Download or read book Skepticism Relativism and Religious Knowledge written by Michael G. Harvey and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge examines the challenges of skepticism and relativism to religious knowledge after the demise of classical foundationalism. Whereas skepticism doubts our capacity to know truth, relativism doubts whether we can find a sufficiently objective perspective to adjudicate strong disagreement about truth. Thus relativism involves skepticism about rationality rather than truth. In developing a critique of responses to these challenges by Karl Barth and Reformed epistemology, Michael G. Harvey develops a Kierkegaardian perspective on religious knowledge informed by Wittgenstein's philosophy. This perspective is based on a hermeneutical model of rationality that appeals to what we hold in common rather than private and parochial foundations in order to settle disagreement. Although doubt is necessary to produce more truth-preserving beliefs, we must scrutinize our doubts as well as beliefs in order to prevent the belief-forming mechanism of doubt from degenerating into a general mood of skepticism about rationality and truth. More fundamentally, we must realize that skepticism and relativism are rooted in attitudes of alienation. Whereas epistemology aims at a non-alienated view of the world, Christianity aims at a non-alienated way of living through faith that enables both our beliefs and lives to correspond with the truth.
Download or read book Essays on Skepticism Relativism and Ethics in the Zhuangzi written by Paul Kjellberg and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1996-04-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese philosophical text Zhuangzi, written in part by a man named Zhuangzi in late fourth century B.C.E. China, is gaining recognition as one of the classics of world literature. Writing in beautiful prose and poetry, Zhuangzi mixes humor with relentless logic in attacking claims to knowledge about the world, particularly evaluative knowledge of what is good and bad or right and wrong. His arguments seem to admit of no escape. And yet where does that leave us? Zhuangzi himself clearly does not think that our situation is utterly hopeless, since at the very least he must have some reason for thinking we are better off aware of our ignorance. This book addresses the question of how Zhuangzi manages to sustain a positive moral vision in the face of his seemingly sweeping skepticism. Zhuangzi is compared to the Greek philosophers Plato and Sextus Empiricus in order to pinpoint more exactly what he doubts and why. Also examined is Zhuangzi's views on language and the role that language plays in shaping the reality we perceive. The authors test the application of Zhuangzi's ideas to contemporary debates in critical theory and to issues in moral philosophical thought such as the establishment of equal worth and the implications of ethical relativism. They also explore the religious and spiritual dimensions of the text and clarify the relation between Zhuangzi and Buddhism.
Download or read book Essays on Skepticism Relativism and Ethics in the Zhuangzi written by Paul Kjellberg and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese philosophical text Zhuangzi was written by Zhuangzi in the fourth century BCE. With humor and relentless logic Zhuangzi attacks claims to knowledge about the world, especially evaluative knowledge of what is good and bad or right and wrong. This book is about the man and the text.
Download or read book Exuberant Skepticism written by Paul Kurtz and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-10-29 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than three decades, philosopher Paul Kurtz has been a strong advocate of skepticism, not only as a philosophical position, but also as a fulfilling way of life. Contrary to the view that skepticism is merely a negative, nay saying, or debunking stance toward commonly held beliefs, skepticism as defined by Kurtz emerges reborn as "skeptical inquiry"—a decidedly positive philosophy ready and able to change the world. In this definitive collection, editor John R. Shook has gathered together seventeen of Paul Kurtz’s most penetrating and insightful writings. Altogether these essays build an affirmative case for what can be known based on sound common sense, reason, and scientific method. And as each essay cogently and convincingly explains, so much can be known, from the natural world around us to the moral responsibilities among us. The work is organized in four topical sections. In the first, "Reasons to Be Skeptical," Kurtz presents compelling reasons why the methods of inquiry used by the sciences deserve respect. In short, science provides reliable knowledge, without which humanity would never have emerged from the age of myth and widespread ignorance. In the second section, "Skepticism and the Non-Natural," Kurtz shows how skeptical inquiry can be fruitfully used to critique both paranormal claims and religious worldviews. He also investigates whether science and religion can be compatible. In the third section, "Skepticism in the Human World," he considers how skeptical inquiry can be applied to politics, ethics, and pursuit of the good life. Realizing the essential connections between scientific knowledge, technological power, and social progress, Kurtz has understood, as few philosophers ever have, how the methods of intelligence can be applied to all areas of human endeavor. The book concludes with Kurtz’s authoritative reflections on the skeptical movement that he founded and has led. As he explains, the forces of blind faith and stubborn unreason still fight for control of the mind, so the skeptic can never rest. If there is a brighter future for humanity, a future in which every person enjoys a realistic opportunity for the pursuit of excellence, Kurtz’s ‘exuberant skepticism’ can show us the way.
Download or read book Scepticism Relativism and Religious Knowledge written by Michael G. Harvey and published by James Clarke. This book was released on 2014 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the challenges of scepticism and relativism to religious knowledge after the demise of classical foundationalism. Whereas scepticism doubts whether we can know truth, relativism doubts whether we can find a sufficiently objective perspective to adjudicate strong disagreement about truth.
Download or read book Scepticism written by Duncan Pritchard and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the nature of scepticism, asking when it is legitimate, for example as the driver of new ideas, and when it is problematic. It also tackles how scepticism is related to contemporary social and political phenomena, such as fake news, and examines a radical form of scepticism which maintains that knowledge is impossible.
Download or read book Skepticism Relativism and Religious Knowledge written by Michael G. Harvey and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge shows where responses to skepticism and relativism by Karl Barth and Reformed epistemology have led to impasses, and reconstructs their insights in a more robust response that does not depend on making excessive claims about our epistemic capacities. This response is based on a more nuanced conception of the relationship between trust, doubt, faith, and reason, and a Kierkegaardian perspective on religious knowledge that stresses the role of the will and the intellectual and theological virtues.
Download or read book The Great Perhaps written by Burton F. Porter and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God created man in his own image; but did man perhaps return the compliment? The question of God's existence has been a pivotal issue for every civilization. Those with faith in God want assurance that their belief is justified, and atheists want confirmation that God is nowhere to be found. When we reflect on religion, we want to know the reasons for belief in God, or whether belief is only a comforting delusion. In an age of science, will religion persist or will it be edged out of our consciousness and become a historical curiosity? Burton Porter approaches the notion of God in an open, yet critical way, examining the argumentation used by centuries of human society to support or reject the existence of God. With minimum assumptions and maximum objectivity, Porter debates whether the religious view does, in fact, diagram reality. He examines the roles that God and religion have played in the ethics, art, and actions of many diverse cultures to conclude that, at the very least, the consideration of the existence of a higher power is fundamental to us all.
Download or read book Uncertain Knowledge written by Dallas George Denery and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contents of this book cover uncertainty and deception in the medieval and early modern court, living with uncertainty, uncertainty in the study of the Bible, the merits of not knowing, vernacular opinions, and much more.
Download or read book Civility Religious Pluralism and Education written by Vincent Biondo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the problem of religious diversity, civil dialogue, and religion education in public schools, exploring the ways in which atheists, secularists, fundamentalists, and mainstream religionists come together in the public sphere, examining how civil discourse about religion fit swithin the ideals of the American political and pedagogical systems and how religious studies education can help to foster civility and toleration.
Download or read book Volume 18 Tome II Kierkegaard Secondary Literature written by Jon Stewart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish.
Download or read book Epistemic Relativism written by M. Seidel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-04-13 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Markus Seidel provides a detailed critique of epistemic relativism in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In addition to scrutinizing the main arguments for epistemic relativism he provides an absolutist account that nevertheless aims at integrating the relativist's intuition.
Download or read book Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy written by Steven D. Hales and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-08-21 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A defense of the view that philosophical propositions are true in some perspectives and false in others, arguing that the rationalist, intuition-driven method of acquiring basic beliefs favored by analytic philosophy is not epistemically superior to such alternate belief-acquiring methods as religious revelation and the ritual use of hallucinogens. The grand and sweeping claims of many relativists might seem to amount to the argument that everything is relative—except the thesis of relativism. In this book, Steven Hales defends relativism, but in a more circumscribed form that applies specifically to philosophical propositions. His claim is that philosophical propositions are relatively true—true in some perspectives and false in others. Hales defends this argument first by examining rational intuition as the method by which philosophers come to have the beliefs they do. Analytic rationalism, he claims, has a foundational reliance on rational intuition as a method of acquiring basic beliefs. He then argues that there are other methods that people use to gain beliefs about philosophical topics that are strikingly analogous to rational intuition and examines two of these: Christian revelation and the ritual use of hallucinogens. Hales argues that rational intuition is not epistemically superior to either of these alternative methods. There are only three possible outcomes: we have no philosophical knowledge (skepticism); there are no philosophical propositions (naturalism); or there are knowable philosophical propositions, but our knowledge of them is relative to doxastic perspective. Hales defends relativism against the charge that it is self-refuting and answers a variety of objections to this account of relativism. Finally, he examines the most sweeping objection to relativism: that philosophical propositions are not merely relatively true, because there are no philosophical propositions—all propositions are ultimately empirical, as the naturalists contend. Hales's somewhat disturbing conclusion—that intuition-driven philosophy does produce knowledge, but not absolute knowledge—is sure to inspire debate among philosophers.
Download or read book Encountering Religious Pluralism written by Harold Netland and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2001-08-14 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harold Netland traces the emergence of the pluralistic ethos that challenges Christian faith and mission, interacting heavily with philosopher John Hick and providing a framework for developing a comprehensive evangelical theology of religions.
Download or read book Concept of Truth in Science and Religion written by K. D. Gangrade and published by Concept Publishing Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing heavily on the writings of porfessor D.S. kothari and matatma gandhi, this book analyses the concepts of truth in science and religion.
Download or read book Christianity Considered written by John M. Frame and published by Lexham Press. This book was released on 2018-05-16 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity is more than a religion: it is also a complex intellectual tradition. Christians and non-Christians who want to understand the world as it is today have to understand Christianity, too. Christianity makes objective claims, but also presents a new way of thinking about the world. In A Guide to Christianity for Skeptics and Seekers, renowned theologian Dr. John Frame introduces the reader to the Christian religion and its unique intellectual framework, describing the key pillars of Christian thought and how these shape the Christian worldview. Covering a range of topics, from the resurrection to the Christian posture toward politics, A Guide to Christianity for Skeptics and Seekers is a valuable guide to understanding the Christian faith as an intellectual tradition. Useful for both the Christian reader looking for a better understanding of the faith and the skeptical reader who seeks to understand the intellectual tradition that has done much to shape the modern world.
Download or read book Dissonant Voices written by Harold A. Netland and published by Regent College Publishing. This book was released on 1999-04 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
