J. L. Schellenberg
NEWS
August 2019: Two new books of mine are either out or about to appear. The first, published by Bloomsbury and available from Amazon and elsewhere in hardback, paperback, and also a Kindle version on August 8, is Progressive Atheism: How Moral Evolution Changes the God Debate. The second, published by Cambridge University Press and available in both hardback and paperback on August 29 in the UK (October 31 elsewhere) is Religion After Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity.
Each of the books turns what I've been doing at one of the two 'poles' of my main work in philosophy of religion so far into a more general approach to relevant work in the field -- Progressive Atheism does this for my atheistic arguments, in particular the hiddenness argument, and Religion After Science does it for my constructive work on religion in the Cornell trilogy and Evolutionary Religion (Oxford 2013). Progressive Atheism argues, among other things, that the success of the hiddenness argument is a sign of larger cultural developments that pave the way for other new arguments of the same type. Religion After Science sharpens and develops my views on religious immaturity into an argument for the immaturity of the human 'religion project.' This argument turns out to have a variety of intriguing cultural consequences, including a new religious humanism and a completely new perspecive on the 'science and religion' debate.
Do the two books offer a unified message? Yes, they do! Indeed, those who look closely will see that Religion After Science subsumes Progressive Atheism in one corner of its agenda.
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I’m a Canadian philosopher known both for my atheism and for a broader skepticism compatible with atheism -- one that, 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, introduced a new argument for atheism now known as the hiddenness argument. My short book on the subject from Oxford, mentioned near the top of this page, is intended to make 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. 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 my short book Evolutionary Religion, which is 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 tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe even 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 adapted 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 precisely because it appears to be thus adapted.
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 additional connections in detail.
NEWS
August 2019: Two new books of mine are either out or about to appear. The first, published by Bloomsbury and available from Amazon and elsewhere in hardback, paperback, and also a Kindle version on August 8, is Progressive Atheism: How Moral Evolution Changes the God Debate. The second, published by Cambridge University Press and available in both hardback and paperback on August 29 in the UK (October 31 elsewhere) is Religion After Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity.
Each of the books turns what I've been doing at one of the two 'poles' of my main work in philosophy of religion so far into a more general approach to relevant work in the field -- Progressive Atheism does this for my atheistic arguments, in particular the hiddenness argument, and Religion After Science does it for my constructive work on religion in the Cornell trilogy and Evolutionary Religion (Oxford 2013). Progressive Atheism argues, among other things, that the success of the hiddenness argument is a sign of larger cultural developments that pave the way for other new arguments of the same type. Religion After Science sharpens and develops my views on religious immaturity into an argument for the immaturity of the human 'religion project.' This argument turns out to have a variety of intriguing cultural consequences, including a new religious humanism and a completely new perspecive on the 'science and religion' debate.
Do the two books offer a unified message? Yes, they do! Indeed, those who look closely will see that Religion After Science subsumes Progressive Atheism in one corner of its agenda.
------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m a Canadian philosopher known both for my atheism and for a broader skepticism compatible with atheism -- one that, 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, introduced a new argument for atheism now known as the hiddenness argument. My short book on the subject from Oxford, mentioned near the top of this page, is intended to make 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. 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 my short book Evolutionary Religion, which is 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 tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe even 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 adapted 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 precisely because it appears to be thus adapted.
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 additional connections in detail.
