Afbeelding van de auteur.

Paul Kurtz (1925–2012)

Auteur van Science and Religion

127+ Werken 1,296 Leden 9 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Paul Kurtz was born on December 21, 1925. He received a bachelor's degree from New York University and a master's degree and doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. During World War II, he served in the United States Army and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. He toon meer was a philosopher who focused on fighting prejudice against people who reject belief in a god and promoting a non-religious stance in life. He wrote or edited more than 50 books on ethics without religion, critiques of religion and the paranormal, and on skepticism, or the challenging of received wisdom. His works include The Transcendental Temptation, Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Secularism, The Courage to Become, Multi-Secularism: A New Agenda, and What is Secular Humanism? He founded the journal Free Inquiry and the secular humanist Center for Inquiry. He also taught at numerous universities including the State University of New York at Buffalo and Vassar. He died on October 20, 2012 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder
Fotografie: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kurtz-1-.color.jpg.

Reeksen

Werken van Paul Kurtz

Science and Religion (1931) — Redacteur — 215 exemplaren
Humanist Alternative (1973) 61 exemplaren
In Defense of Secular Humanism (1983) 54 exemplaren
Secular Humanist Declaration (1980) 46 exemplaren
What Is Secular Humanism? (2007) 38 exemplaren
Embracing the Power of Humanism (2000) 13 exemplaren
The Turbulent Universe (2013) 11 exemplaren
Exuberant Skepticism (2010) 10 exemplaren
The Fullness of Life (1974) 9 exemplaren
American Thought Before 1900 (1967) 9 exemplaren
Dewey's Enduring Impact: Essays on America's Philosopher (2010) — Redacteur — 4 exemplaren
The Future of Naturalism (2009) — Redacteur — 4 exemplaren
Multi-secularism : a new agenda (2010) 3 exemplaren
the body reveals 2 exemplaren
Catholic/Humanist Dialogue (1972) 1 exemplaar
Paul Kurtz 1 exemplaar

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The Roving Mind (1983) — Voorwoord, sommige edities202 exemplaren
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A number of the essays included in this volume were taken from lectures given at a conference held by the Center for Inquiry, a skeptics' organization, and many of the rest were originally published The Skeptical Inquirer magazine. This is not, by and large, a crowd that's particularly well-disposed towards religion, so it's probably not much of a surprise that most of these pieces, if they really address the question in the book's title at all, seem to conclude that the answer is that no, they're not compatible, and that science is (or should be) the clear winner in the conflict between them. There are, however, a few token entries by religious believers from both in and outside the skeptical community, as well as contributions from those who maintain that religion begins where science's ability to answer the very biggest questions ends, or that science and religion are (or should be) completely separate domains, one dealing with facts and one with morality.

It's a mixed bag of a collection. There are a number of articles -- mostly, I think, the ones that really grapple with the big philosophical issues -- that are eloquent, profound, provocative, and very much worth reading. Others, however, are disappointingly superficial. A number seem to be mostly variations on fairly standard arguments in favor of atheism, some of which take a rather dismissive tone about the whole thing. Many don't deal with the big-picture questions at all, but instead focus on some specific factual claim made by religious believers, often a small subset of religious believers, and whether it can be proved or disproved by science. (There is, for example, an entire section on Intelligent Design creationism.) And while those topics are no doubt worth talking about, I have to say that when I picked this book up, I wasn't exactly hoping for yet another creationism debate or a discussion about the Shroud of Turin. Also somewhat disappointing -- although in retrospect it probably shouldn't have been a surprise -- is the way that so much of it focuses so narrowly on Christianity. There seems to be to be something a little off about the idea of a book purporting to be about "science and religion" that barely acknowledges that non-Western religions even exist.

Rating: It's very hard to rate this one. The best stuff in it is very good indeed, but largish chunks of it really were just not at all what I was hoping for. I think I'm going to give it a slightly stingy 3.5/5.
… (meer)
½
2 stem
Gemarkeerd
bragan | 3 andere besprekingen | Apr 5, 2014 |
A philosopher's plea for a worldview of naturalistic humanism, cognizant of an objective reality that exhibits plurality, emergence, and contingency. Subjects discussed start with some science and range (or ramble) as far from it as history and politics. Generally, there is not a high degree of profundity in the writing, with many facts inaccurately expressed and a lot of belaboring of things that are obvious or otherwise well-known. One can only hope that these deficiencies will not be a distraction for those readers who still need to absorb the crucial point that supernaturalism is invalid, nonsensical, and harmful.… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
fpagan | Sep 28, 2013 |
The author does a good job of describing the controversies between science and religion, but is too quick to dismiss the reality of the disputes, and the difficulty of resolving them. Adopting standard accomodationist rhetoric, he takes the position of NOMA, but his arguments are unconvincing.
 
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Devil_llama | 3 andere besprekingen | Apr 17, 2011 |

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Statistieken

Werken
127
Ook door
4
Leden
1,296
Populariteit
#19,807
Waardering
3.8
Besprekingen
9
ISBNs
79
Talen
2

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