Sunday, October 23, 2016
Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith
In 2015, Cambridge University Press published Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith
by Francis J. Beckwith. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy and Co-Director (with Trent Dougherty) of the Program in Philosophical Studies of Religion.
From the publisher's description of Taking Rites Seriously:
From the publisher's description of Taking Rites Seriously:
Taking Rites Seriously is about how religious beliefs and religious believers are assessed by judges and legal scholars and are sometimes mis-characterized and misunderstood by those who are critical of the influence of religion in politics or in the formation of law. Covering three general topics - reason and motive, dignity and personhood, nature and sex - philosopher and legal theorist Francis J. Beckwith carefully addresses several contentious legal and cultural questions over which religious and non-religious citizens often disagree: the rationality of religious belief, religiously motivated legislation, human dignity in bioethics, abortion and embryonic stem cell research, reproductive rights and religious liberty, evolutionary theory, and the nature of marriage. In the process, he responds to some well-known critics of public faith - including Brian Leiter, Steven Pinker, Suzanna Sherry, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Richard Dawkins - as well as to some religiously conservative critics of secularism such as the advocates for intelligent design.Beckwith spoke at the 2016 Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers Conference about this topic.
Labels: featured books, human flourishing, john rawls, jurisprudence, personhood, philosophy and law, richard dawkins, ronald dworkin, Taking Rites Seriously (book)
