Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion

Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Karen R. Zwier
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031148657
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This volume provides a comparative philosophical investigation into a particular concept from a variety of angles—in this case, the concept of “miracle.” The text covers deeply philosophical questions around the miracle, with a multiplicity of answers. Each chapter brings its own focus to this multifaceted effort. The volume rejects the primarily western focus that typically dominates philosophy of religion and is filled with particular examples of miracle narratives, community responses, and polemical scenarios across widely varying religious contexts and historical periods. Some of these examples defy religious categorization, and some papers challenge the applicability of the concept “miracle,” which is of western and monotheistic origin. By examining miracles thru a wide comparative context, this text presents a range of descriptive content and analysis, with attention to the audience, to the subjective experiences being communicated, and to the flavor of the narratives that come to surround miracles. This book appeals to students and researchers working in philosophy of religion and science, as well those in comparative religion. It represents, in written form, some of the perspectives and dialogue achieved in The Comparison Project’s 2017–2019 lecture series on miracles. The Comparison Project is an enterprise in comparing a variety of religious voices, allowing them to stand in dialogue.

Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion

Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Karen R. Zwier
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031148657
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book

Book Description
This volume provides a comparative philosophical investigation into a particular concept from a variety of angles—in this case, the concept of “miracle.” The text covers deeply philosophical questions around the miracle, with a multiplicity of answers. Each chapter brings its own focus to this multifaceted effort. The volume rejects the primarily western focus that typically dominates philosophy of religion and is filled with particular examples of miracle narratives, community responses, and polemical scenarios across widely varying religious contexts and historical periods. Some of these examples defy religious categorization, and some papers challenge the applicability of the concept “miracle,” which is of western and monotheistic origin. By examining miracles thru a wide comparative context, this text presents a range of descriptive content and analysis, with attention to the audience, to the subjective experiences being communicated, and to the flavor of the narratives that come to surround miracles. This book appeals to students and researchers working in philosophy of religion and science, as well those in comparative religion. It represents, in written form, some of the perspectives and dialogue achieved in The Comparison Project’s 2017–2019 lecture series on miracles. The Comparison Project is an enterprise in comparing a variety of religious voices, allowing them to stand in dialogue.

Miracles

Miracles PDF Author: David L Weddle
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814794831
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Despite the dominance of scientific explanation in the modern world, at the beginning of the twenty-first century faith in miracles remains strong, particularly in resurgent forms of traditional religion. In Miracles, David L. Weddle examines how five religious traditions—Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—understand miracles, considering how they express popular enthusiasm for wondrous tales, how they provoke official regulation because of their potential to disrupt authority, and how they are denied by critics within each tradition who regard belief in miracles as an illusory distraction from moral responsibility. In dynamic and accessible prose, Weddle shows us what miracles are, what they mean, and why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, they are still significant today: belief in miracles sustains the hope that, if there is a reality that surpasses our ordinary lives, it is capable of exercising—from time to time—creative, liberating, enlightening, and healing power in our world.

The Concept of Miracle

The Concept of Miracle PDF Author: Richard Swinburne
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349007765
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Book Description


Magic, Miracles, and Religion

Magic, Miracles, and Religion PDF Author: Ilkka Pyysiäinen
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759106635
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Can scientists study religion? Ilkka Pyysiäinen says that they can. While the study of religion cannot be reduced to other disciplines, it must not ignore what other disciplines have learned about human thought and behavior. In this collection of essays, Pyysiäinen shows how findings from cognitive science can offer new directions to debates in religion. After providing a historical and theoretical overview of the cognitive science of religion, Pyysiäinen demonstrates how knowledge of the mind's workings can help deconstruct such concepts as "god," "ideology," "culture," "magic," "miracles," and "religion." For scholars of religion or for scholars of the mind-brain, Magic, Miracles, and Religion provides a helpful overview to this emerging field.

Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion

Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Timothy D. Knepper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319641654
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This collection of essays is an exercise in comparative philosophy of religion that explores the different ways in which humans express the inexpressible. It brings together scholars of over a dozen religious, literary, and artistic traditions, as part of The Comparison Project's 2013-15 lecture and dialogue series on "religion beyond words." Specialist scholars first detailed the grammars of ineffability in nine different religious traditions as well as the adjacent fields of literature, poetry, music, and art. The Comparison Project's directors then compared this diverse set of phenomena, offering explanations for their patterning, and raising philosophical questions of truth and value about religious ineffability in comparative perspective. This book is the inaugural publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa, USA). The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. Specialist scholars of religion first explore this topic in their religions of expertise; comparativist philosophers of religion then raise questions of meaning, truth, and value about this topic in comparative perspective. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

Mysticism, Ineffability and Silence in Philosophy of Religion

Mysticism, Ineffability and Silence in Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Laura E. Weed
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031180135
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The authors in this volume explore a wide variety of the contemporary approaches to mystical and religious experience to elucidate what religious experience is, in its own terms, and how its practitioners understand it. This anthology features contributions that point out that contemporary studies of consciousness, sociology, hermeneutics, neuroscience, medicine, and other fields, are revealing that there is much more to be said for the inner life of a human’s consciousness than reductionists and behaviorists will allow. This book is one of very few that primarily takes the stance of academic practitioners, explaining their own experience, rather than that of academics trying to explain the phenomena away, as really politics, or sociology, or delusion, or psychological pathology, or literary flights of fancy, or an aberration of any of the other academic fields. Most of the authors in this volume embrace the task of explaining and analyzing religious experience, mysticism, and the healing power of silence and presence, using the resources of all of the academic disciplines, as appropriate. The essays contained analyze religious, and non-religious, mystical and profoundly personal experiences across several world religions, and in areas such as art and music, as well as in solving personal crises such as family disruption and patriarchal oppression. The authors address the subject matter through analyses of the frequent and destructive failures of language, or just noise, to capture or express the nuances of the inner life of a person. It is this very ineffability of self that renders the spiritual, emotional and interior life of individuals beyond cognition and perception, of the straightforward sorts embraced by most cognitive disciplines. The contributors come from a variety of cross-disciplinary fields to bring forth the possibilities for an intuitive and creative, rich and growing inner life for a human. This text appeals to students, researchers, and practitioners.

The Cambridge Companion to Miracles

The Cambridge Companion to Miracles PDF Author: Graham H. Twelftree
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139828533
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The miracle stories of the founders and saints of the major world religions have much in common. Written by international experts, this Companion provides an authoritative and comparative study of miracles in not only Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism, but also, indigenous religions. The authors promote a discussion of the problems of miracles in our largely secular culture, and of the value of miracles in religious belief. The miracles of Jesus are also contextualized through chapters on the Hebrew Bible, classical culture to the Romans, Second Temple and early rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. This book provides students with a scholarly introduction to miracles, which also covers philosophical, medical and historical issues.

Miracles: A Very Short Introduction

Miracles: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Yujin Nagasawa
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191064327
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Jesus turned water into wine, Mohammad split the moon into two, and Buddha walked and spoke immediately upon birth. According to recent statistics, even in the present age of advanced science and technology, most people believe in miracles. In fact, newspapers and television regularly report alleged miracles, such as recoveries from incurable diseases, extremely unlikely coincidences, and religious signs and messages on unexpected objects. In this book the award-winning author and philosopher Yujin Nagasawa addresses some of our most fundamental questions concerning miracles. What exactly is a miracle? What types of miracles are believed in the world's great religions? What do recent scientific findings tell us about miracles? Can we rationally believe that miracles have really taken place? Can there be acts that are more religiously significant than miracles? Drawing on a vast variety of fascinating examples from across the major religions, Nagasawa discusses the lively debate on miracles that ranges from reported miracles in ancient scriptures in the East and West to cutting-edge scientific research on belief formation. Throughout, he drives us to ask ourselves if and how we can still believe in in miracles in the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Philosophy of Miracles

The Philosophy of Miracles PDF Author: David Corner
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441138005
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Philosophers who wish to argue for the rationality of belief in God frequently employ a 'god-of-the-gaps' strategy. This strategy consists in trying to find a phenomenon that cannot be explained by natural science, and insisting that it can be explained only by reference to the activity of God. Philosophical discussion of miracles usually revolves around the attempt to link a miracle to God in just this way. One of the problems with this approach is that it is very difficult to identify anything as being forever beyond the power of science to explain. Science continues to advance upon the territory occupied by the god of the gaps. Thus it is desirable to develop an account of divine agency that will not be subject to revision in the face of scientific progress. This book is just such an account. Drawing on recent work in the theory of action, it shows that we can attribute God's agency to an event in nature without eliminating the possibility that it might be explained scientifically. In bringing God's actions out of the gaps, we avoid the possibility that future discoveries in science will make our talk of divine agency obsolete.

Miracles

Miracles PDF Author: David Basinger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108688837
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
This Element is a critical overview of the manner in which the concept of miracle is understood and discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. In its most basic sense, a miracle is an unusual, unexpected, observable event brought about by direct divine intervention. The focus of this study is on the key conceptual, epistemological, and theological issues that this definition of the miraculous continues to raise. As this topic is of existential as well as theoretical interest to many, there is no reason to believe the concept of miracle won't continue to be of ongoing interest to philosophers.