McGrath ff. For them, the sciences represent the sole basis of reliable truth! And with that comes the rejection of religious belief as evidence-free superstition. McGrath refers to two of the well-known New Atheists, namely Dawkins and Dennett, that they both believe that the natural sciences exclude metaphysical commitments, especially of a religious nature, holding that these are ultimately spurious.
However, McGrath argues that Dawkins is a 'master of smuggling metaphysics into science, rewriting the neutral and inconclusive scientific narrative so that it leads to a rigorous atheist conclusion'. The point that McGrath clearly makes - and subsequently illustrates - is that Dawkins imposes an atheistic meta-narrative on a scientific description of things. In other contexts especially more strongly Evangelical and Charismatic-orientated contexts that we find in Africa and Asia, and also certain parts of America - to name only but a few , the negativity comes from the religious side and is with fervour directed towards the natural sciences!
Apart from the thrusts that I have characterised as coming from the 'outside', there are simultaneously negative thrusts or perhaps better understood as challenges! There are more, but I see the following two negative thrusts or challenges as the most compelling, namely the issue of divine action and the stance towards metaphysics, that is, a fundamental outright rejection of metaphysics by some theologians in Christian theology.
Two remarks on each much suffice. Firstly, within contemporary theological discourses on divine agency, it has become clear that most of the viewpoints on divine agency were based upon those gaps in human knowledge of the relevant natural processes that were prevalent in that specific period.
As knowledge on these very laws that govern these processes increased, it correlated with an increase in direct conflict with these influential traditional theological standpoints. Philip Clayton calls it the 'single greatest challenge to theology'. Secondly, to briefly mention but two theologians who have opposed 'metaphysics'. The American theologian Kaufman ff has already in the late seventies of the previous century argued that there is an 'inescapable rivalry between metaphysics and theology'.
To address the rivalry, metaphysics had to be eliminated. Within the circle of the 'Radical Orthodoxy', 13 we find a much more recent rejection of metaphysics. In the words of the Anglican theologian John Millbank from the University of Nottingham who wrote that metaphysics is 'tainted on account of its autonomous pretensions or anti-theistic presuppositions' referred to by McGrath For Millbank, metaphysics is to be rejected on account of its pretensions to theological autonomy, that is, its efforts in seeking a graspable immanent security see McGrath It - according to Millbank - should therefore be eliminated from theological reflection for two good reasons: firstly , it is theologically unnecessary , and secondly, it is degrading.
The first reason of being unnecessary comes from the conviction that the Christian revelation of God needs no philosophical support. The second reason of being degrading comes from the conviction that metaphysics is intellectually contaminated by the presuppositions of a secular world cf. McGrath McGrath rightly questions the argument of Millbank, calling it a 'puzzling argument', because it seems to rest on the 'assumption that metaphysics is an a priori discipline which lays down in advance what can and cannot be said or thought … about God'.
In my opinion, the strongest contemporary thrusts as direction of development lie in taking on reflection after the so-called end of metaphysics Nietzsche. The one is philosophical-theological, whereas the other thrust stems from a proposal on human social evolution, that is, on evolutionary processes related to the emergence of humanity.
Firstly, let us discuss the philosophical-theological approaches. At their core, we find a radical rejection of traditional 'onto-theological' viewpoints. For me, some of the most important critical features lie with issues such as actuality being replaced by possibility, the radical critique of - what is called - idolatrous representations, causality replaced by givenness, death of the mastery of objects as well as the death of the longing for objectivity. Secondly, one outstanding example - in my opinion - of how traditional dualistic approaches are radically revised within more holistic integrated science-theological approaches i.
We find in his so-called niche construction and religious evolution that he endeavours to understand the human propensity for religious behaviour from the core role of the evolutionary processes in the emergence of humanity. The niche construction approach to religious evolution provides an alternative to the primarily functionalist and reductive approach Fuentes This way of approaching the human niche, and human evolution, lays a groundwork for modelling the development of the structures cognitive and behavioural that can facilitate a more comprehensive, and less reductive, understanding of the human propensity for imagination, faith and ritual.
His approach - and for me, this is the important contribution of Fuentes - suggests that a distinctively human imagination, and a uniquely human metaphysics, is a core part of being human and thus part of the explanation for human evolutionary success Fuentes With regard to the relationship , that is, between science and religion theology , the contemporary thrusts are extremely diverse and different from context to context.
Almost two decades ago, the South African theologian Wentzel van Huyssteen and the Danish theologian Gregersen wrote in their introduction to Theology and Science in a Pluralist World :.
Gone are the days in which any attempt to relate theology and science to one another could still be possibly - and mistakenly - seen as a rather esoteric, intellectualist exercise limited to a privilege few. It seems that this ancient and enduring dialogue has managed to successfully transform itself, in our present Western culture, into a sustained and dynamic contemporary discourse with its own identity for our times.
The claim by these two authors of more than two decades ago that the 'dialogue has managed to successfully transform itself, in our present Western culture, into a sustained and dynamic contemporary discourse' is in only scarcely!
Let me elaborate on and substantiate my critique from a series of articles published on religion-science dialogues around the world. Zygon , the well-known America-based journal of religion and science, published a series of articles in on the science-religion dialogues around the world see Drees a; b. I have found these articles not only to be extremely insightful but also to confirm that the Van Huyssteen and Gregersen's claim is not well founded.
It also gives a broad overview of the debates within Islam and Science see Guessoum Given the very interesting diverse overviews that come from the different contexts, Drees therefore - in this long quotation - rightfully states and demands:.
If one looks it up in Wikipedia, it is mostly about marketing, adapting global brands and products to local preferences in order to be more successful commercially. That is still too close to an export model, in my opinion. The process runs deeper than that; the local dimension, the emphasis on particularity, is not merely instrumental but ought to be considered to be a genuine source of insight. We should give people from various settings an opportunity to speak for themselves, and to present on their own terms, how knowledge and values interact in their cultural and social context.
To substantiate the above, a few examples must suffice. For his context, Evers remarks:. In Germany, the interaction between science, religious views, ultimate concerns, unconditional values, and theological reflection will presumably continue to be only a sideline of academic discourse … German academic theology is mainly related to cultural studies, and is less interested in, and hardly competent in relating to, different fields of science.
For the Latin American context, Silva writes, 'The state of the debate surrounding issues on science and religion in Latin America is mostly unknown, both to regional and extra-regional scholars'.
In his conclusion, Silva finds that 'Latin American scholars are still somewhat isolated from the international discussion on science and religion, while being at the same time isolated from each other'. Until now, the focus on science and the science-religion interface was perhaps seen as an unaffordable luxury for the poor. Economic growth, increasing urbanization, and continued investment in science education will inevitably bring religious questions to the fore.
Against this background, the pioneering work in the science-religion interface may serve as a matrix for further development. Perhaps, the most fascinating remarks come from the Japanese scholar Kim who concludes:.
What then might the science-religion dialogue in Japan contribute to the science-religion dialogue in the West? Could we expect from the Japanese approach to the science-religion dialogue a new paradigm for understanding and describing ultimate reality?
Or, might the Japanese approach disclose a point of view where there is neither 'religion' nor 'science' at all? Such questions urge us to observe carefully what is going on in the science-religion dialogue in Japan, a country in East Asia where conventional conceptions of 'religion', 'science', and even of 'God' are foreign and unfamiliar.
The aforegoing remark by Drees that:. Not as polite invite as if I am in some or other 'normative position' to invite the 'others', but precisely as constitutive of the metaphysical 'event' see more on the 'event' below. If, as Van Huyssteen and Gregersen ff.
A Third Generation that are building on the previous generations and are now taking evolutionary processes the nature and implications thereof even more seriously in a deeper holistic and interdisciplinary manner cf. The latter not only has vast implications especially for our unfolding of the 'place of metaphysics' but also to understand the current extremely diverse and messy dialogues that have not managed to 'successfully transform itself'.
I have barely scraped the surface in trying to find a 'place' for metaphysics in science and theology, and I have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that it is really nowhere to be found. It has no place if understood as preferential option for 'universal content', for an a priori viewpoint. Metaphysics is nowhere to be found in science and religion as 'is'. However, it can be 'found' as 'was'.
I would try to explain, in an analogical sense, the difference between the 'is' and 'was' from physics, namely from the movement of atoms. It is nowhere to be found almost like the 'non-foundability' non-localisation of atoms of which we can only theoretically say afterwards where they have been but not that they are here now. That, however, does not imply in any way that they do not exist as physical entities.
We can see them 'afterwards' with our theories and then work forward with those very theories. In that sense, they are very much meta-physical, that is, being 'coming and located afterwards'.
What I thus think I did find is that metaphysics does not occupy place as such, but represent a dimension of an afterwards event 'it takes place'. What I do find directional for my further journey on 'metaphysics' from the aforegoing is the conviction that the sense-making activities of the beholders from their linguistic-cultural contexts are determined - the structure and nature thereof - by the biological evolutionary processes which formed them.
In other words, our understanding of metaphysics must be approached from the very evolutionary processes that made such thinking in the first place a dimension of being human.
This is the best insight to work from in making sense of the varieties and immense differences that we find in the science-religion dialogues around the world. That implies that the 'was' of metaphysical thinking represents the emergent product - as inferred consequence see introductory quotation - of the concrete and specific lifeworlds in which they have 'taken place', that is, 'eventuated'. The 'cognitive ecology' Fuentes of metaphysical reflection helps us - in my opinion - to understand that within the science-religion dialogues, metaphysics has no place and is nowhere to be found as 'is', but only as an after 'was'.
It turns place into event, and in this way, metaphysical reflection becomes the 'afterwards story' on being human and personhood that has accepted the 'seen' the natural sciences and 'heard' religious reflection invitation from the realities it experiences into inferred sense-making frameworks.
The 'was' of metaphysical reflection is surely the most powerful a posteriori event of credofication for human beings in living, spelling and participating empathically in the question 'why there is something rather than nothing? The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
Badiou, A. Brooke, J. Clayton ed. Clayton, P. Despite the frequent hostility of the analytic tradition to metaphysics and religion, many Canadian analytic philosophers have sought to find room for religious expression.
In his Survival and Disembodied Existence , Terence Penelhum questions the meaningfulness of some religious beliefs, but his The Problem of Religious Knowledge and Reason and Religious Faith leaves possibilities for religious discourse.
Donald Evans, after close association with the new analytic philosophy during which he wrote The Logic of Self-Involvement , developed his defence of religious experience in Struggle and Fulfillment , Faith, Authenticity and Morality and in Spirituality and Human Nature There has been little work that reflects the analytic tradition of "fideistic" views that emphasize the autonomy of faith, although one finds tendencies in this direction in Wilfred Cantwell Smith eg, Faith and Belief , Pierre Lucier, in Empirisme logique et langage religieux , assesses the strengths and impact of the analytic movement.
Frequently, analytic philosophers have used language analysis to sustain essentially "humanistic" positions against claims of "determinists" in psychology and history who have believed that free human action is unintelligible or impossible eg. A branch of philosophy known as "action theory" is concerned with analysis of the language with which human actions are described.
Donald Brown, in Action , carefully analyses such language and suggests that we cannot easily convert talk about human action into talk about events figuring naturally in the sciences.
Similarly, William DRAY argues in Laws and Explanation in History that explanations of human history cannot be reduced to the form of scientific laws. Sixth, 20th-century European philosophy has had a substantial influence in Canada. Since , many philosophers, such as Gary Madison The Hermeneutics of Postmodernity , and Jean Grondin have come under the influence of hermeneutics, critical theory and post-modern philosophy.
These authors have been largely critical of the idea of metaphysical and religious systems, and Grondin, in Sources of Hermeneutics , explicitly brings Kant, Heidegger and Gadamer to bear on questions in religion.
Strongly influenced by post-modern thought, particularly that of Richard Rorty, Hendrik Hart's Search for Community in a Withering Tradition reflects a fideistic turn from a Calvinistic perspective.
Concern with the idea of the self and the attempt to build a philosophical anthropology ie, a theory of the nature of man are strong in works such as those of Jacques Croteau, whose L'Homme: sujet ou objet develops ideas from European phenomenology against a background influenced by Aquinas and Maritain.
In The Art of Art Works Cyril Welch applies other aspects of that tradition to our understanding of art and of the ways in which that understanding transforms reality. Existentialism and phenomenology have been criticized as well, eg, by F. Temple Kingston in French Existentialism Seventh, there has recently been a return to the rationalist metaphysics best represented by 17th- and 18th-century philosophers such as Leibniz and Spinoza. This movement, generally using modern logical and analytic techniques, has been led by John Leslie and Helier J.
The rationalists had urged that one must start with questions about what is logically possible rather than what seems to exist. They were guided by the principles that everything has an explanation and that whatever does not exist fails to do so because it is prevented from existing by something else. Leslie's Value and Existence argues for the reintroduction of principles of value into these discussions.
In Renascent Rationalism , which is also an attempt to make experience intelligible, Helier J. Robinson admits that we cannot tell whether or not a god outside the world exists, but he believes that we can tell, for instance, that a god exists in some sense within the world. In somewhat the same vein, Leslie defends an anthropic principle and a form of neo-Platonism in Universes He reassesses much of his philosophical cosmology in The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction , a work which looks at the probabilities for and philosophical underpinnings of theories which concern the long-range prospects for human life.
There has also been a significant interest in the nature of religious practice and religious experience, where philosophy is used as a tool for understanding, but not challenging, religious belief. Cross-cultural Studies Finally, philosophy of religion has taken on an increasingly cross-cultural character in response to religious pluralism.
In The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta: A Comparative Study in Religion and Reason , Arvind Sharma argues for the importance of pluralistic philosophy of religion, holding that cross-cultural philosophy of religion can be normative. Cantwell Smith's later work is interesting so far as it bears on the nature of religious belief, and shows movement towards a "unified world religion". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy A comprehensive reference source about philosophy.
Most of the articles in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy are original contributions by specialized philosophers around the Internet. Let me try to make ith throuh one of the example: Cocunut Trees are worshipped to an extent of God in one of the culture, cutting down a cocunut tree is a kind of disrespect- Religion view. The reason must be that it gives a good yield and the tree is completely of use and so on.. This can be a metaphysical view. Bearing in mind that people will always disagree about the correctness of certain definitions a fact that pertains directly to what metaphysics is all about , metaphysics is "the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
So is that the "real" definition of metaphysics? What is real? Language itself is merely symbolism. There is no intrinsic meaning to a group of squiggly lines that we call letters and words. So "metaphysics" and "religion" themselves do not mean anything other than what someone says they mean. If enough people agree, there can be a generally accepted definition, but then words and their meanings are always evolving.
So your question and the various answers you receive are an example of what metaphysics deals with. What's the relationship of what we think and what is? What's the relationship of what is and how we name it? Much of this website is dealing with that part of metaphysics that explores the relationship between our thoughts and reality, and the possibility of creating reality through our thought processes.
Generally speaking, religion is "belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe". Definition again by The Free Dictionary. So, while metaphysics deals with what we say reality is and what we can do to create, religion says someone or something other than ourselves brought all things into being and has the correct definitions of what it all means.
Our purpose is to learn the truth from that "other" and revere the "other. So you might say that metaphysics is more centered on ourselves, and we take responsibility on ourselves for what is and what we do with it, and what we become.
Religion is more centered on the "other" who creates and governs creation, and our responsibility is to take our directions from that creator. The themes and topics of both religion and metaphysics are often the same, but they are approached from different directions and in different ways. And there are areas where the distinction between the two are blurred. Religion and metaphysics are both much broader areas of study than the relatively narrow focus I've seen so far on this website, so I appreciate your question, Jason, as it may open up a larger field of inquiry.
Thank you. John 4. Consider this quote attributed to Buddha: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
A person can be a religious person and doesnot believe or work on metaphysic, or either can be metaphysic lover understand how the world infact is and does not believe in god.. Religion preaches certain set of practices to be followed in order to achieve deliverance and if you dont follow it, you are called anti religious,some of these practices have no scientific base.
Meta physics doest through you out when you dont practice, you can experiement with it.
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