The John Templeton Foundation, a West Conshohocken-based fundraising organization that serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind, has named University of Notre Dame professor Alvin Plantinga its 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate.
Plantinga, a professor of philosophy emeritus, will receive a cash prize worth about $1.4 million, according to a report in the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune.
The prize honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works.
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“Plantinga’s pioneering work began in the late 1950s, a time when academic philosophers generally rejected religiously informed philosophy.
In his early books, however, Plantinga considered a variety of arguments for the existence of God in ways that put theistic belief back on the philosophical agenda,” the foundation said.
Over his 50 years of research in philosophy of religion, epistemology and metaphysics, Plantinga has advanced landmark arguments for the existence of God, returning the questions of religious belief to the common discourse of academic philosophy.
Previous recipients include Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama.
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