A Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion

The spiritual dimension of hospice: the secularization of an ideal.

Starting points for this thesis were personal observations about how paintings may be responses to unplanned experiences, how they may take on a life of their own, and how meanings may emerge rather than be imposed. Questions arose about possible links with Christian concepts of revelation, and these were investigated with particular reference to the French Catholic philosopher and theologian Jean-Luc Marion. His concepts of saturated phenomena and their ‘excess’ of pure givenness were found to resonate with the actual experiences of painters but also to be critiqued by them. The core chapters discuss examples of paintings drawn from the three worlds of nature, ‘culture’, and persons, using an essentially threefold format: 1) presentation of selected paintings together with artists’ autobiographical material; 2) phenomenological analysis; and 3) theological interpretation. Underlying this approach is Marion’s approach to revelation by way of saturated phenomena, for whilst phenomenology alone cannot determine if actual revelation has taken place, it can investigate conditions for the possibility of revelation.

Original features include the following:

• Development of a ten-part typology of painting trajectories, reflecting diverse interactions between givenness and intentionality.
• Identification of ‘nature’ as a saturated phenomenon from the evidence of painting processes; this is new evidence supporting an existing critique of Marion.
• Discernment of saturated phenomena as ‘nested’, that is manifesting at different scales from the cosmic to the microscopic.
• Application of the ‘visual-verbal chronotope’ to the complexities of painterly hermeneutics, with respect to biblical images.
• Use of collaborative painting processes to enter the worlds of primary school children.
• Identification of painting processes as saturated phenomena in their own right.
• Realisation that Marion’s ‘givenness through saturated phenomena’ approach is complementary to the ‘imagination’ approach to revelation pursued by several British and North American theologians. It is suggested that the two approaches need each other.

It is concluded that, phenomenologically, painters’ imaginative responses to givenness are common to both secular and theistic interpretations of revelation, and that through this commonality painting processes can contribute to addressing tensions between natural and revealed theology contribute to addressing tensions between natural and revealed theology.

A theological enquiry into the processes of painting, with reference to the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion

In this book, Graham Oppy examines arguments for and against the existence of God. He shows that none of these arguments is powerful enough to change the minds of reasonable participants in debates on the question of the existence of God. His conclusion is supported by detailed analyses of the arguments as well as by the development of a theory about the purpose of arguments and the criteria that should be used in judging whether or not arguments are successful. Oppy discusses the work of a wide array of philosophers, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Hume and, more recently, Plantinga, Dembski, White, Dawkins, Bergman, Gale and Pruss.

Arguing about gods

Ian G. Barbour is Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Carleton College, Northefiled, Minnesota. He is the author of Myths, Models and Paradigms (a National Book Award), Issues in Science and Religion, and Science and Secularity, all published by HarperSanFrancisco. Published by Harper & Row, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, 1976. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.

https://media.sabda.org/alkitab-2/Religion-Online.org%20Books/Barbour,%20Ian%20-%20Myths,%20Models%20and%20Paradigms-A%20comparative%20Stu.pdf

Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion

This book comprises a number of important readings offering a wide range of topics in the philosophy of religion.

The philosophy of religion.

The Justification of Religious Belief

the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, ‘Some gardener must tend this plot’. The other disagrees, ‘There is no gardener’. So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. ‘But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.’ So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. ‘But there :is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.’ At last the Sceptic despairs, ‘But what remains of our original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?’

Theology and falsification

In recent years philosophical criticism of theism has tended to take the form of an attempt to show that it is logically inconsistent, or in some other way logically incoherent through failing some legitimate test of significance or intelligibility. If that could be shown there would be no room for an examination of the rational case for theism of the sort I want to undertake. Not only could there be no good reason for belief in God; there would be no possibility of its being even a matter of faith. The subject has accumulated a considerable literature [1], and the present treatment will inevitably be summary and selective. But it would be wrong to evade the challenge altogether and; in meeting it, we are likely to encounter considerations which will be of importance in the later argument.

Basil Mitchell

Papers

The philosophy of religion.

The Justification of Religious Belief

Theology and falsification

Can God’s Existence be Disproved?

Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy.