Reasonable Perspectives on Religion

by Curtis, Richard; Barrett, Kevin; Bellah, Robert N.; Benedikt, Michael; Boer, Roland; Carse, James; Chuman, Joseph; Griffin, David Ray; Harms, William F.; Herrick, Paul; Horn, Patrick Rogers; Olson, Gary; Saxton, Alexander

• ISBN13: 9780739141892
• ISBN10: 0739141899
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-04
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

After the surprising publishing success of the so-called New Atheists it has become clear that there is a market for critical discussions about religion. A religion is much more complex than a set of beliefs which cannot be proven, as the New Atheists argue. There is, in fact, much more to religion and much more to the arguments about its truth claims. This book seeks to bring together a range of discussions, both critical and apologetic, each of which examines some part of religion and its functions. Half of the contributors are critical of some element of religion and the other half are apologetic in nature, seeking to defend or extend some particular religious argument. Covering a wide range of topics, including ethics, religious pluralism, the existence of God, and reasonableness of Islam, these pieces have in common arguments that are made in careful and scholarly ways_they represent reasonable perspectives on a wide swath of contemporary religious debates, in contrast to the unreasonableness that creeps into discussions on religion in American society.

Author Biography

Richard Curtis teaches philosophy in an adjunct capacity at various colleges in the Seattle, WA area.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Worldview Is the Brain's Operating System	p. 1
The God Debates and the Materialist Interpretation of History	p. 17
Sense and Nonsense in Religion and Belief	p. 35
All Religions Are Cousins: Religion in Human Evolution	p. 47
Hegel's Metaphysics and Religious Pluralism	p. 61
Getting "Ought" from "Is": A Practical Solution for Materialists	p. 69
Toward a Neuropolitics of Empathy	p. 81
Ethics and the Fabric of the Universe	p. 107
The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God: An Apologia	p. 115
God as Moral Praxis	p. 149
Toward a Materialist Theology, or, Why Atheists (and Marxists) Should Write Theology	p. 175
Is Islam Reasonable?	p. 203
Types of Religious Naturalism	p. 211
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