J. L. Schellenberg
NEWS
My latest article over at Aeon is on how the idea of macro-level human immaturity suggests a new solution to the problem of philosophy's progress: aeon.co/essays/why-philosophy-is-taking-its-time-to-answer-the-big-questions
The Purdue philosopher Paul Draper and I agree that for philosophy of religion truly to flourish and reach its potential, we need new models of inquiry about religion that are philosophical instead of theological, and scientific (in the broadest sense) instead of confessional. We recently collected essays on how to proceed with such a renewal project from fourteen philosophers at universities in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The collection has now been published by Oxford University Press under the title Renewing Philosophy of Religion: Exploratory Essays. You can learn more about it by going here global.oup.com/academic/product/renewing-philosophy-of-religion-9780198738909?cc=ca&lang=en& or here www.amazon.com/Renewing-Philosophy-Religion-Exploratory-Essays/dp/0198738900
My book The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford, 2015) is 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 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
My latest article over at Aeon is on how the idea of macro-level human immaturity suggests a new solution to the problem of philosophy's progress: aeon.co/essays/why-philosophy-is-taking-its-time-to-answer-the-big-questions
The Purdue philosopher Paul Draper and I agree that for philosophy of religion truly to flourish and reach its potential, we need new models of inquiry about religion that are philosophical instead of theological, and scientific (in the broadest sense) instead of confessional. We recently collected essays on how to proceed with such a renewal project from fourteen philosophers at universities in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The collection has now been published by Oxford University Press under the title Renewing Philosophy of Religion: Exploratory Essays. You can learn more about it by going here global.oup.com/academic/product/renewing-philosophy-of-religion-9780198738909?cc=ca&lang=en& or here www.amazon.com/Renewing-Philosophy-Religion-Exploratory-Essays/dp/0198738900
My book The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God (Oxford, 2015) is 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 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.