Cosmic Meaning, Awe, and Absurdity in the Secular Age: A Critique of Religious Non-Theism
The notion of a meaningful life in secular modernism is often caught between two worlds: a deep human yearning for cosmic meaning, on the one hand, and a seemingly random, impersonal, contingent universe on the other hand. This is often referred to as absurdity. One response to absurdity is classica...
| Publié dans: | Harvard theological review |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[2018]
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| Dans: |
Harvard theological review
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| Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés: | B
Laïcité
/ Athéisme
/ Cosmologie
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophie de la religion CF Christianisme et science |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Résumé: | The notion of a meaningful life in secular modernism is often caught between two worlds: a deep human yearning for cosmic meaning, on the one hand, and a seemingly random, impersonal, contingent universe on the other hand. This is often referred to as absurdity. One response to absurdity is classical theism, and another is scientific reductionism. A third response, and the subject of this article, is religious non-theism. This article: (a) explicates the primary tensions of absurdity, in relation to both human expectations and discussions of beauty in contemporary physics and cosmology; (b) analyzes the arguments and motivations of religious non-theists and the attitude of awe toward the cosmos as a rapprochement between-or at least alternative to-classical theism and scientific reductionism, as a sort of post-secular response to absurdity; and (c) begins a critique of the religious non-theist perspective, explicating four worries, expressed as the Commitment Problem, the Standards Problem, the Moral Problem, and the Awe Problem. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816018000238 |