This elucidation and defense of naturalism argues that an uncompromising secular orientation is the best framework for the search for meaning and interprets religion in purely naturalistic terms. Part One seeks to demonstrate that religious symbols arise from facts about human beings and the societies in which they live, specifically our needs, fears, and aspirations. Part Two examines arguments for and against naturalism, including the defens...
Noted philosopher Kai Nielsen offers an answer to this fundamental question - a question that reaches in to grasp at the very heart of ethics itself. Essentially, this innocent inquiry masks a confusion that so many of us get caught in as we think about moral issues. We fail to realize that there is a difference between judging human behavior within an ethical context, or set of moral principles, and justifying the principles themselves. Accor...
This book presents a chain of argument as well as a conversation conducted in the presence of the major contributors to the "end-of-philosophy" debate: the critics of the dominantly Platonic-Cartesian-Kantian tradition and its defenders.
What happens in a conversation between a committed Atheist and a committed Christian? While agreeing to disagree on almost every detail, Kai Nielsen, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary, and Hendrik Hart, Senior Member in Philosophy at the graduate Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, agree that it is not fruitless.
OTTOBEUREN steht für die kirchliche Barockarchitektur in Bayern und Schwaben. Bis heute fasziniert die gewaltige, ohne größere Verluste erhaltene Klosteranlage durch ihre Ausmaße, nach wie vor ruft der beeindruckende Kirchenraum mit der anspruchsvollen künstlerischen Ausstattung Bewunderung hervor.Die mächtige Klosteranlage, die zwischen 1711 - 1766 unter Mitwirkung bekannter Architekten und Künstler entstand, enthält in ihren mehr als 200 Inn...
This is an extended discussion of this timeless argument of faith and reason. In 1965 D Z Phillips published The Concept of Prayer, one of his first books, and the first time that the influence of Wittgenstein's thought in the philosophy of religion was truly exposed. Two years later, in 1967, Kai Nielsen published his famous article "Wittgensteinian Fideism" in the journal Philosophy. Their respective philosophical work has developed over the...
These essays make a single central claim: that human beings can still make sense of their lives and still have a humane morality, even if their worldview is utterly secular and even if they have lost the last vestige of belief in God. "Even in a self-consciously Godless world life can be fully meaningful, " Nielsen contends.
The indeterminacy of the modern concept of God has made the distinction between belief and unbelief increasingly problematic. Both the complexity of the religious response and the variety of skeptical philosophies preclude simplistic definitions of what constitutes belief in God. Making the discussion even more difficult are assertions by fundamentalists who dismiss the philosophical perplexities of religious claims as unreal pseudo-problems.A...
Will globalization promote or hinder social justice throughout the world? In this cogent analysis philosopher Kai Nielsen argues that in its present form capitalist globalization will only ensure that the rich get richer and the poor poorer. Noting that the ratio of the richest countries to the poorest has steadily grown larger under capitalism in the 20th century and that the total dollar value of the world economy has increased fivefold whil...
This volume considers in depth and carefully a cluster of issues central to contemporary philosophical and social scientific investigation while utilizing methods and conceptualizations at the very cutting edge of philosophy.
Nielsen argues that morality cannot be based on religion, and that there is no evidence to show that nonbelievers despair or lose their sense of identity and purpose. He shows that the implications of Christian absolutism are more likely to be monstrous than are those of a secular ethic that incorporates an independent principle of justice.
