Search results for ""Author J. L. Schellenberg""
Cornell University Press Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion
"There is no attempt here to lay down as inviolable or to legislate certain ways of looking at things or ways of proceeding for philosophers of religion, only proposals for how to deal with a range of basic issues—proposals that I hope will ignite much fruitful discussion and which, in any case, I shall take as a basis for my own ongoing work in the field."—from the Preface Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of religious and irreligious belief, the varieties of religious skepticism, and the nature of religion itself. From the author's searching analysis of faith emerges a novel understanding of propositional faith as requiring the absence of belief. Schellenberg asks what the aims of the field should be, setting out a series of principles for carrying out some of the most important of these aims. His account of justification considers not only belief but also other responses to religious claims and distinguishes the justification of responses, propositions, and persons. Throughout Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, Schellenberg is laying the groundwork for an elaboration of his own vision while at the same time suggesting how philosophers might rethink assumptions guiding most of today's work in analytic philosophy of religion.
£24.99
Oxford University Press What God Would Have Known
Classical Christian ideas loom large in philosophy of religion today. But arguments against Christian doctrine have been neglected. J. L. Schellenberg''s new book remedies this neglect. And it does so in a novel way, by linking facts about human intellectual and moral development to what God would have known at the time of Jesus.The tide of human development, which the early Christians might have expected to corroborate their teaching, has in fact brought many results that run contrary to that teaching. Or at least it will be seen to have done so, says Schellenberg, when we think about the consequences of any God existent then being fully cognizant, when Christian doctrine was first formed, of all that we have laboriously learned since then. Newly discovered facts, not just about such things as evolution and the formation of the New Testament but also about mental illness, violent punishment, the relations between women and men, and the status of same-sex intimacy, suggest detailed new
£30.00
Cornell University Press The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism
The Wisdom to Doubt is a major contribution to the contemporary literature on the epistemology of religious belief. Continuing the inquiry begun in his previous book, Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, J. L. Schellenberg here argues that given our limitations and especially our immaturity as a species, there is no reasonable choice but to withhold judgment about the existence of an ultimate salvific reality. Schellenberg defends this conclusion against arguments from religious experience and naturalistic arguments that might seem to make either religious belief or religious disbelief preferable to his skeptical stance. In so doing, he canvasses virtually all of the important recent work on the epistemology of religion. Of particular interest is his call for at least skepticism about theism, the most common religious claim among philosophers. The Wisdom to Doubt expands the author's well-known hiddenness argument against theism and situates it within a larger atheistic argument, itself made to serve the purposes of his broader skeptical case. That case need not, on Schellenberg's view, lead to a dead end but rather functions as a gateway to important new insights about intellectual tasks and religious possibilities.
£24.99
Cornell University Press Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason
Why, if a loving God exists, are there "reasonable nonbelievers," people who fail to believe in God but through no fault of their own? In Part 1 of this book, the first full-length treatment of its topic, J. L. Schellenberg argues that when we notice how a relationship with God logically presupposes belief in God, we have grounds to conclude that there would be no reasonable nonbelievers if theism were true, and thus—given their existence—grounds for atheism. This argument, he maintains, is not defeated by any of an array of counterarguments seeking to justify divine hiddenness drawn from the work of such writers as Pascal, Kierkegaard, Butler, and Hick, and from the author's own imagination—arguments meticulously scrutinized in the book's second part. Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason has generated a great deal of interest and discussion since its first publication in 1993 and continues to set the agenda for work on its issues today.
£45.90
