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Argument From Religious Experience
The argument from religious experience is an argument for the existence of God. It holds that the best explanation for religious experiences is that they constitute genuine experience or perception of a divine reality. Various reasons have been offered for and against accepting this contention. Contemporary defenders of the argument are Richard Swinburne, William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, Alister Hardy, and Dinesh D'Souza. Outline In essence, the argument's structure is as follows: # There are compelling reasons for believing that claims of religious experience point to and validate spiritual realities that exist in a way that transcends material manifestation; # According to materialism, nothing exists in a way that transcends material manifestation; # According to classical theism, God endows human beings with the ability to perceive – although imperfectly – religious, spiritual and/or transcendent realities through religious, spiritual and/or transcendent exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existence Of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God or deities involves the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and the theory of value (since some definitions of God include "perfection"). The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God or deities began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. Other arguments for the existence of God or deities have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Thomas Aquinas, who presented their own vers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Barbour
Ian Graeme Barbour (1923–2013) was an American scholar on the relationship between science and religion. According to the Public Broadcasting Service his mid-1960s '' Issues in Science and Religion'' "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion." In the citation nominating Barbour for the 1999 Templeton Prize, John B. Cobb wrote, "No contemporary has made a more original, deep and lasting contribution toward the needed integration of scientific and religious knowledge and values than Ian Barbour. With respect to the breadth of topics and fields brought into this integration, Barbour has no equal." Biography Barbour was born on October 5, 1923, in Beijing, China, the second of three sons of an American Episcopal mother (who was the daughter of the obstetrician Robert Latou Dickinson) and a Scottish Presbyterian father. His family left China in 1931 and Barbour spent the remainder of his youth in the United States and England. A co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perceiving God
''Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience'' is a 1991 book about the philosophy of religion by the philosopher William Alston, in which the author discusses experiential awareness of God. The book was first published in the United States by Cornell University Press. The book received positive reviews and has been described as an important, well-argued, and seminal work. However, Alston was criticized for his treatment of the conflict between the competing claims made by different religions. Summary Alston writes that his central thesis is that "experiential awareness of God ... makes an important contribution to the grounds of religious belief." He uses the term "mystical perception" to refer to "putative direct experiential awareness of God." He builds on work by the philosophers Thomas Reid and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and also refers to the work of the philosopher William James. He criticizes the work of the philosopher Wayne Proudfoot, arguing that Proudfoot wron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A ''Review of General Psychology'' analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in ''American Psychologist'' in 1991 ranked James's reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt, who is widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Varieties Of Religious Experience
''The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature'' is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concerned the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and used a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions. Soon after its publication, ''Varieties'' entered the Western canon of psychology and philosophy and has remained in print for over a century. James later developed his philosophy of pragmatism. There are many overlapping ideas in ''Varieties'' and his 1907 book ''Pragmatism''. Historical context Psychology of religion In the 1890s, a "new psychology" emerged in European and American universities which coincided with the establishment of many new psychology laboratories and the appointment of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rational Mysticism
Rational mysticism, which encompasses both rationalism and mysticism, is a term used by scholars, researchers, and other intellectuals, some of whom engage in studies of how altered states of consciousness or transcendence such as trance, visions, and prayer occur. Lines of investigation include historical and philosophical inquiry as well as scientific inquiry within such fields as neurophysiology and psychology. Overview The term "rational mysticism" was in use at least as early as 1911 when it was the subject of an article by Henry W. Clark in the ''Harvard Theological Review.'' In a 1924 book, ''Rational Mysticism,'' theosophist William Kingsland correlated rational mysticism with scientific idealism. South African philosopher J. N. Findlay frequently used the term, developing the theme in ''Ascent to the Absolute'' and other works in the 1960s and 1970s. Columbia University pragmatist John Herman Randall, Jr. characterized both Plotinus and Baruch Spinoza as “rat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundationalism
Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon non-inferential justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises.Simon Blackburn, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'', 2nd (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)p 139 The main rival of the foundationalist theory of justification is the coherence theory of justification, whereby a body of knowledge, not requiring a secure foundation, can be established by the interlocking strength of its components, like a puzzle solved without prior certainty that each small region was solved correctly. Identifying the alternatives as either circular reasoning or infinite regress, and thus exhibiting the regress problem, Aristotle made foundationalism his own clear choice, positing basic beliefs underpinning others.Ted Poston"Foundationalism"(Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Descartes, the most famed foundationalist, discovered a foundation i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basic Belief
Basic beliefs (also commonly called foundational beliefs or core beliefs) are, under the epistemological view called foundationalism, the axioms of a belief system. Categories of beliefs Foundationalism holds that all beliefs must be justified in order to be known. Beliefs therefore fall into two categories: * Beliefs that are properly basic, in that they do not depend upon justification of other beliefs, but on something outside the realm of belief (a "non- doxastic justification") * Beliefs that derive from one or more basic beliefs, and therefore depend on the basic beliefs for their validity Description Within this basic framework of foundationalism exist a number of views regarding which types of beliefs qualify as ''properly'' basic; that is, what sorts of beliefs can be justifiably held without the justification of other beliefs. In classical foundationalism, beliefs are held to be properly basic if they are either self-evident axioms, or evident to the senses ( em ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sense Experience
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, it is important tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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