Reconciliation Of Science And Religion Primary Source Edition

Although much has been written about the vigorous debates over science and religion in the Victorian era, little attention has been paid to their continuing importance in early twentieth-century Britain. Reconciling Science and Religion provides a comprehensive survey of the interplay between British science and religion from the late nineteenth century to World War II. Peter J. Bowler argues that unlike the United States, where a strong fundamentalist opposition to evolutionism developed in the 1920s (most famously expressed in the Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925), in Britain there was a concerted effort to reconcile science and religion. Intellectually conservative scientists championed the reconciliation and were supported by liberal theologians in the Free Churches and the Church of England, especially the Anglican "Modernists." Popular writers such as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw sought to create a non-Christian religion similar in some respects to the Modernist position. Younger scientists and secularists—including Rationalists such as H. G. Wells and the Marxists—tended to oppose these efforts, as did conservative Christians, who saw the liberal position as a betrayal of the true spirit of their religion. With the increased social tensions of the 1930s, as the churches moved toward a neo-orthodoxy unfriendly to natural theology and biologists adopted the "Modern Synthesis" of genetics and evolutionary theory, the proposed reconciliation fell apart. Because the tensions between science and religion—and efforts at reconciling the two—are still very much with us today, Bowler's book will be important for everyone interested in these issues.

Pantheism is the idea that God and the world are identical—that the creator, sustainer, destroyer, and transformer of all things is the universe itself. From a monotheistic perspective, this notion is irremediably heretical since it suggests divinity might be material, mutable, and multiple. Since the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, Western thought has therefore demonized what it calls pantheism, accusing it of incoherence, absurdity, and—with striking regularity—monstrosity. In this book, Mary-Jane Rubenstein investigates this perennial repugnance through a conceptual genealogy of pantheisms. What makes pantheism “monstrous”—at once repellent and seductive—is that it scrambles the raced and gendered distinctions that Western philosophy and theology insist on drawing between activity and passivity, spirit and matter, animacy and inanimacy, and creator and created. By rejecting the fundamental difference between God and world, pantheism threatens all the other oppositions that stem from it: light versus darkness, male versus female, and humans versus every other organism. If the panic over pantheism has to do with a fear of crossed boundaries and demolished hierarchies, then the question becomes what a present-day pantheism might disrupt and what it might reconfigure. Cobbling together heterogeneous sources—medieval heresies, their pre- and anti-Socratic forebears, general relativity, quantum mechanics, nonlinear biologies, multiverse and indigenous cosmologies, ecofeminism, animal and vegetal studies, and new and old materialisms—Rubenstein assembles possible pluralist pantheisms. By mobilizing this monstrous mixture of unintentional God-worlds, Pantheologies gives an old heresy the chance to renew our thinking.

Articulates a metaphysical position capable of rendering both science and religious experience simultaneously and mutually intelligible.

Arab debates about the critical relationship between religion and modernity began in the early nineteenth century. Such debates are now integral to the struggle for power between a variety of political groups and their opponents, and are vital to understanding the modern Middle East. This unique volume introduces writings of Arab Christian and Muslim revisionist and radical "free thinkers" who have tried to redefine the relationship. It challenges the deeply entrenched idea that the contemporary Islamic world has been impermeable to a critique of religious ideas and practices. Authors from the nineteenth century to the present are included. Some are avowed believers, even if they adopt positions many might regard as heretical; others are openly agnostic and atheistic. Despite their differences, all have been united in disputing the notion that life should conform exclusively to a system of values and laws based upon the Qur'an or the Bible, or, in some cases less radically, upon these as they were widely understood before the onset of modernity. They have also rejected many of the standard religious 'liberal' assumptions that are regularly invoked against traditionalism. The book's originality lies in its evaluation of the social and cultural impact of these thinkers.

Philosophy, Science and Religion for Everyone brings together these great truth-seeking disciplines, and seeks to understand the ways in which they challenge and inform each other. Key topics and their areas of focus include: • Foundational Issues – why should anyone care about the science-and-religion debate? How do scientific claims relate to the truth? Is evolution compatible with design? • Faith and Rationality – can faith ever be rational? Are theism and atheism totally opposed? Is God hidden or does God simply not exist? • Faith and Science - what provides a better explanation for the origin of the universe—science or religion? Faith and physics: can they be reconciled? Does contemporary neuroscience debunk religious belief? Creationism and evolutionary biology - what constitutes science and what constitutes pseudo-science? • Practical Implications – is fundamentalism just a problem for religious people? What are the ethical implications of the science-and-religion debate? Do logic and religion mix? This book is designed to be used in conjunction with the free ‘Philosophy, Science and Religion’ MOOC (massive open online course) created by the University of Edinburgh, and hosted by the Coursera platform (www.coursera.org). This book is also highly recommended for anyone looking for a concise overview of this fascinating discipline.

John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age is the remarkable story of the spiritual search of one of Michigan’s most successful entrepreneurs, a search that culminated in the Fetzer Institute whose ambitious mission is nothing less than the spiritual transformation of the world.

In this collection of essays, authors from a variety of disciplines critically examine the peacebuilding implications and societal impact of the Hizmet Movement. Increased scholarly attention is being paid to the role of religion in peacebuilding theory and practice, and in particular how that is expressed in Islam and Islamic contexts.

Examines the perennial issues that keep science and religion at arm's length, clarifies those issues, and fits them into an historical framework—from Plato, to Aquinas, to today's thinkers.