Donald A. Crosby Boeken

The book delves into the differences between sacred and secular elements across various religious traditions, examining how these two realms interact. It offers insights into the potential for a mutually beneficial relationship between them, highlighting the importance of understanding and integrating both aspects in contemporary society. Through this exploration, it encourages readers to reflect on the significance of these distinctions in their own lives and communities.

Explores the mutually dependent relationship of faith and reason in human life and human knowledge.

The book presents a compelling argument for viewing nature as the central element of religious devotion, positing it as the ultimate metaphysical reality that warrants deep spiritual commitment. It explores the philosophical and ethical implications of this perspective, encouraging readers to rethink their relationship with the natural world and its significance in their lives. Through eloquent prose, the author invites reflection on the sacredness of nature and its role in shaping human experience and belief.

Explores the spiritual obligations of humans to animals from a religious naturalist’s perspective.

Provides a metaphysical outlook for religious naturalism. Nature as Sacred Ground explores a metaphysics for religious naturalism. Donald A. Crosby discusses major aspects of reality implicit in his ongoing explication of Religion of Nature, a religious outlook that holds the natural world to be only world, one with no supernatural domains, presences, or powers behind it. Nature as thus envisioned is far more than just a system of facts and factual relations. It also has profoundly important valuative dimensions, including what Crosby regards as nature’s intrinsically sacred value. The search for comprehensive metaphysical clarity and understanding is a substantial part of this work’s undertaking. Yet this endeavor also reminds us that, while it is good to think deeply and systematically about major features of reality and their relations to one another, we also need to reflect tirelessly about how to respond to metaphysical concepts that call for decision and action.

Discusses the role of symbols in religion and suggests particular symbols appropriate to religious naturalism. Religious life involves more than prosaically stated beliefs. It also encompasses attitudes, emotions, values, and practices whose meanings cannot be adequately captured in verbal assertions but require effective expression in forceful images, portrayals, and enactments of a nonliteral sort. Indeed, the world’s religious traditions are each marked by rich and distinctive symbols. In More Than Discourse, Donald A. Crosby discusses the nature of symbols in religion and investigates symbols appropriate for religious naturalism or what he terms Religion of Nature. This is a religious outlook that holds the natural world to be the only world; it is sacred but without any supernatural domain or presence underlying it. Warning against a too-literalistic approach to any religion by either its adherents or its critics, Crosby discusses the nature and roles of religious symbols, how they work, and their particular kinds of truth or falsity. A set of criteria for evaluating the effectiveness and meaning of religious symbols is provided along with explorations of specific symbols Crosby finds to be highly significant for Religion of Nature.

The book presents a philosophical exploration of meaning, purpose, and value in human life, advocating for a naturalistic perspective that avoids reductionism and scientism. It delves into the complexities of human experience, aiming to establish a nuanced understanding of how these concepts interrelate within a natural framework, enriching the discourse on human existence and its intrinsic worth.

Religion in a Pluralistic Age is a collection of selected papers presented at the Third International Conference on Philosophical Theology, which met in Bad Boll, Germany, in the summer of 1998. The conference was sponsored by the Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought, and its theme was «Public and Private Religion in a Pluralistic Age.» This theme explores interactions of public and private religion and ways in which both relate to an increasingly pluralistic age of diverse outlooks and forms of life. The Highlands Institute emphasizes the interface between theology and philosophy. It is especially concerned with theological efforts utilizing the American philosophical tradition, with the development of distinctively American religious thought, with themes relevant to the «Chicago School» of theology, and with naturalism in American religious thought.

This collection of essays is selected from presentations at the Second International Conference on Philosophical Theology, the University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, August 1993. The Conference, sponsored by the Highlands Institute for American Religious Thought, Highlands, North Carolina, includes scholars from the United States and other countries. The Highlands Institute emphasizes the interface between theology and philosophy, with attention to theological efforts utilizing the American philosophical tradition; the history and development of religious thought in America; themes relevant to the -Chicago School- of Theology, and Naturalism in American religious thought. The St. Andrews Conference focused on relations between religious thought and ecology, but other religious and philosophical topics were also addressed."