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1. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Michael J. Murray INTRODUCTION
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2. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk, Slutsk GOD AND PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY
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As the dialogue between science and religion has grown more robust, Christians have been led to more nuanced ways of thinking about the connections between these two modes of inquiry. This essay focuses on exploring various deficiencies in naturalistic conceptions of the cosmos, and further exploring how Eastern Orthodox theology provides a more encompassing picture of human beings and their place in the cosmos.
3. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Fr. Vladimir Shmaliy COSMOLOGY OF THE CAPPADOCIAN FATHERS: A CONTRIBUTION TO DIALOGUE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY TODAY
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As variants of the Christian tradition have emerged through the centuries they have given rise to distinct versions of Christian metaphysics with divergent cosmological commitments. In the early Church, the Cappodocian fathers constructed a theological framework which focuses on the “personal” nature of reality. The personal nature of reality is central not only to understanding key theological doctrines, such as the Trinity, but also the cosmos itself. This essay explores the Cappodocian conception of the cosmos as personal both in its origin and as a medium for an interpersonal relationship between God and creatures.
4. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
William Lane Craig DIVINE ETERNITY AND THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
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An examination of time as featured in the General Theory of Relativity, which supercedes Einstein’s Special Theory, serves to rekindle the issue of the existenceof absolute time. In application to cosmology, Einstein’s General Theory yields models of the universe featuring a worldwide time which is the same for all observers in the universe regardless of their relative motion. Such a cosmic time is a rough physical measure of Newton’s absolute time, which is based ontologically in the duration of God’s being and is more or less accurately recorded by physical clocks.
5. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Victor Pervushin PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY IN RELATIVE UNITS
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The latest astrophysical data on the Supernova luminosity-distance—redshift relations, primordial nucleosynthesis, value of Cosmic Microwave Background-temperature, and baryon asymmetry are considered as evidence for a relative measurement standard, field nature of time, and conformal symmetry of the physical world. We show how these principles of description of the universe help modern quantum field theory to explain the creation of the universe, time,and matter in the way compatible with the Biblical Scenario.
6. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Philip Quinn COSMOLOGICAL CONTINGENCY AND THEISTIC EXPLANATION
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In this paper, I respond to Adolf Grünbaum’s charge that the cosmological problem to which the theological doctrine of divine creation would, if true, be a solution is really only a pseudoproblem. My discussion focuses on three questions: Why does the possible world that is in fact actual obtain, rather than any of the other possible worlds? Why does a possible world with the natural laws of the actual world obtain, rather than some possible world with a different nomological structure? And why does a possible world in which some contingent things exist obtain, rather than the possible world in which nothing contingent exists? I argue that each of these questions can be understood in such a way that it avoids Grünbaum’s pseudoproblem charge. I also argue that the second and third questions give rise, if pressed, to problems that science cannot solve. Their ultimate answers are either appeals to inexplicable brute facts, which are not explanatory, or appeals to extrascientific explanations, which could be theological.
7. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Ernan McMullin ANTHROPIC EXPLANATION IN COSMOLOGY
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Since Collins and Hawking described the need for an unimaginably precise flatness in the early universe, many have argued that the cosmos thereby requires design. This essay traces the developments of these design speculations from the Collins-Hawking discovery in 1973 to the present, and describes the four possible responses that are available to the apparent fine-tuning of the universe.
8. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Joel Primack MODERN COSMOLOGY AND SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION
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Throughout history cultures have adopted cosmological myths as a means to understand the world and the place of human beings in that world. Since the time of Galileo and Descartes the cosmological myths of religion were permanently divorced from the cosmological accounts grounded in the natural sciences.Nonetheless, even contemporary scientific cosmology can act as a controllingmetaphor for thinking about humanity and its fate.
9. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Sean Carroll WHY (ALMOST ALL) COSMOLOGISTS ARE ATHEISTS
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Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imaginebeing brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality, we are led to a strictly materialist conception of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed.
10. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Peter VanInwagen Reply to Sean Carroll
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Sean Carroll argues that we should endorse atheism since there are no good reasons for affirming the more complex thesis of theism over the less complexthesis of materialism. However, this argument relies on an epistemological minimalism we should reject.
11. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Richard Swinburne PRIOR PROBABILITIES IN THE ARGUMENT FROM FINE-TUNING
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Theism is a far simpler hypothesis, and so a priori more probably true, than naturalism, understood as the hypothesis that the existence of this law-governeduniverse has no explanation. Theism postulates only one entity (God) with very simple properties, whereas naturalism has to postulate either innumerableentities all having the same properties, or one very complicated entity with the power to produce the former. If theism is true, it is moderately probable that God would create humanoid beings and so humanoid bodies; but laws of nature would have to have very special properties if they are to bring about the existencne of humaoid bodies. Given laws of the present form (quantum theory with the Pauli principle and the four forces), the constants of the laws and variables of the boundary conditions of the universe would need to be extremely fine-tuned; and no simpler set of laws would allow the existence of humanoid bodies at all. So the evidence of the existence of humanoid bodies adds further to the probability of theismas against naturalism.
12. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Robin Collins THE MANY-WORLDS HYPOTHESIS AS AN EXPLANATION OF COSMIC FINE-TUNING: AN ALTERNATIVE TO DESIGN?
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The most common objection to fine tuning arguments for theism is that there are, or might be, multiple universes among which the fundamental physicalconstants and parameters vary. This essays describes the two main variants of this objection and argues that they both fail.
13. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Del Ratzsch SATURATION, WORLD ENSEMBLES, AND DESIGN: DEATH BY A THOUSAND MULTIPLICATIONS?
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Multiple-universe theories (involving the saturation of a state space of alternative universes) enjoy growing popularity as proposed counters to the design-suggestiveness of increasingly impressive cosmic fine-tuning cases. In this paper I explore this type of counter, and argue that (i) multiple-universe theoriesdo not necessarily undercut the design relevance of cosmic fine-tuning, that (ii) both the required saturation and the hypothesized mechanisms supposed to generate such saturation face seriously non-trivial constraints, and that (iii) in some cases the specific characteristics of such saturations may themselves be suggestive of design.
14. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Vladimir Shokhin THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION: SOME DISREGARDED DIMENSIONS
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One of the most fascinating phenomena in the cultural and spiritual life of Russia in the last decade and a half has been the fact that, after seventy years of the official state-implanted materialistic atheism, the witness of the Bible about our world is openly and widely discussed by scholars and theologians. This paper will survey certain features of those debates in which Orthodox authors participate, and also aspects of the understanding of the Hexaemeron (The Six Days of Creation) that are not reflected in those debates but which are brought to light by several eminent Russian theologians of the XIX century and which to my mind have a great significance.
15. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 5
Fr. Alexander Shimbalev THE PLACE OF GOD IN MODERN COSMOLOGY
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Some recent Christian thinkers have made attempts to harmonize Christianity and science by trying to show a positive correlation between current cosmologyand a literal reading of the account of creation in Genesis. This essay argues that this approach is mistaken since it misunderstands the practices of scienceand hermeneutics. Instead it is argued that Scripture and tradition make only very broad claims about the nature of creation which must be respected when thinking about the universe. Those broad claims are decribed here.
16. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 4
William J. Wainwright Religious Experience, Theological Argument, and the Relevance of Rhetoric
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17. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 4
Robert Oakes Transparent Veridicality and Phenomenological Imposters: The Telling Issue
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18. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 4
Richard M. Gale On the Cognitivity of Mystical Experiences
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19. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 4
Evan Fales The Road to Damascus
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20. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 22 > Issue: 4
John T. Mullen Practical Rationality and Idiosyncratic Beliefs
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