Resurrection

McGrew & McGrew make a solid statistical case for the historicity of the resurrection. This article fills two lacunae in the argument given there, and repairs a conceptual error (making the first lacuna irrelevant in the process).

Abstract: In the future, it will be possible to create advance simulations of ancestor in computers. Superintelligent AI could make these simulations very similar to the real past by creating a simulation of all of humanity. Such a simulation would use all available data about the past, including internet archives, DNA samples, advanced nanotech-based archeology, human memories, as well as text, photos and videos. This means that currently living people will be recreated in such a simulation, and in some sense, (...) “resurrected”. Such “resurrectional simulation” could be deliberately created just for this goal: to return to life all people who have ever lived. The main technical problem of such simulation will be uncertainty about the past, which increases exponentially for more remote times. Such problem could be partly addressed by “acausal trade” between different branches of the multiverse, which will create slightly different versions of the simulation using a quantum randomness generator. Such trade will result in resurrection of all possible people (including those who existed in other branches). Ethical problems of such a resurrectional simulation include: a) possible resurrection of some people against their will; b) such simulation may create additional suffering; с) such simulation could be used by hostile AI to return people to life and then torture them. In this work, I explore preliminary ideas about how to address these problems. (shrink)

Abstract. Death seems to be a permanent event, but there is no actual proof of its irreversibility. Here we list all known ways to resurrect the dead that do not contradict our current scientific understanding of the world. While no method is currently possible, many of those listed here may become feasible with future technological development, and it may even be possible to act now to increase their probability. The most well-known such approach to technological resurrection is cryonics. Another method (...) is indirect mind uploading, or digital immortality, namely the preservation of data about a person to allow for future reconstruction by powerful AI. More speculative ways to immortality include combinations of future superintelligence on a galactic scale, which could use simulation to resurrect all possible people, and new physical laws, which may include time-travel or obtaining information from the past. Acausal trade with parallel worlds could help combine random resurrection and reconstruction based on known data without loss of share of worlds where I exist (known as existence measure). Quantum immortality could help to increase the probability of success for cryonics and digital immortality. There many possible approaches to technological resurrection and thus if large-scale future technological development occurs, some form of resurrection is inevitable. (shrink)

James Turner has argued that views of purgatorial post-mortem salvation face a dilemma on the basis of their motivating intuitions vis-à-vis the second coming of Jesus (i.e., the parousia). Namely, they can accept that some persons experience “abrupt purgation” (undermining a key reason for affirming purgation), they can posit all who are not already saved at the second coming are damned (a view which is highly distasteful to purgatory advocates), or they can deny the parousia (a position which is unorthodox). (...) I offer a way of defusing this problem by constructing a second-chance soteriology on which persons in post-mortem purgation experience a state of psychological time dilation. In so doing, I first articulate the problem at hand before turning to relevant examples from fictional media and the neuropsychology of dreaming to support my constructive efforts. Finally, I apply this solution to a pre-existing soteriological model which already uses such resources so as to demonstrate its usefulness: namely, my own compassionate exclusivist view. (shrink)

Christian theology looks forward to a consummation of all things in which hope, justice, and flourishing will finally prevail. All creation will be perfectly united to God as its Creator, and all shall be well. But what does this mean for disabled people? The typical Christian answer through history has been that disability will not exist in the world to come. The advent of disability theology has given us reasons to doubt this answer, but until now no extended treatment of (...) disability and eschatology has existed. In response, this book gathers together essays from established and emerging scholars alike to provide an extensive look at what it might mean to imagine disability as a part of humanity’s ultimate ends. Across its pages we aim to advance conversations in disability theology through rigorously creative work, including on the much neglected topic of psychiatric disability. As such, our contributors ask and answer questions like “how can one’s well-being be high if they are disabled?,” “how do our beauty standards limit our eschatological thinking?,” “what does dissociative identity disorder mean for the afterlife?,” and more. -/- Contributors include Eleonore Stump (Saint Louis), Harvey Cawdron (St Andrews), Jessica Coblentz (Saint Mary's College), Erin Raffety and Emma Worrall (Princeton Seminary), Derek Estes (Pepperdine), Samuel Youngs (Bryan College), Maja Whitaker (Laidlaw College), and the editors. (shrink)

This article aims to provide an a posteriori argument for the veracity of the Christian conception of the Abrahamic religion that centres on God’s action of sending a divine and atoning prophet—the ‘Messianic Prophet’—into the world, who we can identify as the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This specific argument will be presented through Richard Swinburne’s (modified) explanatory framework, which focuses on assessing the prior and posterior evidence in support of this identification. This, however, will be done in light of (...) the work of Historical Jesus and NT scholars John P. Meier, N.T. Wright, Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado—which, in combination, will provide a means to ward off two important objections against Swinburne's methodology, and ultimately allow one to establish the veracity of the ‘Christian Position’, on firm historical grounds. (shrink)

What are we? Are we, for example, souls, organisms, brains, or something else? In this book, Andrew Brenner argues that there are principled obstacles to our discovering the answer to this fundamental metaphysical question. The main competing accounts of personal ontology hold that we are either souls (or composites of soul and body), or we are composite physical objects of some sort, but, as Brenner shows, arguments for either of these options can be parodied and transformed into their opposites. Brenner (...) also examines arguments for and against the existence of the self, offers a detailed discussion of the metaphysics of several afterlife scenarios - resurrection, reincarnation, and mind uploading -- and considers whether agnosticism with respect to personal ontology should lead us to agnosticism with respect to the possibility of life after death. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a model of disability which synthesizes Amos Yong’s disability theology with Elizabeth Barnes’s “value-neutral model” of disability and then draws Sarah Coakley’s account of ante-mortem/post-mortem bodily fluidity in with both. To construct this model, I first outline Yong’s thought and then introduce Barnes’s work to it as a pivot point around which its eschatological imagery can turn. I then address Coakley’s work on bodily fluidity regarding gender and apply it to disability to reveal the model’s (...) capacity to hold theological clarity and mystery in tension successfully. (shrink)

In 2013, inspired by a combination of the “monster erotica” genre and the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, two women college roommates, Christie Sims and Alara Branwen, self-published the ebook Taken by the T-Rex. Depicting sex between a cavewoman and the titular dinosaur, it spawned a career writing dinosaur erotica which proved more lucrative than those of their white-collar friends. Their success thrived thanks to joke purchases; but even irony-laden reviews of their work contain examples of serious critiques and analysis of (...) the fan-fictive story’s approach to themes of sexual agency, trauma, and comfort. This chapter analyzes Sims and Branwen’s work, as well as situates it within a historical context of more mainstream depictions of romantic and/or sexual tension between (cave)woman and dinosaur. It traces the trope from D. W. Griffith’s 1912 film Man’s Genesis and to its zenith in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. starring a fur-bikini-clad Raquel Welch, and even into themes of reproduction and cloning in the Jurassic Park (1993–2022) films. Ultimately, these works’ rendering of women as erotic agents alongside those dinosaurs is a transformative act that works to reinterpret feminine sexualities within feminist frameworks of pleasure and exploration. (shrink)

This article advocates evangelical environmental care by grounding an ethic of nature at the centre of evangelical theology, namely, in Christ and his resurrection. As Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 15, the continuity between our earthly bodies and our resurrected bodies entails that we should take care of our bodies. Drawing on Romans 8, I argue that the same line of reasoning applies to nature: the continuity between creation and the new creation entails that we should take care of (...) nature. Finally, I consider some objections to my argument regarding its possible eschatological consequences. (shrink)

Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903), the progenitor of so-called Russian Cosmism, is an eccentric figure without parallel in the domain of modern thought. His intellectual vision, elaborated across a number of essays and the sprawling unpublished magnum opus written from the 1870s to the 1890s, The Question of Fraternity, attempted a novel theorization of the trajectory, meaning, and telos of the human species through the fulcrum of resurrection. The speculative dimension of Fedorov's cosmist project has garnered the most sustained theoretical interest, but (...) this speculative dimension develops out of a determinate critical diagnosis of the fundamental operations of Western modernity. Reconstructing the elements that make up the diagnostic tendency of Fedorov's project, and then recentering his project around them, allows for the speculative and cosmic elements of his thought to be properly understood. As a result, his project is revealed to be a thinking and acting out of an intimacy with death and with the earth, a thinking and acting grounded in a delegitimating refusal of the colonial, biopolitical, and capitalist foundations of modernity. Only with the delineation of the critical as the internal drive for the cosmically speculative is Fedorov's difference from dominant modes of eco- and geo-constructivist thought sufficiently retained. Our essay pursues this line of thinking to show the decisive significance of Fedorov's critical project, incubated on the margins of Western modernity, for two dominant lines of critical theory—those associated most closely with the names of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. It does so by reconstructing Fedorov's refusal of the modern biopolitical paradigm, his expansion of the analytics of expropriation, his ambitious reconfiguration of the cartographical imaginary of collective life around the cemetery and the commune, and finally his speculative rewriting of the liturgy as the material enactment of the common task. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article examines two medical journal research articles on tuberculosis, one published in 1938 and the other in 2014. The two articles, which use animal models to understand aspects of tuberculosis mycobacteria survival in the lungs, rely on markedly different research and biotechnological techniques, reach somewhat opposite conclusions, and reflect different paradigms of tuberculosis pathogenesis: the 1938 article (indirectly invoking Koch’s postulates) was written before the paradigm of so-called “latent” and “reactivation” tuberculosis became widely adopted, while the 2014 article (indirectly (...) invoking the molecular equivalents to Koch’s postulates) works within that paradigm but implicitly questions it. Despite this, both articles exhibit fascinating similarities in terms of how their authors tackled their research questions, formulated their results, and framed their research methodologies. These similarities reflect both the reliance on tenets of the scientific method but also the value of paradigms of disease causation. Using tuberculosis as an example, this article concludes with remarks about how disease paradigms evolve and can stimulate research that leads to advances in disease understanding. (shrink)

The problem of resurrection, one of the most important issues in the philosophy and theology. Some of Muslim philosophers and the vast majority of theologians always discussed about this topic. Some of Muslim philosophers accepted this problem and prove it, but, in quality of occurrence of them, they have differ believe from each other. However, some of Muslim theologians except those who believe in transmogrification, they consider the resurrection to be one of the principle of religion, beside monotheism and prophecy. (...) Moreover, they proved the principle of resurrection through reasons, and explanations them elaborates through the Holy Quran and Prophetic saying (Traditions- Hadith). Avicenna and Suhrawardi have been proving resurrection. Of course, for prove of this problem, they adopted of different manner from Muslim Theologians. Both of philosophers according to codify of ordinary psychological system, have proved and explanation this issue. Thus, for understand of Avicenna and Suhrawardi’s eschatology. First of all, we must understand of their psychological system. Furthermore, in this paper, we will discuss about survival of the soul according to immaterial soul and perfecting of soul as two premises for prove of resurrection. (shrink)

Noting that the doctrine of the general resurrection attracted renewed attention after the Reformation, and after the atomist revival led to the displacement of traditional hylomorphism by alternative matter theories, this article surveys the ways in which the resurrection was discussed by leading natural philosophers in seventeenth‐century England. These include discussion of how bodily resurrection might be possible, what resurrected bodies will be like; as well as the nature of living conditions after the resurrection. It is indicated that the resurrection (...) seems to have played a much less prominent place in the writings of natural philosophers than the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and other issues of natural theology. Reasons for this lack of prominence are tentatively offered, chiefly focusing on its unsuitability for combatting the perceived atheism of the time. It is hoped that this preliminary survey might inspire others to extend the survey, especially to cover Continental philosophers. (shrink)

In light of Jacques Derrida’s writings on death and mourning, it may seem that the Christian teaching that the dead will be raised is a betrayal of others, a failure to take up one’s responsibility to testify to those who have died. In conversation with Emmanuel Falque’s work on finitude, Martin Heidegger’s reading of 1 Thessalonians, and Søren Kierkegaard’s reading of Abraham, I respond in two movements to this objection to faith that God will raise the dead. First, I propose (...) that even for the Christian, the death of the other remains a loss, since the Christian must surrender the other to God. It is, however, this very surrender of the other to God that seems to be an abdication of responsibility. Second, therefore, I argue that faith in the resurrection decenters the self and challenges our understanding of responsibility even more than does Derrida’s own analysis. Faith, I conclude, means giving up the desire to cling to one’s own responsibility. (shrink)

The afterlife continues to influence Christian faith and is a concern during fragile moments of reproductive loss. However, a doctrine of resurrection that speaks to death in the womb has yet to be considered. Ignoring fetal death began early in Christian history. The church has struggled for settled meaning regarding issues of personhood in the womb and whether unbaptized infants are saved. Believers today deserve to know the basis for a Christian hope of heaven. They deserve a nontoxic eschatology that (...) sustains an embodied sense of self, which is fractured by the experience of reproductive loss. They deserve to know whether assenting to the resurrection of the body--including unborn bodies--requires them to sacrifice their reproductive self-determination. The dominant Christian narrative of postmortem survival hinges on the concept of an immaterial soul that continues after death. However, the soul's apparently contented communing with God during its interim existence makes a final bodily resurrection superfluous. A soul-based approach to postmortem survival may save souls, but it does not resurrect bodies. If one can secure the plausibility of the resurrection of unborn bodies whose personhood is in doubt, then one dispenses with ensouled personhood as a requirement of resurrection. Christian materialist thought provides a metaphysical alternative to soul-based resurrection. A materialist approach to resurrection echoes the apostle Paul's powerful seed metaphor in 1 Corinthians 15. Medieval Christianity embraced metaphors of sprouting grain and budding plants. Returning to these images carries promise for rethinking resurrection in ways not dependent on an immaterial soul. Modern minds are more inclined to think of persons not as souls in bodies but as bodies that emerge into being, evolutionarily and gestationally. Philosophical theories of emergence are capturing the attention of Christian thinkers. This book's budding-emergence approach to the resurrection aims to speak concretely to the reality of death, including the death of unborn beings. (shrink)

q. 16 of John of Naples’ Quodlibet III – Utrum dolor vel passio damnatae animae separatae sit, sicut in subiecto immediato, in eius essentia vel potentia – evokes one of the most delicate debates, both from a theological and philosophical point of view, of scholastic eschatology between the end of the 13th century and the first decades of the 14th: that relating to the action of hellfire (considered, due to the auctoritas of Gregory the Great, corporeal and identical in essence (...) to sublunar fire) on an immaterial reality such as the soul in its state of separation (i.e. in the period between the individual death and the final judgement). The article retraces the way in which (in the well-known q. 2 of Quodlibet VI) John of Naples defends Thomas Aquinas from the suspicion of incurring, with his position, the condemnations of Tempier in 1270 and 1277, and how Aquinas himself tries to explain (especially in q. 26 of his Quaestiones disputatae de veritate) the passio or pain of the soul (both in the state of separation and in that of conjunction), through the double distinction between passio corporalis and passio animalis, and, within the former, between laesio and experimentalis perceptio laesionis. It then analyses q. 16 of Quodlibet III, in which John of Naples identifies the rational appetite – i.e. the will – as the immediate subject of the separate soul’s pain. In the appendix, an edition of John’s question is provided on the basis of the manuscripts Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, VII.B. 28 (= N) and Tortosa, Biblioteca de la Catedral, 244 (= T). (shrink)

Abstract:This essay follows the recent discourse on two phenomena: the tendency of hegemony to incorporate subversive cultures, and the digital reanimation of prominent dead people. At the intersection of these phenomena lies what we call “cultural necromancy,” a special case of hegemonic incorporation that aesthetically manipulates the physical presence of a deceased figure in the service of power. This essay explores historical analogues to cultural necromancy and how the digital age has accelerated the process through examples ranging from medieval saints (...) to Lenin’s mausoleum to the Tupac hologram. It then examines cultural necromancy’s implications for counterculture and resistance. (shrink)

Review of Thompson, J. W. (2022). The Metaphysics of Resurrection in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

This piece brings into critical conversation Christian resurrection hope, virtual versions of transhumanism, and intellectual disability and demonstrates that Christian resurrection provides a more cogent hope for people with severe intellectual disabilities than transhumanism. I argue that transhumanist virtual futures are theologically problematic, as bodily resurrection is neither required nor desirable. It is particularly problematic for people with severe intellectual disabilities given the way they would be excluded from these futures. Disability theology also raises issues with the traditional notions of (...) “healing” in the resurrection and the implications for the value and identity of persons with intellectual disabilities. Starting with these problems, I explore the nature of Christian hope, noting the inadequacies of a virtual transhumanist future with respect to both resurrection faith and intellectual disability, and address how resurrection hope can account for issues raised in disability theology, and so properly include people with intellectual disabilities. (shrink)

According to Locke, scripture says nothing about the resurrection of the same body. We will be resurrected. But in what sense can resurrected Jane be the “same” as living Jane? Throughout his thinking, Locke holds that sameness of body and/or sameness of soul are not required for the resurrection of “the same Jane.” Sameness of person is required. Locke’s theory of personal identity was ground-breaking in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was provoking and resulted in a wave of critical (...) responses. His distinction between “man” and “person” is important for his account of personal identity, but the distinction was hard for his contemporaries to understand. The correspondence between Locke and Edward Stillingfleet, for example, shows that for Stillingfleet the distinction between “man” and “person” is artificial. Having read this correspondence, Winch Holdsworth attacks Locke in a sermon in 1719 arguing that Locke denied the resurrection altogether. Catharine Trotter Cockburn tries to defend Locke in her Vindication. Despite her clear understanding of the distinctions applied by Locke, she too struggles with what to make of a person. (shrink)

Il est question de montrer que l’une des clés de compréhension de l’idéal communautaire chez Jean-Luc Nancy, passe par sa mise en relation avec la critique littéraire de Maurice Blanchot. Autrement dit, l’idée de communauté recèle une essence poétique de l’absence-présence. Elle est le lieu de trame d’un évènement tragique qui neutralise l’essentielle possibilité du ‘vivre ensemble’. Cette conception de la communauté comme évènement tragique de la transvaluation, décrit comment le dernier homme à parler c’est-à-dire celui qui possède les mots (...) et l’écriture. Se détache de l’homme commun et ordinaire (le dernier homme nietzschéen). C’est une interprétation nihiliste littéraire qui aboutit sur une hypothèse qui consiste à dire que : La communauté désœuvrée est communauté d’une infinie résurrection de l’écrivain. Ce travail situe de ce fait, un instant de colloque, d’où le langage devient un acte pour la finitude. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the idea of general resurrection of the dead at the end of times in the synoptic Gospels. We intend to clarify whether this concept can be interpreted as a transposition of the parallel belief contained in some intertestamental writings, or if the singularity of the religious experience expressed in the synoptic Gospels establishes an inexorable moment of discontinuity with the previous apocalyptic framework, making it impossible to understand this doctrine on the sole (...) basis of its Jewish precedents. In order to accomplish our goal, we shall first study the general resurrection of the dead in the Q source, the references to this notion in the gospel of Mark, and its meaning in both Matthew and Luke. We will exclude from our treatment all the topics related with the resurrection of Jesus, and we will be focused on the explicit mentions of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as such. Since implicit beliefs are always difficult to assess, especially in the context of eschatological ideas, in which vagueness and absence of a systematic effort of exposition often prevail, we will not allude to other synoptic passages which have been regarded as potential expressions of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead at the end of times. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the process of perfecting agents. There are two views that attempt to explain what perfecting an agent looks like, specifically in the context of temporal requirements. One view claims that it is part of Christian orthodoxy that those destined for heaven will be instantaneously changed upon death from imperfect agents to perfect ones. The other view says that it’s impossible to perform an instantaneous change if the agent wants to maintain their personal identity; an (...) instantaneous change from imperfection to perfection would be tantamount to creating a brand-new person, sufficiently causally disconnected from their previous imperfect self. Instead, this view claims that some form of temporal extension is necessary for the process to be successful. I end up in support of the view that says temporal extension is necessary. (shrink)

In his latest book, The Resurrection of Jesus, Dale Allison states that, while he personally believes that Jesus resurrected, “the purely historical evidence is not, on my view, so good as to make disbelief unreasonable, and it is not so bad as to make faith untenable.” This review focuses on Allison’s discussion concerning apparitions, hallucination theory, mass hysteria, and pareidolia. While appreciative of various aspects of Allison’s work, this article points out various problems with Allison’s use of materials in other (...) disciplines, a number of fallacies of reasoning in Allison’s analyses, and demonstrates that the best skeptical hypothesis against Jesus’s resurrection suggested by Allison is untenable. (shrink)

The exegesis of the resurrection of Lazarus offers Hilary of Poitiers the chance to reflect on the emotional suffering of the Word made flesh and its glorification by the Father. The bishop uses these motifs to rebut the subordinationist position of his adversaries and to uphold the presence of the Father in the Son, declaring the perfect equality of both persons. Thus, he uses the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus to show how the glorification of the Son is intended (...) to sanctify the flesh he assumed, so that the Father to recognizes him in it, thus restoring the unity of his divine and human natures. Likewise, he draws a connection with Jn 5:24-29, reinforcing his thoughts on the mystery of the mutual inhabitation of the Father and the Son with an anti-Arian interpretation. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to investigate the philosophical anthropology that underpins the anthropology of the Early Christians. It is curious to know why Christian anthropology is intellectually and practically inclined towards the philosophical anthropology of the Platonic tradition rather than the theological-philosophical tradition of the biblical Hebrew people in the Old Testament. Today the emphasis on Christian anthropology is that the human person is an integration of body and soul. Contrary to this position, the writer maintains that the (...) Christian anthropology, especially during the period of the early Christians, fundamentally conceives the human person as a composite of soul and body, which is a conscious employment of Platonic anthropology. This article observes that, as regards the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, there is a dichotomy between theological coherency and the actual Christian practice on the Christian conception of the human person. Hence, this work argues that the Platonic influence on the philosophical anthropology of the Early Christian was a deliberate act to give a more rational foundation to the theological problematic on the resurrection of the dead and on the resurrected body. It explains why Aquinas’s theological cum philosophical thinking, though overwhelmingly an Aristotelian ground, could not “Aristotelize” his philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to investigate the philosophical anthropology that underpins the anthropology of the Early Christians. It is curious to know why Christian anthropology is intellectually and practically inclined towards the philosophical anthropology of the Platonic tradition rather than the theological-philosophical tradition of the biblical Hebrew people in the Old Testament. Today the emphasis on Christian anthropology is that the human person is an integration of body and soul. Contrary to this position, the writer maintains that the (...) Christian anthropology, especially during the period of the early Christians (here understood as the period within the first five centuries C.E.), fundamentally conceives the human person as a composite of soul and body, which is a conscious employment of Platonic anthropology. This article observes that, as regards the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, there is a dichotomy between theological coherency and the actual Christian practice on the Christian conception of the human person. Hence, this work argues that the Platonic influence on the philosophical anthropology of the Early Christian was a deliberate act to give a more rational foundation to the theological problematic on the resurrection of the dead and on the resurrected body. It explains why Aquinas’s theological cum philosophical thinking, though overwhelmingly an Aristotelian ground, could not “Aristotelize” his philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Einar Bohn [AJP 2019] has proposed a version of panpsychism on which consciousness is fundamentally a property of pluralities of basic objects. I argue that this pluralized panpsychism is structurally similar to emergentism, and faces the problem of explaining how a plurality of basic objects could be a subject of experiences. Because of these issues, pluralized panpsychism is not a substantial improvement on orthodox panpsychism.

Human tragedy could be summed up a single word—death. One first encounters it through the death of others, and then everyone faces it for themselves. The Christian faith confronts humanity’s final foe head on, delivering sustained hope amidst the sorrow and despair of impending death. This paper will first address the central role of the resurrection of the dead in First Corinthians. Second, the paper will present Paul’s retort to several challenges raised against the notion of the resurrection. Finally, the (...) paper will attempt to systematize the means by which Paul proves the resurrection of the dead. (shrink)

The idea that physical death may not mark the end of an individual's existence has long been a source of fascination. It is perhaps unsurprising that we are apt to wonder what it is that happens to us when we die. Is death the end of me and all the experiences that count as mine? Or might I exist, and indeed have experiences, beyond the time of my death? And yet, deep metaphysical puzzles arise at the very suggestion that persons (...) might continue to exist following physical death. Indeed, whether, and how, one can exist post-mortem will depend in no small part on what sorts of things we are and on what it takes for things like us to persist across temporal durations and other changes. These topics and their application to the growing collection of materialist accounts of resurrection are the focus of this Element. (shrink)

Panpsychists aspire to explain human consciousness, but can they also account for the physical world? In this paper, I argue that proponents of a popular form of panpsychism cannot. I pose a new challenge against this form of panpsychism: it faces an explanatory gap between the fundamental experiences it posits and some physical entities. I call the problem of explaining the existence of these physical entities within the panpsychist framework “the missing entities problem.” Spacetime, the quantum state, and quantum gravitational (...) entities constitute three explanatory gaps as instances of the missing entities problem. Panpsychists are obliged to solve all instances of the missing entities problem; otherwise, panpsychism cannot be considered a viable theory of consciousness. (shrink)

I exploit parallel considerations in the philosophy of mind and metaethics to argue that the reasoning employed in an important argument for panpsychism overgeneralizes to support an analogous position in metaethics: panmoralism. Next, I raise a number of problems for panmoralism and thereby build a case for taking the metaethical parallel to be a reductio ad absurdum of the argument for panpsychism. Finally, I contrast panmoralism with a position recently defended by Einar Duenger Bohn and argue that the two suffer (...) from similar problems. I conclude by drawing some general lessons for panpsychism. (shrink)

In response to Stephen Davis’s criticism of our previous essay, we revisit and defend our arguments that the Resurrection hypothesis is logically incompatible with the Standard Model of particle physics—and thus is maximally implausible—and that it cannot explain the sensory experiences of the Risen Jesus attributed to various witnesses in the New Testament—and thus has low explanatory power. We also review Davis’s reply, noting that he evades our arguments, misstates their conclusions, and distracts the reader with irrelevancies regarding, e.g., what (...) natural laws are, what a miracle is, and how “naturalism” and “supernaturalism” differ as worldviews. Contrary to what Davis claims (even in his abstract), we do not argue that “if the Standard Model of particle physics is true, then the resurrection of Jesus did not occur and physical things can only causally interact with other physical things.” Davis distorts our claims and criticizes straw men of his own creation. (shrink)

Christian apologists, like Willian Lane Craig and Stephen T. Davis, argue that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is reasonable because it provides the best explanation of the available evidence. In this article, I refute that thesis. To do so, I lay out how the logic of inference to the best explanation (IBE) operates, including what good explanations must be and do by definition, and then apply IBE to the issue at hand. Multiple explanations—including (what I will call) The Resurrection Hypothesis, The (...) Lie Hypothesis, The Coma Hypothesis, The Imposter Hypothesis, and The Legend Hypothesis—will be considered. While I will not attempt to rank them all from worst to best, what I will reveal is how and why The Legend Hypothesis is unquestionably the best explanation, and The Resurrection Hypothesis is undeniably the worst. Consequently, not only is Craig and Davis’ conclusion mistaken, but belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus is irrational. In presenting this argument, I do not take myself to be breaking new ground; Robert Cavin and Carlos Colombetti have already presented a Bayesian refutation of Craig and Davis’ arguments. But I do take myself to be presenting an argument that the average person (and philosopher) can follow. It is my goal for the average person (and philosopher) to be able to clearly understand how and why the hypothesis “God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead” fails utterly as an explanation of the evidence that Christian apologist cite for Jesus’ resurrection. (shrink)

This book seeks to show how Karl Marx’s vision of communism was a continuation of Aristotle’s classical humanist philosophy. Challenging the Engelsian distortion of Marx, it presents a negation of previous interpretations of Marx which present him in materialist terms. Engels proposed a picture of the highest stage of communist society as an economic egalitarianism, a vision which became an axiom of Leninist-Stalinist-Soviet Communism. By contrast, here it is shown that Marx embraced the Aristotelian concept of “distributive justice”, of proportionate (...) equality. Spanning the works of Marx, from his university education and doctoral dissertation on the differences between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of the atom, to the study of his Rheinische Zeitung period and the persistence of classical humanism in Marx’s defense of the freedom of the press, Levine skillfully reveals the gravitational pull between Marx and Aristotle. Showing how classical humanism is the dominant ethos in the communism of Marx, the book includes chapters on: Hegel as a transition point between Aristotle and Marx The links between Marx’s theory of labor and Aristotle’s idea of the constitutive subject located in The Politics How the local methodologies of Aristotle and Hegel provided Marx with the social methodologies by which to interpret the functioning of capitalism Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle is the culmination of Norman Levine's life-long work to establish the correct placement of Marx and Marx’s communism within the classical humanist tradition. (shrink)

Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, introduces the creation of human beings on the basis of Genesis 1:26–27 and interprets these two biblical verses as a ‘double creation’—the first of which is ‘in the image of God’ and secondly as male or female. His concept of ‘double creation’ is obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish philosopher, but Gregory points out the condition of human beings before and after committing the sin, in contrast to Philo’s (...) conception. While Philo distinguishes between the first and the second creation of the entirety of nature, Gregory only relates the double creation to humans. Thus plants as nourishment for humans, according to Genesis, must be matched with the second creation of humans. In the resurrection, when the ‘first creation’ of human nature will be reached, human beings with their restored bodies will only feed on immaterial, spiritual food—the Word of God. (shrink)

Current theological thought across various fields emphasizes the synthetic and holistic nature of Christ’s saving work. For example, consider the use of the term “Paschal Mystery” by the second Vatican Council1 and the language of “the Christ event” in Biblical studies.2 Even Heideggarian theologians who use the language of “symbolic recognition” see the sacraments as moments when Christians recognize and affirm their connectedness to the whole mystery of Christ.3 Conversely, ulta-traditionalist authors combat the idea of Paschal mystery, charging that the (...) connection of the resurrection to the sacraments undercuts Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice.4 While Albert the Great does not, of course, speak directly to... (shrink)

In his philosophical project of a “deconstruction of monotheism,” Jean-Luc Nancy explores the hypothesis that the historical roots of secularization should be traced back to the beginnings of the monotheistic traditions. The secular is not exclusively a feature of modern culture. The complex connections and tensions between secularity and religion in recent decades can only be analyzed effectively if one rethinks the notion of the secular along these historical lines. The author offers a brief introduction into Nancy’s project, before focusing (...) on a theme that is central to one of the monotheistic traditions, Christianity: that of the resurrection. He reads and comments on parts of Nancy’s essay Noli me tangere, an innovative interpretation of John 20.11–18. In dialogue with Nancy he then develops a new view on the resurrection, in which paradoxically death is given a central meaning. This also involves a new insight in the immanence of transcendence. In the resurrection, it is death itself that resurrects. The idea is criticized that death would be vanquished into a life after death – as dominant approach in Christian doctrine has it, thereby expanding the modest little epilogue that the tale of the “empty tomb” actually is in the gospels, to a massive foundation of Christian redemption. Resurrection is affirmed as a life in death as well as a death in life. The resurrection of the mortal, earthly and vulnerable God that Christ is, invites an affirmation of the here and now, of humanity and of the human body: a “yes” to the world, not to an afterworld. Parallel to this analysis, the author takes up Nancy’s suggestion that the resurrection, and in fact the entire gospel, is a parable, and that its “truth” is a parabolic truth: playing with the impossible and the miraculous, in which truth and falsehood become entangled with each other. (shrink)

We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and against the (...) Resurrection hypothesis. (shrink)