Is there really a God, and if so, what is God actually like? Is there an afterlife, and if so, is there such a thing as eternal punishment for unrepentant sinners, as many orthodox Christians and Muslims believe? And is it really true that our unconscious minds are connected to a higher spiritual reality, and if so, could this higher spiritual reality be the very same thing that religionists call "God"? In his latest book, Raymond M. Smullyan invites the reader to explore some beautiful and some horrible ideas related to religious and mystical thought. In Part One, Smullyan uses the writings on religion by fellow polymath Martin Gardner as the starting point for some inspired ideas about religion and belief. Part Two focuses on the doctrine of Hell and its justification, with Smullyan presenting powerful arguments on both sides of the controversy. "If God asked you to vote on the retention or abolition of Hell," he asks, "how would you vote?" Smullyan has posed this question to many believers and received some surprising answers. In the last part of his treasurable triptych, Smullyan takes up the "beautiful and inspiring" ideas of Richard Bucke and Edward Carpenter on Cosmic Consciousness. Readers will delight in Smullyan's observations on religion and in his clear-eyed presentation of many new and startling ideas about this most wonderful product of human consciousness.

Since the mid-1960s, new religious movements—some exotic, some homegrown—have burgeoned all over the United States. A sense of self-awareness and spiritual sensitivity have found expression in the lives of large numbers of people, especially among youth. Why would this happen? What do these movements teach, and what effect do they have on the future? How does religious consciousness relate to other manifestations of social change, such as communal living, group therapy, and radical politics? Beginning in 1971, an extensive research project was undertaken by a team of sociologists, historians, and theologians seeking answers to these questions. Through a combination of interviews and participant observations, they studied new religious and quasi-religious groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, a spawning ground for upwards of one hundred such movements. The New Religious Consciousness opens with reports on three Eastern-based movements: the Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization, Hare Krishna, and Divine Light (more popularly known by the name of its leader, Maharaj Ji). Three quasi-religious movements are then considered: the New Left, the Human Potential Movement (Esalen, EST, Scientology, etc.), and Synanon. Next, three movements having their roots in Western religious traditions are examined: the Christian World Liberation Front (an offshoot of the Jesus Movement), Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the Church of Satan (whose members believe in witchcraft). Succeeding chapters are devoted to estimating the impact of these movements on established religions and the population at large and to the history of earlier periods of religious ferment in the United States. The book concludes with provocative essays by the editors in which they present separate and differing analyses of the sources, nature, and meaning of the new religious consciousness. A variety of perspectives are represented here: phenomenological, theological, experiential, sociological, and social psychological. The result is a book rich in insight about the nature of new religions. Taken together with a companion volume, Robert Wuthnow's The Consciousness Reformation, also published by University of California Press, The New Religious Consciousness provides the first comprehensive study of American countercultural belief systems. With contributions by: Randall H. Alfred Robert N. Bellah Charles Y. Glock Barbara Hargrove Donald Heinz Gregory Johnson Ralph Lane, Jr. Jeanne Messer Richard Ofshe Thomas Piazza Linda K. Pritchard Donald Stone Alan Tobey James Wolfe Robert Wuthnow This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

The Cosmotheandric Experience is not a Christian, or an Indic, or a Buddhist study, but an interdisciplinary study with a firm foundation. It aims at an integration of the whole of reality: We have to reconstruct the body of Prajapati, even if some of the parts feel unworthy, are shy or run away ... We have to think of all of the fragments of the present world in order to bring them together into a harmonious--though not monoliithic--whole. The Cosmotheandric principle, which the author advocates, could be formulated by saying that the divine, the human and the earthly are three irreducible dimensions which constitute the real.

In Consciousness and the Existence of God , JP Morelandargues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its regular, law-like correlation with physical states) provides evidence for the existence of God. Considering Searle's contingent correlation, O'Connor's emergent necessitation, and Nagel's mysterian "naturalism," Moreland concludes that these versions of naturalism should be rejected in favor of what he calls"the Argument from Consciousness."

The Religious Consciousness opens with the statement "Religion is a basic fact of human culture and it appears at the beginning of human societies," a fact made clear by the burial rites of the earliest human groupings. From this historical perspective, Oscar discloses how the concept of morality became ingrained in religion and how religion has progressed in different cultures, up to the current day. With trialectical precision, Oscar discusses and reveals the philosophical positions that underlie our current worldwide search for religious meaning, and the impasse of recent philosophical thought that can only be addressed by rediscovering the Unity.

This work addresses the challenge of contemporary materialism for thinking about God. The book examines contemporary theories of consciousness and defends a non-materialist theory of persons, subjectivity and God. A version of dualism is articulated that seeks to avoid the fragmented outlook of most dualist theories. Dualism is often considered to be inadequate both philosophically and ethically, and is seen as a chief cause of denigrating the body and of promoting individualism and scepticism. Charles Taliaferro defends a holistic understanding of the person-body relationship in which the two are distinguishable yet integrally related. This integrated dualism is spelled out in a way that avoids the ethical and philosophical problems associated with other dualistic accounts, especially in its Platonic and Cartesian forms. A defence is then made of the intelligibility of thinking about God as non-physical, yet integrally present to creation. Charles Taliaferro is co-editor of the forthcoming A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, with Philip Quinn. He has had work published in, among others, The Philosophical Quarterly, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophia.