Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive SciencesDoes it make sense to speak of the "mind of God"? Are humans unique? Do we have souls? Our growing explorations of the cognitive sciences pose significant challenges to and opportunities for theological reflection. Gregory Peterson introduces these sciences: neuroscience, artificial intelligence, animal cognition, linguistics, and psychology-that specifically contribute to the new picture and their philosophical underpinnings. He shows its implications for rethinking longstanding Western assumptions about the unity of the self, the nature of consciousness, free will, inherited sin, and religious experience. Such findings also illumine our understanding of God's own mind, the God-world relationship, new notions of divine design, and the implications of a universe of evolving minds. Peterson is gifted at explaining scientific concepts and drawing their implications for religious belief and theology. His work demonstrates how new work in cognitive sciences upends and reconfigures many popular assumptions about human uniqueness, mind-body relationship, and how we speak of divine and human intelligence. |
Contents
What Does Silicon Valley Have to Do with Jerusalem? | 3 |
Silicon Valley | 5 |
Jerusalem | 9 |
Jerusalem Engaging Athens | 12 |
Doing Theology through the Lens of Cognitive Science | 17 |
Looking Ahead | 21 |
How the Mind Works A Cognitive Science Perspective | 23 |
What It Is and What It Isnt | 24 |
The Presumption of Uniqueness | 122 |
The Locus Humanus | 124 |
Rational Animals | 128 |
Know Thyself | 133 |
Feeling Machines? | 137 |
Imaging God | 145 |
Whence Original Sin? | 151 |
In the Garden | 152 |
The Grand Tour | 29 |
The Mind as an Information Processor | 36 |
The Situated MindBrain | 41 |
The Cognitive Driver | 44 |
Fitting Square Pegs into Round Wholes The Problem of Consciousness | 49 |
What Is Consciousness? | 50 |
Can Cognitive Science Tell Us Anything about Consciousness? | 53 |
Consciousness as Function | 55 |
Reductionism or Emergence? | 60 |
Rethinking the Soul | 69 |
Do Split Brains Listen to Prozac? | 74 |
The Theological Subject | 75 |
One Body One Mind? | 77 |
The Paradox of Emotion | 85 |
Constrained to Be Free | 95 |
Mysterium Tremendum | 99 |
On the Road to Damascus | 100 |
Are They Real? | 102 |
Religion on the Brain | 105 |
Messages from Whom? | 113 |
Alone in the Universe? | 121 |
Saints and Sinners | 154 |
Born Selfish? | 156 |
Machiavellian Intelligence? | 162 |
Are We Really That Way? | 168 |
Organized to SelfOrganize | 170 |
Falling Up? | 175 |
The Mind of God | 183 |
God as Person | 184 |
From Design to Mind | 188 |
WorldMindBody | 197 |
The Nature and Destiny of Minds | 202 |
The Crown of Creation? | 203 |
The Place of Mind in the Universe | 205 |
The Future of Human Minds | 214 |
The Ultimate Future of Minds | 219 |
Glossary | 223 |
Notes | 227 |
235 | |
247 | |
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