Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, is generating a fair amount of press because of his claim that the laws of physics explain the Big Bang and remove the need for a Prime Mover. God in the Gap theists have thus been pushed further back in time to nothingness, which is the non-state that [...]
Tags:bellum omnium contra omnes·Big Bang·Deepak Chopra·deism·design·designer·Enya·God in the Gap·Leviathan·Natural Theology·New Age·physics·Prime Mover·spiritual realm·Stephen Hawking·The Grand Design·theism·theodicy·Thomas Hobbes·transcendent reality·watchmaker analogy·Where is the Design·William Paley·Yoga
Among scientists, physicists seem to be the most likely to believe in some version of an all powerful sentient being or force. While very few of them are willing to say what such a being or force might be, religionists are always keen to claim such statements as “evidence” for their gods.
I have always understood [...]
Tags:Big Bang·deism·design·laws of physics·physicists·Richard Dawkins·Stephen Hawking·theism
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the [...]
Tags:afterlife beliefs·Alexa Tullett·angst·anxiety·burials·Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right·distress·Do Hominid Burials Indicate a Belief in Spirits or Souls·effect of religiosity·Epiphenom·error reactions·fear·Future of An Illusion·grave goods·Homo neanderthalensis·Homo sapiens·Karl Marx·life after death·Michael Inzlicht·mortuary practices·Neanderthals·opiate·opium·proto-religion·received wisdom·Reflecting on God·Rhawn Joseph·Sigmund Freud·theism·Transmitter to God
Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has penned a manifesto for the “new agnosticism,” which he sees as an alternative to credulous theism on the the one hand and strident atheism on the other. Rosenbaum’s position deserves considerable merit and has some appeal, but I am not sure I can agree with him on this definition:
Agnosticism [...]
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The following statement comes from a “scholarly work” (his words, not mine) by Jay Michaelson, who apparently is a well known Jewish thinker and writer:
For nondual Judaism, God does not exist — God is existence itself. Experientially, God is simply all that is, once the illusion of the separate self is taken away. And religiously, [...]
Tags:Everything is God·Jay Michaelson·Jewish mysticism·pantheism·tautology·theism
