Bücher der Reihe Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

This volume contains fresh scholarly contributions to mark the birth centenary of John Hick, the internationally well-known philosopher of religion, whose works continue to have significant global relevance in today¿s religiously diverse and conflict-ridden world. His writings have reset the parameters of religious pluralism. Up till now, Hick¿s religious pluralism has been mainly seen in relation to the Western context where Christianity is the predominant religion. This volume includes both Western and non-Western engagement with his thinking in contexts such as Japan, China, Korea, Nigeria, and India, where Christianity is a minority religion with little political power. Its distinctiveness lies in widening the debate on religious pluralism by bringing Hick¿s pluralistic hypothesis into a constructive cross-cultural and interreligious conversation with scholars of Hinduism, Jainism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and African traditional religions. In doing so, this collection examines how Hick¿s philosophy of religious pluralism has been received, appropriated and appraised by these scholars. It has been appreciated and critiqued in equal measure, and continues to impact on current thinking on religious pluralism. This volume makes a significant contribution to the debate initiated by Hick.

Atheistic Platonism is an alternative to both theism and nihilistic atheism. It shows how any jobs allegedly done by God are better done by impersonal Platonic objects. Without Platonic objects, atheism degenerates into an illogical nihilism.  Atheistic Platonism instead provides reality with foundations that are eternal, necessary, rational, beautiful, and utterly mindless. It argues for a plenitude of mathematical objects, and an infinite plurality of possible universes. It provides mindless rational grounds for objective values, and for objective moral laws for the persons who evolve in universes. It defines a meaningful way of life, which facilitates self-improvement. Atheistic Platonists argue for computational theories of life after death. Atheistic Platonism includes a rich system of spiritual symbols. It values transformational practices and ecstatic experiences. Where atheisms based on materialism fail, atheisms based on Platonism succeed.

This book addresses the place of religious knowledge in religion, particularly within Christianity. The book begins by examining the difference between the general concepts of knowledge and belief, the relation between faith and knowledge, and reasons why belief as faith, and not knowledge, is central to the Abrahamic religions.The book explores the ambivalence about religious knowledge within Christianity. Some religious thinkers explicitly accepted and sought religious knowledge, as did St. Thomas Aquinas, while others, notably Soren Kierkegaard, cast knowledge and seeking it as incompatible with faith. The book also examines two antithetical religious intuitions about knowledge, both at home in the Christian tradition. For one, faith requires a struggle with doubt. For the other, faith requires a certainty that excludes doubt. For the first, religious knowledge would destroy faith. For the second, religious knowledge is compatible with faith and completes it.Though the book focuses on the Christian tradition, it also considers other traditions, including a chapter on the place of religious knowledge in nontheistic religious traditions. The final chapter examines how coming to Wisdom as personified in the Jewish and Christian traditions may be distinct from attaining religious knowledge.

Hobby Lobby, David argues that such cases need not involve pitting flesh-and-blood individuals against the rights of so-called "corporate moral persons." Instead, David proposes that such disputes should be resolved by attending to the moral quality of group actions.

Providing an extended defense of anti-theism - the view that God's existence would (or does) actually make the world worse in certain respects - Lougheed explores God's impact on a broad range of concepts including privacy, understanding, dignity, and sacrifice.

This book is the first treatment at length of negative, or apophatic, theology within the analytic tradition.

This book addresses the different forms that religious belief can take. The book addresses the issue of the relation between belief and faith, the issue of what Soren Kierkegaard called the subjectivity of faith, and the issue of the relation between religious belief and religious experience.

This book challenges the widespread assumption of the incompatibility of evolution and the biological design argument.

This book addresses several dimensions of religious revelation. In the book's final chapter a particularly significant form of religious revelation is identified and examined: pervasive revelation.

With a focus on three intertwined concepts - God's nature, the formal structure of time, and the metaphysics time, including the relationship between temporal entities and a timeless God - the chapters analyse various solutions to the problem of foreknowledge and freedom, revealing the advantages and drawbacks of each.

This book develops a novel argument which combines the Kalam with the Thomistic Cosmological Argument.

Animal suffering constitutes perhaps the greatest challenge to rational belief in the existence of God. Considerations that render human suffering theologically intelligible seem inapplicable to animal suffering. In this book, Dougherty defends radical possibilities for animal afterlife that allow a soul-making theodicy to apply to their case.

This book provides a coherent and systematic analysis of Miguel de Unamuno's notion of religious faith and the reasoning he offers in defense of it.

Thinking about Religion examines cutting-edge breakthroughs from across the sciences concluding that religion persists because the mind is primed for faith, ready to grasp and fiercely defend beliefs that make sense but defy logic.

A Theory of the Absolute develops a worldview that is opposed to the dominant paradigm of physicalism and atheism. It provides powerful arguments for the existence of the soul and the existence of the Absolute. It shows that faith is not in contradiction to reason.

Engaging several recent and important discussions in the mainstream epistemological literature surrounding 'pragmatic encroachment', the volume asks, amongst others, the question: Do the high stakes involved in accepting or rejecting belief in God raise the standards for knowledge that God exists?

Digitalism is a philosophical strategy that uses new computational ways of thinking to develop naturalistic but meaningful ways of thinking about bodies, souls, universes, gods, and life after death. Your Digital Afterlives examines four recently developed and digitally inspired theories of life after death.

Most modern literature on the rationality of religious belief is primarily written from Christian and Secular perspectives, the introduction of a reflective Muslim perspective provides a fresh and alternative perspective. This work aims to pioneer an engagement with contemporary philosophical scholarship from the perspective of a reflective Muslim

The book offers a novel approach to the idea of divinity in guise of a philosophical doctrine called 'Logical Pantheism', according to which the only way to establish the existence of God undeniably is by equating God with Logical Space.

This book is about religion, pacifism, and the nonviolence that informs pacifism in its most coherent form. Although moral support for pacifism is presented, a main focus of the book is on religious support for pacifism, found in various religious traditions.

Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things.

As it is possible for individuals to come into the presence of God - to have this phenomenal experience - so it is possible for them to come into the presence of persons. Kellenberger explores how coming into the presence of persons is structurally analogous with coming into the presence of God.

In this volume, scholars draw deeply on negative theology in order to consider some of the oldest questions in the philosophy of religion that stand as persistent challenges to inquiry, comprehension, and expression.

This book examines the so-called hiddenness argument of the Canadian philosopher John L. Even though a plausible case is made that the hiddenness argument is unsound, it is beyond dispute that the argument deserves more serious reflection by theists and atheists alike.

Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things.

This unique Handbook provides a sophisticated, scholarly overview of the most advanced thought regarding the idea of life after death. Its comprehensive coverage encompasses historical, religious, philosophical and scientific thinking.Starting with an overview of ancient thought on the topic, The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife examines in detail the philosophical coherence of the main traditional notions of the nature of the afterlife including heaven, hell, purgatory and rebirth. In addition (and breaking with traditional conceptions) it also explores the most recent exciting advance ¿ digital models. Later sections include analysis of various possible metaphysical accounts that might make sense of the afterlife (including substance dualism, emergent dualism and materialism) and the science of near death experiences as well as the links between human psychology and our attitude to the afterlife.Key features: ¿ Grounded in the most advanced philosophical, theological and scientific thinking¿ Contributions by eminent scholars from the world¿s top universities¿ Balanced treatment of fundamental issues that are relevant to everyone¿ Diverse approaches ranging from the religious to the scientific, from the optimistic to the pessimistic¿ A major section on the meaning of the afterlife which includes chapters on fear, purpose, evil, and issues regarding identityThe Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife is essential reading for scholars, researchers and advanced students researching attitudes to and effects of beliefs about death and life after death from philosophical, historical, religious, psychological and scientific perspectives.