This book offers a new theological approach to the multiverse hypothesis. With a distinctive methodology, it shows that participatory metaphysics from ancient and medieval sources represents a fertile theological ground on which to grapple with contemporary ideas of the multiverse. There are three key thinkers and themes discussed in the book: Plato and cosmic multiplicity, Aquinas and cosmic diversity, and Nicholas of Cusa and cosmic infinity. Their insights are brought into interaction with a diverse range of contemporary theological, philosophical, and scientific figures to demonstrate that a participatory account of the relationship between God and creation leads to a greater continuity between theology and the multiverse proposal in modern cosmology. This is in contrast to existing work on the subject, which often assumes that the two are in conflict. By offering a fresh way to engage theologically with multiverse theory, this book will be a unique resource for any scholar of Religion and Science, Theology, Metaphysics, and Cosmology.

This book provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses on scientists’ religious life and practices, and the variety of ways in which they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity’. By complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book engages with new ways of looking at these categories.

Since its inception, the discussion surrounding Open Theism has been dominated by polemics. On crucial philosophical issues, Openness proponents have largely been devoted to explicating the underlying framework and logical arguments supporting their perspective against competing theological and philosophical perspectives. As a result, very little constructive work has been done on the interconnections between Open Theism and the natural sciences. Given the central place of sciences in today's world, any perspective that hopes to have a broad impact must necessarily address such disciplines in a sustained and constructive manner. To date such engagements from the Openness perspective have been rare. God in an Open Universe addresses this deficiency. This book demonstrates that Open Theism makes a distinctive and highly fruitful contribution to the conversation and constructive work occurring between philosophy, theology, and the sciences. The various essays explore subjects ranging from physics to prayer, from special relativity to divine providence, from metaphysics to evolution, and from space-time to God. All who work at the intersection of theology and the sciences will benefit greatly from these essays that break new ground in this important conversation.

Cosmic Jackpot is Paul Davies’s eagerly awaited return to cosmology, the successor to his critically acclaimed bestseller The Mind of God. Here he tackles all the "big questions," including the biggest of them all: Why does the universe seem so well adapted for life? In his characteristically clear and elegant style, Davies shows how recent scientific discoveries point to a perplexing fact: many different aspects of the cosmos, from the properties of the humble carbon atom to the speed of light, seem tailor-made to produce life. A radical new theory says it’s because our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes, each one slightly different. Our universe is bio-friendly by accident -- we just happened to win the cosmic jackpot. While this "multiverse" theory is compelling, it has bizarre implications, such as the existence of infinite copies of each of us and Matrix-like simulated universes. And it still leaves a lot unexplained. Davies believes there’s a more satisfying solution to the problem of existence: the observations we make today could help shape the nature of reality in the remote past. If this is true, then life -- and, ultimately, consciousness -- aren’t just incidental byproducts of nature, but central players in the evolution of the universe. Whether he’s elucidating dark matter or dark energy, M-theory or the multiverse, Davies brings the leading edge of science into sharp focus, provoking us to think about the cosmos and our place within it in new and thrilling ways.

In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead's project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville's focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou Dunyi. Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines.

This Companion offers an up-to-date overview of the beliefs, doctrines, and practices of the key philosophical concepts at the heart of Christian theology. The sixteen chapters, commissioned specially for this volume, are written by an internationally recognized team of scholars and examine topics such as the Trinity, God's necessary existence, simplicity, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, eternity and providence, the incarnation, resurrection, atonement, sin and salvation, the problem of evil, church rites, revelation and miracles, prayer, and the afterlife. Written in non-technical, accessible language, they not only offer a synthesis of scholarship on these topics but also suggest questions and topics for further investigation.

When a physicist who becomes a metaphysician, and a metaphysician who studies physics, join together to examine science (quantum physics and cosmogenesis in particular), explosive results might well be expected. Here Wolfgang Smith and Jean Borella return us to a Weltanschauung that can finally account for the world in all its dimensions.

Is life meaningful? How would the universe have to be made to persuade us toward our purpose? Is there any evidence that we live in such a universe? Modern science has taught us that the fundamental workings of the universe often run counter to our intuitions: time does not flow, it is frozen in a continuum with space; a single particle of matter can create a wave-like interference pattern; and our perception does not reveal reality but instead increases our fitness to survive. Meaning in the Multiverse: A Skeptic's Guide to a Loving Cosmos shows the flaws in our intuitions on universal meaning and our place in the universe. Utilizing metaphysics and cosmology, author and scientist Justin Harnish tackles the interrelatedness of meaning and existence, explores our ability to create virtual consciousness, uncovers our recruitment as a deep-learning program for the universe, and illuminates the optimization routine running on a massively parallel quantum computer. If we are going to ask the question, "what is the meaning of it all" anyway... it is best to leverage the latest science of existence and the latest interrogations of experience. Similar to how Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality stood at the vanguard of physics and described ten different theoretical multiverses, Meaning in the Multiverse speculates on universal meaning in an existence fundamentally made of matter, information, and computation. Books as different as What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell, Sean Carrol's The Big Picture, and Waking Up by Sam Harris are the supernatural, poetic, and personal arguments, respectively, against an all-natural, universal meaning. Meaning in the Multiverse: A Skeptic's Guide to a Loving Cosmos is the first book to speculate that meaning is transmitted to us through an all-natural, computational multiverse.The multiverse is persuading us to live an examined life, one more aligned to our shared meaning. * To be mindful in our experiences. * To flow with existence especially in pursuits that further science, society, or culture. Man's search for meaning has been using a water witching rod when tools like the Hubble Space Telescope are available. Meaning in the Multiverse: A Skeptic's Guide to a Loving Cosmos, will take off the lens cap and stare into the true source of human meaning-the dynamic multiverse.

We humans are collectively driven by a powerful - yet not fully explained - instinct to understand. We would like to see everything established, proven, laid bare. The more important an issue, the more we desire to see it clarified, stripped of all secrets, all shades of gray. What could be more important than to understand the Universe and ourselves as a part of it? To find a window onto our origin and our destiny? This book examines how far our modern cosmological theories - with their sometimes audacious models, such as inflation, cyclic histories, quantum creation, parallel universes - can take us towards answering these questions. Can such theories lead us to ultimate truths, leaving nothing unexplained? Last, but not least, Heller addresses the thorny problem of why and whether we should expect to find theories with all-encompassing explicative power.

The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris’s process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This book’s contention is that Harris’s work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness.