Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people's normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessi...

It is often argued that both Luke and Paul regard the presence of the Spirit as essentially the same as the presence of the kingdom of God. This is true for Paul, who understands the Spirit as the means by which all may participate in the blessings of the kingdom (that is, the Spirit is the totality of the blessings of the kingdom). However, does such an assessment accurately reflect the Lukan ...

there are three main ideas about relation between creatures and god. one of them is the theory of separation, according to this theory there's not any homogeneity between creatures and god it means the essence and existence of creatures are completely inhomogeneity with god's essence and existence. the second is the theory of oneness, according to this theory creatures and god are uni...

In the penultimate chapter of the Bible, in the opening statement of the very last speech God makes in the whole of the Christian Scriptures, God says: "Behold I am making all things new" (Rev 21:5). The prophet sees the old heavens and the old earth the universe as it now is passing away, and new heavens and a new earth, God's new creation of all things, coming into being. It is not that God r...

Belief in God and belief in the science of evolution are not mutually exclusive concepts. Thousands of scientists who believe in God are able to separately study and teach evolution. As scientists and parents, we owe it to our children to ensure that public school science curricula teach the science of evolution and not promote a particular religious faith or belief system.

The best world that an omnipotent God could create is the best of all logically possible worlds. Accordingly, it has been supposed that if the actual world was created by an omnipotent, perfectly good God, it must be the best of all logically possible worlds. In this paper I shall argue that ethical views typical of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition do not require the JudeoChristian theis...

It seems odd that after 370 years or so, since Descartes published his Meditations (1641), we are still wrestling with his thought. Not just philosophers, but scientists who study the mind, as well (see, e.g., Edelman 2006). By the time Descartes himself arrives at his Sixth Meditation, he is wresting with his own thought. Insofar as he defined the self as a thinking thing (res cogitans) in the...

This paper is a critique of Richard Dawkins’ “argument from improbability” against the existence of God. This argument, which forms the core of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, provides an interesting example of the use of scientific ideas in arguments about religion. Here I raise three objections: (1) The argument is inapplicable to philosophical conceptions of God that reduce most of God’s com...

The handiwork and the glory of God displayed by the heavens and the firmament have been called General Divine Revelation. In this category one may also include the constitution of human personality, for man himself is a creation of God and in some sense bears the marks of his Creator. This “light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and pow...