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Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498579914
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
Despite its name, “naturalism” as a world-view turns out to be rather unnatural in its strict and more consistent form of materialism and determinism. This is why a number of naturalists opt for a broadened version that includes objective moral values, intrinsic human dignity, consciousness, beauty, personal agency, and the like. But in doing so, broad naturalism begins to look more like theism. As many strict naturalists recognize, broad naturalism must borrow from the metaphysical resources of a theistic world-view, in which such features are very natural, common sensical, and quite “at home” in a theistic framework. The Naturalness of Belief begins with a naturalistic philosopher’s own perspective of naturalism and naturalness. The remaining chapters take a multifaceted approach in showing theism’s naturalness and greater explanatory power. They examine not only rational reasons for theism’s ability to account for consciousness, intentionality, beauty, human dignity, free will, rationality, and knowledge; they also look at common sensical, existential, psychological, and cultural reasons—in addition to the insights of the cognitive science of religion.
Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498579914
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295
Get Book
Book Description
Despite its name, “naturalism” as a world-view turns out to be rather unnatural in its strict and more consistent form of materialism and determinism. This is why a number of naturalists opt for a broadened version that includes objective moral values, intrinsic human dignity, consciousness, beauty, personal agency, and the like. But in doing so, broad naturalism begins to look more like theism. As many strict naturalists recognize, broad naturalism must borrow from the metaphysical resources of a theistic world-view, in which such features are very natural, common sensical, and quite “at home” in a theistic framework. The Naturalness of Belief begins with a naturalistic philosopher’s own perspective of naturalism and naturalness. The remaining chapters take a multifaceted approach in showing theism’s naturalness and greater explanatory power. They examine not only rational reasons for theism’s ability to account for consciousness, intentionality, beauty, human dignity, free will, rationality, and knowledge; they also look at common sensical, existential, psychological, and cultural reasons—in addition to the insights of the cognitive science of religion.
Author: Robert N. McCauley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199341540
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A comparison of the cognitive foundations of religion and science and an argument that religion is cognitively natural and that science is cognitively unnatural.
Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9781498579926
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
This volume exposes naturalism's unnaturalness and defends theism's naturalness and greater explanatory power to account for wide-ranging phenomena in the world and human experience. A broadening of naturalism to accommodate these features means borrowing heavily from-and thus...
Author: Pascal Boyer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520911628
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 679
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Book Description
Why do people have religious ideas? And why thosereligious ideas? The main theme of Pascal Boyer's work is that important aspects of religious representations are constrained by universal properties of the human mind-brain. Experimental results from developmental psychology, he says, can explain why certain religious representations are more likely to be acquired, stored, and transmitted by human minds. Considering these universal constraints, Boyer proposes an exciting new answer to the question of why similar religious representations are found in so many different cultures. His work will be widely discussed by cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and students of religion, history, and philosophy.
Author: Eric Dietrich
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Flipping convention on its head, Eric Dietrich argues that science uncovers awe-inspiring, enduring mysteries, while religion, regarded as the source for such mysteries, is a biological phenomenon. Just like spoken language, Dietrich shows that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Science is the source of perplexing yet beautiful mysteries, however natural the search for answers may be to human existence. Excellent Beauty undoes our misconception of scientific inquiry as an executioner of beauty, making the case that science has won the battle with religion so thoroughly it can now explain why religion persists. The book also draws deep lessons for human flourishing from the very existence of scientific mysteries. It is these latter wonderful, completely public truths that constitute some strangeness in the proportion, revealing a universe worthy of awe and wonder.
Author: Justin L. Barrett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439196540
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
A provocative report on the universal nature of divine beliefs; explains how the roots of religious perception begin in infancy and evolve into complex beliefs that share instinctive commonalities.
Author: Alan Levinovitz
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080701088X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies. People love what’s natural: it’s the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act—naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities. It may not seem like a problem when it comes to paying a premium for organic food. But what about condemnations of “unnatural” sexual activity? The guilt that attends not having a “natural” birth? Economic deregulation justified by the inherent goodness of “natural” markets? In Natural, readers embark on an epic journey, from Peruvian rainforests to the backcountry in Yellowstone Park, from a “natural” bodybuilding competition to a “natural” cancer-curing clinic. The result is an essential new perspective that shatters faith in Nature’s goodness and points to a better alternative. We can love nature without worshipping it, and we can work toward a better world with humility and dialogue rather than taboos and zealotry.
Author: Frank C. Keil
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262112499
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
These essays address basic questions about explanation: how do explanatory capacities develop, are there kinds of explanation do explanations correspond to domains of knowledge, why do we seek explanations, and how central are causes to explanation?
Author: J. David Pleins
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1623562473
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Offers a new appreciation of Darwin as a religion thinker and a better understanding of his positive contributions to the study of religion.
Author: Helen De Cruz
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262552450
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An examination of the cognitive foundations of intuitions about the existence and attributes of God. Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality.
