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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Religion and belief'
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1
Kiviorg, Merilin. "Freedom of religion or belief : the quest for religious autonomy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6c5916d8-d69d-4f2d-91e5-a5586f8abd4b.
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In this thesis it is argued that while the concept of freedom of religion or belief itself is opaque and difficult to define, the right to religious freedom must contain certain basic factors – most importantly the right to individual (religious) autonomy. The individual autonomy approach is seen here as providing the necessary rationale for the protection of freedom of religion or belief. This rationale is not cemented in stone in the practice of the Convention and this has caused the Court to lose its focus on individual freedom. It is a dangerous tendency. It allows the focus to be placed on the role of the State and leaves freedom of religion or belief to be heavily affected by politics and fluctuating social attitudes. In this regard, this thesis looks for the meaning and scope of individual and collective religious autonomy and how it is and ought to be represented in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. It is the aim of the author to contribute to a clearer and more principled understanding of Article 9 of the ECHR. The right to individual autonomy is thought to be able to provide the necessary focus for the European Court of Human Rights in creating a more robust framework for the protection of freedom of religion or belief different from current Court practice which shows inconsistency in its reasoning and theoretical chaos. This lack of clarity has also contributed to freedom of religion or belief being a relatively weak right. It is explored here as to how the principle of autonomy (as developed in this thesis) relates to other principles provided by the Court, namely the principle of State neutrality, pluralism and the effective protection of rights, but also the margin of appreciation and the autonomy of religious communities. The individual autonomy centred theoretical framework in the first part of the thesis will be engaged to analyse the conflict in the triangle of state-individual-community explored in the second part.
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Crowder, C. G. "Belief, unbelief and Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion." Thesis, Swansea University, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.636328.
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The interpretations of religious belief associated with philosophers in the Wittgensteinian tradition are widely misunderstood, as are the corresponding - but less well-known - interpretations of atheism. Instead of being a theory about autonomous 'language games', the Wittgensteinian approach is, in fact, a means of securing perspicuous representations of the relations between language and human practices; and the discourses of belief and unbelief are as rooted in our natural and cultural histories as any others. Foundationalist philosophers of religion isolate the discourses of belief and unbelief from human lives, both in describing the conflict between belief and unbelief and in attempting to arbitrate between the two. Assuming that metaphysical theism and atheism are fundamental to belief and unbelief, they advance a cognitivist and propositionalist analysis of both phenomena which is sometimes incoherent, and almost always impoverishing. Similarly, assuming that the conflict between belief and unbelief is a 'factual' one, they advocate ways of resolving it which betray a misunderstanding of the character of the conflict as it occurs in the lives of believers and atheists. The design argument, past and present, is a case in point: natural theology and natural atheology prove to be alike in misrepresenting perspectives upon the world as inferences drawn from it. Hume's Dialogues demonstrate the sheer irrelevance of the latter to the conflict between belief and unbelief, and compel us to reflect upon that conflict in different ways.
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Gilbert, Howard J. "The right to freedom of belief : a conceptual framework." Thesis, University of Essex, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.327069.
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Kingston, John Louis James. "Choice and religious belief." Thesis, Heythrop College (University of London), 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.325610.
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Najle, Maxine Belén. "ANALYSIS OF AUTOMATIC JUDGMENTS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF." UKnowledge, 2019. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/psychology_etds/161.
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The measurement of religious belief has some social desirability concerns that make the development of an implicit measure of religiosity advantageous. Currently, there are few options for implicitly measuring religious belief. This study attempted to add to this literature by analyzing the automatic judgements of religious belief through the use of an implicit measure known as the MouseTrack task, allowing for the measurement of latency in the expression of these beliefs as well as the certainty of these beliefs by tracking the path taken during the decision process. A sample of 121 undergraduates was recruited from the UK SONA subject pool. Desired religious variance was not achieved in the sample, making interpretation of results difficult. Detailed breakdowns of these path analyses are given. Key trends in findings are discussed.
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Altmann, Mischa, Aniko Bunta, and Olivier Mazimpaka. "Religion & Sustainability : The Contribution of Religious Belief in Moving Society Towards Sustainability." Thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Sektionen för ingenjörsvetenskap, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-4247.
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Behaviour change initiatives have largely failed in communicating the urgency of the sustainability challenge to the public and thus generate achange of behaviour. Religious communities have achieved remarkable behaviour change in situations where non-faith-based communication failed (Palmer and Finlay 2003). This paper explores what Christian belief contributes to moving society towards sustainability through the lens of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD). We focus on three themes: (1) the definition of sustainability, (2) the religious motivation for and (3) actions towards sustainability. A number of religious leaders are interviewed and the religious community surveyed. Findings show that religious concepts such as stewardship and the Golden Rule are key motivations for can give guidance on sustainability. However, these concepts are not consciously exploited. Further more, both religious leaders and people lack a full understanding of sustainability and are not strategic about moving towards sustainability. We conclude that religious communities could greatly benefit from adopting a strategic sustainable development (SSD) approach.
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Macey, Marie, Alan Carling, and Sheila M. Furness. "The Power of Belief? Review of the Evidence on Religion or Belief and Equalities in Great Britain." University of Bradford, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/4394.
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yesA new legal framework has been developed in Great Britain over the last ten years which protects individuals against unfair treatment on the grounds of their religion or belief. This framework regards all the major faith groups, secular belief systems (such as Humanism or Atheism), and non-belief on formally equal terms. There has also been a rapid growth of research interest in religion/belief in contemporary scholarship on equalities. This report provides a critical overview of this extensive research base relating mainly to England, Scotland and Wales up until 2008.
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Andrejc, Gorazd. "From existential feelings to belief in God." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/10262.
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The question of the relation between religious experience and Christian belief in God is addressed in radically different ways within contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. In order to develop an answer which avoids the pitfalls of the ‘analytic perception model’ (Alston, Yandell, Swinburne) and the ‘overlinguistic’ model for interpreting Christian religious experience (Taylor, Lindbeck), this thesis offers an approach which combines a phenomenological study of feelings, conceptual investigation of Christian God-talk and ‘belief’-talk, as well as theological, sociological and anthropological perspectives. At the centre of the interpretation developed here is the phenomenological category ‘existential feelings’ which should be seen, it is suggested, as a theologically and philosophically central aspect of Christian religious experiencing. Using this contemporary concept, a novel reading of F. Schleiermacher’s concept of ‘feeling’ is proposed and several kinds of Christian experiencing interpreted (like the experiences of ‘awe’, ‘miracle of existence’, ‘wretchedness’, and ‘redeemed community’). By way of a philosophical understanding of Christian believing in God, this study offers a critical interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘religious belief’, combining Wittgensteinian insights with Paul Tillich’s notion of ‘dynamic faith’ and arguing against Wittgensteinian ‘grammaticalist’ and ‘expressivist’ accounts. Christian beliefs about God are normally life-guiding but nevertheless dubitable. The nature of Christian God-talk is interpreted, again, by combining the later Wittgenstein’s insights into the grammatical and expressive roles of God-talk with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on linguistic innovation and Roman Jakobson’s perspective on the functions of language. Finally, the claim which connects phenomenological, conceptual and theological strands of this study is a recognition of a ‘religious belief-inviting pull’ of the relevant experience. Christian religious belief-formation and concept-formation can be seen as stemming from ‘extraordinary’ existential feelings, where the resulting beliefs about God are largely but not completely bound by traditional meanings.
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Ellis-Jones, Ian. "Beyond the Scientology case : towards a better definition of what constitutes a religion for legal purposes in Australia having regard to salient judicial authorities from the United States of America as well as important non-judicial authorities /." University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Law, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2100/404.
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The aim of this thesis is to formulate a better definition of religion for legal purposes than the formulation arrived at by the High Court of Australia in the 1983 decision of Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Pay-roll Tax (Vic). In that case, known in Australia as the Scientology (or Church of the New Faith) case, two of five justices of the High Court of Australia considered belief in a supernatural Being, Thing or Principle to be an essential prerequisite for a belief system being a religion. Two other justices stated that if such belief were absent it was unlikely that one had a religion. There are major problems with the High Court’s formulation in the Scientology case. First, it does not accommodate a number of important belief systems that are generally regarded as being religious belief systems, even though they do not involve any notion of the supernatural in the sense in which that word is ordinarily understood. Secondly, the Court provided little or no guidance as to how one determines whether a particular belief system involves a supernatural view of reality. The guidance that was given is ill-conceived in any event. Thirdly, it is philosophically impossible to postulate a meaningful distinction between the “natural” and the supposedly “supernatural” in a way that would enable the courts and other decision makers to meaningfully apply the “test” enunciated by the Court. The thesis combines a phenomenological approach and the philosophical realism of the late Professor John Anderson with a view to eliciting those things that permit appreciation or recognition of a thing being “religious”. Ultimately, religion is seen to comprise an amalgam of faith-based ideas, beliefs, practices and activities (which include doctrine, dogma, teachings or principles to be accepted on faith and on authority, a set of sanctioned ideals and values in terms of expected ethical standards and behavior and moral obligations, and various experientially based forms, ceremonies, usages and techniques perceived to be of spiritual or transformative power) based upon faith in a Power, Presence, Being or Principle and which are directed towards a celebration of that which is perceived to be not only ultimate but also divine, holy or sacred, manifest in and supported by a body of persons (consisting of one or more faithxvii based communities) established to give practical expression to those ideas, beliefs, practices and activities. The new definition is tested against 3 very different belief systems, Taoism (Daoism), Marxism and Freemasonry.
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Yohanis, Yakob James. "The implications of Christian teachers' faith perspectives for the teaching of World Religions : a study of Religious Education teachers in Controlled schools in Northern Ireland." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.676496.
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Scott, Kyle Irwin Andrew. "Disagreement and the rationality of religious belief." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/15785.
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Concerning religious matters there are a wide variety of views held that are often contradictory. This observation creates a problem when it comes to thinking about the rationality of religious belief. Can religious belief be rational for those who are aware of this widespread disagreement? This is a problem for a view in religious epistemology known as reformed epistemology. Alvin Plantinga, one of the leading defenders of this view, has argued that there is no successful argument to show that religious belief is irrational or in any other way epistemically unacceptable – he calls these arguments de jure arguments. I respond to this claim by seeking to develop two new versions of de jure argument that Plantinga has not dealt with. The first of these I call the return of the Great Pumpkin; and the second, the problem of religious disagreement. The return of the Great Pumpkin is an objection that develops an earlier objection that Plantinga has considered called, simply, the Great Pumpkin objection. This objection is that Plantinga’s methodology for defending the rationality of religious belief could be adopted by anyone, no matter how strange their beliefs – even someone who believed in the Great Pumpkin could use it. I develop this objection further by showing that it would be possible for a person with clearly absurd beliefs to find themselves in the same situation as the hypothetical Christian whom Plantinga is seeking to defend. There is, however, a response available to Plantinga, which involves showing how the historical and sociological context in which the person finds themselves makes a difference to the rationality of some of the beliefs that they hold. This discussion naturally leads into the second version of the de jure argument which asks whether knowledge of several religious communities who hold incompatible beliefs undermines the rationality of religious belief. This discussion engages with work in religious epistemology, but also more widely with the literature on the epistemology of disagreement. I consider whether, and in what circumstances, finding out that others disagree with you could ever rationally require you to give up one or more of your beliefs. This issue involves discussion of epistemic peers and defeaters. One of the arguments I consider is that if a religious believer continues to hold on to her religious beliefs in the face of disagreement then that will give her a reason to think that she is epistemically superior, which will lead to dogmatism, and a sort of epistemic arrogance. I respond to such an argument by showing that there is a problem with the inference involved in this argument.
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Young, Kirkland E. "Is belief in God epistemologically basic?" Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1989. http://www.tren.com.
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Henriquez-Mendoza, Juan Carlos. "The Belief System and the Pop-esoteric Wave: a Theory on the Operational Belief System." Thesis, Boston College, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3321.
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Thesis advisor: Stephen PfohlThis work inquires about the subjectivity construction individuals perform in our contemporary media culture. It examines the structure of believing that can be inferred from the narrative elaboration of beliefs exerted in social conversations when pop-media related to spirituality or transcendency are used as inputs for conversation. For this purpose, I investigate the consumption of three films that triggered for their audiences intense controversies that included topics belonging to the blurry crossroad where spirituality, science, and religion intersect: What The Bleep do We (k)now!? (USA 2004), The Da Vinci Code (USA 2006), and The Passion of the Christ (USA 2004). My approach departs from the sociology of spirituality perspective, and draws on some insights developed by ritual studies, sociology of religion, social psychoanalysis, consumer studies, and visual studies. Based on a multi-method strategy of inquiry, formal film analysis, focus and discussion groups, and interview data collected from the audience, this dissertation finds that the burgeoning of a media driven popular culture spirituality in Mexico is creating a wave of Pop-Esotericism. As a rational narrative with consumption and conversational drives, Pop-Esotericism is not only a resonant media-reference, but also constitutes a pre-text in the construction of ephemeral and collective conversational spaces wherein the belief system is engaged and refurnished. To give a full account on the pop-esoteric phenomenon and on overall contemporary belief systems, I propose a theoretical model aimed to uncover the dynamics and strategies we engage to articulate spirituality, identity, and reality in our current global media context
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Sociology
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Scolnicov, Anat. "Freedom of religion or belief : group right or individual right?" Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2006. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1925/.
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Freedom of religious and belief is a recognized right in international law. In order to understand, interpret, develop and implement this right, it is important to go back and analyse the fundamental reasoning behind this right. Freedom of religion and belief is a contradictory right: a freedom for self-constraint. It is a double-sided right, a right of expression and a right of identity, two aspects related to individual and group perceptions of this right. Therefore, this right must be understood through a conflict between competing conceptions of individual and group rights. International law should protect the religious freedoms of individuals, and should protect groups only as derivative from the rights of individuals, and never in contravention of them, and generally does so. Current tendencies towards recognising group rights raise concerns, highlighting the importance of this determination. The conceptual analysis of the right serves as a critical tool for discussion of specific conflicts of rights regarding religious freedom, in different area of legal regulation. Different state constitutional structures concerning religion have important implications for analysis of the group/individual conflict. A categorization of constitutional arrangements shows that each presents problems for guaranteeing religious freedom. The constitutional analysis shows religions have public characteristics, and so must abide by human rights norms. The recognition of group rights compromises state neutrality, central to liberal theory. Whatever their constitutional arrangement, states must allow participation in religious communities while protecting individual rights. Particular conflicts are analysed: A conflict between group and individual rights exists between community religious autonomy and women's rights. While international law has been decisive in mandating supremacy of individual rights in this conflict, it has not addressed some of the root causes undermining women's individual rights. Children's religious freedom, in conflict between state, religious group, family, and child, has not always been amply protected in international law, due to absence of differentiation between group and individual interests. Lastly, use of speech by individuals directed against, or in conflict with, religious groups, such as blasphemy, proselytism or hate speech, is addressed. Discussion of these conflicts examines difficulties created, and shows that although some states, based on their respective histories, religions, and cultures, protect the group over the individual, ultimately only an individualistic approach of international law is a coherent way of protecting religious freedom as a human right.
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Sanders, Elizabeth Mildred. "Enchanting Belief: Religion and Secularism in the Victorian Supernatural Novel." Diss., University of Iowa, 2015. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5186.
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Driskel, Michael Paul. "Representing belief : religion, art, and society in nineteenth-century France /." University Park (Pa.) : Pennsylvania State university press, 1992. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb35716402q.
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Ali, Amal. "At the intersection of law, gender and religion : qualifying the right to manifest a religious belief." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/16761/.
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The right to manifest a religious belief is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and has been under some attack lately in a number of Contracting Party States. In response to increasingly visible religious pluralism, a number of States have created legislation which limits this right in certain instances through the criminalisation of religious manifestations. This thesis considers the representation of women, their right to manifest their religious belief and inclusion in policy by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), employing a doctrinal analysis within a law in context approach. It will therefore include extensive case law analysis of the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and examine the language, content and legal concepts integrated in the areas of religious manifestations and gender equality. It also draws on the quantitative and qualitative research that has been conducted by researchers across Europe who have evidenced that women are disproportionately affected by such bans and documents the experiences and motives of the women affected. Using intersectional feminism, feminist judging and gender mainstreaming as a form of critical scholarship it concludes that the bans are based on outsider experiences and views and proposes a more inclusive framework for qualifying the right to manifest a religious belief.
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Bader, Christopher D., Joseph O. Baker, and Andrea Molle. "Countervailing Forces: Religiosity and Paranormal Belief in Italy." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/498.
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Due to the unique cultural niche inhabited by “paranormal” beliefs and experiences, social scientists have struggled to understand the relationship between religion and the paranormal. Complicating matters is the fact that extant research has primarily focused upon North America, leaving open the possible relationship between these two spheres of the supernatural in less religiously pluralistic contexts. Using data from a random, national survey of Italian citizens, we examine the nature of the relationship between religiosity and paranormal beliefs in a largely Catholic context. We find a curvilinear relationship between religiosity and paranormal beliefs among Italians, with those at the lowest and highest levels of religious participation holding lower average levels of “paranormal” belief than those with moderate religious participation. This pattern reflects how two influential social institutions, religion and science, simultaneously define the paranormal as outside of acceptable realms of inquiry and belief.
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Åkerman, Björn. "Om lycka och tro : Religiös orientering och subjektivt välmående i Sverige." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för sociala och psykologiska studier, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-48045.
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En enkätstudie utfördes utifrån en regressionsdesign. Studien utfördes i syfte att redogöra förklaringsvärdet hos religiös orientering i subjektivt välmående för religiösa svenskar. Stickprov gjordes med ett internetbaserat klusterurval. Enkäten publicerades på fem slutna grupper för olika religiösa tillhörigheter på sociala medier. För att mäta religiös orientering gjordes en översättning på I/E-R som mätte religiös orientering i tre dimensioner. För att mäta subjektivt välmående användes SWLS. Två frågor mätte deltagares regelbundna religiösa aktivitet. En forced-entry multipel regressionsanalys gav ett signifikant förklaringsvärde för prediktorerna inre och yttre tro på 12 procent. Deltagarnas regelbundna religiösa aktivitet uppmättes vara enhetligt högt. Deltagarnas välmående uppmättes vara i den övre gränsen av vad som klassas som normalt välmående. Slutsatsen drogs att religiös aktivitet motverkade dysfunktionella effekter på välmående utan att leda till högre än normalt välmående. I tillägg gjordes slutsatsen att teori om religiös orientering är för kulturellt kontextkänslig för att vara tillförlitlig i det svenska samhället. Framtida forskning uppmanas till att kontrollera för sociala tillgångar och vilken specifik religion deltagare tillhör.An electronic survey was performed to conduct a regression study. The study was conducted with the specific goal to find the explanatory value in religious orientation for subjective well-being for religious Swedes. Samples were drawn from internet based clusters. The survey was made available on five different closed groups for religiously active members on social media. I/E-R was translated and used to measure religious orientation on three dimensions. Subjective well-being was measured using SWLS. Two single items measured regular religious activity. A forced-entry multiple regression analysis showed an explanatory value of 12 percent for the predictors intrinsic and extrinsic belief. Regular religious activity was measured to be uniformly high. Subjective well-being was found to be in the upper levels of normal well-being. The conclusion drawn was that religious activity inhibited dysfunctional behavior and thus brought about a healthy well-being. In addition it was concluded that the cultural sensitivity in the religious orientation scale made measurements unreliable in the Swedish society. Future research is encouraged to control for social recourses when testing for effects on well-being as well as to control for what specific religion is practiced.
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Furness, Sheila Margaret. "Religion and belief and social work : making sense of competing priorities." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/13941.
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This PhD by published work consists of: • two single authored articles in refereed journals; • four jointly authored articles in refereed journals; • one jointly authored editorial; • one jointly authored book, including four single authored chapters; They were published in the period 2003-2013. Philip Gilligan submitted the jointly written publications as part of his submission for the award of Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Published Work in 2013. This thesis identifies substantive findings, theoretical insights, new questions and practice/policy implications arising from the published work. The body of work has and continues to stimulate debate about the need to recognise and appreciate the significance and relevance of religion and related belief in the lives of people accessing health and social care services in the UK. It outlines the general relevance and impact of religion and related belief and explores questions and research concerned with the extent to which social work takes these matters into account in its practices, polices and professional training. It prompts practitioners to reflect on their own and others’ religious beliefs by providing a framework of nine related principles to assist them in their professional practice. One key finding is the need for service providers and policy makers to develop new services that are more responsive to the diverse needs of people living in the UK today by recognising and adopting some of the diverse helping strategies employed and imported by different communities.
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Furness, Sheila M. "Religion and Belief and Social Work: Making sense of competing priorities." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/13941.
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This PhD by published work consists of:
• two single authored articles in refereed journals;
• four jointly authored articles in refereed journals;
• one jointly authored editorial;
• one jointly authored book, including four single authored chapters;
They were published in the period 2003-2013. Philip Gilligan submitted the jointly written publications as part of his submission for the award of Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Published Work in 2013.
This thesis identifies substantive findings, theoretical insights, new questions and practice/policy implications arising from the published work. The body of work has and continues to stimulate debate about the need to recognise and appreciate the significance and relevance of religion and related belief in the lives of people accessing health and social care services in the UK. It outlines the general relevance and impact of religion and related belief and explores questions and research concerned with the extent to which social work takes these matters into account in its practices, polices and professional training. It prompts practitioners to reflect on their own and others’ religious beliefs by providing a framework of nine related principles to assist them in their professional practice. One key finding is the need for service providers and policy makers to develop new services that are more responsive to the diverse needs of people living in the UK today by recognising and adopting some of the diverse helping strategies employed and imported by different communities.The full text of the published articles submitted with this PhD thesis are not available in full text in Bradford Scholars due to copyright restrictions.
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Gilligan, Philip A. "Considering religion and belief in child protection and safeguarding work: Is any consensus emerging?" John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/2716.
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Diverse, but significant, phenomena have combined to raise both
the profile of issues related to religion and child abuse and the need
for professionals to understand and respond appropriately to them.
The nature of some of these issues is explored and attempts made
to clarify them. Data collected by the author primarily from
questionnaires completed by professionals involved in child protection
and safeguarding work are analysed and discussed. Some patterns
are identified and explored. Finally, it is suggested that, despite
the apparent emergence of a more general recognition and
acknowledgement of these issues amongst many professionals,
relevant day-to-day practice remains largely dependent on individual
views and attitudes. Moreover, practitioners are able to continue
with `religion-blind¿ and `belief-blind¿ approaches without these being
significantly challenged by agency policies or by professional
cultures.
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Stevens, Lincoln Boyd. "The epistemic impact of mystical perception on interfacie disputes over religious belief /." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487950658548305.
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Freeburg, Darin. "Information Culture and Belief Formation in Religious Congregations." Thesis, Kent State University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3618893.
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This qualitative study investigated the information culture and beliefs within two United Church of Christ congregations in Northeast Ohio. One congregation was Open and Affirming (ONA), and one congregation was not. ONA refers to a congregation's decision to be listed as a place where LGBT individuals—in particular—are welcomed and accepted. Using a purposive sampling technique, 8 focus groups of 4-8 participants each were asked to discuss content derived from three research question areas: participant beliefs, information that participants used to inform these beliefs, and how this information was used.
Analysis found that both congregations espoused the superiority of their beliefs about inclusivity, thus creating a paradox whereby their inclusivity involved excluding beliefs of exclusion. Because the ONA congregation preferred a personal expression of belief, they were more comfortable with the potential divisions caused by this paradox than the non-ONA congregation, which preferred a communal expression of belief.
Analysis also found that most participants relied heavily and placed great authority in information from internal sources, e.g., prayer, meditation, and emotion. The ONA congregation reflected the presence of more unique information, indicating that they approached the Bible and other common religious information critically and with more freedom to come to different conclusions than fundamentalists and biblical literalists.
Despite these differences in belief expression and information type, the analysis found that both groups showed evidence of Chatman's Small Worlds theory. First, participants showed evidence of unmet information needs. Many lacked confidence in the ability to articulate personal beliefs. Second, participants noted the presence of long-term attendees who determined the relevancy of incoming information. Finally, participants tended to guard against disclosing information about personal problems to other congregants, preferring to anonymously seek out answers.
The research highlights the social nature of belief formation and the impact of religious tradition, pastoral sermons, and external information on these beliefs. It contains important implications for pluralistic communication and the social nature of organizational legitimization. It extends the literature on belief formation and information science by developing mid-range theories about the processes by which individuals in religious communities use information to form beliefs.
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Habte-Tesfamariam, Milen. "Implicit theories and religious belief systems in college students." Diss., Connect to the thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10066/1561.
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Greening, Emma Kate. "The relationship between false memory and paranormal belief." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2299/14040.
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The thesis investigates the effects of false memory and belief in the paranormal on reports of events. The first chapter reviews the existing literature on false memory. The main theories of how false memory develops are described and the individual differences of those susceptible to false memories are considered. The paranormal belief literature is then examined, particularly with regard to the cognitive differences between believers and disbelievers. It is concluded that these differences would be suggestive of a relationship between paranormal belief and false memory. The second chapter considers the relationship between imagination inflation, paranormal belief and ESP. No correlation between the factors was found. The third chapter examines whether pre-event suggestion and belief in the paranormal can affect experiences of `ghostly' phenomena in an allegedly haunted location. Evidence for the effect of belief in the paranormal was found, but there was no effect of pre-event suggestion or an interaction between the two factors. The fourth chapter investigates the effects of positive and negative during-event suggestion and paranormal belief on reports of events in the seance room, and the fifth chapter explores the effects of duringevent suggestion on reports of a key bending video. There was some evidence that during-event suggestion is effective in altering reports of events, and the causes for this effect are considered. Paranormal belief was not shown to consistently affect acceptance of suggestion, but may affect reports of phenomena which are judged to be paranormal. The thesis concludes that during-event suggestion and negative suggestion are areas which offer great potential for further research. The relationship between paranormal belief and false memory development has not been demonstrated. However, it has been shown that belief and suggestion can affect the manner in which situations are attended to and interpreted.
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Evans, Carolyn. "Freedom of religion or belief under the European Convention of Human Rights." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313453.
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Freeburg, Darin S. "Information Culture and Belief Formation in Religious Congregations." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1383573397.
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Jones, Douglas FitzHenry. "A straying collective: Familism and the establishment of orthodox belief in sixteenth-century England." Diss., University of Iowa, 2011. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/994.
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The Family of Love was a religious collective that emerged in the Low Countries during the Reformation and settled in England in the latter half of the sixteenth century. It was a casualty of entrenched doctrinal disagreement and the sensationalism of popular print culture. Yet, there is reason to believe that Familists were very much a part of the very society that so vehemently condemned them. While earlier scholars have noted the surprising level to which the group immersed themselves in their local communities, few have specifically addressed the immersion of Familists in their religious and intellectual milieu. This dissertation seeks to uncover the worldview that the Elizabethan Family shared with even its fiercest detractors. Through a close reading of the surviving material, the following chapters reveal a religious climate in England that was far more porous, and far less set-in-stone, than many in the period were willing to admit.
In particular, the dissertation focuses on two, related categories: the religious justifications for outward obedience to authority and the methods of interpreting the "literal" meaning of sacred writings. Familists were notorious for transgressing the accepted boundaries of both categories. As those hostile to the group were eager to point out, they were furtively disobedient and ruthlessly allegorical. My research suggests, to the contrary, that Familist thought often fell within the accepted boundaries of these two categories; only the categories themselves were inchoate. In making this point, this dissertation contributes to a broader interest in the reification of religious traditions at the expense of those less-defined worldviews that contributed to their original development.
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Rose, Dale Joseph. "Our Master’s Legacy: Belief and Ritual in Mission De L’esprit Saint." TopSCHOLAR®, 2015. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1526.
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This thesis is a folkloristic examination of the religious beliefs and rituals associated with members of a religious movement known as Mission De L’Ésprit Saint. Mission De L’Ésprit Saint is a Quebecois religious denomination which believes that their founder was the physical incarnation of the Holy Spirit, and the movement strives to continue the teachings which were laid down during his lifetime. The major components of Mission theology and history, as well as an introductory consideration of their cosmology and worldview will be the major focus of this document, as well as a consideration of the role that Folklore has in understanding marginal religious movements.
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Baker, Joseph O., and Buster G. Smith. "American Secularism: Cultural Contours of Nonreligious Belief Systems." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. http://amzn.com/1479873721.
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A rapidly growing number of Americans are embracing life outside the bounds of organized religion. Although America has long been viewed as a fervently religious Christian nation, survey data shows that more and more Americans are identifying as “not religious.” There are more non-religious Americans than ever before, yet social scientists have not adequately studied or typologized secularities, and the lived reality of secular individuals in America has not been astutely analyzed. American Secularism documents how changes to American society have fueled these shifts in the non-religious landscape and examines the diverse and dynamic world of secular Americans. This volume offers a theoretical framework for understanding secularisms. It explores secular Americans’ thought and practice to understand secularisms as worldviews in their own right, not just as negations of religion. Drawing on empirical data, the authors examine how people live secular lives and make meaning outside of organized religion. Joseph O. Baker and Buster G. Smith link secularities to broader issues of social power and organization, providing an empirical and cultural perspective on the secular landscape. In so doing, they demonstrate that shifts in American secularism are reflective of changes in the political meanings of “religion” in American culture. American Secularism addresses the contemporary lived reality of secular individuals, outlining forms of secular identity and showing their connection to patterns of family formation, sexuality, and politics, providing scholars of religion with a more comprehensive understanding of worldviews that do not include traditional religion.https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1028/thumbnail.jpg
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Mills, Robin. "The origins of religious belief in the British Enlightenment, 1651-1770." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709111.
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Chipp, Jonathan. "A critical comparison of William James and Søren Kierkegaard on religious belief." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2009. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/169893/.
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This thesis is a critical comparison of the accounts of religious belief proposed by William James and Søren Kierkegaard. Both James and Kierkegaard greatly emphasize the subjective aspects of religious belief. In view of this fact, surprisingly little comparative work has been done in this area. I contribute to this literature in two ways. Firstly, I make a brief assessment of what James knew of Kierkegaard’s work. Secondly, I draw four comparisons between Kierkegaard and James. In Chapter One I examine the claim that Kierkegaard proposes a pragmatist account of faith of the kind that James sets out in his essay The Will To Believe. I argue that this claim rests on a misunderstanding of Kierkegaard’s argument that to have faith is to take a risk. In the following chapter I discuss James’s and Kierkegaard’s views on formal proofs for the existence of God. Both philosophers reject the notion that faith can be based on such proofs. I distinguish between their positions, and argue in favour of Kierkegaard’s. In the third chapter I compare Kierkegaard’s and James’s accounts of religious experience. James views religious experiences as a special kind of evidence for the existence of God. For Kierkegaard it is a mistake to view religious experiences as evidence. Such experiences should be understood in relation to the concept of religious authority. In the final chapter I examine Kierkegaard’s conception of faith as a life-view. I argue that for Kierkegaard a life-view is a fundamental perspective on one’s existence. I compare this conception with James’s concept of philosophical temperament and in relation to his discussion of the sick soul.
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Powers, Patrick D. "Belief in the Unbelievable: Yakov Druskin and Chinari Metaphysics." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1619455383434057.
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Anderson, R. "Emotion and experience in classical Athenian religion : studies in Athenian ritual and belief." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.595501.
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Greek religion is often said to have been a religion of performance, rather than one of belief. This view achieved its canonical formulation in the work of Arthur Darby Nock in the 1930s, where the contrast was drawn via an explicit comparison with Christianity, and it has been much repeated since then. However, such a formulation easily slips into depicting Greek religion as a religion of (merely) ‘going through the motions’ and there is growing doubt about its ability to reflect Greek religious experience accurately or adequately. One response to these concerns would be to look for ‘belief’ in the Greek religious context. The difficulty with this response is that the concept of ‘belief’ is not just an analytical tool, but has also been a key term in Christianity of all periods. Approaches to religion which emphasise ‘belief’ (as in statements such as ‘the x believe such-and-such’) thus proceed from a distinctively Christian or Christian-influenced viewpoint, the universal applicability of which is open to question. To apply the concept of belief to Greek religion risks swapping one problematic approach for another no less beset with difficulties. The opposition between belief and performance emerges from an underlying opposition between mind and body in Western thought. In my thesis, I attempt to circumvent the difficulties inherent in such a position by adopting a perspective which seeks to collapse this duality. This phenomenological ‘paradigm of embodiment’ takes as its starting point the conscious human body in the world, and focuses on the processes of perception by which the objective world comes to be for the perceiving subject. Concentrating on the role of religion in perception uncovers ways in which Greek religion, though rarely producing explicit statements of belief comparable to the Christian credo, nevertheless established and articulated an implicit practical worldview which gave structure and meaning to experience. This approach also opens up a further dimension of the relationship between religion and society. Greek religion not only articulated society and social structure, as has long been recognised, but also constituted a shared, perceptual life-world or lived reality, something which may lie at the foundation of social life in general.
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Stenbäck, Tomas. "Swedish Belief and Swedish Tradition : The Role of Religion in Sweden Democrat Nationalism." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Religionsvetenskap, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-33345.
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In the context of Western, European, Nordic, and Swedish radical nationalism, this study is an analysis of the various ways the political party the Sweden Democrats talks about religion; primarily about Swedish Evangelical-Lutheran Christianity and the Church of Sweden. The study investigates the party expressions on religion and nationalism, using theoretical models of interpretation, constructed for this specific purpose, out of hermeneutic methodology. The purpose has been to analyse the different functions of the various ways the Sweden Democrats talk about religion, and to investigate how the references to religion legitimize the ideology of nationalism, with the aim to answer the following questions: How do the Sweden Democrats’ talk on religion function as an identity marker? In what way is it possible to distinguish an aspiration for cultural purity in the Sweden Democrats’ talk on religion? Is it possible to distinguish neo-racism in the Sweden Democrats’ talk on religion? In which ways can the Sweden Democrats’ talk on religion be regarded as political strategy? The results demonstrate in which ways the Sweden Democrats apply religion to promote the party perceptions of nationalism, as well as to legitimize the party conceptions of the Swedish nation and the Swedish people: Swedish Christianity and the Church of Sweden are used to identify Swedish culture and to identify contrasting foreign culture. Swedish Christianity is used as the determining factor between the good Swedish people and the bad other people. Swedish Christianity is used as the determining factor between the right Swedish values and the wrong values of the other. Swedish Christian values are used as dividing criteria between the culturally pure Swedish people and the culturally impure other people. The degeneration of the Church of Sweden mirrors the degeneration of the Swedish society. Swedish Christian homogeneity will guarantee security for the Swedish people and the Swedish nation within the Swedish nation-state. Elements of religion and culture sort different peoples into different categories in the hierarchical view of humanity. Swedish Christianity and Swedish culture identify and define the Swedish people as innocent to the current precarious situation of the Swedish nation, and Swedish Christianity and Swedish culture identify and define the people of the other, which is to blame for this situation. The Swedish people is superior, to the non-Swedish people, because of superior Swedish religion and superior Swedish culture. Swedish Christianity is used to promote anti-democratic political positions. Swedish Christianity is used to legitimize coercion and force in the enforcement of Swedishness.
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Krueger, Margaret Christine. "Religion on Many Platforms: Approaching Religion Reporting in an Era of Multimedia." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1399562959.
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Bullivant, Spencer Culham. "Believing to Belong: Negotiation and Expression of American Identity at a Non-religious Camp." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/32801.
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This dissertation presents results of ethnographic study at a non-religious summer camp called Camp Quest Montana in the summer of 2011 and the numerous insights gained into the lived experiences of non-religious Americans. These particular Americans, because of their non-religion, have experienced unique pressures while navigating through life in a country that is and has been dominated by religious identification and belief. The ethnographic accounts gathered over the course of a week at Camp Quest Montana show how these non-religious people were using a language of belief, informed by a spirituality derived from science, as part of an effort to fit themselves into this wider and religiously steeped American culture. This dissertation argues that the Camp Questers express themselves through a language of “belief” because of the current and historical pressures to be religious, along with Americans’ tendency to distrust non-religious people. Using “belief” language allows them to talk about themselves in a way that makes sense to religious Americans, while also maintaining a non-religious identification. Moreover, this study found differences between how first and second-generation non-religious Americans (the parents and children at Camp Quest Montana) interact with religious Americans. These variations are important because they point to different experiences of the social and cultural landscape of the United States, differences that are reflected in each generation’s non-religious expression. This data also presents a challenge to current arguments regarding the benefits of religion to the socialization and overall well-being of youth.
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Hoefle, Sara Nicole. "Engaging Differences of Religious Belief: Student Experiences with an Intergroup Dialogue Course." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1387464866.
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Kirby, Matthew. "The Impact of Religious Schema on Critical Thinking Skills." DigitalCommons@USU, 2008. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/10.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between critical thinking and religious schema as represented by religious orientation. Past research has included religious belief within the larger construct of paranormal belief, and demonstrated a correlation between high levels of paranormal belief and poor critical thinking skills. Studies in the psychology of religion suggested that a more complex religious measure based on religious orientation was necessary to understand these correlations. Additionally, schema theory offered a cognitive framework within which to experimentally test the cause of these correlations. This study found that primed religious schema did not account for the relationship between paranormal/religious belief and critical thinking skills. This study did find that poor critical thinking performance was predicted by higher levels of extrinsic religious orientation.
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Khokhar, Nadeem. "Belief, Belonging and Social Identity: Religious Ideals and Young Adults in Australia." Thesis, Griffith University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367246.
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This thesis examines how young Australians engage with questions about their existence and place in the world in both religious and in non-religious terms. Using data from in-depth interviews, it seeks to understand how young people’s beliefs interact with their ethical thinking (to create their “inner worlds”) and impact on their social relationships. Its twin arguments are, firstly, that young people are actively thinking about their existential and moral beliefs: the existential imaginary mechanism described in this thesis is a viable mechanism for uncovering them. Secondly, most young people are increasingly seeking to determine for themselves what to believe and with whom to associate. This investigation has implications for research on individual, and social, identity formation; the formation or avoidance of prejudicial attitudes and behaviours among young people; and threats to and
support for social cohesion in Australian society. My research, using the existential imaginary tool as a foundation, indicates three salient findings: firstly, that non-religious youth have the potential to develop a conception of their existence as rich and as complex as their religious peers; secondly, that higher belief intensity is associated with decreases in belief diversity and, for theists, an increase in moral conservatism; and finally, that strength of belief has an inverse relationship to social group heterogeneity.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Humanities
Arts, Education and Law
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Baker-Hytch, Max. "Reformed Epistemology and naturalistic explanations of religious belief : an inquiry into the epistemological implications of the cognitive science of religion." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:74c7b127-cf27-4939-9e32-5341465e02a8.
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Reformed Epistemology is an influential view in contemporary philosophy of religion, according to which theistic beliefs that are the product of our native, non-inferential cognitive faculties often constitute knowledge if God exists. My aim in this thesis is to ascertain whether Reformed Epistemology is viable in light of contemporary scientific explanations of the mechanisms of religious belief- formation, especially the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). I argue for a qualified “yes.” To begin with, I attempt to carefully reconstruct and scrutinise some currently popular “debunking arguments” from CSR’s findings, which aim to show that non-inferential religious beliefs are not knowledge, even if true, given the causal origins that CSR ascribes to them. I try to show that in various ways these arguments fail. Subsequently, I attempt to find a better such argument. The strongest debunking argument, I contend, is one that focuses upon the diverse and mutually inconsistent outputs of the religious belief-producing mechanisms described by CSR. However, I go on to argue that even supposing that this argument succeeds in showing that religious beliefs that are partly the product of contingent cultural influences are not knowledge even if true, there remains a body of what I term “core propositions”—propositions concerning the existence of some kind of personal, supernatural creator and moral lawgiver, in which humans are naturally disposed to believe regardless of their particular cultural setting— that can be known if God exists. Finally, I try to show that merely having this core supernaturalistic knowledge would provide someone with the cognitive contact with God that is sufficient for having a personal relationship with God (if God exists), even if only de re relationship. I argue, moreover, that God would have positively good reasons for creating a world in which human beliefs about life’s most important matters, including religious matters, are significantly dependent upon testimony and hence subject to the ebbs and flows of cultural tides.
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Clanton, Amy M. "Religion as Aesthetic Creation: Ritual and Belief in William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley." Scholar Commons, 2011. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3718.
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William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley created literary works intending them to comprise religious systems, thus negotiating the often-conflicting roles of religion and modern art and literature. Both men credited Percy Bysshe Shelley as a major influence, and Shelley's ideas of art as religion may have shaped their pursuit to create working religions from their art. This study analyzes the beliefs, prophetic practices, myths, rituals, and invocations found in their literature, focusing particularly on Yeats's Supernatural Songs, Celtic Mysteries, and Island of Statues, and Crowley's "Philosopher's Progress," "Garden of Janus," Rites of Eleusis, and "Hymn to Pan." While anthropological definitions generally distinguish art from religion, Crowley's religion, Thelema, satisfies requirements for both categories, as Yeats's Celtic Mysteries may have done had he completed the project.
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Marlowe, Eric-Jon Keawe. "Treatment of religious expression and belief in Utah public schools : perspectives of the religious minority /." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2005. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd776.pdf.
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Marlowe, Eric-Jon Keawe. "Treatment of Religious Expresssion and Belief in Utah Public Schools: Perspectives of the Religious Minority." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2005. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/275.
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Recorded members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as Mormon or LDS) comprise over 70% of Utah's population. This qualitative study identifies the unique concerns and challenges that members of Utah's minority religions may face in public schools. Semi-structured interviews, designed to elicit rich, detailed information, were conducted with 48 participants (13 leaders, 17 parents, 18 students) from seven different minority religions in Utah. Each interview was audio taped, transcribed, and then analyzed using the qualitative analysis program N-Vivo. Looking at the school institutional treatment (laws, policy, teachers, administrators) of participants' religions, few expressed major concerns or challenges. Ignorant LDS favoritism and school accommodation of LDS Released-Time Seminary were issues most commonly expressed. In contrast to institutional treatment, social treatment of participants' religion in school received significantly more comment, and related concerns ran considerably deeper. Participants identified areas of occasional peer exclusion such as LDS cliques, Seminary, conversation, and dating. Participants further identified areas of occasional uncomfortable peer interaction such as LDS proselytizing, sense of superiority, and assumptions or stereotypes. Several participants cited LDS ignorance, cohesiveness, and their doctrine of one true church as general causes of this peer exclusion and uncomfortable interaction. Furthermore, the data suggests that the challenges mentioned by participants are enhanced in the higher LDS populated and more rural areas of Utah. The findings also suggest that the prevalence of such challenges have been decreasing over time. All participants identified some concerns or challenges they face as members of a minority religion in their Utah school communities. However, it appears most participants, with some clear exceptions, did not view treatment of their religion in Utah public schools as a major issue.
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Baxter, Paul. "Science and belief in Scotland, 1805-1868 : the Scottish Evangelicals." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9860.
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This study concentrates on the scientific writings of Thomas Chalmers, David Brewster, John Fleming and Hugh Miller. All belonged to the Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland and all joined the Free Church of Scotland at the Disruption in 1843. The thesis begins with a brief history of natural theology between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. It also reviews previous work on science and belief in the first half of the nineteenth century, pointing out that much of the emphasis in studies of Christian natural theology has been on the Anglican Broad Church. Chapter two describes the divisions in the Church of Scotland and the events which led to the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. It also indicates the particularly favourable circumstances for Evangelical intellectuals at the start of the nineteenth century by charting the rise and decline of the Moderate party during the second half of the eighteenth. Chapter three documents interactions amongst the four Evangelical scientists and describes their roles in the Disruption and in the formation of the Free Church of Scotland. Chapters four and five trace common threads in their natural theologies and in their views about the reconciliation of science and Scripture. Comparisons are made with opinions expressed within the Evangelical party as a whole. Chapter six describes Evangelical reactions to the dissemination of materialism and deism, concentrating especially on the activities of George Combe and his circle. Combe's natural theology is shown to have been specially threatening to Evangelicals in the Established Church because of the potency of the Book of Nature metaphor in challenges to the clerical supervision of education. Chapter seven examines similarities and differences in the geological work of Miller and Fleming and examines the role of rival natural theologies in the development of theories about the Earth's origin, history and development. Particular attention is given to the astronomical nebular hypothesis and to the transmutation theory put forward in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chapter eight summarises the various functions of natural theology for the Evangelicals and for the Combeists.
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Olson, Ted. "Give Me That Old-Time Religion: Faith and Belief in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Appalachia." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2012. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1189.
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Moncrieff, Michael Arthur. "'When you believe in things you don't understand' : an evolutionary exploration of paranormal, superstitious and religious belief." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2010. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1455.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Sciences
Psychology
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Ngugi, Michael Wainana. "Impact of Christianity among the Kikuyu people : a study of Kikuyu people religion and belief /." Berlin Viademica-Verl.***90496, 2007. http://deposit.d-nb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2905079&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.
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McNabb, Tyler Dalton. "Closing Pandora's Box : a defence of Alvin Plantinga's epistemology of religious belief." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7587/.
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I argue (1) that Alvin Plantinga’s theory of warrant is plausible and (2) that, contrary to the Pandora’s Box objection, there are certain serious world religions that cannot successfully use Plantinga’s epistemology to demonstrate that their beliefs could be warranted in the same way that Christian belief can be warranted. In arguing for (1), I deploy Ernest Sosa’s Swampman case to show that Plantinga’s proper function condition is a necessary condition for warrant. I then engage three objections to Plantinga’s theory of warrant, each of which attempts to demonstrate that his conditions for warrant are neither necessary nor sufficient. Having defended the plausibility of Plantinga’s theory of warrant, I present and expand his key arguments to the effect that naturalism cannot make use of it. These arguments provide the conceptual tools that are needed to argue for (2): that there are certain world religions that cannot legitimately use Plantinga’s theory of warrant to demonstrate that their beliefs could be warranted in the same way that Christian belief can be warranted.