无神论和科学无神论

人类是天然的无神论者。假如人类的历史果然有三百万年,人类有神的历史,最多也不过二十万年左右。在二百八十万年的漫长时期里,人类没有神,也不靠神的指导,发展了智力和能力,完成了自己的进化。近二十万年以来,在自己可以解决问题的范围内,从衣食住行、生儿育女到谋道谋财、治家治国,人们一般也不去求助于神灵。即使那些求助     

Believers and Their Disbelief

Several recent Roman Catholics who were known for their devotion have left accounts of their troubled faith. I consider three of these: St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Then I tell of the troubled atheism of Jean‐Paul Sartre. Finally, I use texts of Sartre and Teilhard to understand the unsettled nature of belief.     

Unicorn Atheism

Kripshe treats `god’ as an empty natural kind term such as `unicorn’. She applies Saul Kripke's fresh views about empty natural kinds to `god’. Metaphysically, says Kripshe, there are no possible worlds in which there are gods. Gods could not have existed, given that they do not actually exist and never did. Epistemologically, godlessness is an a posteriori discovery. Kripshe dismisses the gods in the same breath that she dismisses mermaids. Semantically, the perspective Kripshe finds most perspicacious, no counterfactual situation is properly describable as one in which there are gods. Perhaps it is not quite a necessary truth that there are no gods. According to Saul Kripke, failed natural kind terms are ill‐defined. Incorporating ill‐defined terms into declarative sentences yields only mock propositions. Just as the meteorologist has no professional interest in mock thunder, the logician has no professional interest in mock propositions. Kripshe disagrees with agnostics who assign a low probability to `There is at least one god’. The bearers of probabilities must be propositions. Despite this deference to science, Kripshe agrees with the a priori atheist that, necessarily, no future experience could constitute an encounter with a god. Divine revelation is impossible. Kripshe's a posteriori necessary atheism compares favorably to familiar forms of atheism and to non‐cognitivists. It reveals interesting challenges to a coherent formulation of atheism.     

Evidential Atheism

Here is a new version of the Evidential Problem of Evil.Theists claim that it is reasonable for atheists to believethat if God did exist, suffering would look just as it does now. I endorse this claim, however it cannot be deployedagainst my argument without the following epistemic principle:what we see makes p likely only if it is reasonable tobelieve it would be discernibly different if p were false. I demonstrate that this principle is mistaken. The paperalso responds to objections from Alvin Plantinga and PeterVan Inwagen that Gods existence is compatible with pointlessnatural evil. In particular, I argue that appeals to vaguenessdo not support the compatibility claim.     

Anselmian Atheism

On the basis of Chapter 15 of Anselm's Proslogion , I develop an argument that confronts theology with a trilemma: atheism, utter mysticism, or radical anti-Anselmianism. The argument establishes a disjunction of claims that Anselmians in particular, but not only they, will find disturbing: (a) God does not exist, (b) no human being can have even the slightest conception of God, or (c) the Anselmian requirement of maximal greatness in God is wrong. My own view, for which I argue briefly, is that (b) is false on any correct reading of what conceiving of requires and that (c) is false on any correct reading of the concept of God. Thus, my own view is that the argument establishes atheism. In any case, one consequence of the argument is that Anselmian theology is possible for human beings only if it lacks a genuine object of study.     

Disbelief as the Dual of Belief

The duality of truth and falsity in a Boolean algebra of propositions is used to generate a duality of belief and disbelief. To each additive probability measure that represents belief there corresponds a dual additive measure that represents disbelief. The dual measure has its own peculiar calculus, in which, for example, measures are added when propositions are combined under conjunction. A Venn diagram of the measure has the contradiction as its total space. While additive measures are not self‐dual, the epistemic state of complete ignorance is represented by the unique, monotonic, non‐additive measure that is self‐dual in its contingent propositions. Convex sets of additive measures fail to represent complete ignorance since they are not self‐dual.     

Case Formulation in Poststructural Narrative Therapy

This article offers a formulation structure for poststructural narrative therapy. As a self-declared constitutionalist approach, narrative therapy has neglected the issue of formulation, perhaps out of concern that it might lead to an essentialist and seemingly objective account of the person. However, provided care is taken around these dangers, there are advantages to formulation: It can provide much needed theoretical discipline in our thought, encourage us to reflect on how persons become trapped in problem-saturated identities and situations, and permit previously unforeseen intervention strategies. This article offers a simple structure for the development of a narrative therapeutic formulation, presented in four parts: subject positions, discourses, normalizing judgments, and disqualified knowledges. An example of a case is used to illustrate.     

Phenomenology and the Poststructural Critique of Experience

Abstract

Phenomenology is considered a philosophy of experience. But in the wake of French post‐structuralism beginning in the 1970s, the concept of experience within phenomenology has fallen under heavy critique. Even today, in the context of feminist philosophy the phenomenological concept of experience has yet to recover from the poststructuralist critique.

In this article, I will closely examine the poststructuralist critique of the concept of experience within the context of feminist theory. I will thereby refer first and foremost to the poststructuralist theorist Joan Scott, and her influential text “‘Experience’”. In my examination of the poststructuralist critique of experience, the leading question will be whether or not this critique, down to its details, can in fact be applied to phenomenology. My thesis is that phenomenology is able to withstand the poststructuralist critique of experience. Further, I will argue that post‐structuralism and phenomenology have more in common as regards the concept of experience than is usually admitted. For several reasons, it seems – as I will maintain – that both poststructuralist feminism and phenomenology are equally interested in a strong concept of experience and thus do not promote doing away with the concept.     

Militant Modern Atheism

Militant modern atheism, whose most eloquent champion is Richard Dawkins, provides an effective and necessary critique of fundamentalist forms of religion and their role in political life, both within states and across national boundaries. Because it is also presented as a more general attack on religion (tout court), it has provoked a severe reaction from scholars who regard its conception of religion as shallow and narrow. My aim is to examine this debate, identifying insights and oversights on both sides. Two distinct conceptions of religion are in play. For Dawkins and his allies (most notably Dan Dennett) religions are grounded in doctrines, propositions about supernatural entities, events and processes which the devout believe. Their beliefs prompt them to actions, which they support or rationalize by reference to the doctrines. Dawkins and Dennett view the acceptance of the doctrines as resting on cognitive misfiring — these are delusions to be outgrown or spells to be broken. By contrast, the religious scholars who criticize the militant atheists often view religion as centered in social practices that inform and enrich human lives. To the extent that there are doctrines that atheists might subject to epistemic evaluation, these are to be viewed as pieces of scaffolding, that are, in principle, dispensable. I argue that militant modern atheism is incomplete (and likely counter‐productive) so long as it fails to attend systematically to the roles religion fulfills in human lives. Yet it is important to achieve public clarity about the literal falsehood of the doctrines on which fundamentalists rely. The challenge is to develop a well‐articulated and convincing version of secular humanism. Meeting that challenge is, I claim, one of the central problems of philosophy today.     

论科学的无神论：一种启蒙传统

科学在许多情况下都是与宗教对立的,但是在某些场合又与宗教保持着若即若离的联系。在探索宇宙的无限奥秘、物质运动的绝对规律以及科学家对大自然的壮美表达无比赞叹的情怀方面,上帝作为宇宙的“逻格斯”以及宗教作为人类情感的“终极关怀”都一定程度地反映在人类的科学事业和科学家的个人情感中。所以,具有科学家和传教士双重身份的德日进     

无神论与道德

公共道德建设是目前社会上议论很多的话题,而这个话题又强烈地牵动着有神论和无 神论的敏感神经。自从数百年前开始实行政教分离,有神论逐步退出政治舞台前后,科学、 哲学、文学、艺术,也都先后从有神论的控制之下独立出来。有神论对于社会思想和社会 生活的影响,大体可以用道路越走越不宽广来形容。在这种情况下,有神论方面所能紧紧 抓住的领域,大约也就是道德建设了。     

Disbelief in belief: On the cognitive status of supernatural beliefs

Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific settings. We argue that Van Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray their being held as factual. We conclude with some remarks about the common failure of secular people to face the fact that some religious people really do believe wildly implausible things. Such incredulity, as evinced by Van Leeuwen and others, could be termed “disbelief in belief.”     

“无神论”与“信仰”

无神论对应的是完全否定任何超自然的存在（包括上帝与灵魂等）的观念体系,作为一种世界观．它的根基是唯物主义。“信仰”属于非理性范畴而与唯物主义风马牛不相及。马克思主义是科学而不是信仰。不幸的是多年来我们有些政治家和理论家把共产主义必然实现的政治信念也表述为‘‘信仰”。以致混淆了科学与宗教的区别。60年的治国经验提供给我们的重要教训之一就是：决不能引导或者放任某种政治信念异化为“信仰”。共产主义者根本不需要诉诸“信仰”来维持对既定目标的遵循。认为无神论者不能离开“信仰”的那些号称共产党员又拒绝承认自己信教．以及一方面追逐着金钱一方面又指责“信钱”就是“没有任何崇高信仰的人”的学者应该重温马克思恩格斯的有关论述。执政党处理与宗教界关系的现行原则是“政治上团结合作,信仰上互相尊重”：信教和不信教以及所信宗教不同的信徒之间在根本利益上是完全一致的：世界观上的差别是“形而上”的问题．将长期存在,应该在民主法制层面保证各自的公民权利,最终由社会文明的发展逐步融解。某些研究宗教问题的专家把“信仰”直接归入“精神价值层面”．必然使一些完全违反道德和法律的“信仰”不能不获得“尊重”．以致“信仰上互相尊重’’这个表述成为鸡肋。建议改用不会产生歧义的说法——“政治上团结合作。世界观上互相尊重”。     

Disbelief and Christonomy of the World1

In recent years, the debate on the relation between religion and politics has attracted renewed attention. One of the reasons is a new awareness of the significance of religious sources for moral and political convictions. Within Western theology and philosophy this may cause a certain tension to a secular view on autonomy. In the ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer it is, however, possible to find a notion of Christonomy that exceeds this tension by maintaining the insights of the claim of autonomy and yet qualifying this in a specific Christological sense. Bonhoeffer's view on Christonomy may therefore serve as a basis for a common ground of moral deliberation and yet point to a qualification of this common ground that moves beyond a separation of the worldly and the Christian.