Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life PDF Download

Author: Mikael Stenmark
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268091676
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Mikael Stenmark examines four models of rationality and argues for a discussion of rationality that takes into account the function and aim of such human practices as science and religion.

Author: Mikael Stenmark
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802828231
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Stenmark (philosophy of religion, Uppsala University, Sweden) replaces the paradigm of science and religion as opposing perspectives with a conciliatory model. He lays out the central issues of the debate between these two powerful cultural forces and shows what is at stake for the advancement of human knowledge, then demonstrates how science and r

Author: Eberhard Herrmann
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789039002223
Category : Faith and reason
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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(Peeters 1995)

Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469692
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.

Author: Michael C. Banner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
In this critical examination of recent accounts of the nature of science and of its justification given by Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Laudan, and Newton-Smith, Banner contends that models of scientific rationality which are used in criticism of religious beliefs are in fact often inadequate as accounts of the nature of science. He argues that a realist philosophy of science both reflects the character of science and scientific justifications, and suggests that religious belief could be given a justification of the same sort.

Author: Jeppe Sinding Jensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136480315
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Does rationality, the intellectual bedrock of all science, apply to the study of religion? Religion, arguably the most subjective area of human behaviour, has particular challenges associated with its study. Attracting crowd-healers, conjurers, the pious and the prophetic alongside comparativists and sceptics, it excites opinions and generalizations whilst seldom explicitly staking out the territory for the discussions in which it partakes. Increasingly, scholars argue that religious study needs to define and critique its own field, and to distinguish itself from theology and other non-objective disciplines. Yet how can rational techniques be applied to beliefs and states of mind regarded by some as beyond the scope of human reason? Can these be made empirically testable, or comparable and replicable within academic communities? Can science explicate religion without reducing it to mere superstition, or redefine its truth in some empirical but meaningful way? Featuring contributions from leading international experts including Donald Wiebe, Roger Trigg and Michael Pye, Rationality and the Study of Religion gets under the surface of the religious studies discipline to expose the ideologies beneath. Reopening debate in a neglected yet philosophically significant field, it questions the role of rationality in religious anthropology, natural history and anti-scientific theologies, with implications not only for supposedly objective disciplines but for our deepest attitudes to personal experience. 'Interesting and important. Religion has long been associated with irrationality, both by its defenders and its critics, and the topic of rationality has been unjustly neglected The book certainly deserves to be widely circulated.' Greg Alles, Western Maryland College

Author: Guido O. Perez
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628941073
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Most people look to religion and science (faith and reason) for an explanation of “everything that is,” but neither the scientific nor the religious system can actually provide all the answers to life's questions. Is that really what we're looking for? The author examines both science and religion in some detail and from a variety of standpoints. A life-long educator, he indicates many avenues for further reading, so that no one has to simply accept whatever his family or community traditions may have proposed. One sticking point in most discussions of religion vs. science is that few of us really have enough information about both positions - and the myriad hybrid beliefs in between - in order to make a proper evaluation. As a professor of medicine and an avid investigator of these questions, Dr. Guido Perez offers some background and guidance. The author explores the basics of theism and today's largest religions, and gives a solid grounding in the facts and theoretical basis for evolution and the scientific approach to knowledge. He then explores a possible place to stand in, both morally and intellectually grounded, while we puzzle out our existence: a rational belief system that accounts for what we can account for, while recognizing those mysteries and existential questions we humans just can't seem to stop asking. Dr. Perez proposes a rational belief system grounded in natural science and humanism, an approach where morality comes naturally - not because we fear divine punishment but because we inherently understand what is good for humanity.

Author: Joshua L. Golding
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351773291
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Throughout the ages one of the central topics in philosophy of religion has been the rationality of theistic belief. This book proposes that parties on both sides of this debate might shift their attention in a different direction, by focusing on the question of whether it is rational to be a religious theist. Explaining that having theistic beliefs is primarily a cognitive affair but being a religious theist involves a whole way of life that includes one's beliefs, Golding argues that it can be pragmatically rational to be a religious theist even if the evidence for God’s existence is minimal. The argument is applied to the case of Judaism, articulating what is involved in religious Judaism and arguing that it is rationally defensible to be a religious Jew. The book concludes with a discussion of whether a similar argument might be constructed for other versions of religious theism such as Christianity or Islam, and for non-theistic religions such as Taoism or Buddhism. Joshua Golding offers a carefully wrought explanation of how it can be rational for someone to live a religious life, in particular (but not necessarily only), a traditional Jewish life.

Author: Andrew Ralls Woodward
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532660189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Most comparisons of science and religion are really comparisons of science and Christianity, or science and Islam, and so forth. In Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge, the author aims to get outside typical polarized debates between traditional, a priori theism and radical, scientistic naturalism. Instead, a new science and religion compatibility system—between a scientific study of religion and a religious epistemology—is our new, elusive problem. Moreover, we shall look at a comparison and contrast of modern science with the simple deference of the human mind to the actions of culturally postulated superhuman agents. This book pays critical attention to the contributions of scholars in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and the scientific study of religion. Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge is useful for readers looking to expand their learning in the philosophies of science and religion as these subjects are taught and analyzed in modern research universities.

Author: Wessel Stoker
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042917880
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Is faith rational? Some respond by providing proofs for God's existence. Others hold that no reasons for the Christian faith can be given. This book discusses different ways of accounting for faith, i.e. classical apologetics, the transcendental view that faith is part of human nature, and the view that argues for the rationality of faith on the basis of direct perceptions of God that appear to be objective. The author subsequently proposes a rational accounting for the Christian faith in our secularized and religiously pluralistic society. His starting point is the lasting religious experience of believers in everyday life. He also discusses the question of how this accounting for faith can function in a world of both secular worldviews and other religions. Religious experience is not subjective or arbitrary but rational. In these experiences human beings are involved with God. Religious experience can be described phenomenologically as an experience that transcends our capacities. God reveals himself to people primarily in narratives. Narratives have a rational structure and the Gospel narratives provide, in narrative form, arguments for faith. The assent to faith involves the whole person and stamps his life story and conduct. Assent to faith is thus affective, but that does not exclude its being rational. The positive reason for faith lies in experience itself. There are no reasons for faith outside the faith itself, but this does not mean that there are no points of contact in human existence for the Christian faith.