The endeavour to prove God's existence through rational argumentation was an integral part of classical Islamic theology (kalam) and philosophy (falsafa), thus the frequently articulated assumption in the academic literature. The Islamic discourse in question is then often compared to the discourse on arguments for God's existence in the western tradition, not only in terms of its objectives but also in terms of the arguments used: Islamic thinkers, too, put forward arguments that have been labelled as cosmological, teleological, and ontological. This book, however, argues that arguments for God's existence are absent from the theological and philosophical works of the classical Islamic era. This is not to say that the arguments encountered there are flawed arguments for God's existence. Rather, it means that the arguments under consideration serve a different purpose than to prove that God exists. Through a close reading of the works of several mutakallimun and falasifa from the 3rd-7th/9th-13th century, such as al-Baqillani and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi as well as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, this book proffers a re-evaluation of the discourse in question, and it suggests what its participants sought to prove if it is not that God exists.

Spinoza is among the most controversial and asymmetrical thinkers in the tradition and history of modern European philosophy. Since the 17th century, his work has aroused some of the fiercest and most intense polemics in the discipline. From his expulsion from the synagogue and onwards, Spinoza has never ceased to embody the secular, heretical and self-loathing Jew. Ivan Segre, a philosopher and celebrated scholar of the Talmud, discloses the conservative underpinnings that have animated Spinoza's numerable critics and antagonists. Through a close reading of Leo Strauss and several contemporary Jewish thinkers, such as Jean-Claude Milner and Benny Levy (Sartre's last secretary), Spinoza: the Ethics of an Outlaw aptly delineates the common cause of Spinoza's contemporary censors: an explicit hatred of reason and its emancipatory potential. Spinoza's radical heresy lies in his rejection of any and all blind adherence to Biblical Law, and in his plea for the freedom and autonomy of thought. Segre reclaims Spinoza as a faithful interpreter of the revolutionary potential contained within the Old Testament.

Can human beings be free and responsible if there is a God? Anselm of Canterbury, the first Christian philosopher to propose that human beings have a really robust free will, offers viable answers to questions which have plagued religious people for at least two thousand years: If divine grace cannot be merited and is necessary to save fallen humanity, how can there be any decisive role for individual free choice to play? If God knows today what you are going to choose tomorrow, then when tomorrow comes you have to choose what God foreknew, so how can your choice be free? If human beings must have the option to choose between good and evil in order to be morally responsible, must God be able to choose evil? Anselm answers these questions with a sophisticated theory of free will which defends both human freedom and the sovereignty and goodness of God.

Lowell Streiker, a longtime expert on free church movements and cults, examines a vital and growing free church movement--an impressive movement that is yet largely unknown. Founded in Norway more than 90 years ago, it is a church without membership rolls, clergy, central administration, tithing, or even a name. Outsiders call them Smith's Friends after their founder, Johan Oscar Smith. On a worldwide basis, some 30,000 people participate in more than 200 churches in 50 countries.

As a phenomenologist of religion, Streiker attempts to be descriptive, analytic, and constructively critical. In order to set Smith's Friends in historical, social, and religious perspectives, he first examines their similarities to and differences from earlier Norwegian revival movements. He then provides a detailed phenomenological report on Smith's Friends, based on field study in America and Europe. He examines their worship, hymnody, theology, and their everyday way of life. As a friendly critic, Streiker entertains the hope that Smith's Friends will come out of their small-church shell and actively engage Christendom and the world. If they do, Streiker believes we would all be better impressed by the influence of this extremely positive force for spiritual renewal. Streiker's examination presents an important study for scholars of religion, sociologists, psychologists, historians, and the general public concerned with modern religious life.

This anthology brings together over a dozen articles published by David Nimmer over the past decade regarding copyright, together with updated commentary weaving together the various threads running through them. The Unifying theme running through the work is the need to reconcile standards in order to protect that most ethereal creation of mankind: the written word. From that unique vantage pointy the discussion delves into the religious roots and sacred character of the act of creation. Religion and copyright are brought into resonance as issues from one field are deployed to illuminate those in the other. Given its culminating focus on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act this work of necessity drills deeply into current advances in technology, notably the dissemination of works over the internet. The religious perspective shines an unexpected light onto those issues as well.

Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God's motivation - about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God's moral perfection consists in God's being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed. The aim of God's Own Ethics is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God's own ethics is like. According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God's conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.

A concise and accessible introduction, this Reader's Guide takes students through Kierkegaard's most important work and a key nineteenth century philosophical text. Soren Kierkegaard was without question one of the most important and influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. "Fear and Trembling" is a classic text in the history of both philosophical and religious thought that still challenges readers with its original philosophical perspective and idiosyncratic literary style. Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling: A Reader's Guide" offers a concise and accessible introduction to this hugely important and notoriously demanding work. Written specifically to meet the needs of students coming to Kierkegaard for the first time, the book offers guidance on: philosophical and historical context; key themes; reading the text; reception and influence; and, further reading. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

Over the last two decades the distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher has started to make a serious case for pragmatism as the source of a new life in contemporary philosophy. There are some, like Kitcher, who view today's analytic philosophy as mired in narrowly focused, technical disputes of little interest to the wider world. What is the future of philosophy, and what would it look like? While Classical Pragmatism - the American philosophy developed by John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James in the 19th century- has a mixed reputation today, Kitcher admires the way its core ideas provide a way to prioritize avenues of inquiry. As he points out, both James and Dewey shared a wish to eliminate 'insignificant questions' from philosophy, and both harbored suspicion of 'timeless' philosophical problems handed down generation after generation. Rather, they saw philosophy as inherently embedded in its time, grappling with pressing issues in religion, social life, art, politics, and education. Kitcher has become increasingly moved by this reformist approach to philosophy, and the published essays included here, alongside a detailed introduction setting out Kitcher's views, provide motivation for his view of the "reconstruction of philosophy." These essays try to install the pragmatic spirit into contemporary philosophy, renewing James and Dewey for our own times.

Jonathan Kvanvig presents a compelling new work in philosophical theology on the universe, creation, and the afterlife. Organised thematically by the endpoints of time, the volume begins by addressing eschatological matters--the doctrines of heaven and hell--and ends with an account of divine deliberation and creation. Kvanvig develops a coherent theistic outlook which reconciles a traditional, high conception of deity, with full providential control over all aspects of creation, with full providential control over all aspects of creation, with a conception of human beings as free and morally responsible. The resulting position and defense is labeled "Philosophical Arminianism," and deserves attention in a broad range of religious traditions.

Most contemporary versions of moral realism are beset with difficulties. Many of these difficulties arise because of a faulty conception of the nature of goodness. Goodness, God, and Evil lays out and defends a new version of moral realism that re-conceives the nature of goodness.

Alexander argues that the adjective 'good' is best thought of as an attributive adjective and not as a predicative one. In other words, the adjective 'good' logically cannot be detached from the noun (or noun phrase) that it modifies. It is further argued that this conception of the function of the adjective implies that recent attempts to provide necessary a posteriori identities between goodness and something else must fail.

The convertibility of being and goodness, the privation theory of evil, a denial of the fact-value distinction, human nature as the ground of human morality and even a novel argument for the existence of God are some of the implications of the account of goodness that Alexander offers.

Rationality and Religious Commitment shows how religious commitment can be rational and describes the place of faith in the postmodern world. It portrays religious commitment as far more than accepting doctrines--it is viewed as a kind of life, not just as an embrace of tenets. Faith is conceived as a unique attitude. It is irreducible to belief but closely connected with both belief and conduct, and intimately related to life's moral, political, and aesthetic dimensions.
Part One presents an account of rationality as a status attainable by mature religious people--even those with a strongly scientific habit of mind. Part Two describes what it means to have faith, how faith is connected with attitudes, emotions, and conduct, and how religious experience may support it.
Part Three turns to religious commitment and moral obligation and to the relation between religion and politics. It shows how ethics and religion can be mutually supportive even though ethics provides standards of conduct independently of theology. It also depicts the integrated life possible for the religiously committed--a life with rewarding interactions between faith and reason, religion and science, and the aesthetic and the spiritual.
The book concludes with two major accounts. One explains how moral wrongs and natural disasters are possible under God conceived as having the knowledge, power, and goodness that make such evils so difficult to understand. The other account explores the nature of persons, human and divine, and yields a conception that can sustain a rational theistic worldview even in the contemporary scientific age.

In the tidal wave of intellectual argument that followed the 2006 release of Richard Dawkins's God Delusion book, a fierce debate has raged between atheism and religion over the existence of God, leaving the world's scientists and laymen largely undecided in their opinion. God's Illusion Machine presents a fascinating alternative to a debate that has largely been argued within the framework of Christian versus science concepts. Drawing upon the world's oldest body of knowledge (the Vedas), the author describes the massive illusion to which we are all subjected as we mistakenly believe ourselves to be physical creations of the material world. In God's Illusion Machine, the material world is gradually exposed as the ultimate virtual reality machine for wayward souls who prefer a self-centred, rather than a God-centred, existence. In contrast to Richard Dawkins's assertion that the religious are suffering a delusion for believing in God, the author argues that both the atheists and the religious are under the spell of God's deluding energy called Maya, which acts in reciprocation with a soul's desire to be in illusion within the physical realm.

By applying the profound spiritual insights of Vedic knowledge along with a healthy dose of common sense and good humour, God's Illusion Machine is an enthralling expose of the deceptive nature of the material world and the false claims of materialists regarding the nature of life and love. It is a triumph of spirituality over both atheistic materialism and religious dogmatism.

God's Illusion Machine is a work of major importance realigning Western religion, philosophy, and science with eternal spiritual truths, an enlightening read for both the atheist and the religious, bringing spiritual certainty and true love to bewildered souls in troubled times. For atheists who like a good argument, for the religious who are stuck for a reply to Richard Dawkins, for fans of fantasy and sci-fi where forces of light and illusion contend in battle, and for you, the reader, whatever your disposition, this book will forever change your outlook on life and its meaning. As the rising sun disperses the darkness of night, so in the presence of Krishna (The Absolute Truth), maya (illusion) cannot stand.

Offering an original perspective on the central project of Descartes' Meditations, this book argues that Descartes' free will theodicy is crucial to his refutation of skepticism. A common thread runs through Descartes' radical First Meditation doubts, his Fourth Meditation discussion of error, and his pious reconciliation of providence and freedom: each involves a clash of perspectives-thinking of God seems to force conclusions diametrically opposed to those we reach when thinking only of ourselves. Descartes fears that a skeptic could exploit this clash of perspectives to argue that Reason is not trustworthy because self-contradictory. To refute the skeptic and vindicate the consistency of Reason, it is not enough for Descartes to demonstrate (in the Third Meditation) that our Creator is perfect; he must also show (in the Fourth) that our errors cannot prove God's imperfection. To do this, Descartes invokes the idea that we err freely. However, prospects initially seem dim for this free will theodicy, because Descartes appears to lack any consistent or coherent understanding of human freedom. In an extremely in-depth analysis spanning four chapters, Ragland argues that despite initial appearances, Descartes consistently offered a coherent understanding of human freedom: for Descartes, freedom is most fundamentally the ability to do the right thing. Since we often do wrong, actual humans must therefore be able to do otherwise-our actions cannot be causally determined by God or our psychology. But freedom is in principle compatible with determinism: while leaving us free, God could have determined us to always do the good (or believe the true). Though this conception of freedom is both consistent and suitable to Descartes' purposes, when he attempts to reconcile it with divine providence, Descartes's strategy fails, running afoul of his infamous doctrine that God created the eternal truths.

Hilary of Poitiers (c300-368), Bishop and Theologian, was instrumental in shaping the development of pro-Nicene theology in the West. Carl Beckwith engages the extensive scholarship on the fourth-century Trinitarian debates and brings new light on the structure and chronology of Hilary's monumental De Trinitate.
There is a broad scholarly consensus that Hilary combined two separate theological works, a treatise on faith (De Fide) and a treatise against the 'Arians' (Adversus Arianos), to create De Trinitate. In spite of this the question of when and why Hilary performed this task has largely remained unanswered. Beckwith addresses this puzzle, situating Hilary's De Trinitate in its historical and theological context and offering a close reading of his text. He demonstrates that Hilary made significant revisions to the early books of his treatise; revisions that he attempted to conceal from his readers in order to give the impression of a unified work on the Trinity.
Beckwith argues that De Fide was written in 356 following Hilary's condemnation at the synod of Beziers and prior to receiving a decision on his exile from the Emperor. When Hilary arrived in exile, he wrote a second work, Adversus Arianos. Following the synod of Sirmium in 357 and his collaboration with Basil of Ancyra in early 358, Hilary recast his efforts and began to write De Trinitate. He decided to incorporate his two earlier works, De Fide and Adversus Arianos, into this project. Toward that end, he returned to his earlier works and drastically revised their content by adding new prefaces and new theological and exegetical material to reflect his mature pro-Nicene theology. Beckwith provides a compelling case for the nature of these radical revisions, crucial textual alterations that have never before been acknowledged in the scholarship on De Trinitate."

This book offers a philosophical analysis of what it is to be a human being in all her aspects. It analyses what is meant by the self and the I and how this feeling of a self or an I is connected to the brain. It studies specific cases of brain disorders, based on the idea that in order to understand the common, one has to study the specific. The book shows how the self is thought of as a three-fold emergent self, comprising a relationship between an objective neural segment, a subjective neural segment and a subjective transcendent segment. It explains that the self in the world tackles philosophical problems such as the problem of free will, the problem of evil, the problem of human uniqueness and empathy. It demonstrates how the problem of time also has its place here. For many people, the world includes ultimate reality; hence the book provides an analysis and evaluation of different relationships between human beings and Ultimate Reality (God). The book presents an answer to the philosophical problem of how one could understand divine action in the world.