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Philosophy of religion

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Articles 1 - 19 of 19

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Dialogue Concerning The Existence And Nature Of God, Theodore J. Szpakowski Oct 2022

Dialogue Concerning The Existence And Nature Of God, Theodore J. Szpakowski

Student Publications

This fictional work is based on Euthyphro by Plato and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume. It mimics the dialogue style of these authors and places Socrates, Cleanthes, and Philo at Gettysburg College to discuss the existence and nature of God along with the author, a Gettysburg College student. In doing so, it shows how the questions asked by Plato and Hume are relevant today.


What We Mean When We Say "Religion": The Q'Ero Migrants Of Cusco, Peru, Autumn J. Delong, Mirtha Irco Feb 2022

What We Mean When We Say "Religion": The Q'Ero Migrants Of Cusco, Peru, Autumn J. Delong, Mirtha Irco

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article is based upon ethnographic research conducted with Q’ero Indigenous migrants living in Cusco, Peru in the fall of 2018. The Q’ero community originates from the village of Paucartambo and the surrounding areas, about a three days’ trek northeast of the city. These stories collected from the migrants emphasize the centrality of their spirituality and worldview in defining their sense of identity apart from that of greater society. In their rituals, these migrants draw upon an experience of the sacred which is manifest through performance, discipline, and practice – often more so than through belief, faith, or intellectualism. Based …


The (Un)Holy Bible: Slavery, Female Objectification, And Harm, Natalia A. D. Martins Apr 2021

The (Un)Holy Bible: Slavery, Female Objectification, And Harm, Natalia A. D. Martins

Senior Theses

This project further elucidates the ability that the Biblical text has of being used as a justification for immoral actions. By using a textualist approach, we find that analyzing the effects that the literal text could have if used to justify action, allows us to see what Scriptural-based morality is subject to at all times. We approach this matter by classifying Scriptural interpretations under a spectrum that varies by degree. This is useful to see that the lowest bar for an action to be theologically justifiable, is whether it is in accordance with a literal reading of the Biblical text. …


An Evaluative Framework For The Improvement Of Religious Practice In The Context Of Pluralism, Benjamin Ford Dardas Dec 2019

An Evaluative Framework For The Improvement Of Religious Practice In The Context Of Pluralism, Benjamin Ford Dardas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pluralism presents a troubling epistemic problem in that the inability to determine whether or not significant portions of a given religion’s cosmological and metaphysical belief set actually correspond to reality. Within this standstill there seems to be no way to prove yet alone maximize the epistemic rationality of continued religious practice, as each religion will claim to have a unique source of knowledge the others do not. However, if we set aside these unverifiable disputes, there remains an often underemphasized common thread: religions each have a conception of how this world ought to be. These conceptions involve how members of …


O My Neighbors, There Is No Neighbor, Harris B. Bechtol Dec 2019

O My Neighbors, There Is No Neighbor, Harris B. Bechtol

All Faculty Scholarship

This article meditates on the Christian command to love the neighbor as yourself by focusing on how both Jacques Derrida and Søren Kierkegaard have read this command. I argue that Derrida, failing in his faithfulness to Kierkegaard, makes a mistake when he includes this command in the Greek model of the politics of friendship in his Politics of Friendship. Such a mistake is illumined by Kierkegaard’s understanding of the neighbor in this command from Works of Love because this understanding helps to develop Derrida’s vision of a democracy and politics that resists the hegemony of the masculine and remains …


Review Of Hud Hudson, A Grotesque In The Garden, Matthew A. Benton Jan 2019

Review Of Hud Hudson, A Grotesque In The Garden, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

No abstract provided.


The Legacy Of A 'Living Library': The Transatlantic Reception Of John Smith, Derek A. Michaud Jan 2019

The Legacy Of A 'Living Library': The Transatlantic Reception Of John Smith, Derek A. Michaud

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Review Of Indian Thought And Western Theism: The Vedanta Of Ramanuja, Sucharita Adluri Sep 2018

Review Of Indian Thought And Western Theism: The Vedanta Of Ramanuja, Sucharita Adluri

Sucharita Adluri

No abstract provided.


Description, Prescription, And Value In The Study Of Religion, Bharat Ranganathan Jan 2018

Description, Prescription, And Value In The Study Of Religion, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

The study of religion is commonly divided into two sides. On the one side is the descriptive approach, including social scientific and historical scholars who seek to account for religion as it has been practiced. On the other side is the prescriptive approach, including religious ethicists, philosophers of religion, and theologians who seek to evaluate and prescribe religious practices and beliefs. But is this divide desirable or even tenable? Some scholars believe so, holding that the proper aim of religious studies ought to be delimited to the analysis and description of religious phenomena. Such a view, however, excludes those who …


Denominational Incompatibility And Religious Pluralism: A Non-Pluralist Response To A Pluralist Critique, Matthew Stinson Jan 2018

Denominational Incompatibility And Religious Pluralism: A Non-Pluralist Response To A Pluralist Critique, Matthew Stinson

Global Tides

Religious Pluralism is the view that no one religion is correct, and no religion enjoys special status in relation to the Ultimate. Recently, Samuel Ruhmkorff has defended Religious Pluralism from what we'll call 'The Incompatibility Objection': many religions appear to make incompatible claims about ultimate reality, and therefore they cannot all be true. Ruhmkorff defends Religious Pluralism from the incompatibility problem by applying a “subsets of belief” defense that non-pluralists may use in response to denominational differences within a religion. He argues that non-pluralists are faced with denominational incompatibility within whatever religion they are asserting is uniquely true. He further …


Living Joyfully After Losing Social Hope: Kierkegaard And Chrétien On Selfhood And Eschatological Expectation, J. Aaron Simmons Jan 2017

Living Joyfully After Losing Social Hope: Kierkegaard And Chrétien On Selfhood And Eschatological Expectation, J. Aaron Simmons

Religion Publications

In this essay, I offer an existential-phenomenological consideration of what it might look like to live joyfully after losing social hope. Using the example of the widespread hopelessness that many are feeling in light of the election of Donald Trump, I suggest that the danger of losing hope is that we can also lose our selfhood in the process. In order to develop a conception of “eschatological hope” that would be resistant to the loss of such social and political expectations, I draw specifically on Søren Kierkegaard’s notion that “the expectancy of faith is victory,” and Jean-Louis Chrétien’s idea of …


Review Of Indian Thought And Western Theism: The Vedanta Of Ramanuja, Sucharita Adluri Jan 2016

Review Of Indian Thought And Western Theism: The Vedanta Of Ramanuja, Sucharita Adluri

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


The Entanglement Of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, And Interrelatedness, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza Jan 2016

The Entanglement Of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, And Interrelatedness, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project weaves together the theoretically rich and diverse work of ancient materialist philosophers, modern philosophy which advanced a theory of monism, and contemporary philosophies that further extends monism into new terrain, including 'new materialism.' While monism is a strand of this project, the core features of this project are materiality and bodies; these two concepts create the particular entanglement and central thrust of this project, which is becoming. While this project is conceptually organized around matter and bodies, and a particular notion of becoming traced from ancient through contemporary thought, this project, also, introduces the importance of Gloria Anzaldúa …


On The Evolutionary Origins Of Religious Belief, Robert Duane Howard Dec 2015

On The Evolutionary Origins Of Religious Belief, Robert Duane Howard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Religious belief is a byproduct of evolutionarily designed cognitive mechanisms. The ubiquity of religious belief and experience across human cultures is explained by our common human psychology; our domain-specific cognitive mechanisms give rise, collectively, to the phenomenon of byproduct religious belief/experience. In this thesis, I will examine what I call religion-generating cognitive mechanisms, and I will argue that byproduct raw god-beliefs are developed by cultures into refined god-beliefs. These refined god-beliefs are co-opted by evolutionary processes and are cultural adaptations. My conception of “religious belief” in terms of raw and refined god-beliefs allows a disambiguation of the term “religion,” and …


Berkeley's Philosophy Of Religion, Kenneth L. Pearce Jan 2015

Berkeley's Philosophy Of Religion, Kenneth L. Pearce

Kenneth L Pearce

Traditionally, religious doctrines and practices have been divided into two categories. Those that purport to be justified by natural reason alone are said to be part of natural religion, while those which purport to be justified only by appeal to supernatural revelation are said to be part of revealed religion. One of the central aims of Berkeley's philosophy is to understand and defend both the doctrines and the practices of both natural and revealed (Christian) religion. This chapter will provide a survey of this aspect of Berkeley's thought.


The Incoherence Of Denying My Death, Lajos L. Brons Dec 2013

The Incoherence Of Denying My Death, Lajos L. Brons

Lajos Brons

The most common way of dealing with the fear of death is denying death. Such denial can take two and only two forms: strategy 1 denies the finality of death; strategy 2 denies the reality of the dying subject. Most religions opt for strategy 1, but Buddhism seems to be an example of the 2nd. All variants of strategy 1 fail, however, and a closer look at the main Buddhist argument reveals that Buddhism in fact does not follow strategy 2. Moreover, there is no other theory that does, and neither can there be. This means that there is no …


Ability-Based Objections To No-Best-World Arguments, Brian Kierland, Philip Swenson Nov 2012

Ability-Based Objections To No-Best-World Arguments, Brian Kierland, Philip Swenson

Brian Kierland

In the space of possible worlds, there might be a best possible world (a uniquely best world or a world tied for best with some other worlds). Or, instead, for every possible world, there might be a better possible world. Suppose that the latter is true, i.e., that there is no best world. Many have thought that there is then an argument against the existence of God, i.e., the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being; we will call such arguments no-best-world arguments. In this paper, we discuss ability-based objections to such arguments; an ability-based objection to a …


Monotheism And Tolerance: Recovering A Religion Of Reason, Robert Erlewine Dec 2009

Monotheism And Tolerance: Recovering A Religion Of Reason, Robert Erlewine

Robert Erlewine

Why are religious tolerance and pluralism so difficult to achieve? Why is the often violent fundamentalist backlash against them so potent? Robert Erlewine looks to a new religion of reason for answers to these questions. Drawing on Enlightenment writers Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, and Hermann Cohen, who placed Christianity and Judaism in tension with tolerance and pluralism, Erlewine finds a way to break the impasse, soften hostilities, and establish equal relationships with the Other. Erlewine's recovery of a religion of reason stands in contrast both to secularist critics of religion who reject religion for the sake of reason and to …


1890-1891 Annual Program, Phi Sigma Jan 1890

1890-1891 Annual Program, Phi Sigma

Annual Programs

This annual program outlines the topics discussed and presented at Phi Sigma's monthly meetings from April 1890 to March 1891. Topics include readings from The Voice, music, drama, history, religious philosophy, social issues, and art.