muslim leadership is now shifting in favour of informed engagement with science/religion topics, and that Malik’s book both exemplifies this shift, but also addresses an urgent need for scholarship that brings Islamic theological principles into dialogue with modern scientific topics.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255952
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Tags: #Evolution #Islam #Religion #Sociology
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Shared intentionality and divine persons: explorations in empirical psychology and ramified natural theology
By Dennis P. Bray, University of St Andrews
This article explores the intersection of two developing fields of study: the psychological field of shared intentionality and the philosophy of religion field of ramified natural theology. In shared intentionality, agents share mental states and cooperate to achieve a common goal. Many psychologists in this field believe that of all the primates, only humans share intentionality – humans alone form a ‘we’. Ramified natural theology is the project of presenting philosophical evidences for core doctrines of the Christian faith. In this article I investigate some applications of shared intentionality for Christian natural theology. In the Anselmian tradition I offer two deductive arguments that deploy shared intentionality to argue that there are multiple divine persons. I then suggest that analogical arguments – often overlooked by philosophers of religion – provide a better fit for psychological findings, such as shared intentionality. After sketching some fundamental features of analogical arguments, I advance two arguments by analogy for the conclusion that God, like humans, shares intentionality. These arguments show that the psychology of shared intentionality, and empirical psychology more generally, is a promising source for theological reflection.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412523000781
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Tags: #Anselm #NaturalTheology #God #Theology
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Does God Comfort You When You Are Sad? Religious Diversity in Children’s Attribution of Positive and Negative Traits to God
By Hea Jung Lee, Ashley B. Marin, Jiayue Sun and Rebekah A. Richert, University of California
Children actively construct their understanding of God in early childhood, an understanding that incorporates affect-laden mental representations often referred to as God images. To explore religious variations in children’s association of positive and negative traits to God, 254 preschool-aged children from Protestant Christian, Catholic, Muslim, and Non-Affiliated religious backgrounds indicated their certainty that God scares them, punishes them, is angry at them, loves them, comforts them, and helps people. Parents indicated the frequency of children’s religious engagement. Older children were more certain than younger children that God did not scare or punish them and that God loved and comforted them, and helped people. Moreover, religious affiliation differences emerged in children’s attribution of both positively and negatively valenced properties to God, and more frequent religious engagement was related to a higher degree of certainty that God loves, comforts, helps, and becomes angry, but was unrelated to the certainty that God scares or punishes. The findings suggest that religious engagement plays an important role in children’s developing God image.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14091181
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Tags: #God #Religion #Psychology #Sociology
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Other “Adams”: Twelver Shiʿism and Human Evolution
By Amina Inloes, The Islamic College
This paper presents a Twelver Shīʿī defence of human evolution. It was written in dialogue with Shoaib Ahmed Malik's, Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghāzālī and the Modern Evolution Paradigm. It synthesises classical Twelver Shīʿī exegesis, hadith, doctrines, and philosophy with contemporary exegesis and scientific thought. Rather than taking the approach of scientific exegesis, it focuses on the origins of the human being in the immaterial realm, and is one of the few Islamic defences of evolution to be hadith-based. It also considers the possible role of hadith as cultural memory.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2255953
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Tags: #Shiasm #Evolution #hadith
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Hello World: Digital Media and the Search for Interplanetary Life on Religion’s Final Frontier
By Amanda Furiasse, Nova Southeastern University
NASA’s 2021 Perseverance Rover races toward the farthest reaches of our known world to search for signs of life. Although promising to discover life on the surface of Mars, the rover’s digital images of Mars’s barren and scorched wasteland paradoxically reinforce the fear that death is inevitable. Why search for life on the barren wasteland of Mars? This article explores this question from the perspective of scholarly examinations of Spiritualism and argues that the search for extraterrestrial life on Mars’s surface constitutes a growing religious community, one that reframes religious practice around digital media’s interface and endows digital technologies with the potentiality to transform the burden of our impending extinction into an opportunity to extend humanity’s perceived temporal and spatial finitude.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfad056
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Tags: #Religion #Media #Exotheology
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The Value of a Meaningful Life as a Response to the Problem of Evil
By Eric J Silverman, Christopher Newport University et al.
We argue that the good of a meaningful life has a role in theodicy by serving as a contributory reason for an all-good, all-powerful God to allow the existence of evil. If a meaningful life is a more valuable good than competing goods such as pleasure, power, etc., then the good of a meaningful life could have some theodical value for explaining a world where personal pleasure and power are often threatened and undermined. Thus, a world including deeply meaningful personal lives along with the existence of evils like pain and suffering, could be superior to a world without pain and evil but with less meaningful lives. This view is especially plausible if our argument successfully demonstrates that certain kinds of evils are necessary conditions for certain kinds of more valuable, more meaningful lives.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.1.3
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Tags: #PoE #Evil #Religion #God
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Nagasawa's Maximal God and the Ontological Argument
By Peter Millican, University of Oxford
Yujin Nagasawa has recently defended two reformulated Ontological Arguments, one adapted from Anselm's ‘Classical’ version and one from Plantinga's ‘Modal’ version. This article explains in detail why both of them fail, and then goes on to present general objections to any Ontological Argument.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412523000458
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Tags: #God #OntologicalArgument #Plantinga #Anselm
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Islamic Traditionalists: “Against the Modern World”
By Jacob Williams, King's College London
Mark Sedgwick drew attention to the radically anti-modern Traditionalist School, a Western esoteric movement initiated by René Guénon that calls for the retrieval of a spiritual wisdom found in all religions but lost in modernity.1 In his book Against the Modern World, Sedgwick argues that this movement, operating in the shadows, has exerted a hidden influence over world events that he calls a ‘secret intellectual history of the 20th century’.2 Sedgwick also links the School to a modern tendency within Muslim thought known as ‘Islamic traditionalism’3 or ‘neotraditionalism’.4 Many of the School's leaders including Guénon, Fritzhof Schuon, and Martin Lings, converted to Islam and became involved in various Sufi orders, viewing Islamic traditions as offering easier access to the spiritual Source to which all religions are ultimately oriented. At the same time, the School's rejection of modernity led many members to embrace radical right-wing politics. Julius Evola's notorious self-designation as ‘superfascista’5 is typical. Nor is this alliance with the political right a historical curiosity: al-Azami has identified a ‘deeply rooted political conservatism’6 in the thought of Abdullāh bin Bayyah, a leading Islamic traditionalist scholar and a mentor of Hamza Yusuf, one the thinkers to be examined in this article.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12475
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Tags: #Islam #Traditionalism #Religion
