Descartes insisted that it is easier to gain knowledge of the soul than of the body. Religious precepts will be either redundant or immoral as they either coincide with ordinary moral intuition or conflict with it.
Norman believes that some combination of utilitarianism and deontology should produce the essentials of a secular morality. This will invite two objections. As theories, utilitari- anism and deontology are essentially opposed.
It would take a lot more work to produce a stable synthesis. Either the theory will be redundant if the result coincides with what we already think or it will be immoral if it goes against our morality. The chapter is complete with the keywords of literary-minded philosophy from the turn of the millennium: fragility, tragedy, particularity, narrative, the Holocaust, Primo Levi.
This is fine as far as it goes, but one wonders if there is nothing new to be said about the topic. With the help of reason, we can try to make the world a better place. Secondly, there is the fuzziness of the attribute itself.
Rationality is not a programme. Rather, it is an aspect of widely different and often violently opposed human strivings.
One does not save the world just by bringing humankind to reason. This brings out a negative sense, too, in which this work is a product of traditional humanist ideals.
It completely ignores political issues. Was cruelty the main reason back in the s? Genocides are still taking place right before our eyes. But then of course, these will be contro- versial topics. In any case, this points to inherent limitations in works of this kind. Nevertheless, this is a good book: a book to make one think. It is enjoyable as such, but it might also be included as a reading for a Philosophy of Religion course.
Antony Flew Delos B. Each part is divided into three chapters. In the first part, Chapter 1 provides an Introduction and Distillation with Commentary. Chapter 2 is a Defence and Chapter 3 contains Criticisms. The subject of the first part is abbreviated throughout as AINR. The book under this title was originally published under a pseudonym in by George Grote, who later became a founder president and vice-chancellor of the University of London.
But there is, of course, a dispute as to how much of this publication was actually the work of Bentham who, not being employed as an academic, had no material interest in the number and quality of his publications. It is important for readers today to realise that in arguing against natural religion, Bentham was arguing against a kind of opponents who no longer exist.
This Holy Trinity, undivided in regard to its essence which is common to all in regard to the attributes of the persons, gave the doctrine of salvation to the human race in due process of time. That the person known as St Paul changed from being a destructive persecutor of the Christian movement within Judaism to being a collaborator, largely it would seem on his own terms, is surely a point of ancient history as well- established as any.
Although this is indisputable, there remain the questions of whether or not the three accounts in Acts of his conver- sion allow us to infer that it was inner as well as outer.
Such occurrences, however, pale in comparison with coordinated voices addressing two individuals, unknown to one another, at a distance, and over a period of several days. Yet that is what Acts 9: 8—18 would have us take as historical.
While Saul lingered in Damascus in darkness, with something like scales on his eyes a condition unknown to medicine a certain Ananias was said to have encountered the Lord Jesus? The Lord of the vision ordered him to go to Straight Street v.
Antony Flew harboured the sightless Saul. For, as G. Wells wrote in his Who was Jesus? They do not refer to a place of birth or residence e. They never refer to his trial before a Roman official, nor to Jerusalem as the place of his execution. An outraged theist could have written this book, though not an orthodox Christian theist. But let your communication be Yea yea, Nay nay. All credit to them for recognising that scholarship is a good in itself, and accepting on its account the likelihood of financial loss.
Ben Tilghman D. Phillips and Mario von der Ruhr eds. Biblical Concepts, the volume from , consists of six parts. Each part con- sists of a main paper and a response to it together with a summary of the discussion that followed.
In Culture and Value Wittgenstein says that Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a historical narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather believe through thick and thin, which you can only do as the result of a life.
This remark, which is cited by more than one participant, could well serve as the epigraph for this volume. The issue that dominates these papers is the tension between the results of critical and historical biblical scholarship, particularly concerning the Gospels on the one hand and Christian faith on the other.
The following paper by James M. For this, he is criticised in detail in the discussion. No conclusion drawn from history can be totally immune to doubt, and Kierkegaard says that is why such investigations have nothing to do with faith. Some would claim that religious experience, the work of the Holy Spirit or the like, must be added to the reading to get at the religious significance. Sceptical questions can be raised about the reliability of these allegedly divine sources of inspiration.
They only show that when people have a certain theological conception, they can construct a coherent and logically possible interpretation of the picture of the historical Jesus. Alvin Plantinga wants to forestall this sceptical question.
The ques- tion about the veracity of the religious experience does not automati- cally arise any more than does scepticism about sense experience. That there is snow in the backyard is a belief that one forms immediately from the experience. What Plantinga does not see, however, is that in ordinary circumstances, doubts about seeing snow in the backyard are unintelligible.
Someone may say with all sincerity that there is snow when everyone else can see clearly that there is not. It would require very special circumstances for that claim to make sense. It strikes me that there are no analogous ordinary or standard circumstances these days in which alleged religious experiences are assessed. Some of this is taken up but not driven home in the discussion.
Once again, this is a matter of the relation between history and faith. Ben Tilghman Stephen T. What difference would that make to Christians? For some, it would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. But Davies goes on to point out that scholarly agreement on this could well change. There is the danger that people could think that history is the only source of knowledge of Christ to the exclusion of religious experience, tradition and community.
Davies seems to be assuming that there is knowledge of Christ apart from historical knowledge of the life of Jesus. Does this beg a question? Ingolf U. He points out how she gets Wittgenstein wrong and makes clear that she has misunderstood what it is to recognise the risen Christ. It is not a matter of locating a spiritual perception analogous to sense perception; it is not a matter of epistemology at all. In the New Testament view, seeing the risen Christ is not something that we do, but something that is done to us.
Walford Gealy begins by reminding us that the biblical miracles are reported from the background of a world view that is not ours.
He goes on to dismiss characteristically modern discussions of miracles as violations of natural laws, extraordinary events caused by God and the like.
Causation was not a part of those ancient world views. There are interesting references to Roy Holland, Peter Winch and especially to Rush Rhees concerning the idea of the unity of language and the intelligibility to be found in diverse realms of discourse and the relevance of that for thinking about miracles. An established religion may not need signs from God to support its beliefs. He concludes that faith is itself a miracle.
The response is from D. Phillips who comes off the bench as a last-minute substitute. The discussion keeps returning to the unity of language.
Can we find the right spirit in the biblical miracles? Phillips thinks we can, but that conclusion seems secondary to the conceptual interconnections introduced between miracles, lan- guage and life, and it is through those interconnections that the question must be pursued.
While not all these papers are successful in what they set out to do, they are uniformly thoughtful and there is always something to be learned from them. The later book in the series Language and Spirit does not follow quite the same format as the previous volume.
There are six papers, but no responding papers. There are the usual summaries of the discussions following each presentation. The question that the participants address is that of trying to understand what it means to believe in God as Spirit and to make sense of speaking of God as Spirit.
In his introduction to the volume, Phillips calls attention to a tension between theology and ontology. Must theology presuppose an ontology stating what exists in the world, God and Spirit, for example? He illustrates a problem about ontology with the example of Pythagorean mathematical units. The lesson I would draw from this is that theology does not rest on an ontological foundation.
The Council for Secular Humanism. The first edition of the novel was published in , and was written by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of pages and is available in Paperback format. If you know of a humanist author or humanist-themed book not listed here, share your suggestion in the comments below. Here we see the committed philosopher working in public, with many of its evident hazards.
Despite its flaws, in Existentialism is a Humanism, we have a model for a committed philosophy—one that is sorely needed today. The Meaning of Humanism 3. The Importance of Philosophy 3 2. Humanism Defined 12 3. Different Kinds of Humanists II. The Humanist Tradition. Philosophic Forerunners 33 2. Religious Roots of Humanism 53 3.
This Life Is All and Enough.
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