J. L. Schellenberg
My most recent book, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford, 2015), has just come out in paperback:
www.amazon.com/Hiddenness-Argument-Philosophys-Challenge-Belief/dp/0198733089
While at Amazon, you might also check out Evolutionary Religion (Oxford 2013), likewise available in paperback, for the more religiously positive side of my thinking. Or go straight to it from here:
www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Religion-J-L-Schellenberg/dp/0198744366
For a quick taste of my overall religious outlook, try this brief article recently solicited for a Christian periodical (Word & World) exploring the topic of life without God: Religion without God (and without Turning East).
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I’m a Canadian philosopher known both for my atheism and for my defense of a broader skepticism compatible with atheism -- a form of skepticism which, as it happens, opens a path to a new evolutionary brand of religion.
In the late ‘80s of the last century I did a DPhil in philosophy at Oxford (studying with Richard Swinburne, David Brown, Maurice Wiles, and Anthony Kenny). Currently I am Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University.
My first book, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Cornell 1993; paperback 2006), introduced a new argument for atheism now known as the hiddenness argument. (My short 2015 book from Oxford, mentioned at the top of this page, makes this argument widely accessible.) The hiddenness argument has enjoyed a good deal of attention in philosophy. As a result, 'the problem of divine hiddenness' is now commonly discussed alongside ‘the problem of evil’ in philosophy classrooms and texts around the world.
But in the late 1990s several factors conspired to push me beyond the theism/atheism debate and into more fundamental investigations in philosophy of religion. The result was three books that make a trilogy: Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism, and The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion (Cornell 2005, 2007, 2009; paperback 2012). Contemporary western philosophers can be a little reluctant to go into regions beyond theism and beyond belief, but truly fundamental thinking -- which philosophy is supposed to be about -- will inevitably take us there. And as I argue in the trilogy, a new reconciliation of reason and religion is waiting there.
Writing the trilogy was an interesting creative experience. So was the realization, just as I was completing it, that there was an evolutionary framework ready, as it were, to receive all my results. In a book called Evolutionary Religion, published by Oxford in 2013 and intended for a wide audience, I put that framework in place.
The emphasis here is on completing the shift from human to scientific timescales, and coming thereby to see how we exist at a very early and immature stage in the development of intelligence and culture on our planet, with many millions of years of future development – whether experienced by our species or others – potentially lying ahead of us. Seeing this, we will also see that the central question about faith and reason is whether there is a form of religion appropriate to our place in time and our present immaturity. What the trilogy calls ‘skeptical religion,’ an imaginative rather than believing species of faith, invites our attention (in part) because it appears to be thus appropriate.
Evolutionary Religion encapsulates my recent work on philosophy of religion, concerned with deep time and religious immaturity. But the immaturity view has consequences for other areas of philosophy, and indeed for a very wide range of issues in human life. I am presently hard at work exploring these connections in detail.
My most recent book, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford, 2015), has just come out in paperback:
www.amazon.com/Hiddenness-Argument-Philosophys-Challenge-Belief/dp/0198733089
While at Amazon, you might also check out Evolutionary Religion (Oxford 2013), likewise available in paperback, for the more religiously positive side of my thinking. Or go straight to it from here:
www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Religion-J-L-Schellenberg/dp/0198744366
For a quick taste of my overall religious outlook, try this brief article recently solicited for a Christian periodical (Word & World) exploring the topic of life without God: Religion without God (and without Turning East).
------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m a Canadian philosopher known both for my atheism and for my defense of a broader skepticism compatible with atheism -- a form of skepticism which, as it happens, opens a path to a new evolutionary brand of religion.
In the late ‘80s of the last century I did a DPhil in philosophy at Oxford (studying with Richard Swinburne, David Brown, Maurice Wiles, and Anthony Kenny). Currently I am Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University.
My first book, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Cornell 1993; paperback 2006), introduced a new argument for atheism now known as the hiddenness argument. (My short 2015 book from Oxford, mentioned at the top of this page, makes this argument widely accessible.) The hiddenness argument has enjoyed a good deal of attention in philosophy. As a result, 'the problem of divine hiddenness' is now commonly discussed alongside ‘the problem of evil’ in philosophy classrooms and texts around the world.
But in the late 1990s several factors conspired to push me beyond the theism/atheism debate and into more fundamental investigations in philosophy of religion. The result was three books that make a trilogy: Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism, and The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion (Cornell 2005, 2007, 2009; paperback 2012). Contemporary western philosophers can be a little reluctant to go into regions beyond theism and beyond belief, but truly fundamental thinking -- which philosophy is supposed to be about -- will inevitably take us there. And as I argue in the trilogy, a new reconciliation of reason and religion is waiting there.
Writing the trilogy was an interesting creative experience. So was the realization, just as I was completing it, that there was an evolutionary framework ready, as it were, to receive all my results. In a book called Evolutionary Religion, published by Oxford in 2013 and intended for a wide audience, I put that framework in place.
The emphasis here is on completing the shift from human to scientific timescales, and coming thereby to see how we exist at a very early and immature stage in the development of intelligence and culture on our planet, with many millions of years of future development – whether experienced by our species or others – potentially lying ahead of us. Seeing this, we will also see that the central question about faith and reason is whether there is a form of religion appropriate to our place in time and our present immaturity. What the trilogy calls ‘skeptical religion,’ an imaginative rather than believing species of faith, invites our attention (in part) because it appears to be thus appropriate.
Evolutionary Religion encapsulates my recent work on philosophy of religion, concerned with deep time and religious immaturity. But the immaturity view has consequences for other areas of philosophy, and indeed for a very wide range of issues in human life. I am presently hard at work exploring these connections in detail.
