Rationality and Religious Theism

Rationality and Religious Theism PDF 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.

Rationality and Religious Theism

Rationality and Religious Theism PDF Author: Joshua L. Golding
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351773291
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Get Book Here

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.

Rationality and Religious Theism

Rationality and Religious Theism PDF Author: Joshua L. Golding
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315198538
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages :

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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. "--Provided by publisher.

Rationality and Religious Commitment

Rationality and Religious Commitment PDF Author: Robert Audi
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191619523
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Rationality and Religious Commitment shows how religious commitment can be rational and describes the place of faith in the postmodern world. It portrays religious commitment as far more than accepting doctrines—it is viewed as a kind of life, not just as an embrace of tenets. Faith is conceived as a unique attitude. It is irreducible to belief but closely connected with both belief and conduct, and intimately related to life's moral, political, and aesthetic dimensions. Part One presents an account of rationality as a status attainable by mature religious people—even those with a strongly scientific habit of mind. Part Two describes what it means to have faith, how faith is connected with attitudes, emotions, and conduct, and how religious experience may support it. Part Three turns to religious commitment and moral obligation and to the relation between religion and politics. It shows how ethics and religion can be mutually supportive even though ethics provides standards of conduct independently of theology. It also depicts the integrated life possible for the religiously committed—a life with rewarding interactions between faith and reason, religion and science, and the aesthetic and the spiritual. The book concludes with two major accounts. One explains how moral wrongs and natural disasters are possible under God conceived as having the knowledge, power, and goodness that make such evils so difficult to understand. The other account explores the nature of persons, human and divine, and yields a conception that can sustain a rational theistic worldview even in the contemporary scientific age.

The Rationality of Theism

The Rationality of Theism PDF Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134574878
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
The Rationality of Theism is a controversial collection of brand new papers by thirteen outstanding philosophers and scholars. Its aim is to offer comprehensive theistic replies to the traditional arguments against the existence of God, offering a positive case for theism as well as rebuttals of recent influential criticisms of theism.

Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief

Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief PDF Author: Jerome I. Gellman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801433207
Category : Experience (Religion)
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Jerome I. Gellman observes that the mystic experience of God's presence, a sense of having direct contact with the divine, often compels belief in God's existence. On the basis of widely accepted principles connecting appearance with reality, Gellman contends, the claims people make of having experienced God show that belief in God is strongly rational, meaning that such claims are sufficient in number and variety to support a line of reasoning making it rational to believe that God exists and irrational to deny God's existence. Gellman considers challenges to his thinking based on epistemological grounds and challenges growing out of the diversity of religious experiences across the range of world religions. He thoroughly evaluates reductionist explanations of apparent experiences of God and finds them incapable of invalidating his view. Finally, he directs his attention to the two most compelling arguments against the existence of God: the charge that the idea of a perfect being is logically incoherent, and the threat to theism based on the existence of evil, in both its logical and probabilistic forms. Until and unless stronger objections come along, he concludes, personal experiences of God constitute sufficient evidence of God's existence.

Religion Within Reason

Religion Within Reason PDF Author: Steven M. Cahn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543662
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
In the views of most believers and critics, religion is essentially connected to the existence of a supernatural deity. If supernaturalism is not reasonable, the argument goes, religion cannot be reasonable—or if supernaturalism is reasonable, religion must be as well. Are faith and reason, religion and science, doomed to a constant struggle for the heart of humanity? Steven M. Cahn believes that they are not, that even if God exists, religion may not be justified and that even if religion is justified, belief in God may not be. In Religion Within Reason, Cahn argues that the common understanding of the relationship between religion and supernaturalism is flawed and that while supernaturalism is not reasonable, religious commitment may well be. Writing not as a theist but as one who finds much to admire in a religious life, he examines faith and reason, miracles, heaven and hell, religious diversity, and the problem of evil, using a variety of examples taken from religious thought, literature, and popular culture. Lucidly written in a nonpolemical spirit, Religion Within Reason offers an exciting new approach to the reconciliation of science and religion.

Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment

Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment PDF Author: Robert Audi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book is unified by three broad concerns: the rationality of belief in God, the relation between religion and morality, and the explication of the concept of God. The essays are, however, marked by diversity. Some focus on historical figures, such as Aquinas and Locke; others bring recent epistemological and metaphysical developments to bear on problems of religious belief. Some of the papers explore neglected issues central to religious practice, such as the question of how total devotion to God can permit other deep commitments; others apply philosophical distinctions from within a religious tradition, for example, in setting out a Christian approach to the problem of evil.

Between Faith and Doubt

Between Faith and Doubt PDF Author: J. Hick
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023027532X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This short book is a lively dialogue between a religious believer and a skeptic. It covers all the main issues including different ideas of God, the good and bad in religion, religious experience and neuroscience, pain and suffering, death and life after death, and includes interesting autobiographical revelations.

Debating Christian Theism

Debating Christian Theism PDF Author: J. P. Moreland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199344345
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
Comprising groundbreaking dialogues by many of the most prominent scholars in Christian apologetics and the philosophy of religion, this volume offers a definitive treatment of central questions of Christian faith. The essays are ecumenical and broadly Christian, in the spirit of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, and feature lucid and up-to-date material designed to engage readers in contemporary theistic and Christian issues. Beginning with dialogues about God's existence and the coherence of theism and then moving beyond generic theism to address significant debates over such specifically Christian doctrines as the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus, Debating Christian Theism provides an ideal starting point for anyone seeking to understand the current debates in Christian theology.

The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith

The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith PDF Author: Thomas D. Senor
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501744836
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A veritable who's who in the field of contemporary philosophy of religion here considers various issues in the epistemology of religious beliefs. The writings of William P. Alston, the leading figure in the revival of the Anglo-American philosophy of religion, provide the focus of these essays, all but two previously unpublished. Philosophers of religion, meta-physicians, epistemologists, and theologians will find in this volume some of the most important work available in the theory of knowledge and the epistemic status of religious belief.