Links


Philosophy Forums

This website offers an online forum for public discussions related to subjects in philosophy of religion. From reading groups gathering to discuss Being and Time to debates over the consequences that quantum vacuum phenomena might have upon religion, topics clearly range far and wide. While most of what you will find here is purely conversational—and after losing count of how many proofs for/against God are in circulation at any given time, perhaps even painful—the community is very active and engaged. Moreover, a resource page is also made available (complete with user-based rankings for its content), offering a gateway to online texts, philosophical reference databases, other forums of a similar nature, and an array of additional places on the internet devoted to one or another of the various philosophical subdisciplines.

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The Prosblogion

The Prosblogion is, well, a blog—or, rather, a collection of them—but don’t let the informality of that term fool you into a vision of idle ramblings or meandering daydreams. With nearly all of the forty-one contributions coming from established faculty members at various institutions around the world, this assortment of musings is actually able to attain a fairly high level of discourse with some consistency. Nor is there any lack of perspectival diversity, voices being heard from the young and the old, the theist and the agnostic, alike. The website is well maintained and blog entries are efficiently categorized, enabling the reader to locate a particular topic of interest quickly and easily. While thoughts can amble across some pretty expansive terrain here, The Prosblogion also provides a list of links to other blogs that offer a bit more in terms of topical specificity (e.g., Epistemic Value, Free Will/Responsibility, Philosophy of Time, etc).

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Philosophy Around the Web

This website is much less geared towards fostering a discussion and functions more as a database to gather as many repositories of data about philosophy of religion together in one place as it can manage. Organized into general sections, it provides sources for information on societies and organizations; journals; papers or articles available online; a handful of personal websites maintained by individuals interested in philosophy of religion; and sites whose miscellany renders them a poor fit for any one of the categories just enumerated. An entirely separate page is dedicated to the vast assemblage of figures—historic or otherwise—associated with this subject, clicking any one of which reveals a grouping of web resources pertinent to the chosen selection. Without a doubt, the amount of material accessible by way of this website is staggering, but it suffers under its own weight in the end. The descriptions associated with many of the hyperlinks are woefully lacking (if present at all), almost as if somebody ran out of time having spent too much of it amassing the links alone, and the rest of us are left confronting a mountain of choices without any basis upon which to choose.

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Philosophy of Religion: The Mind Map

This project strives to create an interactive learning environment online. Toward this end, it utilizes a branching diagram to move the individual through that thick briar of interconnected and convoluted terminology so many of us have presumably faced with unease when first considering the prospect of spending a career devoted to the philosophy of religion. Beginning with “Philosophy of Religion” at center, then, we can observe a number of correlated concepts splitting off that, among others, include “The Nature of Persons,” “Ontological Arguments,” “Evil,” and “Religious Diversity.” Clicking any one of these unveils a number of additional, previously hidden terms or concepts typically associated with the chosen branch. Some of these will lead to yet another level populated by concepts of even greater specificity, others may lead to an external webpage with a more detailed exposition of the particular term, and still others may offer the choice between both options. NOTE: Clicking on “about” in the orange box (upper-right hand corner) will bring you to a short introduction and some instructions for how to interact with the diagram.

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PhilWeb: Bibliographic Archive

Functioning as a type of historical archive, to say that PhilWeb encompasses an extensive volume of material would be a gross injustice. A substantial portion of this size can be traced to its vast bibliography of literature (arranged into primary and secondary sources), but the webpage also maintains a catalogue of past conferences (2003-2012) alongside links to presently active degree programs, journals, and organizations. Elsewhere, in the “contents” section of this site, a history of human thought almost in its entirety—beginning with 700 BCE and culminating with contemporary sports (the link leads to a collection of online resources relevant to the philosophy of sports)—is described in a manner that resembles the type of outline that might be used to organize the sitemap on a webpage. For anybody simply in search of pure, unbridled information, PhilWeb should definitely be a stop on the itinerary.

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Jewish Philosophy Place

With an eye towards contemporary developments in the Jewish space especially, Zachary Braiterman (Professor of Religion, Syracuse University) uses this blog as an incubator for his thoughts and observations about the modern world. His reactions range anywhere from a rather terse comment concerning something on the news to a fully impassioned engagement with the more charged polemics of our day. Nevertheless, his focus rarely wanders far from the originally stated goal: the construction of an experimental space online that would allow him (and us, presumable) to play with intentionality and the dynamic interrelationships that exist between image and text. Interesting at times, perhaps less so at others, Braiterman nevertheless succeeds in conveying to the reader how much subtlety and nuance is required to navigate a religious life in this contemporary world.

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Roots of Western Mysticism: A Resource Database

This website was originally constructed as a source of information to supplement a class on Western mysticism. By “Western,” the author means that resources relevant to mysticism in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam can be found here, along with non-religious mystical practices occurring throughout Europe and North America. The information gathered on this website is organized into a number of different categories. First, there are separate sections for primary source resources, secondary source resources, and bibliographical resources. Second, material is also divided according to a number of different dimensions within the academic study of mysticism. Such divisions include contextual vs. perennial philosophy; mysticism and the human sciences; natural science and mysticism; literature and mysticism; Gnosticism; and others. Information about historical figures is grouped according to a general timeline and coexistence within an epoch (e.g., Later Medieval Mysticism).

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CloserToTruth.org

CloserToTruth gathers some of the brightest minds in the sciences, philosophy, and theology to explore grand themes like the lawfulness of the cosmos, the nature of consciousness, and various conceptions of Ultimate Reality. Aided by host Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s genuine curiosity and provocative questioning, many of the great minds of our time share their thoughts on all the big questions in short 5-20 minute video interviews. Of their three main topics – Cosmos, Consciousness, and Meaning – the section on Meaning is the most relevant to the philosophy of religion, but the other two categories are also tangentially relevant to questions in philosophy of religion. Though the offerings in philosophy of religion are heavily focused on theism, atheist and other skeptical voices are included in the conversation, and there are several topics related to the diversity of religious traditions. All in all, CloserToTruth is a rich resource both for exploring some of the living questions at the heart of philosophy of religion and for meeting some of the thinkers leading contemporary debates.

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Free Philosophy and Religion Course at Coursera.org

Organized by the University of Edinburgh, this free online course is an excellent resource for anyone interested in philosophy of religion. The course revolves around six classes, each led by a different thinker who approaches religious belief from a distinct methodological perspective. Sarah Lane Ritchie discusses the significance of neuroscience and cognitive science of religion for understanding religious belief in her class “Mind, Science, and Religion.” John Evans explores the potential for moral conflict between the religious public and scientists in the second class, “Science and Religion in the Public Realm.” Using the methods of social epistemology, John Greco examines the seemingly intractable disagreements between theists and atheists in his class “Religious Disagreement and Friendly Theism/Atheism.” John Schellenberg explains his own argument from divine hiddenness and theist’s objections to that argument in his class on “The Hiddenness Argument.” Rik Peels explores scientism as a form of fundamentalism in his class on “Religious and Scientific Fundamentalism.” Finally, Mark Alfano examines the epistemic virtues and vices exemplified by scientific collaboration and religious belief in miracles and revelation in his class on “Epistemic Virtues and Vices in Science and Religion.” Each class comes with corresponding readings, and there are opportunities to test one’s understanding through quizzes, as well as opportunities to connect with others taking the course. By approaching the subject through a wide variety of methodologies, this course offers an extremely rich picture of the complexities of religious rationality and belief.