David Ray Griffin – författare

Furthering his contribution to the science and religion debate, David Ray Griffin draws upon the cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead and proposes a radical synthesis between two worldviews sometimes thought wholly incompatible. He argues that the traditions designated by the names "scientific naturalism" and "Christian faith" both embody a great truth--a truth of universal validity and importance--but that both of these truths have been distorted, fueling the conflict between the visions of the scientific and Christian communities. Griffin contends, however, that there is no inherent conflict between science, or even the kind of naturalism that it properly presupposes, and the Christian faith, understood in terms of the primary doctrines of the Christian good news.

The baffling age-old question, if there is a good God, why is there evil in the world? has troubled ordinary people and great thinkers for centuries. God, Power, and Evil illuminates the issues by providing both a critical historical survey of theodicy as presented in the works of major Western philosophers and theologians--Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Luther, Calvin, Leibniz, Barth, John Hick, James Ross, Fackenheim, Brunner, Berkeley, Albert Knudson, E. S. Brighton, and others--and a brilliant constructive statement of an understanding of theodicy written from the perspective of the process philosophical and theological thought inspired primarily by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne.

A groundbreaking scholarly work, Deep Religious Pluralism is based on the conviction that the philosophy articulated by Alfred North Whitehead encourages not only religious diversity but deep religious pluralism. Arising from a 2003 Center for Process Studies conference at Claremont Graduate University, this book offers an alternative to the version of religious pluralism that has dominated the recent discussion, especially among Christian thinkers in the West, which has evoked a growing call to reject pluralism as such.Renowned contributors of a diversity of faiths include: Steve Odin, John Shunji Yakota, Sandra B. Lubarsky, Jeffery D. Long, Mustafa Ruzgar, Christopher Ives, Michael Lodahl, Chung-ying Cheng, Wang Shik Jang, and John B. Cobb Jr.

In this book, four distinguished scholars level a powerful critique of the rapid expansion of the emerging American empire and its oppressive and destructive political, military, and economic policies. Arguing that a global Pax Americana is internationally disastrous, the authors demonstrate how America's imperialism inevitably leads to rampant irreversible ecological devastation, expanding military force for imperialistic purposes, and a grossly inequitable distribution of goods--all leading to the diminished well-being of human communities.

Process Theology is an introductory exposition of the theological movement that has been strongly influenced by the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. It offers an interpretation of the basic concepts of process philosophy and outlines a "process theology" that will be especially useful for students of theology, teachers of courses in contemporary philosophy, ministers, and those interested in current theological and philosophical trends.

Sorts out the confusion created by the use of the term "postmodern" in relation to widely divergent theological positions.This book sorts out the confusion created by the use of the term "postmodern" in relation to widely divergent theological positions. Four different types of postmodern theology are distinguished in the preface: constructive, deconstructive, liberationist, and conservative. Two forms of each type are discussed in the book.Writing from a constructive, postmodern perspective, the authors enter into dialogue with the deconstructive postmodernism of Mark C. Taylor and Jean-François Lyotard, with the liberationist postmodernism of Harvey Cox and Cornel West, and with the conservative postmodernism of George William Rutler and John Paul II.

Griffin responds to critiques of his earlier work God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy.In this book Griffin responds to critiques of his earlier work-God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy-and discusses ways in which his position has changed in the intervening years. In so doing, he examines the problem of evil, theodicy, and philosophical theology, and contrasts traditional theism and process theism with regard to the question of omnipotence.

Examines why parapsychology has been held in disdain by scientists, philosophers, and theologians, explores the evidence for ESP, psychokinesis, and life after death, and suggests that these phenomena provide support for a meaningful postmodern spirituality.In this book, David Ray Griffin, best known for his work on the problem of evil, turns his attention to the even more controversial topic of parapsychology. Griffin examines why scientists, philosophers, and theologians have held parapsychology in disdain and argues that neither a priori philosophical attacks nor wholesale rejection of the evidence can withstand scrutiny.After articulating a constructive postmodern philosophy that allows the parapsychological evidence to be taken seriously, Griffin examines this evidence extensively. He identifies four types of repeatable phenomena that suggest the reality of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. Then, on the basis of a nondualistic distinction between mind and brain, which makes the idea of life after death conceivable, he examines five types of evidence for the reality of life after death: messages from mediums; apparitions; cases of the possession type; cases of the reincarnation type; and out-of-body experiences. His philosophical and empirical examinations of these phenomena suggest that they provide support for a postmodern spirituality that overcomes the thinness of modern religion without returning to supernaturalism.

Articulates a metaphysical position capable of rendering both science and religious experience simultaneously and mutually intelligible.Winner of the 2000 Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize In this book, David Ray Griffin argues that the perceived conflict between science and religion is based upon a double mistake-the assumption that religion requires supernaturalism and that scientific naturalism requires atheism and materialism.

Examines the postmodern implications of Whitehead's metaphysical system.Postmodern philosophy is often dismissed as unintelligible, self-contradictory, and as a passing fad with no contribution to make to the problems faced by philosophers in our time. While this characterization may be true of the type of philosophy labeled postmodern in the 1980s and 1990s, David Ray Griffin argues that Alfred North Whitehead had formulated a radically different type of postmodern philosophy to which these criticisms do not apply. Griffin shows the power of Whitehead's philosophy in dealing with a range of contemporary issues-the mind-body relation, ecological ethics, truth as correspondence, the relation of time in physics to the (irreversible) time of our lives, and the reality of moral norms. He also defends a distinctive dimension of Whitehead's postmodernism, his theism, against various criticisms, including the charge that it is incompatible with relativity theory.

Occasionally, a book comes along that is definitive for its field of study, a book that marks a milestone in thought.... Griffin has written just such a book―a book that, by all rights, should mark a watershed in the academic study of religion.... Griffin makes about as strong a case as one can in a single volume for a genuine and viable alternative. ― The Journal of ReligionThe process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne has made many distinctive contributions to the philosophy of religion. David Ray Griffin now offers the first full-scale philosophy of religion written from this perspective, discussing such topics as the relationship between science and religion, the validity of religious experience, the nature and existence of God, religious pluralism, creation and evolution, and the problem of evil. Griffin's clear and comprehensive book also serves as a valuable introduction to process philosophy itself.In his vigorous defense of a worldview that is fully naturalistic and fully religious, Griffin shows not only how this position reconciles naturalism with freedom, genuine religious experience, and even life after death, but also how its naturalistic theism "reenchants" the world in the sense of providing cosmic support for moral values.Highly original and sometimes controversial, Griffin's book develops its stance in conversation with influential proponents of other philosophical positions, including William P. Alston, JÜrgen Habermas, John Hick, Colin McGinn, Alvin Plantinga, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, Ninian Smart, Jeffrey Stout, and Bernard Williams.

Occasionally, a book comes along that is definitive for its field of study, a book that marks a milestone in thought.... Griffin has written just such a book―a book that, by all rights, should mark a watershed in the academic study of religion.... Griffin makes about as strong a case as one can in a single volume for a genuine and viable alternative. ― The Journal of ReligionThe process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne has made many distinctive contributions to the philosophy of religion. David Ray Griffin now offers the first full-scale philosophy of religion written from this perspective, discussing such topics as the relationship between science and religion, the validity of religious experience, the nature and existence of God, religious pluralism, creation and evolution, and the problem of evil. Griffin's clear and comprehensive book also serves as a valuable introduction to process philosophy itself.In his vigorous defense of a worldview that is fully naturalistic and fully religious, Griffin shows not only how this position reconciles naturalism with freedom, genuine religious experience, and even life after death, but also how its naturalistic theism "reenchants" the world in the sense of providing cosmic support for moral values.Highly original and sometimes controversial, Griffin's book develops its stance in conversation with influential proponents of other philosophical positions, including William P. Alston, JÜrgen Habermas, John Hick, Colin McGinn, Alvin Plantinga, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, Ninian Smart, Jeffrey Stout, and Bernard Williams.

This book, originally published by The Westminster Press in 1973, was the first full-scale Christology based upon process thought. Its thesis: Whitehead's process philosophy provides a basis for explicating the idea that Jesus of Nazareth is God's decisive self-revelation, in a manner that is consistent with both modern thought and Christian faith. A Process Christology brings together three dimensions of recent theology: the new quest for the historical Jesus, the new-orthodox emphasis on God's self-revealing activity in history, and the theology based primarily on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. This edition contains a new Preface.

Challenges the conventional view of the nature of time.Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time challenges the conventional view of the nature of time. The dominant twentieth-century view, supported by Einstein and many of the founders of quantum theory, implies that time is ultimately unreal. Several new schools of thought reject the notion that physics is temporally symmetrical, and that time could just as easily run backwards. Combating this conventional view of time, this book offers three new viewpoints and explores their apparent differences.Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine argues that irreversibility and asymmetry are more fundamental than reversibility and symmetry. David Bohm notes that while conventional notions about physics and the worldview it suggests have been based upon exclusive attention to the 'explicate order,' quite another view results when primary attention is focused on the 'implicate order.' And the growing school of process philosophy based on Alfred North Whitehead's work holds that irreversible temporal relations characterize the most 'elementary' components of the world, implying the heretical view that time exists for a single electron or atom.

Describes the move from modern, mechanistic science to a post-modern, organismic science.This book describes the move from modern, mechanistic science to a post-modern, organismic science. David Ray Griffin gives voice to a revisionary postmodernism, based on the work of Whitehead and Hartshorne that contrasts with the relativistic, nihilistic postmodernism of Heidegger, Derrida, and Wittgenstein. The book brings together some of today's most creative thinking about science.Griffin's introductory essay summarizes the way in which the mechanistic view led to the disenchantment of science and the various reasons for the reversal of this process in our time. The essays on physics, cosmology, biology, ecology, psychosomatic medicine and parapsychology bring out the various dimensions of the reenchantment of science: the replacement of modern dualism and reductionism with an ecological, organismic paradigm; the priority of internal relations to external; the casal power of experience; the presence of experience, purpose, and intrinsic value throughout nature; influence at a distance; the laws of nature as habits; the presence of a divine whole in all the parts; and the history of the universe as a self-creative, meaningful story. This book gives a powerful voice to this emerging movement's proposals for a postmodern science, spirituality, and world order.

This book takes a genuinely new spiritual stance reflecting the emergence of a post-modern science and differing from the relativistic nihilism that calls itself postmodern but is really modernism extended to its limit.Based on a direct experience of reality as divine, this postmodern spirituality transcends modernity's individualism and patriarchy, its forced choices between dualism and materialism, anthropocentrism and relativism, supernaturalism and atheism, intolerance and nihilism. Bringing moral and ethical values back into rational discourse, this book provides a critique of various aspects of modern society—political, economic, social, agricultural, and technological aspects. This criticism, informed by the postmodern worldview, points toward a more satisfying form of personal existence and a sustainable form of global order.

Addressed to readers who have found liberal theology empty or who believe that one cannot be religious and fully rational and empirical at the same time.The naturalistic theism presented in this book is addressed to readers who have found liberal theology empty or who believe that one cannot be religious and fully rational and empirical at the same time. Griffin shows that the postmodern view is more empirical and rational than that of late modern materialism.This is not a return to early modern dualistic supernaturalism. The mechanism and sensationalism of Descartes and Newton precluded a real union of religion and science. Griffin's postmodernism offers a deeply religious and fully scientific theology, providing a new basis for spiritual discipline and for a pacific mortality that could reverse the militarism of modernity.Griffin proposes a revisionary, constructive postmodern theology challenging the deconstructive philosophy that calls itself postmodern and leads to relativism and nihilism.

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence.

David Ray Griffin är professor emeritus i religionsfilosofi och teologi vid Claremont School of Theology och Claremont Graduate University. Han har publicerat över 30 böcker, bl a Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis, The New Pearl Harbor och Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action. ?Oavsett vad man tror om vem som är ansvariga för 9/11-attackerna, behövs det åtminstone en noggrann, oberoende och fristående undersökning. I den här boken presenterar Griffin 25 relevanta frågor - motsägelser som kräver ärliga svar.?- Jim Hightower, författare till Simma mot strömmen ?David Ray Griffin, som här riktar sig speciellt till medlemmarna i Kongressen och till median, har framlagt de inte sällan otroliga men sanna detaljerna i 25 grundläggande motsägelser i Bushadministrationens rapport om 9/11. Denna bok, som baseras på noggrann forskning men är skriven i en flyhänt och lättläst stil, kullkastar helt uppfattningen att 9/11-kommissionens rapport presenterar en korrekt redogörelse för vad som hände den 11 september. Den visar fullständigt klart behovet av en ny undersökning.? - Bill Christison, f d CIA-tjänsteman

David Ray Griffins förra bok, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, bestods en ära som bara tillkommer 51 böcker om året. Den 24 november 2008 utnämndes den till ?Pick of the Week?, av Publishers Weekly, en ansedd tidskrift som har väglett bokhandlare, bibliotekarier, bokagenter och utgivare i över 100 år. Förhandsberöm för denna bok, Usama bin Ladin: Död eller Levande? ?David Ray Griffin, en av Amerikas grundligaste och mest omdömesgilla analytiker, specialiserar sig på ämnen som ledande medier och de flesta politiker föredrar att ignorera. Ett trefaldigt leve för honom för att han nu tar upp frågan om huruvida Usama bin Ladin dog för några år sedan och därför inte borde vara något skäl för USA att fortsätta kriget i Afghanistan. Det finns starka krafter både i USA och bland några av dess allierade som otvivelaktigt vill ha en civilisationernas kamp. En del av dessa krafter kan mycket väl ha agerat i hemlighet tidigare och kanske ännu gör det för att skapa situationer, verkliga eller falska, som åstadkommer mer krigföring. Griffins nya bok med sina belägg för att ?budskapen från bin Ladin? kan ha fabricerats bör stimulera till en total omprövning av uppdraget i Afghanistan.? William Christison, f.d. hög CIA-tjänsteman ?Usama bin Ladin är världens mest kände terrorist. Men hur mycket av vad vi tror oss veta om honom är sant? David Griffin undersöker den frågan grundligare än någon tidigare författare. På grundval av framlagda belägg drar han slutsatsen att bin Ladin kan ha varit död sedan länge. Det betyder i så fall att en del tekniker i hemlighet fabricerat band för att hålla Usama bin Ladin vid liv i allmänhetens föreställningar.? Terrell E. Arnold, f.d. vicedirektör i US State Department Office of Counterterrorism, författare till A World Less Safe. ?Den här boken är en del av en växande samling faktaböcker som belyser den katastrofala klyftan mellan de som har makten, vilka gör som de vill, och de som har kunskap, vilka inte hörs? President Obama [måste] bryta sig ut ur sin slutna maktkrets för att ta del av den opartiska kunskap denna bok förmedlar?? Robert David Steele Vivas, f.d. spion, grundare av USMC Intelligence Centre, VD för OSS.net och VD för Earth Intelligence Network.

Klockan 17.20 på eftermiddagen den 11 september rasade byggnad 7 i World Trade Center, trots att det inte hade träffats av något plan och bara hade bränder på några få våningar. Anledningen till dess kollaps ansågs vara ett mysterium. I augusti 2008 lade NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) fram sin rapport om WTC 7, där man förklarar att skälet till kollapsen av World Trade Center 7 är inte längre ett mysterium och att vetenskapen står verkligen bakom det vi har hävdat. Genom att visa att ingetdera av deras påståenden är sanna demonstrerar David Ray Griffin att NIST har gjort sig skyldigt till den värsta sortens vetenskapliga falsarium: man fabricerar, förfuskar och ignorerar bevis. Han visar också att NIST:s rapport lämnar det centrala mysteriet olöst: Hur kunde en byggnad, skadad av brand inte sprängämnen rasa i fritt fall? DAVID RAY GRIFFIN har publicerat 35 böcker om filosofi, religion och politik. Hans senaste bok om 9/11 The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, blev vald av Publishers Weekly som Pick of the Week 2008.