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The nomological argument for the existence of God
By Tyler Hildebrand, Dalhousie University; Thomas Metcalf, Spring Hill College
Abstract
According to the Nomological Argument, observed regularities in nature are best explained by an appeal to a supernatural being. A successful explanation must avoid two perils. Some explanations provide too little structure, predicting a universe without regularities. Others provide too much structure, thereby precluding an explanation of certain types of lawlike regularities featured in modern scientific theories. We argue that an explanation based in the creative, intentional action of a supernatural being avoids these two perils whereas leading competitors do not. Although our argument falls short of a full defense, it does suggest that the Nomological Argument is worthy of philosophical attention.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12364
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Tags: #God #Philosophy #Theism
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RETHINKING ANCIENT CENTERS OF HIGHER LEARNING: MADRASA IN A COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
By Burhan Fındıklı, University of Bergen
Abstract
This study examines the emergence and evolution of madrasa as a specific organizational form of higher learning from a comparative-historical perspective. The article begins by discussing how the madrasa emerged and which factors contributed to its rise and spread among the Islamicate political regimes during the Middle Ages and afterwards. Then, it provides a comparison between the medieval European university and the madrasa, with particular attention to the characteristics of the legal systems on which they were founded and the influences of the political environment on the respective institutions. It is argued that the differences in the legal tradition and the political authority structures may help us to grasp why madrasa and university produced different outcomes in terms of internal governance and institutional autonomy. The short discussion of the Ottoman case, where madrasas functioned as the main higher learning institutions at least until the adoption of the Western-style educational institutions from the 18th century, is presented as an illustrative case to test these assumptions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2021.1901853
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Tags: #Islam #Religion #Madrasa
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Reading the Rival’s Scripture in Open Societies: Christians Encountering the Qur’an
By Shabbir Akhtar, University of Oxford
Abstract
Given the civic needs of open Western societies which respect pluralism, democracy and human rights, how should Christians read the Qur’an? I examine four major methods or ways on how Christians do read the Qur’an, and demonstrate that all are inappropriate to the needs of our modern secular democracies. These are often allied to approaches that use the mask of revisionist scholarship to conceal malice and irrational hatred of Islamic values. First, major Christian methods that approach Islam, the Qur’an, and the Prophet Muhammad could be entitled as follows, successively in this chapter: the non/reception method, the externalization method, the rejection method, and the paternalist method. Examples of such methods will be referred to. Second, a further examination of revisionist scholarship and literature shows other methods of approaching Islam and its sacred text and prophet; here, five other methods are outlined, which intertwine with the first four methods; these five are as follows: the Qur’an’s alleged misunderstanding of Christian dogmas method, the radical skepticism of the origins of Islam method, the Qur’an’s half-way to truth method, the Qur’an’s unoriginality method, and Muhammad as a messenger for the Arabs only method. Critical comments follow each of these methods, as a way of overcoming biases and prejudices that nurture Islamophobia and right-wing parties and populist movements.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66089-5_8
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Tags: #Islam #Religion #Christianity #Quran
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Pluralism in Islamic Contexts - Ethics, Politics and Modern Challenges
By Imtiyaz Yusuf, International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC-IIUM)
Abstract
Drawing from the teachings of the Qur’an about human unity and religious diversity and also the history of Islam-Buddhism coexistence, this chapter looks at the chances, challenges and opportunities for building Islam-Buddhism understanding in the age of rising Asian Islamophobia and Muslim-Buddhist conflicts in Asia. The chapter draws its content from the teachings of the Qur’an regarding how it views the role of religion in human history and its attitudes towards different religions. It also highlights that the distortion of the Qur’an’s positive views about religions is largely the result of political and economic developments in Muslim history – an interplay between religion and politics in the post-Muhammadan era. Finally, the chapter urges the Muslims to view other religions such as Buddhism from the perspective of the Qur’an – i.e. Ahl al-Kitāb perspective which recognizes religious pluralism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66089-5_12
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Tags: #Philosophy #Religion #Buddhism #Quran
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The Brain Resides in the Soul (Not the Other Way Around)
By Brendan Case, Harvard University
Link: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-brain-resides-in-the-soul-not-the-other-way-around/
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Tags: #Philosophy #Neuroscience #Materialism #Theology
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Logos, logic and maximal infinity
By A. C. Paseau, University of Oxford
Abstract
Recent developments in the philosophy of logic suggest that the correct foundational logic is like God in that both are maximally infinite and only partially graspable by finite beings. This opens the door to a new argument for the existence of God, exploiting the link between God and logic through the intermediary of the Logos. This article explores the argument from the nature of God to the nature of logic, and sketches the converse argument from the nature of logic to the existence of God.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412521000019
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Tags: #Philosophy #Logic #God #Theism
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Evolutionary Debunking and Normative Arguments Against Theism
By Scott M. Coley, Mount St. Mary’s University
Abstract
The levers of natural selection are random genetic mutation, fitness for survival, and reproductive success. Defenders of the evolutionary debunking account (EDA) hold that such mechanisms aren’t likely to produce cognitive faculties that reliably form true moral beliefs. So, according to EDA, given that our cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection, we should be in doubt about the reliability of our moral cognition. Let the term ‘sanspsychism’ describe the view that no supramundane consciousness exists. In arguing against theism, some sanspsychists advance a normative claim about the moral significance of phenomena like sentient suffering. But if no supramundane consciousness exists, our cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection. It follows that if EDA is correct, the sanspsychist should not think that our moral cognition is reliable. So unless the sanspsychist has a defeater for EDA, she should not think herself justified in appealing to normative reasons for denying the existence of God.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00830-y
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Tags: #Philosophy #Evolution #Theism
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The Empty Religions of Instagram
By Leigh Stein, Novelist
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/influencers-glennon-doyle-instagram.html
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Tags: #Religion #Sociology
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A Critique of Contemporary Islamic Bioethics
By Abbas Rattani, University of Louisville
Abstract
Last year marked a decade since the publication of the book “Islamic Biomedical Ethics” by religious studies professor Abdulaziz Sachedina in which he called for a critical and rigorous analytical approach to the ethical inquiry of biomedical issues from an Islamic perspective. Since the publication of this landmark work, some authors have continued to call into question the ways in which Islam as a religious tradition is engaged with in the secular bioethics literature. This paper describes common argumentative issues with current Islamic bioethics scholarship and offers general pearls and strategies to facilitate better engagement with religious approaches to bioethical issues.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-021-10098-z
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Ethics #Bioethics
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AVICENNA ON GRASPING MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS
By Mohammad Saleh Zarepour, University of Birmingham
Abstract
According to Avicenna, some of the objects of mathematics exist and some do not. Every existing mathematical object is a non-sensible connotational attribute of a physical object and can be perceived by the faculty of estimation. Non-existing mathematical objects can be represented and perceived by the faculty of imagination through separating and combining parts of the images of existing mathematical objects that are previously perceived by estimation. In any case, even non-existing mathematical objects should be considered as properties of material entities. They can never be grasped as fully immaterial entities. Avicenna believes that we cannot grasp any mathematical concepts unless we first have some specific perceptual experiences. It is only through the ineliminable and irreplaceable operation of the faculties of estimation and imagination upon some sensible data that we can grasp mathematical concepts. This shows that Avicenna endorses some sort of concept empiricism about mathematics.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423920000090
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Avicenna #History
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Divine foreknowledge and human free will: Embracing the paradox
By Michael DeVito, Tyler Dalton McNabb, University of Birmingham,
Abstract
A family of objections to theism aims to show that certain key theological doctrines, when held in conjunction, are incompatible. The longstanding problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom represents one such objection. In this essay, we provide the theist an epistemic approach to the problem that allows for the rational affirmation of both divine foreknowledge and human freedom (understood as the ability to do otherwise) despite their prima facie incompatibility. Specifically, we apply James Anderson’s Rational Affirmation of Paradox Theology model to the problem, arguing that the theist can stave off defeat that arises from a belief in the conjunction of both doctrines by appealing to paradox. In order to establish this thesis, we first define key terms as well as lay out the theological fatalist argument. Next, we explicate Anderson’s model and apply it to the foreknowledge and freedom problem. We conclude by addressing the objection that an appeal to paradox is simply special pleading for the theist, arguing that the naturalist can be found in a similar epistemic position.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09791-1
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Tags: #Religion #God #FreeWill #Philosophy
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In this video, Dr. Chad McIntosh (Cornell University) presents 86 (yes, 86) arguments for the existence of God. Each argument is presented in visual form followed by recommended sources for further research. At the end, we discuss what a similar list of arguments for atheism would look like (and what it would imply for the theistic list of arguments).
Link: https://youtu.be/Qi7ANgO2ZBU
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Tags: #God #Philosophy #Science #Theism #Atheism
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The Study of Religions in Premodern Muslim Civilization: Some Distinctions Concerning Its Disciplinary Status
By Muhammad Akram, International Islamic University
Abstract
Scholars have made contesting claims about the nature and scale of works on religions by Muslim scholars before modern times. The present paper explores various primary and secondary sources, especially the classical bibliographical indexes that the scholarly tradition under scrutiny itself produced, and classifies these works into three types: (a) polemics, (b) works that present authentic knowledge about various faith traditions or introduce methodological novelties but carry some degree of apologetic undertone, and (c) descriptive writings on religions which resemble the modern-day academic study of religion. Based on these distinctions and an assessment of the number of works in each type, the paper maintains that a sprouting tradition of descriptive studies of religions existed in the pre-modern Muslim societies, which introduced certain methodical novelties such as comparative method, historiography, and, last but not least, textual criticism, which seems to have heralded the modern biblical studies in some respects. However, this tradition could not mature into a full-fledged discipline at par with many other branches of knowledge that flourished in the heyday of Muslim civilization. These findings imply that the descriptive study of religions other than one’s own is not necessarily a modern Western phenomenon. It can take root in multiple cultural settings.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020096
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #God #History
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Women’s Nature in the Qur’an: Hermeneutical Considerations on Traditional and Modern Exegeses
By Janan Izadi, University of Isfahan
Abstract
Some verses of the holy Qur’an speak of a preference of man over woman such as 2:228, 4:34 and 43:18. One can ask whether man and woman have the same essence or whether man has certain characteristics that make him own a different and superior essence. How have exegetes understood these verses through history? Research on more than 100 classical and contemporary Shia and Sunni exegeses demonstrates that understanding of these verses was constant for centuries but was subject to evolution in the twentieth century. In this evolution, the inferiority of women in earlier exegeses was largely replaced by exegeses that provide respect and reverence for women. This change in understanding of the verses has been undoubtedly influenced by improvement in the cultural, social and economic situation of women in the twentieth century. A finding of this research is that some Qur’anic verses have the potentiality for different, and sometimes contradictory, understandings. On the other hand, the cultural and historical frameworks of the exegetes have played a crucial role in their understanding of the Qur’an. Therefore, understanding and interpreting the Qur’an is a dynamic process that should be reviewed according to the needs of the time.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0015
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Tags: #Religion #Gender #God #Quran
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The Contingency Argument in Plain Language
By Timothy Hsiao, Grantham University
Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/heyj.13916
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Tags: #Religion #Philosophy #God #Kalam
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America Without God
By Shadi Hamid, The Brookings Institution
Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america-politics-religion/618072/
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Tags: #Religion #God #Politics #Secularism
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Freemasonry and Islam
By Thierry Zarcone, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research
Link: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004273122_014
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Tags: #Islam #History
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The Qur’an and Pluralism: A Skeptical View
By Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky
Abstract
The idea that religions should be pluralist is often supported by commentators. It opposes the more rigid suggestion that a particular religion is the only valid route to the truth and salvation. A problem with the latter idea of course is that it makes dialogue meaningless, since the only point to talking to those in other faiths would be to try to convince them of the truth of your own religion. It is not difficult to find indications in many religions that a variety of views on basic issues are acceptable and indeed should be welcomed as progressive. It is argued here, though, that such an approach really does not do justice to the Qur’an. Like many religions, Islam requires obedience to divine authority and is often critical of alternative ways of thinking and behaving. We may regret that this is the case, but religions are often illiberal institutions and should be accurately described as such.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66089-5_3
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Tags: #Religion #Pluralism #Quran
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Human Beings Among the Beasts
By Andrew M. Bailey, Yale‐NUS College; Alexander R. Pruss, Baylor University
Abstract
In this article, we develop and defend a new argument for animalism – the thesis that we human persons are human animals. The argument takes this rough form: since our pets are animals, we are too. We'll begin with remarks on animalism and its rivals, develop our main argument, and then defend it against a few replies.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12348
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Tags: #Philosophy #Identity
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City of lost mosques: how Suzhou tells the story of China’s Islamic past
By Alessandra Cappelletti, Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University
Link: https://theconversation.com/city-of-lost-mosques-how-suzhou-tells-the-story-of-chinas-islamic-past-155504
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Tags: #Islam #History #China
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The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention
This report is the first independent expert application of the 1948 Genocide Convention to the ongoing treatment of the Uyghurs in China. It was undertaken by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, in cooperation with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in response to emerging accounts of serious and systematic atrocities in Xinjiang province, particularly directed against the Uyghurs, an ethnic minority, to ascertain whether the People’s Republic of China is in breach of the Genocide Convention under international law.
Link: https://newlinesinstitute.org/uyghurs/the-uyghur-genocide-an-examination-of-chinas-breaches-of-the-1948-genocide-convention/
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Tags: #Islam #China #Terrorism
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Genetically Modified Foods from Islamic Law Perspective
By Ayten Erol,
Abstract
Nowadays, genetically modified foods find application in many sectors from livestock to health and especially in agriculture. From Islamic law perspective, the critical point is to know whether the modern biotechnology is properly used in genetically modified food production and whether these products are suitable for human health and whether all production stages are halal. Another important point is the uncertainty that may arise during the production and whether the precaution can be taken. The Islamic law methodology is of great importance in understanding and resolving the above issues in line with religious values and scientific data together. This paper outlines how the Islamic law methodology can be applied to the issues of genetically modified goods in an interdisciplinary framework, by combining the pillars of Islam and scientific knowledge, and thus promoting what is morally, legally and economically beneficial for halal nutrition and life, for all humanity, Muslims and non-Muslims. We reach the conclusion that there are no definitive provisions set by Islamic law about these issues but they can be resolved within the scope of maslahah and maqasid, which is to achieve the righteous and eliminate the harmful.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09845-4
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Tags: #Law #Islam #Sharia
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Where do India’s Muslims really stand on family planning? This book scrutinises the myths
By S Y Quraishi, former Chief Election Commission of India
A widespread narrative in India suggests that Muslims produce too many children, skewing the national demographic balance. The right-wing propaganda alleges that this is all part of a deliberate plan by Muslims to capture political power in the country.
The common belief that Islam is against family planning, which is why Indian Muslims practise polygamy, has for decades caused bitter acrimony between the Hindu and Muslim communities. The demand for a uniform civil code is also born out of this belief.
This book seeks to cover the facts, figures and myths about the prevalence of family planning practices among Muslims in India.
Link: https://scroll.in/article/988375/where-do-indias-muslims-really-stand-on-family-planning-this-book-scrutinises-the-myths
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Tags: #Islam #Politics
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The mind of God? The problem with deifying Stephen Hawking
By Philip Ball, editorial board of Interdiscipinary Science Reviews
Link: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/stephen-hawking-celebrity-physicist-flaws
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Tags: #Science #God #Hawking
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USE OF THE GALAXY AS A TOOL FOR SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL ORIENTATION DURING THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD AND UP TO THE 15TH CENTURY
By Andreas Eckart, Physikalisches Institut
Abstract
We study to what extent the Milky Way was used as an orientation tool at the beginning of the Islamic period covering the 8th to the 15th century, with a focus on the first half of that era. We compare the texts of three authors from three different periods and give detailed comments on their astronomical and traditional content. The text of al-Marzūqī summarises the information on the Milky Way put forward by the astronomer and geographer ʾAbū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī. The text makes it clear that in some areas the Milky Way could be used as a geographical guide to determine the approximate direction toward a region on Earth or the direction of prayer. In the 15th century, the famous navigator Aḥmad b. Māǧid describes the Milky Way in his nautical instructions. He frequently demonstrates that the Milky Way serves as a guidance aid to find constellations and stars that are useful for precise navigation on land and at sea. On the other hand, Ibn Qutayba quotes in his description of the Milky Way a saying from the famous Bedouin poet Ḏū al-Rumma, which is also mentioned by al-Marzūqī. In this saying the Milky Way is used to indicate the hot summer times in which travelling the desert was particularly difficult. Hence, the Milky Way was useful for orientation in space and time and was used for agricultural and navigational purposes.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423920000077
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Physics #History
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Sharia
By Morgan Clarke, University of Oxford
Abstract
Sharia is a key concept in Islam and our contemporary world. Often translated into English as ‘Islamic law’, it includes financial contracts, criminal justice, and marriage and divorce. But it also covers ritual practice, dietary prohibitions, and personal and interpersonal ethics. Indeed, the rules of sharia could, in theory, encompass all of life. Sharia thus comprises both a legal system and a rule-based approach to the challenges of living a good life more generally. Sharia ideas and discourses have been hugely important historically across the parts of the world touched by Islam. Despite their marginalization under colonial modernization projects, they remain intensely vibrant and relevant today. In the wake of the widespread failings of postcolonial secular states, sharia has become widely seen as an alternative and challenge to civil law and the liberal tradition. The violence of some of the most extreme contemporary Islamist movements has, however, contributed to an intensely negative stereotyping of sharia in the West.
Such extreme instances need to be placed in the context not only of recent and deeper history, but also the immense diversity of approaches to Islam and sharia that the world’s nearly two billion Muslims adopt today. Anthropology has made an invaluable contribution to such efforts. One key topic has been gender, and the place of sharia norms in family law. The relationship between sharia and other sets of norms has been a central case of legal pluralism within legal anthropology. Medical and economic anthropology have explored sharia’s role in responses to the challenges of new global technologies such as assisted reproduction and novel financial instruments. More broadly, as part of the wider anthropology of Islam, anthropologists have helped document the various ways in which sharia norms form part of the texture of Muslim life across the world.
Link: http://doi.org/10.29164/20sharia
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Tags: #Religion #Anthropology #Islam #Law #Politics #Ethics
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Deprovincializing Science and Religion
By Gregory Dawes, University of Otago
Abstract
To ask about the relation of science and religion is a fool's errand unless we clarify which science we are discussing, whose religion we are speaking about, and what aspects of each we are comparing. This Element sets the study of science and religion in a global context by examining two ways in which humans have understood the natural world. The first is by reference to observable regularities in the behavior of things; the second is by reference to the work of gods, spirits, and ancestors. Under these headings, this work distinguishes three varieties of science and examines their relation to three kinds of religion along four dimensions: beliefs, goals, organizations, and conceptions of knowledge. It also outlines the emergence of a clear distinction between science and religion and an increase in the autonomy of scientific inquiry. It is these developments that have made conflicts between science and religion possible.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108612623
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Tags: #Religion #Philosophy #Science
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In homage to Descartes and Spinoza: A cosmo‐ontological case for God
By Michael Anthony Istvan Jr., Austin Community College,
Abstract
Integrating cosmological and ontological lines of reasoning, I argue that there is a self‐necessary being that (a) serves as the sufficient condition for everything, that (b) has the most perfect collection of whatever attributes of perfection there might be, and that (c) is an independent, eternal, unique, simple, indivisible, immutable, all‐actual, all‐free, all‐present, all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐good, and personal creator of every expression of itself that everything is. My cosmo‐ontological case for such a being, an everything‐maker with the core features ascribed to the God of classical theism, addresses the standard worries plaguing these lines of reasoning: (1) the richness required of such a being dissolves it into many beings; (2) the metaphysical possibility of such a being is assumed on insufficient grounds; (3) the features we ascribe to such a being are mere human‐all‐too‐human projections.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/phil.12280
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Tags: #Religion #Descartes #God #Philosophy #Theism
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The Logical Inconsistency in Making Sense of an Ineffable God of Islam
By Abbas Ahsan, University of Birmingham
Link: https://doi.org/10.5840/philotheos20202016
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Tags: #Philosophy #Logic #God #Islam #Ghazali
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How did the Crusades originate?
How did Europe manage to unite against the Muslims?
How many Crusades were there?
Join this Saturday, Feb 13 at 6pm and next Saturday Feb 20 at 6pm. EST
MCMC is honored to host Dr. Ovamir Anjum, Professor of History and Islamic Studies at University of Toledo and Editor-in-Chief of Yaqeen Institute!
Link: https://youtu.be/gAgRQukA5LE
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Tags: #History #Religion #War
