Religious Faith and Prometheus

Philosophy ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 55 (214) ◽  
pp. 497-507
Author(s):  
J. Kellenberger
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Essential Dimension ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
Recent Philosophy

Recent philosophy of religion, particularly neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, has reminded philosophers that there is more to religion than belief and, indeed, that there is more to religious belief than mere belief. D. Z. Phillips is among those who have made a contribution here. He has emphasized how religious belief is very different from the kind of belief that amounts to holding a hypothesis, even a God-hypothesis. However, perhaps because of his non-cognitivist tendencies, Phillips, unlike Kierkegaard to whom he often appeals, has failed to bring into relief another quintessential fact about belief in God, namely that it is for the believer an entered relationship with God. We do well to appreciate that belief in God is not identical with making a truth claim. But if the essential core of religious belief is construed as an attitudinal or affective response, as non-cognitivists tend to construe it, an important conceptual dimension of religious faith will all but be overlooked, as, paradoxically it seems it has been by the philosophical approach that strives to describe the religious ‘form of life’ in its own terms. In what follows I shall endeavour to bring into relief what I take to be an essential dimension of religious belief, one which presupposes that religious belief is an entered relationship for the believer. This I shall do by pursuing a contrast which, I think, at once clarifies and makes undeniable religious belief's essential nature as a relationship to God.

Believing God: an account of faith as personal trust

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
CYRILLE MICHON
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Personal Trust ◽  
Richard Swinburne ◽  
Belief Content

AbstractThe affective view of faith, as opposed to the doxastic or cognitive view, giving more importance to goodwill than to belief content, has received much support in recent philosophy of religion, including from Richard Swinburne. Swinburne's concept of faith is no less rational than his concept of religious belief, but its rationality is that of an action or of a practically oriented attitude, aiming at the goals of religion, compatible with religious disbelief (belief that the religious content one has faith in is probably false) and even with atheism. I argue that this paradoxical stance, which hardly squares with the Christian tradition, can be avoided, while keeping to an affective view of faith, if we give more weight to the idea that faith is first an answer given to a telling, on the basis of personal trust of the hearer in the authority of the teller – a personal account as opposed to a propositional account of faith.

scholarly journals Purism

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-178
Author(s):  
Primus
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Relative Power ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Ontological Proof

Abstract This article presents an ontological proof that God is impossible. I define an ‘impossibility’ as a condition which is inconceivable due to its a priori characteristics (e.g. a ‘square circle’). Accordingly, said conditions will not ever become conceivable, as they could in instances of a posteriori inconceivability (e.g. the notion that someone could touch a star without being burned). As the basis of this argument, I refer to an a priori observation (Primus, 2019) regarding our inability to imagine inconsistency (difference) within any point of space. This observation renders the notion of absolute power to be inconceivable, a priori. I briefly discuss the moral implications of religious faith in the context of Purism: a moral rationalist paradigm. I conclude that whilst belief in God can be aesthetically expressed it should not be possessed as a material purpose, due to the illogicality of the latter category of belief and/or expression. With this article I provide conceptual delineation between harmless religious belief and expression—which, I argue, should be protected from persecution, as per any other artistic expression—and religious belief and expression which is materially harmful to society. Whilst I aim to protect religious freedom of expression on one hand, I duly aim to reduce instances of material faith in God(s) on the other. Finally, I aim to bring hope in the possibility for human salvation via technology—such that they should exist indefinitely as ‘demi-gods,’ defined by conditional, relative power over their environment.

scholarly journals Functions of Religious Faith and Religious Experience as Components of the Structure of Religious Consciousness: A Comparative Analysis

2007 ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Anatolii S. Ivanchenko
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Consciousness

The article compares the functions of religious faith and religious experience as structural components of religious consciousness. Traditionally, in scientific studies, the problem of religious belief and religious experience is viewed separately from the perspective of psychology and philosophy of religion. However, the author of this article, while researching the structure of religious consciousness, noticed that at the present stage of the development of religious traditions, religious faith and religious experience perform rather related functions. This work is devoted to the substantive disclosure of the relevance of this hypothesis.

INTERPRETATION OF THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN MODERN POLITICAL THEORIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-96
Author(s):  
Sayyora Saidova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
Religious Aspect

In the Middle East, the processes for leadership among religious and democratic progress in North Africa require that the state pursue secular policy on a scientific and dialectical basis. Because religious beliefs have become so ingrained in secular life that it is difficult to separate them. Because in the traditions and customs of the people, in various ceremonies, there is a secular as well as a religious aspect. Even the former Soviet Constitution, based on atheism, could not separate them. Religious faith has lived in the human heart despite external prohibitions. National independence has given freedom to religious belief, which is now breathing freely in the barrel. The religious policy of our state strengthens and expands this process and guarantees it constitutionally.

scholarly journals ‘That’s What Art Does’: Disclosing Religious and Ethical Possibilities Through Film

Sophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikel Burley
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Dead Man

AbstractThe significance of narrative artworks as resources for, and possibly as instances of, philosophical thinking has increasingly been recognized over recent decades. Utilization of such resources in philosophy of religion has, however, been limited. Focusing on film in particular, this article develops an account of film’s importance for a ‘contemplative’ approach to philosophizing about religious ethics, an approach that prioritizes the elucidation of possibilities of sense over the evaluation of ‘truth claims’. Taking Dead Man Walking as a case in point, the article shows how this film facilitates an enhanced comprehension of specific concepts, most notably the concepts of faith, truth and love, as they feature within a characteristically Christian form of life.

How rational is rational theology? A reply to Mikael Stenmark

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-97
Author(s):  
VINCENT BRÜMMER
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Rational Theology ◽  
Truth Claims

In this response to Stenmark's critique of my views on rational theology, I concentrate on his distinction between the epistemic and the practical goals of religion and between descriptive and normative rational theology. With regard to the first distinction, I grant that truth claims play an essential role in religious belief and that it is indeed the task of philosophy of religion to decide on the meaning and rationality of such claims. I argue, however, that since such claims are internally related to the practical context of religious belief, their meaning and rationality cannot be determined apart from this context as is done in the kind of rational theology which Stenmark calls ‘scientific’. With regard to the second distinction, I reject Stenmark's view that philosophy of religion has a descriptive task with reference to religion, and hence also his claim that I have put forward a false description of ‘the religious language game’.

Religious Language after J. L. Austin

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
James M. Smith ◽  
James WM. Mcclendon
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Linguistic Action ◽  
The Way

John L. Austin believed that in the illocution he had discovered a fundamental element of our speech, the understanding of which would disclose the significance of all kinds of linguistic action: not only proposing marriage and finding guilt, but also stating, reporting, conjecturing, and all the rest of the things men can do linguistically.2 We claim that the illocution, the full-fledged speech-act, is central to religious utterances as well, and that it provides a perspicuity in understanding them not elsewhere provided in the work of recent philosophy of religion. In particular we hold that understanding religious talk through the illocution shows the way in which the representative and affective elements are connected to one another and to the utterance as a whole. There may, further, be features in such an analysis which can be extended to other forms of discourse than religious.

Emergent creationism: another option in the origin of the soul debate

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSHUA R. FARRIS
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Viable Option ◽  
Substance Dualism ◽  
Material Part ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Discrete Effect ◽  
The Brain

AbstractIn the debate over the theology of the soul's origin, there have traditionally been three broad views on origins. These include creationism, traducianism, and Origen's pre-existence view. In the recent philosophy of religion and mind literature, William Hasker posits an alternative view of origins called emergent substance dualism. As a contribution to this discussion, I put forward one novel option as a via media between simple creationism and Hasker's emergent substance dualism, wherein it has relevant overlapping features found in the two contrary positions. I suggest that this view is a variation of creationism like emergentism where the material part (i.e. the brain) has some positive causal role in the soul's coming to be as a discrete effect of one divine cause. I argue that emergent creationism (as I call it) is a viable option deserving the attention of philosophers and theologians.

Deep Structure and the Comparative Philosophy of Religion

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-399
Author(s):  
Michael P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Comparative Philosophy ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Religious Thought

Through various applications of the ‘deep structure’ of moral and religious reasoning, I have sought to illustrate the value of a morally informed approach in helping us to understand the complexity of religious thought and practice…religions are primarily moved by rational moral concerns and…ethical theory provides the single most powerful methodology for understanding religious belief. Ronald Green, Religion and Moral Reason

Faith and Goodness

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 167-191
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Richard Swinburne ◽  
The Relationship

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith.

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