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Showing papers on "Supreme Being published in 2001"



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The fact that there is no evidence of a creator-god, whose existence was claimed by Schebesta, in the beliefs of the Mbuti Pygmies, a large group of African pygmies is confirmed by the observations of the present author and other researchers as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The fact that there is no evidence of a creator-god, whose existence was claimed by Schebesta, in the beliefs of the Mbuti Pygmies, a large group of African pygmies, is confirmed by the observations of the present author and other researchers. The reason why Schebesta made up the creator-god is explored and described; he was under the strong influence of W. Schmidt's theory of primitive monotheism, and he was a Christian priest. Instead, the importance of the ancestors, or the dead, for the pygmies' world view is shown with examples from the Efe, Mbuti, Baka, and Aka Pygmies. Lastly two theoretical issues of religious anthropology are pointed out; because many researchers fail to understand the relationship between names and concepts of "supernatural beings," they are inclined to make up a supreme being or a creator-god to resolve the contradiction; researchers often use terms such as "god" and "spirit" without considering that they are imposing Western dichotomy upon the world view of the people they study.

8 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Besinnung as discussed by the authors is a work dating from 1938-1939, one among the "unpublished treatises" in Part III of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, and it follows the Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1938), taking up the same themes as that work.
Abstract: The article deals with the recently published Besinnung, a work dating from 1938–1939, one among the “unpublished treatises” in Part III of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe. It follows the Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936–1938), taking up the same themes as that work, such as the last God, the first and the other beginning, etc. But whereas the earlier work, especially the notion of the last God, relates more to Schelling, this one muses on Kierkegaard. The article sets Besinnung within the context of related works of the same period, not only the Beitrage but also Metaphysik und Nihilismus and Geschichte des Seyns. However, Besinnung also breaks new ground, finding a deeper ontological distinction between Seyn and Sein as the basis for the earlier “ontological difference” between being and beings. The work is part and parcel with Heidegger's destructuring of metaphysics, which he sees as really a freeing up of the beginning, as also the issue of onto-theology. Thus it is integral with Heidegger's program of getting God out of metaphysics and being out of theology. It is in virtue of the meaning he attaches to Seyn (Logos) in Da-sein that it is possible for him not only to retrieve the meaning of the other beginning, the en-owning (Er-eignis) of Da-sein, and with it the meaning of the first beginning (in the two senses the phrase has in this work), but also thereby to recover the forgotten meaning of being (Sein). The approach to Seyn, with Kierkegaard, is not through the thinking (Denken) that thinks being, which cannot really get beyond beings and/or the Supreme Being of metaphysics, but through a thinking, a musing, that thinks through to (Er-denkt) Seyn. The article concludes with some reflections on the significance of Heidegger as theo-logian.

6 citations


Book
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a Buddhist philosophy of religion that the insight of Prajna and Sunyata initiates a future religion which is free both from conflict between reasoning and believing, and from goal-oriented cycles of life.
Abstract: The collection is designed to propose a Buddhist philosophy of religion - that the insight of Prajna and Sunyata initiates a future religion which is freed both from conflict between reasoning and believing, and from goal-oriented cycles of life. It addresses transformation from the conflict-ridden quest for a supreme being, to the search for a non-theistic nature of spirituality that provides a foundation for universal human happiness and salvation.

4 citations


Book ChapterDOI
Keith Ward1
TL;DR: The concept of one supreme being, omniscient and omnipotent and possessing all possible perfections, is a relatively recent development in human history as discussed by the authors and can be traced to the time of Plato and Aristotle in Greece.
Abstract: The concept of God as the idea of one supreme being, omniscient and omnipotent and possessing all possible perfections, is a relatively recent development in human history. The gods of Sumer and Egypt, of early Indian and Mediterranean cultures, were many and limited in attributes. The idea of one supreme God was a natural development, most ancient historians think, from earlier tendencies to rank one’s own favoured god as more powerful than the gods of other people. The philosophical development of the monotheistic idea of a self-existent being of supreme value can, so far as written evidence is concerned, be dated to the time of Plato and Aristotle in Greece. In Europe it was especially Aristotle’s discussion in book 12 of the ‘Metaphysics’, coupled with Plato’s discussions in theRepublicand theTimaeus, that helped to define the classical theism which is common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

4 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Le Mahieu1
TL;DR: Robinson's book "Honest to God" as discussed by the authors was published in 1963 and sold over 300,000 copies within a year and over 1,000,000 within a decade over 1000,000.
Abstract: On 17 March 1963 the Observer ran a feature article titled "Our Image of God Must Go" that outlined the main ideas of a forthcoming book. Bishop John A. T. Robinson's Honest to God was published three days later, its first edition selling out in a week. Within a year it sold over 300,000 copies, within a decade over 1,000,000. No religious publication other than the Bible sold as well in Britain. The Bishop of Woolwich became a national celebrity. The BBC devoted radio and television programs to Robinson's ideas; the popular press caricatured his theology in its headlines; magazines outlined his life and ideas in feature articles. Thousands of individuals sent letters of approbation and condemnation (Clements 178-79; James Life 115-16). Robinson rejected the image of God as a patriarch in heaven or, as he put it, "an Old Man in the sky" (HG 18). This traditional spatial metaphor survived from an earlier era, he wrote, before modern science exploded the three-decker universe of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Christian theology found itself on the defensive as scientific fact overwhelmed traditional religious cosmology. By the 1960s satellites and other space probes evacuated the concept of "God in His Heaven." "Now it seems there is no room for him," Robinson wrote of the archaic representation of the Deity, "not merely in the inn, but in the entire universe: for there are no vacant places left" (HG 13-14). Modern thought transcended the image of God as an anthropomorphic projection of the Father, the paterfamilias of lost childhood. Sigmund Freud demonstrated the psychological origins of this archaic Patriarch and, like Friedrich Nietzsche earlier, abandoned it. "Inevitably it feels like being orphaned," Robinson declared (HG 18). Borrowing from Paul Tillich and others, Robinson portrayed God as the "Ground of our Being" and the "Beyond in our Midst" (HG 44, 53). "Belief in God is the trust, the well-nigh incredible trust, that to give ourselves to the uttermost in love is not to be confounded but `accepted,' that Love is the ground of our being, to which ultimately we `come home'" (HG 49). This Supreme Being was at once personal and abstract: God became defined by agapic affiliations that reflected, however imperfectly, a transcendent reality, not unlike a Platonic Form. As Robinson acknowledged, some found such transcendence difficult to grasp. At the same time, however, he retained a characteristic Protestant bias by grounding authentic religion in a deeply personal encounter, the love of one individual for another or for God. Invoking Martin Buber, the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge, Robinson deemed this encounter an I-Thou relationship (HG 53). "How does one pray to `ultimate reality?'" The Times asked (qtd. in Edwards 99). Robinson answered this question by transforming prayer into a deflected transaction among humans: "My own experience is that I am really praying for people, agonizing with God for them, precisely as I meet them and really give my soul to them" (HG 99). Again Robinson surrounded a secular encounter with traditional religious nomenclature. Heavily influenced by the martyred German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Robinson suggested that "worldly holiness" removed the barriers between the religious and secular world. Whatever revivified Love, the Ground of our Being, ought to be considered worship: "Anything that fails to do this is not Christian worship, be it ever so `religious'" (HG 88). Within this theology Jesus became a "man for others," "the one in whom Love has completely taken over, the one who is utterly open to, and united with, the Ground of his being" (HG 76). Jesus embodied the Unconditional in the Conditional, the Transcendent Love of God in an individual who walked on earth. He was "self-emptying" (HG 74), surrendering himself to others completely and accepting fallen humanity in Grace. Honest to God provoked enormous controversy. Typical of the book's harshest critics, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that Robinson's muddled theology too easily assimilated the destructive arguments of religious skeptics. …

2 citations