THE VARIETIES AND REVISIONS OF ATHEISM

Abstract. The philosopher Antony Flew has argued for decades that theistic arguments cannot meet criteria of truth. In this essay I respond to Flew's recent announcement that research into the emergence of DNA provides grounds for rational belief in an intelligent orderer, a “God.” Flew's theistic turn is important for philosophers of religion and the wider science‐and‐religion dialogue. It becomes apparent, however, that Flew's “conversion” is not as decisive as one might imagine. While he admits growth in scientific and philosophical understanding, he rejects the idea of growth in religious understanding. Further, he endorses a version of “theoretical theism” while denying the practical importance of belief. Such denial of practical conviction is part of a modernist mindset that separates freedom from the embeddedness of human beings in the natural world. I conclude by noting that the entanglement of human action and wider physical processes, an entanglement seen emblematically in the environmental crisis, requires not only considering the importance of intelligence and order in the emergence of life but also the significance of human agency in claims about the divine and the natural world.     

Blind Intuitions: Modernism's Critique of Idealism

Adorno contends that something of what we think of knowing and rational agency operate in ways that obscure and deform unique, singular presentations by relegating them to survival-driven interests and needs; hence, in accordance with the presumptions of transcendental idealism, we have come to mistake what are, in effect, historically contingent, species-subjective ways of viewing the world for an objective understanding of the world. And further, this interested understanding of the world is deforming in a more radical way than just obscuring what is there for the sake of interested needs and purposes; these instrumental ways of knowing and acting, are broadly self-interested, in the interest of survival, without effective concern for the well-being and worth of others; by becoming generalized and exclusive, hegemonic, by driving out modes of encountering things and persons that support their differences and independence, their needs and interests, these instrumental practices are the deepest cause of the ills of our time. As heightened forms of rational self-interest, self-interest being the drive of reason, transcendental interests suppress the interests of others. Adorno argues that modernist artistic practices perform a critique of the set of assumptions governing idealism by demonstrating how there is a suppressed rational form of human comportment directed towards the making and comprehension of unique sensuous particulars. Art, according to Adorno's ‘Aesthetic Theory’, is a broken off and isolated fragment of human knowing; in its hibernates the rational forms of acting and knowing that have been suppressed in the coming to be of Enlightened modernity.     

Heidegger on Human Finitude: Beginning at the End

Interpreters generally understand Heidegger's notion of finitude in one of two ways: (1) as our mortality – that, in the end, we are certain to die; or (2) the susceptibility of our self‐ and world‐understanding to collapse – the fragility and vulnerability of human sense‐making. In this paper, I put forward an alternative account of what Heidegger means by ‘finitude’: human self‐ and world‐understanding is non‐transparently grounded in a ‘final end.’ Our self‐ and world‐understanding, that is, begins at the end, and authenticity requires us to interpretively appropriate the full range of this understanding. After laying out this view of finitude, via an analogical appeal to the Socratic account of action and desire in the Gorgias, I discuss its relationship to the two leading views of finitude mentioned above.     

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION AS THE AWAKENING OF GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS: A DIMENSIONAL SHIFT IN THE TECHNOLOGY OF MIND

Abstract. Great spiritual and philosophical traditions through the ages have sought to tap and articulate the grammar or logic of the fundamental unified field that is the common generative ground of our diverse worldviews, religions, cultures, ideologies, and disciplinary languages. I suggest that we are in the midst of a profound dimensional shift in our rational capacity to process reality, and I seek to articulate the implications of this evolutionary shift to global reason and awakened consciousness for all aspects of our human and rational enterprise. It is clear that we are in the midst of an unprecedented shift in the human condition—a global renaissance that affects every aspect of our cultural lives, self‐understanding, experience, and world making. This evolutionary transformation, when seen through the dilated global lens, has been emerging through the ages on a global scale. I suggest that this advance in our technology of mind is of an order of magnitude that is so radical and comprehensive that the very concept of a person, of what it means to be human, of our encounter with Reality, and of all our hermeneutical arts including the sciences are likewise taken to a higher, global, dimension. I explore this emergent grammar of spiritual transformation to global, dialogic, integral, and holistic consciousness, the global awakening of reason, scientific knowing, and the holistic worldview.     

CAN WE STILL TALK ABOUT “TRUTH” AND “PROGRESS” IN INTERDISCIPLINARY THINKING TODAY?

On a cultural level, and for Christian theology as part of a long tradition in the evolution of religion, evolutionary epistemology “sets the stage,” as it were, for understanding the deep evolutionary impact of our ancestral history on the evolution of culture, and eventually on the evolution of disciplinary and interdisciplinary reflection. In the process of the evolution of human knowledge, our interpreted experiences and expectations of the world (and of the ultimate questions we humans typically pose to the world) have a central role to play. What evolutionary epistemology also shows us is that we humans can indeed take on cognitive goals and ideals that cannot be explained or justified in terms of survival‐promotion or reproductive advantage only. Therefore, once the capacities for rational knowledge, moral sensibility, aesthetic appreciation of beauty, and the propensity for religious belief have emerged in our biological history, they cannot be explained only in biological/evolutionary terms. Finally, in this way a door is opened for seeing problem solving as a central activity of our research traditions. As philosophers of science have argued, one of the most important shared rational resources between even widely divergent disciplines is problem solving as the most central and defining activity of all research traditions. As will become clear, the very diverse reasoning strategies of theology and the sciences clearly overlap in their shared quests for intelligible problem solving, including problem solving on an empirical, experiential, and conceptual level.     

Human Nature and World Politics: Cognition,Identity, and Influence

Many psychologists deem it self‐evident that psychology can make fundamental contributions to our understanding of world politics. Many social scientists, however, argue that policymakers are tightly constrained by macro political and economic forces. This article will advance a systemic approach to world politics that challenges: (a) psychologists by highlighting ways in which macro social structures may transform the character of “basic” intrapsychic processes; (b) anti‐psychological theorists by showing that even the most sweepingly deterministic macro claims—for example, claims about the power of free trade to promote peace—rest on controversial assumptions about human nature. Systemic approaches to world politics are far more consistent with how seasoned diplomats—from Dag Hammarskjöld to Henry Kissinger—have historically approached geopolitical problems than are the traditional but increasingly obsolete micro and macro dualities that have dominated academic analyses.     

FIRST PERSON PLURAL: SELF‐UNITY AND SELF‐MULTIPLICITY IN THEOLOGY'S DIALOGUE WITH PSYCHOLOGY

In contradistinction to the contemporary human sciences, recent theological accounts of the individual‐in‐relation continue to defend the concept of the singular continuous self. Consequently, theological anthropology and the human sciences seem to offer widely divergent accounts of the sense of self‐fragmentation that many believe pervades the modern world. There has been little constructive interdisciplinary conversation in this area. In this essay I address the damaging implications of this oversight and establish the necessary conditions for future dialogue. I have three primary objectives. First, I show how the notion of personal continuity acquires philosophical theological significance through its close association with the concept of personal particularity. Second, through a discussion of contemporary accounts of self‐multiplicity, I clarify the extent of theological anthropology's disagreement with the human sciences. Third, I draw upon narrative accounts of identity to suggest an alternative means of understanding the experiential continuity of personhood that maintains the tension between self‐plurality, unity, and particularity and thereby reconnects philosophical theological concerns with human‐scientific analyses of the human condition. Narrative approaches to personhood are ideally suited to this purpose, and, I suggest, offer an intriguing solution to understanding and resolving the problem of self‐fragmentation that has caused recent theological anthropology so much consternation.     

Understanding Gerotranscendence in Older Adults: A New Perspective for Counselors

The author describes gerotranscendence as a process that occurs when older adults shift from a rational focus on the present‐day, material world to a more universal and transcendent perspective. Accompanying this shift is a desire to move toward the end of life with a sense of integrity and acceptance of one's choices. By gaining an understanding of gerotranscendence, counselors can better meet the needs of their aging clients. Using existing gerotranscendence literature as a guideline, suggestions are made for appropriate counseling interventions.     

Social cognition: learning about what matters in the social world

Social‐cognitive principles underlie people's learning about what matters in the social world. The benefits of these social‐cognitive principles reveal essential aspects of what it means to be human. But these social‐cognitive principles also have inherent costs , which highlight what it means to be ‘only human’. Social cognition is ‘social’ because what is learned concerns the social world, and where the learning takes place is in the social world. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of both sides of social cognition: (1) the cognition of social psychology principles of organization, explanation, knowledge activation and use; and (2) the social psychology of cognition principles of shared reality role enactment, social positions and identities and internal audiences. The fact that there are inherent costs of the same social‐cognitive principles for which there are essential benefits affords a new perspective on social‐cognitive costs that is different from either the classic ‘conflict’ perspective or the more current ‘limited capacity’ and ‘dual‐process’ perspectives. This ‘trade‐off’ perspective deepens both our understanding of the true nature of these principles and our appreciation of our common humanity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integral Spirituality, Deep Science, and Ecological Awareness

There is a growing understanding that addressing the global crisis facing humanity will require new methods for knowing, understanding, and valuing the world. Narrow, disciplinary, and reductionist perceptions of reality are proving inadequate for addressing the complex, interconnected problems of the current age. The pervasive Cartesian worldview, which is based on the metaphor of the universe as a machine, promotes fragmentation in our thinking and our perception of the cosmos. This divisive, compartmentalized thinking fosters alienation and self‐focused behavior. I aim to show in this essay that healing the fragmentation that is at the root of the current world crises requires an integrated epistemology that embraces both the rational knowledge of scientific empiricism and the inner knowledge of spiritual experience. This “deep science” transcends the illusion of separateness to discern the unity, the unbroken wholeness, that underlies the diverse forms of the universe. Our perception of connectedness, of our integral place in the web of life, emerges as an attribute of our connection with the eternal, beatific source of all existence. This awakened spiritual vision “widens our circle of understanding and compassion, to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature” (Einstein, quoted in Goldstein [1976] 1987). Our behavior, as it emerges naturally out of our perception of the sacredness of the natural world, will naturally embody love and respect for all life forms. This vision promotes the healing of our long‐standing alienation from the natural world and offers hope for renewal in the midst of widespread cultural deterioration and environmental destruction.     

SOUL‐MAKING,THEOSIS, AND EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY: AN IRENAEAN APPROACH

In Romans 5, St. Paul claims that death came into the world through Adam's sin. Many have taken this to foist on us a fundamentalist reading of Genesis. If death is the result of human sin, then, apparently, there cannot have been death in the world prior to human sin. This, however, is inconsistent with contemporary evolutionary biology, which requires that death predates the existence of modern humans. Although the relationship between Romans 5, Genesis, and contemporary science has been much discussed—often with goal of dissipating the idea that the two are in conflict—the specific issue of death entering the world through sin has remained difficult to resolve. I argue that the Eastern Orthodox tradition has the resources to respect both Romans 5 and contemporary science. Appealing to a broadly Irenaean notion of soul‐making, and to the idea of theosis, opens up space for an understanding of these passages that is both scientifically informed and Orthodox.     

A LITERARY TRINITY FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The cognitive sciences may be understood to contribute to religion‐and‐science as a metadisciplinary discussion in ways that can be organized according to the three persons of narrative, encoding the themes of consciousness, relationality, and healing. First‐person accounts are likely to be important to the understanding of consciousness, the “hard problem” of subjective experience, and contribute to a neurophenomenology of mind, even though we must be aware of their role in human suffering, their epistemic limits, and their indirect causal role in human behavior and subsequent experience. Second‐person discussions are important for understanding the empathic and embodied relationality upon which an externalist account of mind is likely to depend, increasingly uncovered and supported by social neuroscience. Third‐person accounts can be better understood in uncovering the us/them distinctions that they encode and healing the dangerous tribalisms that put an interdependent and communal world increasingly at risk.     

A REPLY TO ANNE KULL,EDUARDO CRUZ,AND MICHAEL DeLASHMUTT

In my reply to the essays by Anne Kull, Eduardo Cruz, and Michael DeLashmutt, I turn first to Cruz's charge that my use of “the sacred” is at odds with a growing religious studies mainstream that understands religion in secular terms. I suggest that this latter approach has its own problems, deriving partly from its neglect of the political, constructed nature of the category of “religion.” Second, in relation to Cruz's suggestion that my lack of attention to explanation compromises my claim to be social scientific, I defend a broader understanding of the human sciences and explore the relationships between understanding, critique, and history, and between sociology and theology. Third, reflecting on DeLashmutt's suggestion that I neglect the way that technical invention provides a glimpse of divine creativity, and the myth making that goes on around technology in vehicles such as science fiction, I argue that such issues have to be approached in a radically historical way. I conclude by identifying three challenges: to explore more deeply how technological objects form part of human being‐in‐the‐world, to show how my approach might offer practical resources for assessing technological and environmental developments, and to expand my analysis to include non‐Western religious traditions.     

The Problem of Criteria and the Necessity of Natural Theology

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ‐centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self‐disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post‐liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old‐fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self‐evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life‐world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach.     

Is Nature Enough? Yes

Abstract. Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism.     

REALISM WITHOUT TRUTH: A REVIEW OF GIERE'S SCIENCE WITHOUT LAWS AND SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVISM

An increasingly popular view among philosophers of science is that of science as action—as the collective activity of scientists working in socially‐coordinated communities. Scientists are seen not as dispassionate pursuers of Truth, but as active participants in a social enterprise, and science is viewed on a continuum with other human activities. When taken to an extreme, the science‐as‐social‐process view can be taken to imply that science is no different from any other human activity, and therefore can make no privileged claims about its knowledge of the world. Such extreme views are normally contrasted with equally extreme views of classical science, as uncovering Universal Truth. In Science Without Laws and Scientific Perspectivism, Giere outlines an approach to understanding science that finds a middle ground between these extremes. He acknowledges that science occurs in a social and historical context, and that scientific models are constructions designed and created to serve human ends. At the same time, however, scientific models correspond to parts of the world in ways that can legitimately be termed objective. Giere's position, perspectival realism, shares important common ground with Skinner's writings on science, some of which are explored in this review. Perhaps most fundamentally, Giere shares with Skinner the view that science itself is amenable to scientific inquiry: scientific principles can and should be brought to bear on the process of science. The two approaches offer different but complementary perspectives on the nature of science, both of which are needed in a comprehensive understanding of science.     

Redefining super recognition in the real world: Skilled face or person identity recognizers?

While there has been growing interest in the deployment of superior face recognizers in policing and security settings, it is likely that most real‐world tasks tap person rather than face recognition skills. We suggest that changes in real‐world screening tasks and terminology are required to distinguish these individuals from laboratory‐identified superior face recognizers, who have more potential in developing our theoretical understanding of the face recognition system.     

Soul,freedom and salvation: a literary,cinematic and musical journey to the crossroads

It is tempting to assume that the construction of rational arguments for the existence of God reflects the basic logical form of theological discourse and debate. However, it would also seem that most if not all major religions are grounded mainly in stories (including biographies) of divine or divinely inspired saviours or prophets, and that the form of much ordinary religious understanding is ‘narratival’. In addition, such latter‐day moral and social theorists as Alasdair MacIntyre have held that human moral and spiritual understanding cannot but take a narrative form, and regarded religious stories as contributing crucially to such appreciation. However, while it is tempting to support such claims by reference to classics of literary and artistic culture, it is arguable that much contemporary cinematic and other popular art has also developed the major moral and spiritual themes of classical culture in significantly insightful ways. This article explores the movie Crossroads as a particularly fertile instance of such development.     

Human Response to Environmental Changes

A range of factors affect human response to environmental change. They include the information available, understanding of the phenomenon, the nature of the decision-making processes implied, and the motivation for change. One major factor affecting decision making is that scientific information is not fully and accurately disseminated through society. The media have an important role in this process, but cannot disseminate all the necessary information in the manner that is required and do not reliably present information that is safe from misinterpretation. Further, scientific uncertainty about and complexity of biosphere changes complicate the process of reaching a rational decision. The mental model that people have of their world tends to be maintained unless it is contradicted by experienced events, so global change is likely to be understood only to the extent that it impacts on everyday life. Much of human reasoning is essentially analogical rather than based on standard logic, and its validity depends on finding a suitable analogical model. It is suggested that risk, or defence situations may provide useful analogies. Finally, we need to consider the motivational problems created by the sacrifices that must be made to deal with the problem effectively.     

The dynamic lift of developmental process

What are the essential properties of human intelligence, currently unparalleled in its power relative to other biological forms and relative to artificial forms of intelligence? We suggest that answering this question depends critically on understanding developmental process. This paper considers three principles potentially essential to building human‐like intelligence: the heterogeneity of the component processes, the embedding of development in a social world, and developmental processes that change the cognitive system as a function of the history of soft‐assemblies of these heterogeneous processes in specific tasks. The paper uses examples from human development and from developmental robotics to show how these processes also may underlie biological intelligence and enable us to generate more advanced forms of artificial intelligence.