Review – Tim Crane "The Meaning of Belief"

Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences, 2018

Testament? And who in mainstream Christianity is aware of the importance of 1 Enoch? the book of Jubilees? the Psalms of Solomon? At most there is awareness of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however much misunderstood. The answer to this religious ferment, Jenkins says, lies in the Hellenistic period. The Jews in their homeland and the diaspora came into increased contact with Hellenistic philosophy, and Mesopotamian and Persian religious traditions. The so-called (and often neglected and little understood) Intertestamental Period, whose prolific writings shaped our modern notions of the afterlife, angels, apocalyptic, cosmic warfare, and so on, often escapes modern attention even from some scholars let alone the public because many of the surviving writings are either seen as "apocryphal" and so not in modern (Protestant) Bibles or are fragments or in languages such as Aramaic, or else in fairly inaccessible Greek texts. The Mesopotamian region, opened up to Greeks via the conquests of Alexander the Great, was crucial in the transmission of ideas from Persia to the West where Platonic thought was being developed. The brutality of life and the factional struggles in the area of (historic, note please, as Jenkins also does) Palestine where the Seleucid empire was losing its grip led to an apocalyptic flurry, where justice, however defined, might eventually triumph and wrongs be avenged. There was a need to believe in the Afterlife. In the first century CE, Roman repression and the destruction of the Temple led to a reconstruction of Judaism away from a religion of sacrifice with a particular place to call its own. The legacies of the Crucible years, as Jenkins shows, are not only to be found in Christianity and Judaism but also in Islam. These were the survivors. Others like Manichaeism, the Christian offshoot with an emphasis on dualism, and the varied forms of Gnosticism, did not fare so well but have left traces in modern thinking also. The wisdom and prescience of Jenkins are much needed today. It is to be hoped that he will continue writing and that this book will be read and attended to by those who want to understand the role of religion in culture.

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion

This article relates the philosophical discussion on naturalistic religious practice to Tim Crane’s 'The Meaning of Belief: Religion from an Atheist’s Point of View', in which he claims that atheists can derive no genuine solace from religion. I argue that Crane’s claim is a little too strong. There is a sense in which atheists can derive solace from religion and that fact is worth acknowledging (whether or not this counts as ‘genuine’ solace).

Religious Studies Review, 2007

. This book is a rigorous, yet refreshing, piece of analytic philosophy of religion because Schellenberg analyzes various difficult concepts (e.g., religion, belief, and faith) and draws many intricate distinctions (e.g., between faith-in and faith-that, belief-in and belief-that, assent and belief, and also between several kinds of religious skepticism). Moreover, his book is refreshing in that it concentrates on foundational issues in the philosophy of religion that have received comparatively little attention (e.g., questions about what religion is, what religious belief is, and what is required for faith). Schellenberg's culminating thesis is that faith does not require propositional belief and, more provocatively, that propositional faith is incompatible with propositional belief. A main point in his argument is that propositional faith involves a voluntary mental act of assent, whereas propositional belief is an involuntary mental state. He concludes with an interesting discussion on the general aims of the philosophy of religion as well as on the general principles for evaluating responses to religious claims. The thread that ties together all the various topics in Schellenberg's book is his aim to provide a thorough and systematic treatment of foundational issues in the philosophy of religion. Overall, this book is highly complex and therefore not recommended for beginners in philosophy; but it certainly deserves attention from advanced inquirers inside (and outside) the area of philosophy of religion.

American Atheist, 2000

A lecture given by Frank R. Zindler at the 26th National Convention of American Atheists in San Francisco, Saturday, 22 April 2000. "Weak Atheism" and "Strong Atheism" are defined in terms of the verifiability/falsifiability/testability theory of meaning.

This edited volume of essays will provide an extremely useful, critical companion to the writings of the four horsemen of the new atheism, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. The remarkable interest in the writings and pronouncements of these new atheists certainly requires interrogation, and the essays in this excellent book offer a range of perspectives for reflecting on, among other things, the substance of the new atheist critique of religion, the links between atheism and science, sociological explanations for the sudden and unexpected surge of interest in atheism, theological engagements with secular critiques and the epistemological links between the new atheism and religious fundamentalism. Ably put together by the editor Amarnath Amarasingam with the support of Warren Goldstein, series editor for Studies in Critical Research on Religion for Brill, I expect this volume to become essential reading for scholars and students, whether from theological, philosophical, sociological or religious studies disciplinary backgrounds. In what follows, I will outline the contents of the book before selecting, perhaps arbitrarily, two of the essays for more sustained reflection.

Zygon�, 2005

The philosopher Antony Flew has argued for decades that theistic arguments cannot meet criteria of truth. In this essay I respond to Flew's recent announcement that research into the emergence of DNA provides grounds for rational belief in an intelligent orderer, a "God." Flew's theistic turn is important for philosophers of religion and the wider science-and-religion dialogue. It becomes apparent, however, that Flew's "conversion" is not as decisive as one might imagine. While he admits growth in scientific and philosophical understanding, he rejects the idea of growth in religious understanding. Further, he endorses a version of "theoretical theism" while denying the practical importance of belief. Such denial of practical conviction is part of a modernist mindset that separates freedom from the embeddedness of human beings in the natural world. I conclude by noting that the entanglement of human action and wider physical processes, an entanglement seen emblematically in the environmental crisis, requires not only considering the importance of intelligence and order in the emergence of life but also the significance of human agency in claims about the divine and the natural world.

Mester, 2014

Introduction In discussions with colleagues and through reading various articles – scholarly and popular, by believers and non-believers – it is clear that Richard Dawkins, and New Atheism in general, is perceived as being antireligious. For this to be a fair charge, critics must first determine what it is to be anti-religious. Furthermore, the term ‘religion’ must necessarily be defined. No one is better placed to define, and understand the complexities and challenges in attempting to define, such a controversial and often emotive term, than the Religious Studies scholar. Suspecting that Dawkins’ views have been misunderstood and misrepresented, on this and other issues, I felt it pertinent to attempt to clarify what it is that Dawkins actually espouses, and to determine if this, and related criticisms, are warranted. During Richard Dawkins’ visit to Australia in December 2014, I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to interview him, with the appropriately naturalistic aesthet...

This paper explores the distinction between positive and negative atheism, analyzing their respective epistemological and metaphysical commitments. We ask what a clarification in terms that define belief for the atheist means for metaphysics and broader reality. I then look at the function of the ineffable in nature and the essence of existence. The reason for doing this is to locate an unknown which makes sense to the negative atheist. Not that the negative atheist believes that anything supernatural resides here—within this unknowability—but only to reveal where the negative atheist is inclined to place the existence of such an infinitely potential creative capacity that might otherwise be known to her as 'the fundamental essence and nature of all existence'. This validates the position of negative atheism as having a valid object of inquiry, without merely being another empty vacant kind of skepticism. The aim of the essay is not to argue for or against the existence of God but to clarify terms only, and to explore a little what such clarification means for the meaning of meaning.

In this article, we offer an overview of different version of contemporary atheism from the viewpoint of positive beliefs that are joined together with atheistic worldview. Our four main classes of atheism are scientistic atheism, philosophical atheism, tragic atheism and humanistic atheism, which can then be divided to various subclasses. With this classification, we aim to challenge the view according to which atheism is not a belief system but merely a lack of belief in some transcendent being. Moreover, there seems to be no atheism per se, but it always appears with some positive beliefs.