Naturalism and our knowledge of reality : testing religious truth-claims

Title

Naturalism and our knowledge of reality : testing religious truth-claims

Files

School/Department

Talbot School of Theology

Description

Philosophical naturalism is taken to be the preferred and reigning epistemology and metaphysics that underwrites many ideas and knowledge claims. But what if we cannot know reality on that basis? What if the institution of science is threatened by its reliance on naturalism? R. Scott Smith argues in a fresh way that we cannot know reality on the basis of naturalism. Moreover, the "fact-value" split has failed to serve our interests of wanting to know reality. The author provocatively argues that since we can know reality, it must be due to a non-naturalistic ontology, best explained by the fact that human knowers are made and designed by God. The book offers fresh implications for the testing of religious truth-claims, science, ethics, education, and public policy. Consequently, naturalism and the fact-value split are shown to be false, and Christian theism is shown to be true.

Keywords

Naturalism; Knowledge, Theory of;

ISBN

978-1409434863

Publication Date

1-28-2012

Document Type

Book

Publisher

Ashgate

City

Farnham

Disciplines

Epistemology | Metaphysics

Naturalism and our knowledge of reality : testing religious truth-claims


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