religious belief

Introducing my new research project: A philosophical and theological exploration of ‘religious atheism’ and ‘religious naturalism’

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Via my LinkedIn-account I already announced that from February 1, 2015, I have a new halftime position, as a researcher at the Dominican Study Centre for Theology and Society in Amsterdam (see http://dsts.nl). It’s a position for one year, and I intend to do a lot in that time.

The project that I will be working on is titled: The spirituality of ‘belonging without believing’: a philosophical and theological exploration of ‘religious naturalism’ and ‘religious atheism’. I’ll try to give a brief description of what I will be working on for the coming year…

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Presenting the CSR at the upcoming conference of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion (ESPR)

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From tomorrow (Thursday) until Sunday, the 20th biennial conference of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion (ESPR) will take place in Münster, Germany. The theme is “Transforming Religion”. I will be one of the main speakers. I am invited to be one of the main speakers at the conference and to discuss evolutionary insights and their implications for the philosophy of religion.

Thus I have written a 20-page paper on some the implications of the cognitive science of religion for theology and philosophy of religion with the title “Religious Belief Beyond Kant and Darwin: Philosophical Reflections on the Evolutionary and Cognitive Roots of Religious Belief”.

The participants have received the paper before the conference (which is customary at ESPR-conferences). The participants are expected to have read it beforehand. At the conference itself I will give a short introduction, which summarizes the main points of my paper. Thereafter a discussion will follow. Below you find the text of my presentation at the conference. (The paper itself is at present unavailable, I hope to hear at the conference whether the main papers will be published somewhere – but if you’re interested, send me an e-mail.)

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Will atheism replace religion in the future?

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Recently, I came across two interesting articles about the causes and possible future of religion and atheism…

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Is atheism a new faith? (video link)

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One discussion that arises again and again is the one about the question whether atheism is a kind of faith or even a new faith. Personally, I find this a lame discussion that goes nowhere. But then I read Dawkins and I tend to agree that atheism is a faith. I just came across a … Lees verder

Jared Diamond joins the choir of atheists

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Jared Diamond, the professor of geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, and who got his fame from voluminous books like The Third Chimpanzee, Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse has recently published a new book, titled The World Until Yesterday.

I haven’t read this book yet, but the website Salon.com published an exerpt from the book dealing with religion. I want to share some observations…

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