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This text lays out three distinct ways in which people who have been exposed to science are now responding to the following questions: “Does science rule out a personal God?” and “Is faith compatible with evolution?” The first kind of response claims that the natural sciences and religious faith are mutually exclusive. This is the conflict position. Its representatives include two main subgroups: (1) skeptics who believe that the natural sciences have made all religious claims unbelievable, and (2) people of faith who refuse to accept certain scientific ideas such as Big Bang cosmology and biological evolution. However, in the present text conflict refers only to scientific skeptics, those who claim that scientific method and discoveries now make religious faith and theology obsolete.A second type of response to the questions listed claims that science and faith are each concerned with different levels or dimensions of reality. Science and theology, according to this approach, ask completely different kinds of questions, and so it makes no sense to place them in competition with each other. The contrast approach, as we call it, maintains that there can be no real conflict between the claims of natural science and those of faith and theology. Contrast insists that faith and science are not competing for some common goal, so they cannot come into conflict with each other.A third approach is that of convergence. It might also be called “consonance,” “cooperation,” “contact,” or “conversation.” Convergence agrees with the contrast approach that religious faith and natural science are distinct ways of understanding the world, but it argues that the two inevitably interact. Convergence promotes this interaction. Its objective is to arrive at a synthesis in which both science and faith keep their respective identities while still relating closely to each other in a shared pursuit of intelligibility and truth. Convergence assumes that scientific discoveries matter to faith. In other words, scientific findings can make a significant difference in how we think about God and the meaning of our lives. Convergence wagers that science and faith, as long as they are not confused with each other, can together continue to a richer view of reality than either can achieve on its own.
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This article seeks to indicate a platform for discussion between evolutionists and creationists, which will enable dialogue and increase the chance of developing a coherent worldview that combines elements of scientific knowledge and religious faith. In the context of various types of knowledge, three levels are indicated: (1) the subject of research, (2) knowledge of this subject, and (3) interpretation of this knowledge. Dialogue can be undertaken and conducted already at the second level, but only accompanied by both respect for mutual autonomy and a focus on inspiration rather than integration. The appropriate level of dialogue is the third level: the interpretation of knowledge and building an overarching view of the world and man. The aim of dialogue at this level is to integrate all elements of a worldview and to strive to explain and understand the whole reality.
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One of the contemporary world-view disputes is the conflict between materialistic evolutionists and proponents of the intelligent design. Importantly, both sides of the dispute claim that their positions fall within the area of natural sciences. Discussions have been going on for over a hundred years, but there is no chance that they will end and that there will be some consensus. The source of this state of affairs seems to lie in the fact that this dispute is taking place on a philosophical level. In the article, I give arguments that both materialistic evolutionism and the concept of intelligent design are not scientific theories. I also compare the concepts of evolution and creation and show that the concept of creation is not a scientific concept. Creation is an act of the Creator who is not a space-time being. Therefore, his activities cannot be studied by methods appropriate to natural sciences.
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The aim of the paper is to seek such an interpretation of the presence and activity of God in nature that could harmonize important truths of faith with scientific understanding of the world, governed in its evolution by chance and devoid of any direction. The search is taken in a few steps. Firstly, classic accounts of teleology are indicated, with the conclusion that the only way of the understanding an idea that the world is purposeful is that in terms of inner teleology: the world is directed not so much by God but towards God.Contemporary discussions about the possibility of God’s aims being realized in nature often concentrate on the notion of general or special divine action. Drawing on some accounts of GDA and SDA the paper supports the view that strict delimitation of what is natural and what divine in a given case is probably impossible.One of the reasons of this impossibility is captured by the principle of the causal closure of the world. With relation to this principle, a need to revise some classic accounts of the miraculous is pointed to. Particularly, “the miracle of the human” does not need any special divine interventions, any special guidance of the evolutionary processes (which are, in any case, truly random), if one accepts a hypothesis of the underdetermination of the goal of creation: If God’s aim is that a special being emerges in nature, able to maintain a conscious relation with its Creator, then such a being (called Human in theology) does not need to be a representative of the species Homo sapiens.Finally, panentheism is pointed to as a truly Christian view of the world; the world which is “fate and destiny” of God himself (Karl Rahner). In such a perspective, the details of the evolutionary development of the world cease to be relevant for religion, and religion frees itself finally from “error and superstition” (John Paul II).
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The article is devoted to the critical analysis of several arguments appearing in contemporary discussions regarding the interpretation of God’s creative activity in the world of nature, considered in the context of the theory of evolution. In particular, an attention was paid to some reservations about this theory put forward by some representatives of creationism contained within the framework of St. Thomas’s metaphysics, who see no way to reconcile evolution with the theological truth about God’s creation of the world. The arguments underlying the theory of intelligent design were also considered. This theory claims that chance-based evolution cannot adequately explain the „irreducible complexity” of living organisms, and that it must therefore be assumed that the course of evolutionary processes is primarily influenced by the direct actions of God—the Intelligent Designer.
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In this text, I analyze the theses put forward by Polish anti-evolutionary creationists, which in recent years have been expressed not only in scientific publications, but also in various forms of transmitting the content of religious faith and in public debates, which are an important aspect of the discussed field. The aim of the article is to define the main components of anti-evolutionary creationism and to capture the ways of thinking that lead to internal inconsistency of formulated concepts as well as their incoherence with philosophical, theological, and scientific knowledge.I show how many aspects of anti-evolutionary creationism have been included in catechetical books published in the last decade in Poland. There are too many fundamental errors in their content that is often edited in a manner that does not serve to build a positive relationship between science and religious faith. Evolutionism is mainly associated with extreme naturalism, and creationism with a fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical accounts of creation and the rejection of the theory of evolution. Too little attention is paid to the scientific forms of evolutionism and the worthwhile currents of creationism. It results, among other things, from the lack of consultation of the problems that lie on the frontier between natural sciences and theology with those representatives of the Catholic Church who deal with interdisciplinary issues in daily academic practice.
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In this article I argue that metaphysical creationism that we encounter in the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, as opposed to American creationism and theological and biblical creationism, is a theory that stems from a purely philosophical explanation of the beginnings of the world and man. It is not, therefore, a biblical idea transferred to philosophy. Like the theism of the Aristotelian metaphysics, the theism of Aquinas’s metaphysics is not a religious (theological) theism, but a purely philosophical (metaphysical) theism, because it stems from a metaphysical explanation of reality. Metaphysical creationism is the ultimate explanation of the source of the existence of beings that are given to us in experience as both unnecessary in their own existence and changeable. American creationism, on the other hand, is a biological-cosmological interpretation of the biblical truth concerning the creation of the world within a certain time frame (the 7-day paradigm) and—at its starting point—refers to the data of Revelation, which it wants to confirm scientifically.This article is divided into two parts. The first part presents the key elements of the metaphysical theory of ex nihilo creation and the understanding thereof. In the second part, the elements of evolutionary theism are recalled which, from the point of view of metaphysical creationism, are the source of various paradoxes and, at times, even absurdities, and thus demand reconsideration.
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Contemporary Thomists strive to demonstrate a compatibility between Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and the theory of biological macroevolution. Recently such positions have been promoted by Dr Mariusz Tabaczek. However, he admits that Aquinas’s teachings need to be substantially modified to make them compatible with theistic evolution. On his view, the main point of controversy is whether the creation of the world has been completed (as Aquinas maintains) or it continues (as it is required by theistic evolution). But the evolutionary postulate of continual creation understood as emergence of totally new substantial forms contradicts not only Aquinas’s doctrine but the classic Christian understanding of creation. Thomistic evolutionists cannot explain the origin of new substantial forms; they refer to accidental changes, such as random genetic mutations, whose accumulation over time would produce new species. This, however, is not possible in the light of Thomistic metaphysics because an accidental change does not produce a substantial change. Additionally, the Thomistic evolutionist concept does not tally with many facts discovered by contemporary science. Thomistic evolutionists abandon the fundamental concepts of Aquinas’s philosophy such as the substance-accidents fold and moderate realism as a cognitive attitude. Hence the conclusion that it is not possible to reconcile biological macroevolution with Aquinas’s teachings.
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In response to Michał Chaberek’s polemic with my position regarding theistic evolutionism, I refer to some key aspects of the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and theology in their encounter with the theory of evolution and point toward some inconsistences and flaws in the argumentation developed by my adversary. After defining crucial aspects of Aquinas’s understanding of creation, I emphasize that evolutionary changes belong to divine gubernatio, and not creatio. I also offer an analysis of the question concerning the need of a direct divine intervention in instantiation of a new species. Moving to metaphysics I comment on the Aristotelian-Thomistic substantialism, the analogical character of substantivity, and Chaberek’s alternative taxonomy of living organisms. Regarding philosophical theology, I answer the question concerning the source of the substantial form of the first representative of a new species, in reference to the categories of disposition of matter and accidental features of substances. Addressing once again metaphysical aspects of the evolutionary theory I suggest characterizing species transformation as a complex process, engaging many substantial and accidental changes.
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Previous research (by Eugenio Garin and Vittoria Perrone Compagni) claimed that Picatrix played an important role as a source or inspiration for the third book of Ficino’s On Life both in practical-magical and doctrinal matters, for example when discussing the universal spirit. This paper proves the opposite. It shows the single case where Ficino really cites Picatrix, and shortly describes this medieval magic textbook, making clear the distance that divides it from Ficino’s philosophical approach. For Hungarian readers the author provides the Picatrix’s summary in the Workshop section, and in the next issue a translation based on the Latin text of the fourth book’s first treatise, which discusses a philosophical topic.
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The author criticizes the view that sexual intercourse between individuals of the same sex is “unnatural” and hence bad or wrong, and offers a new framework for Christian ethical reflection on human sexuality.
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The aim of the article is to show the existential themes of filmmaking by Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest European directors. The paper emphasizes that the matters undertaken by Bergman focus on such issues as loneliness, anxiety, uncertainty and transience of human fate, death, man’s relationship with God and the searching for meaning of life. On the one hand, the paper refers to Bergman’s poetics (especially from The Seventh Seal and the “religious trilogy”). On the other hand, it discusses the recognition of existential philosophers. Existential interpretation of Bergman’s films allows to consider the director as the leading existential artist and emphasizes a universal, timeless character of his films.
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The article is a polemic with Wolfgang Welsch’s criticism of the aestheticization process presented in his article entitled Aestheticization Processes. Phenomena, Distinctions and Prospects. Its purpose is to show that arguments suggesting a negative assessment of this phenomenon are unfounded and the aestheticization should be rather treated as a sign of human civilization welfare which revealing favourable perspectives than as a problem threatens a degeneration or the fall of values. In the first part of the text, I present the definition of aestheticization and some examples of it. Next, I analyse the potentially negative consequences of this process and fears about its further development pointed out by Welsch. I argue that the aestheticization is a positive phenomenon because people may care of aesthetic values only after satisfying more basic needs. The real consequence of this process is a better understanding of the reality, as the aestheticization emphasizes its immanent susceptibility to modelling which simultaneously enhance a possibilities of influencing on it by the human will. Therefore, instead of a danger for humanity,
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The death of God thesis is a significant one when it comes to the contemporary philosophy of religion. In this article we will try to present this thesis in the light of Gianni Vattimo’s philosophy in order to clarify the meaning of the death of God and also to criticise it. The article will be divided into three sections. The aim of the first one will be to show the ways in which the death of God thesis should not be understood. The aim of the second will be to present the actual meaning of the thesis. And the third one will be devoted to the critique of Gianni Vattimo’s philosophy of religion which constitutes itself as a result of accepting the death of God thesis
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The aim of this paper is to present and analyze different formulations of human beings ultimate goal in Ayn Rand’s philosophy. I offer an analysis of Rand’s own formulations, namely that the ultimate goal is (i) one’s own life, (ii) one’s survival qua man, and (iii) one’s own happiness. The remainder of the paper is focused on two other possible formulations of the ultimate goal from an objectivist perspective: (iv) one’s own flourishing and (v) happy life. My thesis is that all these formulations – both Rand’s and the two others – are not only compatible with each other but also complementary.
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This is a translation of passages from the chapter “Le savant et l’antrophos: Anthropocène ou Oliganthropocène” from Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book L’Événement Anthropocène: La Terre, l’histoire et nous, Paris: Seuil, 2016., pp. 83-118 (The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us in David Fernbach’s English translation). In their groundbreaking book The Shock of the Anthropocene, Bonneuil and Fressoz discuss the relationship between science as a modern institution of organising individual life in its biological and organic dimension and social life, which is subordinated to faith in technological progress and the paradigm of infinite capital accumulation. The authors propose that the anthropocene is not only the peak and negative point of the project of modernity – a different way of thinking about science and new scientistic practices will be more than utopian visions – above all, they will be ways to maintain the diversity of life and to reverse humankind’s separation from the world.
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The central task of the paper is to trace the development of Husserl's thinking on deictic expressions in a communicative situation. It also shows how an idea of Harvey Sacks from his Lectures on Conversation – related to the conditions for everyday stabilization of demonstratives without being attached to objective correlate – can be located in the theoretical horizons of the treatment of occasional expressions by Edmund Husserl.The analysis unfolds in several steps. First, the context from which Husserl's interpretation of occasional expressions grows is briefly outlined, and then the focus is mainly on the treatment of deictic expressions in Logical Investigations. Some of the limitations of Husserl's analysis in Logical Investigations are shown and the potential for overcoming them, inherent in the manuscripts around the revision of Logical Investigations (1913- 1914), is demonstrated. The last part of the article reconstructs a non-classical continuation of Husserl's analysis of indicators, developed in Sacks' Lectures on Conversation.
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The paper considers some of the major neopragmatist approaches to the notion of truth with their respective methodological questions and corresponding difficulties. A basic distinction is made between 'radical' and 'moderate' neopragmatism and both directions are compared with respect to their ability to interpret the concept of truth in a consistent way. The result of the analysis suggests that the 'moderate' representatives of pragmatism such as Hilary Putnam and Simon Blackburn offer more promising directions, while the radical arguments of Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson about truth put the pragmatist strategy on the way of contradicting some of its own tenets.
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