I've never heard of Kant's philosophy of religion, do you know why it didn't have as much of an impact as Hegel's did?
How does kierk fit in there?

I should say Kant’s transcendental theology. People seemed to be more interested in Kant for his ethical writings because that’s the brunt of his work. Hegel just so happened to gather a larger following because his work was extensive on religion. Kierkegaard wrote all about religion; he saw himself as a writer attempting to reintroduce Christianity into a culture that was rejecting it.

I prefer the redemptive or ethical theology of Jewish thinkers such as Levinas and Kavka. The focus is on man rather than speculation about a divine being and a messiah who has or will save us. Messianic responsibility is ours. It is our task to redeem the world.

I also prefer to drop the metaphysical trappings.

Forgot to mention that I like Levinas. And Kafka’s The Trial is a great book.

I have deep perplexity on the value of John Paul II as a philosopher or theologian. Before him, the fact that only men where admitted to priesthood was just a tradition in the Catholic Church; this means that there was some possibility to admit women to priesthood in the future: traditions can be changed. John Paul II changed this tradition into a dogma (see Ordinatio sacerdotalis), which means that it can never be changed in the future, because it must be considered an essential part of the infallible faith, infallible revelation. In other words, John Paul II closed, destroyed any possibility for women to be priests in the future.
The theological reasons for this decision are out of any human understanding: it is so just because it is so. They refer to the fact that Jesus was a man and his apostles were men; this way this theology decides to ignore the historical context, that instead is considered relevant in other cases. For example, the fact that Jesus had no properties was considered something historically limited to his person and not relevant to become a rule for the priests.
How can be considered valuable John Paul II as a theologian, considering that, by creating this dogma about the priesthood denied to women, he followed a theology lacking humanly understandable explanations?

In 1992 John Paul II promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In canon 2358 of the Catechism, homosexual tendencies are officially declared “objectively disordered”. This way homosexual people are publicly exposed to be treated differently from other people: it is said explicitly in the same canon: “They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity”. What is wrong in homosexual people so that they deserve particular compassion, particular acceptance? What are the theological basis to explain these declarations? Who establishes what is objectively ordered and objectively disordered in nature? What are the criteria to establish it?

And Kafka’s The Trial is a great book. — Dermot Griffin

Not Franz Kafka. Martin Kavka. Author of Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy.

No wiki entry but this will give you an idea of his work:

https://religion.fsu.edu/person/martin-kavka

Ahhh, yes. I’ve heard of the book but never bothered to read it. I’ll have to look into it!

I haven't studied his theology. I'm not a transcendentalist but I imagine it's unique.

Yeah kierk threw me off because he seems way more protestant than your other picks (in fact he could be an extremist protestant) so I was wondering how you reconciled them.

While I totally understand your point I tend to like JPII because of his personalism, the belief that man is a unique being in the universe that has every right to be an individual. You must understand that his position regarding homosexuality was very liberal for the day; the pope’s prior to him didn’t bother preaching that gay people should be treated with compassion. People left the church because of JPII’s very true statement. As far as women clergy go I personally don’t care if the church did allow this. Before that happens we need to drop the clerical celibacy nonsense. This does not mean that a priest doesn’t have the right to be celibate it’s just that the Vatican mandates it and that’s something I just think is a problem. It should be a persons choice.

From the introduction to Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy

1. What is not? Everything that has not yet actualized its potential. Most viscerally, me.

2. What is meontology? The study of unmediated experiences of lack and privation. This study inaugurates self-critique and the realization that I live in a moment best described as not-yet. I thereby begin my path toward human perfection and toward God.

3. How do I live in this not-yet? In manic desire for what appears to me to be stable, for what displays a comfort in its own skin that I have never experienced. For you.

4. What is the effect of this desire? In the hope against hope that my desire will come to fulfillment, I keep you in mind, near me. I take care of you and work to engender political reforms that allow our conversation and relationship to perdure. I act to delay your death – even, perhaps, if this contributes to the skyrocketing proportion of the GDP taken up by the cost of medical care – and the death of your friends, and their friends, ad infinitum. In these brief moments when I break free of my narcissistic chains, I act messianically and redeem the world that is responsible for your suffering and your death, which will always be premature for me. I engender a world that my tradition (and perhaps yours) says God engenders, and I articulate my resemblance to God.


This argument makes a long journey from Athens to Jerusalem. It moves from a philosophy of nonbeing to the passionate faith in a redeemer still to come ... whom I represent. Indeed, the notion of a redeemer to come – the difference between Judaism and Christianity – cannot be defended without turning back to the analysis of nonbeing in the Greek philosophical tradition. Without Athens, Jerusalem (Judaism) risks being unable to articulate the meaning of its own religious practices, becoming no more than a set of customs divorced from their ultimate source, a sedimented series of rote actions that can create an identity for its practitioners only through the profane category of “culture.”

I like to think that I am a Roman Catholic by denominational preference but an Eastern Orthodox Christian at heart. We of course have Byzantine rite churches in Catholicism and I’ve considered “switching” my rite (yes it is possible). Most Byzantine churches and Eastern Catholic churches in general act exactly like Orthodox churches: married priests, slightly different theology (more therapeutic than legalistic), different liturgy, an emphasis on the Church Fathers, and so on. The process seems to be pretty simple. You attend a Byzantine parish for 6 months to a year then write a letter to your bishop asking to switch. Of course you can’t write a hate letter about why the Roman Church is so messed up. That’s automatic rejection. One could just say “Go be Orthodox” but I don’t feel that I want to abandon my Catholic roots entirely. Still thinking on it but hopefully discerning this will cure me of a lot of anger that I have had built up towards the ”Latin” end of the church for a number of years despite my own personal piety.

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gregory Palamas, St. John of the Cross, John Wesley, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, St. John Henry Newman, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Jacques Maritain, Edith Stein, Fulton Sheen, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Martin Buber, Maimonides, Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Lossky, Sergei Bulgakov, Richard Swinburne, David Bentley Hart, Psuedo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Kitaro Nishida. — Dermot Griffin

You definitely should check out Avicenna there if you're a fan of Aquinas, a good chunk of Islamic philosophy influenced Scholastic philosophy.

As for the later period, like Leibniz and what not, they got their access to that tradition through Ibn Tufail's novel which investigated some of the problems in epistemology that later became the focus of that era of philosophy

Raised and educated Roman Catholic, then apostate in my middle teens, and finally unbeliever^^ (freethinker) over four decades since, here are many of the theologians (metaphysicians) and philosophers of religion – who confront "the divine" – from which I've learned a great deal:

Laozi
The Buddha
Aeschylus, Sophlocles, Euripides
Kohelet (Solomon?)
Epicurus
Hillel the Elder
Lucretius
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
John Scotus Eriugena
Adi Shankara
Ibn Rushd
Maimonides
William of Ockham
Benedictus de Spinoza
David Hume
Thomas Paine
Ludwig Feuerbach
Arthur Schopenhauer
Friedrich Nietzsche
Martin Buber
Karl Jaspers
Gabriel Marcel
Mircea Eliade
(Howard Phillips Lovecraft)
Gershom Scholem
Hans Jonas
Kitaro Nishida
(Georges Bataille)
Emmanuel Levinas
"Gora" aka Goparaju Ramachandra Rao
Thomas J. J. Altizer
Howard Thurman
Walter Kaufmann
Gustavo Gutiérrez
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Paul Tillich
Iris Murdoch
(René Girard)
(George Steiner)
(Ernest Becker)
(Hans Peter Duerr)
(Irvin Yalom)
Elaine Pagels
Don Cupitt

edit:

antitheist religious skeptic^^

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on the resurgence of neo-scholasticism in the philosophy of religion? I remember a few years ago everyone was raving about people like Feser, though I haven't followed up with the trend for a while.

I prefer my own theology. My being was prepared as it were, to receive a message from the eternal infinite heavens where the godkinds played their divine games already eternally.

unbeliever (freethinker) — 180 Proof

As if these two are the same... :sparkle:

philosophers of religion – who confront "the divine" — 180 Proof

And how they know what that even is?

Did Nietzsche believe in gods? Or only in a dead one?

From Wikipedia:

This is a list of philosophers of religion.

God

As the first in the row. Remarkable...

Though it is possible for one to be an unbeliever while not a freethinker (this is usually the case), I cannot see how a freethinker is not also an unbeliever insofar as freethought warrants unbelief.

Try something new, lil D-Ker: actually read one or more of their works. :worry:

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I've read the very first in the row! The gods. What use are the others still?

cannot see how a freethinker is not also an unbeliever insofar as freethought warrants unbelief. — 180 Proof

Then you're not a real freethinker. Freethought warrants unbelief? Why's that? You think gods oblige? That only creation from pure chance offers freedom?

confront "the divine" — 180 Proof

:fire:

Confront! Explain yourself, God/priest/cohen/mullah/lama or whoever the hell you are!

Words, words are all I have, to take your heart away...

Kant wished to interrogate, as opposed to converse with, nature. We should adopt a similar line, God has a lot of explainin' to do, ja?

Right now, I don't wanna be in god's shoes!

God has a lot of explainin' to do, ja — Agent Smith

No, Agent my love. It's us who should explain. The apology should be ours. BTW, you roll the cigarettes yourself?

No, Agent my love. It's us who should explain. The apology should be ours. BTW, you roll the cigarettes yourself? — EugeneW

Why would we need to do the explaining? We had no hand in creation. Is it possible to be good when the way the game has been designed is such a way as to invariably lead to situations that can only be fully described as aut neca aut necare (either kill/harm/maim or be killed/harmed/maimed)?

Goodness is impossible given the way the world is and how it works. There's not enough to go around for everybody if you know what I mean; war and its milder variants (a tiff that on most occasions spirals outta control) are inevitable. To make matters worse, going by the headlines in the media, the conditions aren't exactly improving.

That said, the brain/the mind is a powerful organ. If we, when we, use it well, magic!

As for cigarettes, mine are pre-rolled (by a machine hopefully, I'm fascinated by machines it seems), in packets of 10 (cheaper, deadlier).

Why would we need to do the explaining? — Agent Smith

Just take a good lookaround. That's not how heaven looks like. Instead, the homonid carbon copies of the homonid-gods did some damned intensive rearranging. Paradis lost. If only god-kind didn't overlook them when they worked on the right stuff. Enthusiasm and craving to escape the collective feeling of existential emptiness, felt in the whole of eternal and infinite heaven, was too overwhelming. No real attention was given to the homonid-gods. To their squiblings and squackeleries. For that they might be to blame

If you don't agree with the wiki article summary of the freethought tradition which I have linked in my previous post, then we're not talking about the same thing. I consider myself a freethinker regardless of what you cannot understanding, lil non-thinker (troll).

Clifford's Principle

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — William Kingdon Clifford

The pansy serves as the long-established and enduring symbol of free thought; literature of the American Secular Union inaugurated its usage in the late 1800s. The reasoning behind the pansy as the symbol of free thought lies both in the flower's name and in its appearance. The pansy derives its name from the French word pensée, which means "thought". It allegedly received this name because the flower is perceived by some to bear resemblance to a human face, and in mid-to-late summer it nods forward as if deep in thought. — Wikipedia