Larry L. Rasmussen offers a dramatic new way of thinking about human society, ethics, and the health of our planet. Rejecting the modern ethical assumption that morality applies to human society alone, Earth-honoring Faith argues that we must derive a system of ethics and morality that accounts for the wellbeing of all creation on Earth.

A philosophical discussion of religion and its place in society. The book will examine the nature of faith and of the attacks upon it; considering both external and internal criticism - from non-believers and between believers. Having clarified the character of faith and considered its intellectual status, and its relation to scientific, moral, artistic and philosophical modes of thought; the book will then address a number of issues of contemporary public interest where religious faith is at (...) issue, e.g. religious education and schooling. (shrink)

John C. Fletcher, a pioneer in the field of bioethics and friend and mentor to many generations of bioethicists, died tragically on May 27th at the age of 72. The son of an Episcopal priest from Bryan, TX, Fletcher graduated in 1953 with a degree in English Literature from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. After completing a Masters in Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a stint as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Heidelberg (...) in 1956, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church and received a doctorate in Christian ethics from the Union Theological Seminary in New York. After ordination, Fletcher worked in various Episcopal churches and founded the Interfaith Metropolitan Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. However, despite his religious faith, he was also a skeptic, and renounced his ordination in the mid-1990s due to his need for ?intellectual honesty.? Fletcher began his bioethics contributions in the early 1970's, when he became a founding Fellow of the Hastings Center and eventually the first Chief of the Bioethics Program at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Bioethics and a professor of biomedical ethics at the medical school, and became the Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics until his retirement in 1999. Fletcher was a prominent authority and voice in the national and international bioethical dialogue through his talks, his testimonies before scientific and congressional panels, his many articles, and his bioethical and religiously-orientated books, including: An Introduction to Clinical Ethics (1997), Coping with Genetic Disorders: a Guide for Clergy and Parents (1982), Ethics and Human Genetics: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (1989), which he wrote with sociologist Dorothy C. Wertz. Dr. Fletcher received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in 2000. With the passing of Dr. John C. Fletcher, bioethics has lost one of its great voices, a dedicated teacher and mentor, and a friend and colleague to scholars in bioethics and a host of other fields. Below is a touching tribute from one of his former students. (shrink)

Past research suggests that death pushes some individuals to strongly promote religious worldviews. The current work explores the role of conceptual metaphor in this process. Past research shows that metaphors can provide meaning and certainty, suggesting that death may therefore cause people to be more attracted to epistemically beneficial metaphoric descriptions of God. In three studies, we test this possibility against competing alternatives suggesting that death concerns may cause more selective metaphor preferences. Using both correlational and experimental methods, we (...) find that death concern is generally associated with embracing metaphors about God. (shrink)

These are the challenges taken up in Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith, an exploration of the place of religion in contemporary public life.

ABSTRACT Is it good to form positive beliefs about those you have faith in, such as God or a religious community? Doxastic partialists say that it is. Some hold that it is good, from the viewpoint of faith, to form positive beliefs about the object of your faith even when your evidence favours negative ones. Others try to maintain respect for evidence by appealing to a highly permissive epistemology. I argue against both forms of doxastic partiality, (...) on the grounds that they foster an epistemically problematic noetic entrenchment. I instead defend evidentialism—the view that it is good to strive for true beliefs about the object of your faith, be they positive or negative, given relatively stringent evidential norms. I address the objection that evidentialism fosters disloyalty to the other party, not least because it risks losing your faith altogether. What emerges are not just epistemic norms for beliefs about religious matters, but an evidentialist account of what makes for good faith itself. (shrink)

The book brings forth a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between science and faith in Russian religious thought.

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? (...) Can it be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires? The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above. (shrink)

He maintained that there are two main categories of truth: those that are a result of natural laws and those that are completely necessary since their opposite suggests contradiction. God can dispense solely with the latter rules, such as the law of human mortality. Although a doctrine of faith may conflict with second-type realities, it can never contradict first-type truths. Therefore, reason may not be able to completely understand an article of religion, even though it cannot be self-contradictory. Simply (...) put, mysteries like the Trinity are "above reason." However, how can we balance the odds in favor of a religious belief with those based on natural law and common experience? The presence and character of God, as well as the global harmony that underpins the providential creation and order of the universe, must all be considered when we make these choices. On the other hand, moving from the higher to the lower classes is also feasible. Since goodness has an immediate order to the higher pattern of the universal source of being, rational creatures are able to understand "the meaning of the good as such" (II-IIae q.2, a.3). The last good that theologians and philosophers examine is different; the former is the bonum ultimum, which can only be understood with the help of revelation, while the later is the beatific vision, which reason can understand. Both conceptions of the ultimate good have significant implications since they serve as the foundation for the political division between secular and ecclesiastical authority as well as the moral division between natural and supernatural virtues. (shrink)

Faith plays a valuable role in sustaining relationships through various kinds of challenges, including through evidentially unfavorable circumstances and periods of significant doubt. But if, as is widely assumed, both faith in God and faith that God exists require belief that God exists, and if one’s beliefs are properly responsive to one’s evidence, the capacity for faith to persevere amidst significant and well-grounded doubt will be fairly limited. Taking Mother Teresa as an exemplar of Christian (...) class='Hi'>faith and exploring the close connection between faith and faithfulness in the context of committed covenantal relationships, I set out a view of Relational Faith that does not assume that faith requires belief and allows wide room for honestly wrestling with doubt from within the Judeo-Christian tradition. (shrink)

Purpose. The aim of this article is to analyse the essential features of religious faith as an existential-personalistic model of the formation of a person, his worldview orientations and activities. This requires a consistent solution of the following tasks: a) to focus on different approaches to understanding the phenomenon of "religious faith" ; b) to reveal the spiritual potential of religious faith, its capabilities in boundary situations. Theoretical basis. The author thinks that the interpretation (...) of religious faith as confidence in the invisible is unsatisfactory, one-sided and superficial. Religious faith is the existential, due to which a person overcomes the contradictions between finiteness and infinity. It is the construct of the human spirit, which makes its way into the transcendental realm. In this context, religious faith is a kind of criterion for the "growth" of the "human" in human, the criterion of his spirituality and humanity. Religious faith, being an integral part of human existence, gives it irrational dimensions, makes the possibility of impossible. The existential potential of religious faith serves as the "fulcrum" of a person, thanks to which he self-actualizes, self-fulfills and forms a certain worldview model. Originality. The author has proved that religious faith, which is the projective model of a person, turns out to be one of the possible ways to solve its existential problems, as it concerns not only the nature of the essential characteristics, the properties of the Divine itself but also the ultimate foundations of person in all the uniqueness and specificity of his being. Conclusions. Religious faith, acting as a factor in human activity, builds his value-worldview model of the world. Faith deals with the "ultimate" problems of human existence since it is of exceptional importance in solving life-meaning issues of human existence. The existential experience of the believer acquires the status of an event that opens up a field of new possibilities, a new spiritual experience. The accumulative effect of such experience forms the spiritual and value priorities of human existence, sets certain coordinates of his vital activity, due to which he self-determines, being in dialogue with the Absolute. Religious faith, unfolding as a permanent process of "search and finding" opens the "code" of transcendence, a new level of relations of the Human and Divine. (shrink)

This paper provides a relational analysis of James Fowler's Faith Development Theory and Heinz Streib's Religious Styles Perspective in light of a recent study of apostasy from religious fundamentalisms. Empirical support is provided for both theories. RSP is endorsed as a more encompassing theory of religious development which accounts for more contingencies than FDT. However, FDT is subsumed rather than superseded by RSP as a powerful lens through which to observe cognitive dimensions of religious development. (...) The paper introduces an integrative paradigm, phenomenological empiricism, to conceptualise a complementary relationship between FDT and RSP as key theories in the future study of religious development. (shrink)

It is sometimes thought that individual religious faith should be firmly fixed in the traditions of the past. That once it is established in someone's life, it should remain steadfast and unchanging throughout personal, cultural, or any other changes. This book subverts that idea by showing how it is actually ongoing inquiry, examination, and indeed change, requiring similarly ongoing acts of informed and responsible freedom, that will produce a dynamic and meaningful faith. Contending that religious (...) class='Hi'>faith should readily encompass deliberate and ongoing acts of personal freedom, the text outlines various ways in which these dual aspects are more ally than enemy. It also demonstrates how the ongoing free choices that are required for genuine faith are not absolute, but are in fact contextualized and conditioned by genetic makeup, environmental conditioning, and present character traits produced in part by a person's past choices. Despite this caveat, personal freedom is presented as genuine and real, with a vitally important role to play in a person's religiosity. The book concludes with some observations of this process in practice in the author's own journey from a Christian theist worldview to that of a religious naturalist. This is a fascinating treatise on the role of personal freedom in religious faith. It will, therefore, be of significant interest to scholars of religion, theology, philosophy of religion and religious naturalism. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Initial sketch of a concept of faith -- Facets of faith -- Faith and knowledge -- Faith and scientific knowledge -- Faith and morality -- Secular forms of faith -- Crises of faith -- My personal journey of faith.

Religious communities that speak of faith typically affirm the ideal of a highly confident faith. If we understand confidence in terms of the quality of assent to faith-claims, however, it is difficult to reconcile a high degree of confidence with intellectual virtue. As an alternative, I propose to construe confident faith as a kind of trusting perception. The sort of confidence that I envision here makes sense as a religious ideal. In addition it leaves (...) room for the recognition of epistemic risk needed for intellectual humility as well as for the kind of openness to revising the content of faith in the light of relevant evidential considerations that intellectual integrity demands. Furthermore, someone with this type of confidence can find a particular faith compelling, while also acknowledging some faiths that make conflicting claims to be reasonable options. (shrink)

The book exposes the theological foundations of religious-Zionism. Relying on a rigorous analysis of new primary sources, Schwartz argues that this movement strove to build a new religious consciousness, in light of the Jewish national renaissance in the twentieth century.

The particular sense or use of the word ‘faith’ that I am seeking to understand is that which occurs when the religious man, and more specifically the Christian believer, speaks of ‘knowing God’ and goes on to explain that this is a knowing of God by faith. Or again, when asked how he professes to know that God, as spoken about in Christianity, is real, his answer is ‘by faith’. Our question is: what does ‘faith’ (...) mean in these contexts? And what I should like to be able to do is to make a descriptive analysis that could be acceptable to both believers and non-believers. A Christian and an atheist or agnostic should equally be able to say, Yes, that is what, phenomenologically, faith is – though they would of course then go on to say radically different things about its value. (shrink)

Classical pragmatists, especially William James, have long been known as defenders of the rationality of religious commitment. Recently, however, scholars have begun to appreciate Charles Sanders Peirce's unique contributions to that defense. For instance, Richard Atkins defends Peirce's Sentimental Conservatism as advising us to trust in our instinctual sentiments rather than our reasonings and theories, elucidating an account of the rationality of religious belief in Peirce's "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." Likewise, Michael Raposa examines Peirce's (...) religious writings and underscores their significance for his philosophical writings in general.1 The aim of this essay is to supplement... (shrink)

Open-ended survey responses from 205 Christian exemplars drawn from 37 distinct congregations within 19 Christian denominations in the Northwest and New England regions of the United States were analyzed by chi-square and multiple regression analyses to determine relationships between religious experience and gender. Results indicated that men were more likely than women to describe positions of leadership/responsibility/service as influential to their faith, and to indicate their own personal sin as a faith challenge. Women were more likely than (...) men to describe negative/tragic events as a faith influence, the intellectual dimension of their faith as a challenge, and serving other people as a faith satisfaction. These results appear to lend strong empirical support to previous assertions in both the social science and feminist theological literature regarding relationships between gender and religious experience. (shrink)

On several levels, there is now a debate whether the concept of God can be made compatible with modern science. In an attempt to elucidate this debate, I give an account of my own experiences from writing a book on the foundation of quantum mechanics. In my opinion, one can give two independent arguments for the existence of God by taking as departure an epistemic (knowledge-based) interpretation of quantum theory. However, I also argue that any religious belief should be (...) the result of an existential choice governed by each person’s own context (history and culture). In particular, I give my account of Christianity as a religion connected to our western culture, how one as a scientist can relate to the relevant dogmas. (shrink)

This study focuses on analysing the ways in which vehicle stickers construct individual and group identities, people's religious faith and social vision in the context of religious assumptions and practices in Nigeria. Data comprise 73 vehicle stickers collected in Lagos and Ota, between 2006 and 2007 and are analysed within the framework of the post-structuralist model of discourse analysis which views discourse as a product of a complex system of social and institutional practices that sustain its continuous (...) existence. Results show that through stickers people define their individual and group identities within religious institutional practices. And as a means of group identification, they guarantee social security and privileges. In constructing social vision the stickers help mould the individual aspiration about a future which transcends the present. Significantly, stickers in the data also reveal the tension between Islam and Christianity and the struggle to propagate one above the other. (shrink)

Within Judeo-Christian theism many of the initially-sounding paradoxical and counter-intuitive expressions—such as Martin Luther’s description of the Christian believer as simul peccator et iustus—seem oftentimes contradictory, or at least pointless, to the unbeliever. Yet, these expressions play an important role within the theistic context of faith. The present essay promotes the view that such expressions should not be eliminatively reduced to “equivalent” restatements of them in non-paradoxical language. For the paradoxical formulations are themselves instinct with a rhetorical force that (...) makes their putative religious truth seem all the more penetrating and prepossessing. (shrink)

This article aims at showing the potentiality of Transcendent Theosophy in the creation of peace and denial of religious violence. Belief in Necessary Being that is identical to beauty and perfection is one of the central issues in Islamic philosophy, particularly Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Theosophy. This belief has different stages, the highest one of which is a love-based sense of humbleness before God who is the source of beauty. Thus, faith in the thought of Mulla Sadra is one (...) of the aesthetic categories. Surrender to such a Being leads to love in him and his effects. Thus, in Transcendent Theosophy, love in God is followed by the love in people. This love is associated with the sense of responsibility and the effort for the realisation of people’s rights. In the final part of the article under the title ‘Mulla Sadra and Confrontation of Two Types of Religious Understanding’, through the analysis of Mulla Sadra’s dialogue with a religious radical, we have criticised the discourse of religious violence and concluded that Transcendent Theosophy is a defender of human rights and a pioneer of peace and a despiser of religious violence. The most important finding of this study is that according to Mulla Sadra, religious radical interpretations are the source of the emergence of religious violence, and the solution to this problem is the promotion of rational and conscious religiosity. The method used in this research is of descriptive-analytic type.Contribution: The article brought to fore the potentiality of Islamic philosophy for the realisation of peace and the denial of religious violence. The authors analytically studied Mulla Sadra’s pacifist foundations in order to ascertain its relation with non-violence towards humans. The main contribution of this article is that the teachings of Transcendent Theosophy are very useful for creating peaceful coexistence between human beings. (shrink)

Eamonn Callan; Faith, Worship and Reason in Religious Upbringing, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 183–193, https://do.

Is Thomas Kuhn’s model of scientific revolutions in terms of paradigm shifts appropriately applied to cases of radical changes in religious outlook, and in particular conversion to faith, or loss of faith? Since this question cannot be addressed in purely a priori terms, three case studies of philosophers who have described significant changes in their own perspectives are examined. Part of the justification for such an approach is to see how changes in view seem from the first-person (...) perspective. Although what is offered here is a very limited group of studies, each of them perforce brief, a key theme emerges: that the incommensurability between paradigms which is part of the Kuhnian model is mirrored by the shift away from atheist or humanistic perspectives, though not necessarily by loss of faith. (shrink)

Based on a national social studies survey that included over 10,000 respondents from 44 states, this study examined the emphasis on diversity of religious view (EDRV) in public school P-12 social s...

This book considers how places come to acquire special religious significance, as sites for prayer or other kinds of devotional activity. It examines the ways in which sacred sites function, and the ways in which sites which have no explicitly religious import may come to bear a religious meaning. One of the concerns of the book is to show how 'religious experience' is often not directly an experience of God, but rather an experience of some material (...) context, or place, and the religious significance which attaches to that context. The book draws on the phenomenological literature on sacred space and the emerging literature in philosophy of place, to provide an account of how religious belief is connected integrally to our embodied relationship to the material world. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue that it’s possible to lose your faith in God by the actions of other people. In particular, we argue that spiritually violent religious trauma, where religious texts are used to shame a person into thinking themselves unworthy of God’s love, can cause a person to stop engaging in activities that sustain their faith in God, such as engaging in the worship of God. To do this, we provide an analysis of (...) class='Hi'>faith, worship, and love on which to have faith in God is to have an attitude of worship to him; to have such an attitude of worship to God is to love him; and to love God is to desire union with him. We apply this analysis particularly to the case of LGBT Christians and their experience in the church today. (shrink)

Two views of theistic faith are presented in this book. Some contributors see faith as a set of beliefs about God and seek substantiation for those beliefs. Others perceive faith less as a set of beliefs than as a special way of living in relationship to God. The connection between these two views is an intriguing theme winding through the collection and explicitly addressed by Michael A. Brown in the closing essay. The epistemology of religion is now (...) one of the most exciting and controversial areas in philosophy of religion. These eleven essays by recognized leaders in the field and outstanding new voices exhibit the diversity of approaches and the subtle unity of concerns that characterize the best work in this discipline. The repeated comparison of religious beliefs and their justification with scientific theories and their testing is especially useful. (shrink)

The figure of Myroslav Shkavrytko as an active figure and ideologist of the Ukrainian religious movement is virtually unknown to modern scholars. Also unknown are the doctrines and activities of the Holy Faith - Native Faith created by M. Shkavrytko.

In _Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity and the Bahá’í Faith_ Mikhail Sergeev offers a new interpretation of the Soviet period of Russian history by developing a theory of religious cycles, which he applies to modernity and all major world religions.

In a recent defence of what he calls "study by religion," Robert Ensign suggests that alleged divine revelations represent public forms of knowledge, which should not be excluded from the academy. But at least according to two major Christian thinkers, namely Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, revelation is received by an act of faith, which rests on evidence that is person-relative and therefore not open to public scrutiny. If religious studies is to remain a public discipline, whose arguments (...) may be evaluated by believers and non-believers alike, it should maintain its defeasible but not yet defeated presumption of naturalism. (shrink)