God & Religion
Philosophy about the divine. Augustine and Aquinas, the proofs and the objections, medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, the problem of evil, and the arguments over faith and reason that never resolved.
Part of Philosophy
17 moments in this segment.
- - Plotinus - the mystic of the One. A deeper look, part of the history of philosophy.
- - Augustine of Hippo (354–430). The Confessions and the City of God, fusing Platonism with Christianity at the close of antiquity.
- - Augustine (The School of Life). The Confessions and the turn inward.
- - Augustine - City of God. The two cities and Christian political philosophy.
- - Al-Farabi (c. 872–950). "The Second Teacher" after Aristotle, logic, the virtuous city, and the synthesis of Greek and Islamic thought.
- - The Islamic Golden Age - philosophy & humanities (Kings and Generals). Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes and the flowering of reason.
- - Avicenna / Ibn Sina (980–1037). The "Flying Man" and the necessary being, the towering metaphysician of the Islamic Golden Age.
- - Averroes / Ibn Rushd (1126–1198). The great commentator on Aristotle whose work reignited reason in medieval Europe.
- - Maimonides (1138–1204). The Guide for the Perplexed, reconciling Aristotle with Jewish scripture.
- - Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). The Summa Theologica, the grand scholastic synthesis of faith and Aristotelian reason.
- - Thomas Aquinas (The School of Life). The scholastic synthesis of faith and Aristotle.
- - William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347). Ockham's Razor: do not multiply entities beyond necessity, the edge of medieval thought.
- - Gifford Lecture on the feminine and religious imagination. The fifth lecture of Miri Rubin's 2024 Gifford series at Aberdeen, on how religious imagination has been gendered and what lies beyond that framing. The Gifford Lectures remain the standing forum for natural theology and philosophy of religion.
- - Charles Taylor answers a seminar's questions. Charles Taylor takes questions from a philosophy seminar in a session recorded for teaching. Taylor's work on secularity and the modern self is one of the through-lines of late twentieth-century philosophy.
- - Loving the world, between atheism and theism (Gifford Lectures). The opening lecture of the 2025 Gifford series asks whether belief in God helps or hinders the care a suffering world requires. Amor mundi is posed as an ethical problem before a theological one.
- - The annual Boyle Lecture on science and religion. The 2026 edition of the Boyle Lecture at St Mary-le-Bow in London, the annual address on science and religion endowed by Robert Boyle and revived in its modern form in the 2000s.
- - Swinburne and Huemer on whether theism is coherent. Richard Swinburne and Michael Huemer, both working academic philosophers, debate whether theism is even a coherent position before asking whether it is true.
