The paper is a critique of recent criticisms of Sigmund Freud’s theory that religion is based on wishful thinking. The criticisms made by authors such as Alvin Plantinga, John Hick, William P. Alston, William Rowe, and Merol Westphal are critically examined. I defend Freud’s critique of religion as a satisfaction of our deepest desires for a heavenly father showing inductively that those desires render religious belief as unlikely to be true.

Two themes run through Kierkegaard’s authorship. The first defines existential requirements for “becoming human”—reflective honesty and earnest humor. The second demarcates the religious phenomena of sobriety when human becoming suffers insurmountable collisions. Living with existential pathos teaches the difference between the either/or logic of collisions and the both/and logic of development and transitions. There is a difference between self-transformation and a progressive individual and social development. In the developmental mode self experiences gradual progression or adaptive evolution; in the self-transformative mode (...) self undergoes qualitative upsurges, leaps, gestalt switches, musical key transpositions of becoming in individual and social evolutions. Each individual in every epoch begins at the beginning. The author traces the movements of becoming in their parallel dimensions, drawing a fork through Kierkegaard’s writing. The first leads through the existence spheres of his pseudonymous authorship. The second intensifies the movement on the spot and in the moment. (shrink)

In this paper I will help provide some suggestions for a “postmodern” business ethic. I will do this by criticizing some recent work done in the field, and then put forth some basic themes in postmodern thinking that might be applied to business ethics. I will here criticize both Green’s and Walton’s articles on the possibility of postmodern business ethics. I will criticize Green on the grounds that his characterization of the definitive elements of postmodern thought are not definitive of (...) postmodern thought. I will criticize Walton onthe grounds that his portrayal of postmodern philosophy as inherently nihilistic and relativistic is mistaken. Finally, I will try to provide afew minimal principles (or tendencies) of a postmodern business ethic. Ultimately, what postmodernism has to offer business is notrules, but questions that raise issues of responsibility. (shrink)

First, a few words of introduction, setting the scene. IÕm not a Nietzsche scholar. IÕm not even an historian of philosophy of any stripe. I am one of the fortunate few who are paid to Ôdo philosophyÕ, but the areas I tend to do most of my work in are logic, philosophy of language and some philosophy of religion. So why am I presenting a paper on Nietzsche? Well, there are at least two reasons. Firstly, I teach philosophy of religion, (...) and in the course I have a section about distinctively modern critics of religious belief. Nietzsche, together with Freud, Feuerbach and Marx present important criticisms which form a part of the fabric of contemporary philosophy of religion, and any student of the area needs to know something about it. So, what better way for me to learn about it than to force myself to write a paper on it? However, my reasons are not just selfish Ñ I do believe that the way that Christians (and other religious believers) respond to these contemporary critics of religion is very important. So, my aim in this paper is not only to give a short introduction to what Nietzsche has to say about Christian faith, but also to examine what an appropriate response for believers might be. This then has consequences for what we take the task of ÔChristian PhilosophyÕ to be. (shrink)