Natural ReligionFrederick Turner Routledge, 2017 M07 12 - 304 páginas There is widespread belief that the world's religions con- tradict each other. It follows that if one religion is true, the others must be false--an assumption that implies, and may actually create, religious strife. In Natural Religion, acclaimed poet, critic and essayist Frederick Turner sets out to show that the natural world offers grounds for stating that all religions are, in some respect, true. Through the ages, various ways have been proposed to resolve religious differences. Some argue for the destruction of all religions but one's own. Others substitute an abstract principle for the real ritual and moral practice of religion. Still others doubt all religious truth and, consequently, all truth. Others accept a kind of pluralistic relativism. This book explores syncretism, whereby all religions are seen as grasping the same strange and complex reality, but by very different means and handles. The idea that all religions are true raises a supervening question: if so, what must the real physical universe be like? Turner approaches these questions in terms of scientific inquiry. There is not enough room in space itself to fit in all theologies; but there may be enough room in time if new scientific descriptions of time's nature are to be believed. Turner argues that in the time-models of contemporary cosmological and evolutionary science all times may be connected and time may be infinitely branched and causally looped so that both forward-in-time and backward-in-time factors may be in operation in the same event. Thus, the fundamental substance of the universe may be information rather than matter or energy. The universe is more like a vast living organism than a vast machine. Turner argues that all existing religions can be shown to fit into this model, which in turn points to deeper implications of religious doctrines, languages and practices. There would be plenty of "room" in such a view of time for a tree of different yet linked religious w |
Dentro del libro
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... The Poetic Idiom of the Divine An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: The Divine Language of Nature Pied Beauty The Queen of Heaven Glossary Further Reading Index Acknowledgements The subject of this book not only demanded more.
... his letter to religion's cultured despisers. If one's experience of the divine is in the burning of the paper offerings at one's father's Shinto funeral, or in the lighting of the Christmas candles, or the taste of They Fight.
... divine would be strange indeed if it can be experienced not only in the blood of a sacrificed chicken or the ecstasy of tantric sex or the striking of a temple bell, but also as the utterly non-sensory, the irreducibly inexpressible ...
... divine, we are neglecting the immediate, warm reality of trees and love and bread and wine. Or perhaps our language and metaphorical systems determine what we are perceiving, for surely we cannot perceive what we cannot name; the limits ...
... divine exists, there is a staggering arrogance in the assumption that because we experience it in different ways, it is not there. Gravitation is experienced in different ways—the motions of the planets, the flow of water, the falling ...
Contenido
Religious and Scientific Truth | |
Freedom Values and Strange Attractors | |
Time | |
The InformationSpirit Universe | |
A Brief History of | |
The Last Times | |
What Each Religion Brings to the Search | |
The Style of | |
Glossary | |
Further Reading | |
Index | |