RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE; METAPHYSICS IN AN ERA OF HISTORY

Abstract. Ian Barbour's Religion in an Age of Science is a welcome systematic, theoretical overview of the relations between science and religion, culminating his long career with a balanced and insightful appraisal. The hallmarks of his synthesis are critical realism, holism, and process thought. Barbour makes even more investment in process philosophy and theology than in his previous works. This invites further inquiry about the adequacy of a highly general process metaphysics in dealing with our particular, deeply historical world; also further inquiry about the adequacy of its panexperientialism and incrementalism.     

Scientific Naturalism, the Mind-Body Relation, and Religious Experience

Although attempts to explain religious experience in terms of brain processes usually presuppose the identification of scientific naturalism with the s ensationist, a theistic, m aterialist version of naturalism (naturalism_sam), this version is inadequate for science, and human experience more generally, for numerous reasons. An alternative version, based on p anexperientialism, p anentheism, and a p rehensive doctrine of perception (naturalism_ppp), not only avoids those problems but also allows for religious experience understood as the soul's direct experience of a Holy Reality.