philosophical book about God/religion for guy suffering existential angst and fear about afterlife possibility

[Larry of the Lawn]

Okay let's all recognize the elephant in the room and embrace the fact that we are all uranuscentrists at heart.

[Rorshach]

I was always partial to Tycho Brahe's combination of helio- and geocentrism. It just looks so wonderfully, needlessly complicated.

Just for curiosity, and shits and giggles, it was excellent at what it tired to do, which was to forsee movements of the (known) heavens. However, even Tycho could not (I believe) explain retrograde motion. Kepler could.

However, as already noted, these two systems were miles ahead of the competition owing to the fact that they rested on wonderfully compiled data (edited and published as The Rudolphine Tables by Kepler in 1626/27)

[Iskaral Pust]

To the OP, it may have been already mentioned by I'm in the middle of A Brief History of Thought by Luc Ferry. It looks at the history of philosophy. Ferry's central theme is that man's great crisis is awareness of mortality and all philosophy and religion is an attempt to deal with this. He starts with the classic philosophies, especially the Stoics (and similar to Buddhism), then moves to the Christian promise of individual salvation and then moves on to humanism and modern philosophy. His focus throughout is how do these schools of thought address man's need to deal with fear of mortality (our own mortality, potential loss of loved ones and even just passing of time).

It's not a deep nor technical treatise on philosophy. It's interesting, well written, explains concepts at a high level. I'd recommend it as a starting point that would lead you to deeper investigation of the ideas.

[Sci-2]

Science and the Modern World. Lowell lectures, 1925, by Alfred North Whitehead.

"These pages may be freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please go to http://www.umdl.umich.edu/ for more information."

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Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology

[dornishscorpion]

Science and the Modern World. Lowell lectures, 1925, by Alfred North Whitehead.

"These pages may be freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please go to http://www.umdl.umich.edu/ for more information."

=-=-=

Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology

i found this to be really interesting, thank you

[Sci-2]

i found this to be really interesting, thank you

Cool beans! If you're into Whitehead, you might also like Freya Matthews:

Why Has the West Failed to Embrace Panpsychism?

It was a brilliant and arresting article by Francois Jullien (2002), “Did philosophers have to become fixated on Truth?”, that first sensitized me to the possible contingency of truth as the goal of cognition. And it was the meta-level contrast Jullien drew between the figure of the Greek philosopher and that of the Chinese sage that somehow made this contingency of truth asa goal plain. Jullien’s arguments were different from those I have offered here; he did not posit theoria as a distinct category of cognitive process nor did he, accordingly, seek to demonstrate that dualism originated in such a process. But his aim was, like mine, to show that truth, the goal of the Greek philosopher, was an historical and cultural discovery. In seeking truth, the Greek philosopher was seeking a kind of final solution to the riddle of existence, an account of the nature of things that was fixed and eternal despite the perishability of things themselves. Truth in this sense, Jullien emphasized, was exclusive: if a view were true it necessarily excluded all competing views. It was in this respect that the Greek philosopher stood in marked contrast to the Chinese sage, who, Jullien observed, set out not to explain the world but to adapt himself to it. The sage sought to identify the tendencies or dispositions at work in particular situations in order to harness those tendencies or dispositions to his own best advantage. To this end he remained open to all points of view instead of insisting on a single viewpoint(‘truth’) exclusive of others. In describing the sage as seeking ‘congruence’ with reality, Jullien seems to be implying that the thinking of the sage remained inextricable from agency rather than becoming, like the thinking of the Greeks, an end in itself.

Panpsychism as Paradigm

I shall address four specific metaphysical anomalies.In each case I shall argue that these are anomalies for materialism but are far less problematic for cosmological panpsychism.The arguments as I present them here will be very abbreviated but can be found in more developed form elsewhere in my work.

1.Problem of realism, or of the appearance/reality distinction

2.Problem of why the universe hangs together, or, more narrowly, the problem of causation

3.Problem of why there is something rather than nothing

4.Problem of the origin of the universe, or of a beginning to time

Of course, the hard problem of consciousness, which I have not listed, is also a preeminent anomaly for the materialist paradigm, an anomaly which panpsychism can make some claim to solve. But if it can be shown that materialism harbours other anomalies,and that cosmological panpsychism solves, or at least softens, these, this independent evidence for panpsychism strengthens it as a contender in the case of the hard problem. Moreover, a sense of the cosmological reach and origins of consciousness will provide a new and illuminating context for the investigation of our own human consciousness. In both these respects then exploring cosmological panpsychism as paradigm is relevant to the hard problem of consciousness

[Sci-2]

More Whitehead:

A.N. Whitehead and Subjectivity

This paper comes at subjectivity from a Whiteheadian perspective. It argues that Whitehead provides us with a “deep” form of empiricism grounded in the notion of the “actual occasion” of experience and in the temporal and spatial co-assembly of multiplicities of such occasions. A deep empiricism that embraces process, affirms creativity, foregrounds value and refuses to bifurcate nature into irreconcilable subjective and objective aspects, it is argued, might serve as a useful corrective to current tendencies in social theory to avoid subjectivity and to elide the differences between forms of subjectivity.

=-=-=

Whitehead's Idea of God

Yes, in one sense the people and butterflies are like partners in a dance, with God as the lead dancer. God is trying to guide them into forms of dancing that are beautiful, joyous, and mutually enriching. But God's power is not absolute. What happens in the dance as a whole is an outcome of divine creativity and the universe's creativity, not divine creativity alone.Process thinkers call this the co-creativity of God and the Universe. Co-creativity can result in tragedy as well as joy, horror as well as beauty. In process theology God, understood as the lead dancer, is always trying to guide the world into joy and beauty, not tragedy and horror. God is good.

But the dance metaphor is problematic, inasmuch as it depicts the universe as outside God's life. For process thinkers the universe is not outside God but rather inside God, not unlike a baby is within a mother's womb. The dance of the universe, partly determined by creatures in the universe, is like the moving of a baby within the womb. As the baby kicks, the mother feels it and in some sense it happens to her, too.

[Richard]

Hmm - pretty, but no sale.

First, why assume that god is good? A brief look around at how the material universe works - supernovae, asteroid impacts, extinctions, volcanic eruption and other sundry seismic events, Darwinian evolution, predator and prey dynamics - would lead you to believe pretty much the exact opposite. In the light of this empirical evidence, it makes far more sense to see god as either an amoral force, a trickster deity or a sadist. Nice quote from the movie Cross of Iron - "I think God is a sadist, but he probably doesn't even realise it."

Second, the womb and mother metaphor is as fatally flawed as the dance - a mother cannot (yet!) choose what happens in her womb, she is very far from all powerful. No mother, for example, would want one embryonic life inside her to consume its twin (but this happens all the time). Nor would she want the foetus to suffer damage or to die (but ditto). An all powerful (and benevolent, natch) mother would see to it that these things did not occur. An omnipotent and benevolent god would build a better universe and people it with better-behaved sentient life.......

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

by most theistic definitions where god is source of immorality concepts of evil or amoral god are contradictions

it's god who define morality

and if western liberals have a problem with true morality and don't won't to sacrifice their newborns in holy fire, that's their problem... ;)

[Yersinia]

Second, the womb and mother metaphor is as fatally flawed as the dance - a mother cannot (yet!) choose what happens in her womb, she is very far from all powerful. No mother, for example, would want one embryonic life inside her to consume its twin (but this happens all the time). Nor would she want the foetus to suffer damage or to die (but ditto). An all powerful (and benevolent, natch) mother would see to it that these things did not occur. An omnipotent and benevolent god would build a better universe and people it with better-behaved sentient life.......

True. We have only enough influence over the outcome to give us the illusion of control and make us feel responsible for anything that goes wrong. If I were a deity, I'd demand better powers.

[Sci-2]

Hmm - pretty, but no sale.

First, why assume that god is good? A brief look around at how the material universe works - supernovae, asteroid impacts, extinctions, volcanic eruption and other sundry seismic events, Darwinian evolution, predator and prey dynamics - would lead you to believe pretty much the exact opposite. In the light of this empirical evidence, it makes far more sense to see god as either an amoral force, a trickster deity or a sadist. Nice quote from the movie Cross of Iron - "I think God is a sadist, but he probably doesn't even realise it."

Second, the womb and mother metaphor is as fatally flawed as the dance - a mother cannot (yet!) choose what happens in her womb, she is very far from all powerful. No mother, for example, would want one embryonic life inside her to consume its twin (but this happens all the time). Nor would she want the foetus to suffer damage or to die (but ditto). An all powerful (and benevolent, natch) mother would see to it that these things did not occur. An omnipotent and benevolent god would build a better universe and people it with better-behaved sentient life.......

From what I've read God doesn't have absolute control over reality in Whitehead's philosophy. But yeah, I'd agree that omnipotence and omnibenevolence are, AFAICTell, impossible to reconcile.

Taking metaphors like the mother's womb literally, and then invoking biology to knock it down just seems like a strawman attack to me.

[Richard]

Not at all - a metaphor is either robust or it isn't. This one isn't.

[Westfold-II]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a good philosopher on art and culture and the individual (though I think he sometimes exaggerates). Here he writes about painting as indirect language and voices of silence:

http://dcg.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Merleau-Ponty__Indirect-Language-Voices-of-Silence.pdf

I think Paul Ricoeur is in a similar vein, but has developed more elaborate cultural hermeneutics and also includes theology. I have read nothing by him though. The already mentioned Camus probably remains the best fit I could think of.

Why Has the West Failed to Embrace Panpsychism?

I think that's quite interesting, though I was suspicious of the title. It provides a coherent alternative to purely linguistic solutions or of "what one says". (And of course contingency doesn't mean that different contingencies cannot be brought into relation to each other.)

P.S.:

Regarding that earlier discussion about the Galileo affair, which I tried to ignore at some point, and maybe should have, but was still drawn back to out of interest, I can agree with a moderate position which characterizes this as a "complex series of events", with the decisive factor for me that Galileo wrote the Dialogue at the request of the pope. However, I would make a clearer distinction between a cause and effect account and actual responsibility for the trial (or why the trials even existed). And despite the (presumably) valid argumentation in the trial itself, one can still regard the fact that Galileo was forced to abjure from all thought and research regarding the Copernican idea (or heliocentrism), and to supplant it with religious supplication, as religion suppressing science in the original sense (though this might be less interesting for the "history of science"). (But none of this means one hasn't understood what the other account is trying to say. It's just not the same emphasis.)

[Westfold-II]

I want to make a few remarks, but which are not intended to roll this up again or newly contest the issue as a whole but to be more explanatory than my last statement. I probably should have said to leave the responsibility in the cause and effect and not to distinguish it from it. And it might have been better not to talk of a "decisive factor", but an overall adjusted picture. But the starting point was to adjust the picture only in one direction, although there are good reasons not to see it so one-sided, and this one-sidedness led to some purely rhetorical arguments. For example, I don't see the point in arguing about which torture could actually have been threatened). This was partly out of miscommunication in the beginning but got increasingly unnecessary.

It might not have been seen that there are possible contentions about the conclusion that, due to Galileo's wrong claim to factuality, his trial cannot be regarded as disrimination against science. By calling his opponent "Simplicio" in the Dialogue, Galileo might have wanted to take contemporaries out of their dogmatic bias which made them too complacent to seriously consider other possibilities. The church might have wanted to prevent this. Before this background the attitude to "carefully consider" has to be understood (not just science), even when the reasons are potentially politically justifiable. (The intention is then almost unimportant, when it objectively obstructs in the service of something else. The final "proof" and progress are then a more abstract matter which glides over the event.) Besides, it seems that while one book by Kepler wasn't banned, another one was (see the first few posts and links about all this).

And while Galileo was overconfident and incorrect in giving the appearance of fact, he still argued scientifically and in a way which was potentially disprovable, and if some arguments were then deemed still insufficient or not good enough, it was largely out of the same kind of research which first made it possible to assess them. And his theory consisted of different arguments, and while not all of them were correct (I'm thinking especially of the argument of the tides), they shared assumptions, like those based on new discoveries. For similar reasons, modern remarks about the unprovability of Giordano Bruno's beliefs of infinity and different worlds seem misplaced, since he argued in a way which was no less valid than the church's dogmatic bias (and which demonstrates the difference between Aristotelian logic and heresy). As in this case, the scientific links themselves are sometimes beside the point, e.g. when they talk about "systems already out of the running", which is obviously irrelevant to the trial (for the church), but I suppose is meant to demythologize the standing of Galileo.

(And something one has to know when looking at past scientists is that one cannot expect them to accurately render all that we know exactly as fact or merely hypothesis. Some things in old chemistry are now pure redundancy and guesswork to us, but nonetheless they worked and progressed. A rationality and method has to come first and foremost.)

So while the matter is not so clearcut, there are logical reasons why one may not be readily willing to agree with the invalidation of the totality of statements about the affair. It can depend on the questions asked what one can say about it, and there might be more balanced or specified accounts (e.g. those references). It is just the absoluteness of statements which can be doubted, though that seems to be largely a matter of specific meanings, especially of science and the scientist. I suppose one can have some interest in science and still be unfair against it...