EPS Blog

Interview with J.P. Moreland: The Recalcitrant Imago Dei (part two)

2009-07-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

We continue our interview with J.P. Moreland about his book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei. In this part, J.P. shares how our view of human persons forms culture, how philosophy of religion work is helping to challenge naturalism in various areas, and how J.P. teaches philosophy.

You seem to wear multiple hats in this book as a philosopher, theologian and cultural observer. For you, how are these areas interrelated when offering an analysis of “human persons and the failure of naturalism”?

The philosopher, especially the Christian philosopher, should take a realist understanding of the imago Dei seriously. That understanding presents the philosopher with a prima facie justified case that the six features of human persons mentioned above are real and irreducible. The theologian should take the philosophical arguments seriously as an example of how to clarify the key issues and options and make crucial distinctions relevant to their resolution. The cultural observer should be careful to observe the connection between broad cultural drifts in the arena of ideas and the way human persons are depicted by the advocates of those various drifts.

In your book, you use an important Pitrim Sorokin distinction between a “sensate culture” vs. an “ideational culture.” Can you expand upon what that distinction means and why it is significant?

A sensate culture is one that believes only in the physical world that can be seen and touched. An ideational culture accepts the physical world but also believes in an unseen realm that can be known in other ways. Sensate cultures don’t last very long because they do not have the intellectual resources to sustain a vibrant cultural form of human flourishing. Sensate cultures degenerate into greed, dishonesty and conflicts over power.

For example, it is not wide of the mark to locate the fundamental intellectual cause of our current economic crisis in the ubiquitous presence of a sensate culture in the contemporary West. By contrast, an ideational culture, especially a Judeo-Christian one, allows questions like these to be asked and provides a robust answer to them: Is there meaning to life and, if so, what it is? What is right and wrong? Is God real and is there life after death? What ought the state, public education, and other key institutions do and what role ought they play in a culture conducive to human flourishing? What role ought wealth play in such a culture? None of these questions can even be asked, much less answered, from within a scientific, sensate perspective.

How can a robust view of the image of God positively shape public policy discussions?

In a reductionist culture, human persons will be identified with things such as being an animal, sexual orientation, ethnicity, which are not the most important thing about us—that we are made in zthe image of God, or so I argue in my book. In a reductionist culture, free will and rationality disappear, and are replaced with biological and sociological determinism. Along the way, personal responsibility vanishes and social engineering at the hands of cultural elites achieves hegemony. My book stands against these trends.

It seems that the homogeneous character of naturalism is actually starting to crack and break for some in Western academic circles. If that is the case, what is going on?

For twenty years or so there has been an explosion of Christian philosophy in the academy, and the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers are theistic realists in the sense that they take their Christian theism to have ontological and epistemological implications that do intellectual work in their field. In the next decade, the prominence of Christians in philosophy will expand even more, and a backlash is sure to precipitate. Scholars in other fields, especially theology and religious studies, would do well to take note of what is happening in philosophy and seek to learn from this phenomenon. The Recalcitrant Imago Dei would be a good place to go to see an example of theistic realism at work.

There is a constant theme in a lot of your writing: Christianity is a knowledge tradition. What is the significance of this claim for how Christianity is perceived in the culture?

If Christianity were regarded as an alleged source of knowledge of reality, then its ideas would be taken seriously, put to the test, and evaluated rationally just like other alleged sources of knowledge. Knowledge, not faith, is what gives people the right to act responsibly in culture. Religious knowledge gives theological claims authority. In The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, I seek to re-establish theological claims about human persons as a reliable source of knowledge about their actual nature.

What type of philosophy courses at a university or a seminary would most benefit from this book?

Courses in philosophy of mind, comparative religion, theological anthropology, ethics (especially metaethics or end-of-life ethics), worldview comparison, and the sociology of culture would benefit from the course. Psychologists would also find much of interest here.

How do you like to teach the areas of philosophy that your book covers?

I usually begin my course by presenting the class with facts and considerations that demonstrate the broad, cultural importance of issues at the core of philosophical and theological anthropology. Then, I seek to use texts that defend various positions on those core issues and work through them carefully with the students. My book would be a good one to use in a course in philosophy of mind/action or theological anthropology. It would also be good for a course in comparative religion, since it presents and defends a Judeo-Christian understanding of the self, and treatments of the self are central issues for any religious system.

More about J.P. Moreland can be found here.

Interview with Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel: Love of Wisdom (part two)

2009-07-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

We continue our interview with Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel concerning their latest book, The Love of Wisdom: A Christian Introduction to Philosophy (Broadman & Holman, 2009). In part one, Steve and Jim talked about the uniqueness of their textbook and its approach, including a brief overview of the book's scope. Below is the second and final part of our interview.

As professors, how has your extensive teaching experience shaped what you say and the manner in which you communicate your ideas in this book?

SPIEGEL: More than twenty years of college teaching in philosophy has confirmed to me the need for a text that is clearly written and engages students’ interest without sacrificing accuracy in discussing views and arguments. Also, students are bugged by imbalance and bias as much as we professors are. So the ideal of fairness and humility in presentation of views was also paramount for us as we wrote the book.

COWAN: I think students like to see the big picture first before they get to the nitty-gritty details of an issue. They need to know how the topic at hand fits in with other questions and concerns, and they need to see the relevance of the issue for real life. When one gets to the details, there need to be clear and concise explanations of the philosophical problems and their answers, and it doesn't hurt if there is some way to make the discussion interesting and fun. Also, I try to approach topics systematically so that we deal with questions in an order that makes sense, so that what is said later builds on what's gone before.

Regarding the need to make things interesting, I have found in my teaching and writing that using lots of illustrations, examples, case studies, and thought experiments are indispensible pedagogical tools. So, as in my teaching, I included in the book lots of illustrations from film, novels, comic books, and so on in order to help explain tough issues in a fun and relevant way. For example, in discussing the Gettier problem in chapter two, I chose to present the problem not by using Gettier's own rather plain counterexamples but by telling a story about an imposter Spider-Man showing up at a public event where Peter Parker, the real Spider-Man's alter ego, was present. Likewise, in the section on free will, I explained Frankfurt-type counterexamples by telling a story about Dr. Doom planting a computer chip in the brain of Reed Richards, leader of the Fantastic Four. The students love it!

At the beginning of each chapter you intentionally introduce your discussion with a literary, film or pop cultural illustration or allusion. What are you trying to communicate or show by introducing a chapter’s topic in this way?

SPIEGEL: In addition to making the text more readable and interesting, these illustrations underscore the fact that Philosophy is not a remote, esoteric discipline but rather a field of study that can be, and should be, applied to literally all aspects of human experience and interest. This includes film, music, sports, literature, television, and everything else in our lives. Also, as Christians, we are called to apply our worldview to all that we do, and providing these links to everyday experience, including arts and entertainment, should remind readers of this fact.

COWAN: As I see it, these illustrations communicate two things. First, they tell readers who have never engaged in any formal study of philosophy that they are already familiar with many philosophical issues whether they know it or not. In the films, TV shows, and books they have read, philosophical concepts and problems are already a part of the experience. In this way, we take the edge off the strangeness and apparent irrelevancy with which philosophy is often perceived by newcomers. Second, and this is closely related to the first point, we hope to show the reader that philosophical ideas can and do influence people even if they have never studied them academically. I tell my students often that even though philosophical ideas often originate in the ivory tower, they never stay there. They always find their way down to the street where people live. And they typically make this transition by means of art—film, literature, etc.

Based on your assessment of the progress of Christian philosophers engaged in philosophical work, what areas of philosophical study remain under-developed or weak? Please list these areas and briefly explain why you think they are under-developed or weak and how might they become more developed and strong.

COWAN: Since the resurgence of Christian philosophy in the last few decades, Christians have done extensive and profitable work in the philosophy of religion and epistemology. Some areas in metaphysics have also received significant attention such as the mind/body problem and free will and determinism. But I think we have only recently begun to have an impact on key issues in general metaphysics or ontology. And, as far as I can tell, we have seen very little work on political philosophy and aesthetics. We seem rightly to be working our way outward from issues of central apologetic concern to Christianity (God's existence, divine attributes, problem of evil, religious epistemology) to broader areas relevant to the larger Christian worldview.

SPIEGEL: I agree with Steve here and would add that Christian philosophical aesthetics is especially in need of some strong work. It is telling that our book is the first Christian introductory philosophy text to feature a chapter on aesthetics.

How do you like to teach a philosophy or apologetics class? How do you use a textbook or other readings in the class?

COWAN: In my philosophy classes I take what I call a mixed Socratic approach. I usually begin a topic with a lecture that explains, say, a particular philosophical problem and then sketches some of the major strategies for solving that problem. Then I ask the students questions that lead them to evaluate the problem themselves and draw out the strengths and weaknesses of the various proposed solutions. I also ask questions designed to help them draw implications and practical consequences from given ideas and views. I like my textbooks to facilitate this method by providing summaries of philosophical issues and discussions of the various positions that can be taken on them. In my apologetics classes, I take a similar approach, though I usually seek to lead the students more directly to particular answers given that apologetics (at least as I conceive it) is designed to train students to defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So here I prefer apologetics textbooks that state and defend traditional views which I supplement with additional lecture material and evaluative questions.

SPIEGEL: My teaching style is much like that described by Steve. As for my use of textbooks, I prefer to use an anthology of readings and supplement this with a secondary text which provides commentary, thoughtful discussion of key arguments and, if available, a Christian orientation. Our text provides all of these features I desire in a secondary text, thus making it ideally suited for a course in which it is coupled with an anthology of some kind. But, of course, The Love of Wisdom can be profitably studied on its own, in or out of the classroom.

Interview with Chad Meister: Introducing Philosophy of Religion (part two)

2009-07-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

We continue our interview with Chad Meister about his Introducing Philosophy of Religion. In this part, Chad shares with us about he teaches philosophy and how philosophy of religion has influenced other areas of philosophy.

What are some lessons that you’ve learned over the years about how to teach philosophy of religion?

My overall pedagogical methods in the classroom have changed significantly over the last ten years or so, and this is especially true in upper level undergraduate philosophy courses such as philosophy of religion. Here are what I consider to be some significant lessons for teaching philosophy of religion (or any undergraduate philosophy course). Some of these lessons I gleaned from pedagogy researcher Ken Bain:

Students are not typically familiar with many, if not most, of the central topics and ideas discussed in the field, nor are they familiar with how the topics are typically approached. So rather than focusing on one or two main issues, or reading one or two primary sources, I find it helpful to first introduce them to a number of relevant topics and then to hone in on several key ones. For their assigned papers, then, I give them the opportunity to choose one or two issues with which to spend a good deal of time over the course of the semester.
I usually begin class with an excellent question (a question that is meaningful to the student)—that is, with a BIG question. So I generally create at least one major question for each class period and write it on the board or in PowerPoint. For example, I might ask, “What is John Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis, and what are some reasons you have for agreeing or disagreeing with it?” The lecture/discussion will generally, then, focus on this question.
As Ken Bain notes, a recent Harvard study of the most successful students included two key elements in the classroom: tough classes and the opportunity to try, fail, get feedback, etc. separate from a grade. I believe creating assignments, such as short papers on a central theme, that allow students to work on a topic, turn in the assignment, receive comments, and re-work the assignment are effective means. These early papers receive no grade, but the final product (a longer paper including research and reflection from the earlier shorter ones) does.
Students need to have some control over their own education. For papers, I offer students multiple topics from which to choose, or I allow them to pick a subject related to their major or area of interest.
As many of the great ancient Greek philosophers understood, one of the most helpful ways of acquiring knowledge and being transformed by it is seeing it modeled by a respected mentor. So, for example, I invite students over to my home regularly to discuss issues in that environment and work to develop respect by the “younger” students for the more advanced ones. I even encourage their involvement in an official mentoring program at the college where students and faculty mentor others, and I mentor a number of the philosophy majors myself. There should be regular collaborative efforts between students, so I have them work together in small groups on projects both in and outside of class. When appropriate, I have the “advanced” students help/mentor the “newer” ones. Especially for the philosophy majors, I try to create an environment where we are growing together and encouraging one another as a community of learners.
Students must believe that their own work will really matter (though it may be quite basic at this stage), so I have individual meetings with them to discuss their paper topics. I encourage them to focus on a theme that is significant—both to them and to the field at large—and explain why what they are doing is philosophically significant. Furthermore, I offer them the opportunity as a class to craft a journal—one structured very much like a professional philosophy journal, but with other features that make it more fun and exciting for undergraduates (for example, including timelines, glossaries, even a comics section!). This has been a very productive, collaborative kind of project which, in one case, we published. I also encourage students to work toward writing publishable papers (and to try to publish them if they are of that quality) and to attend conferences where students and others are presenting papers. It is oftentimes in these kinds of contexts where the significance of their own work can be more fully appreciated.

How has philosophy of religion work influenced other fields in philosophy?

There is a long story to be told here, but I’ll try to keep this brief. There is a fascinating symbiotic relationship among those doing work in the various fields of philosophy you mention and work being done in philosophy of religion. Consider first a brief account (one probably quite familiar to many readers) of the resurgence of philosophy of religion over the past century with respect to work done in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

Philosophy, especially within the analytic tradition, emphasizes precision of terms and clarity of concepts. Religion, however, is often imprecise and veiled in mystery. This imprecision was challenged in the mid-twentieth century with the rise of logical positivism. Logical positivists used a principle of verifiability to reject as meaningless all non-empirical claims; only the tautologies of mathematics and logic, along with statements containing empirical observations or inferences, were considered meaningful. Many religious statements, however, such as claims about the transcendent, are neither tautological nor empirically verifiable. So certain fundamental religious claims and beliefs (such as “Yahweh is good” or “Atman is Brahman”) were taken by the positivists to be cognitively meaningless utterances. Positivism became a dominant philosophical approach and for a time, for this and related reasons, philosophy of religion as a discipline became suspect.

The philosophical tide began to turn, however, in the latter half of the twentieth century with respect to religious language. Many argued that the positivists’ empiricist criteria of meaning were unsatisfactory and problematic. Due to the philosophical insights on the nature and meaning of language provided by the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, the rise of a pragmatic version of naturalism offered by Willard Quine, and other factors, logical positivism quickly waned. For these reasons, along with the exemplary work of such analytic philosophers of religion as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and others, by the 1970s discussions about religious (and metaphysical and ethical) concepts were revived and soon became accepted arenas of viable philosophical and religious discourse.

Since that time, philosophy of religion has become a burgeoning field. For example, two leading philosophy journals today—Philosophia Christi and Faith and Philosophy—are primarily focused on issues in philosophy of religion. In addition, two of the largest (if not the largest) subgroups within the American Philosophical Association are the Evangelical Philosophical Society and the Society of Christian Philosophers. Furthermore, one could cite countless examples of recent work that integrates other fields of philosophy with philosophy of religion, or philosophy of religion work which has influenced other fields. Consider just a few fine examples (with apologies for the many other fine examples which are not included):

Metaphysics: work on ontology and naturalism by Mike Rea, JP Moreland, and Alvin Plantinga;
Epistemology: work on religious epistemology by Paul Moser, Alvin Plantinga, and Doug Geivett;
Ethics: Paul Copan’s work on God and morality; John Hare’s work on ethics and religion;
Philosophy of Mind: Charles Taliaferro’s work on the mind; JP Moreland’s work on the argument from consciousness;
Philosophy of Time: work on God and time by William Lane Craig, Greg Ganssle, Gary DeWeese, and Alan Padgett.

The list goes on and on. Those doing work in philosophy of religion have indeed made great strides in influencing other fields in philosophy over the past fifty years, and there is no indication of its waning any time soon.

More about Chad Meister can be found at his website.

Call for Papers: Hiddenness of Spiritual Realities

2009-06-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

The Philosophy of Religion Group is issuing a call for papers for its session at the 2010 American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting on the topic of "The Hiddenness of Spiritual Realities." While the topic of "divine hiddenness" has received a modest amount of attention in recent years, the topic of this session is being cast a bit more broadly. Those proposing papers are welcome to address the topic of divine hiddenness, however the program committee is also interested in considering papers that address hiddenness in non-theistic traditions, as well as aspects of hiddenness that are not focused on the existence of God. Papers might thus address other topics where the hiddenness of a spiritual reality is initially surprising or unexpected given particular claims within a tradition. For example, for traditions with an emphasis on natural law, the hiddenness of divine moral mandates might merit attention. For traditions with a commitment to reincarnation, the seemingly minimal evidence for the existence of "past lives" might require explanation. Etc.

Those wishing to submit papers for consideration should send 350 word (or less) abstracts to the Program Chair, Michael Murray at Michael.murray@fandm.edu no later than SEPTEMBER 1, 2009.

Interview with J.P. Moreland: The Recalcitrant Imago Dei (part one)

2009-06-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

We are glad to announce the release of J.P. Moreland's latest book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009). J.P. is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University. We previously interviewed him about his Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008). Below is part one of our interview with him about his latest book and the philosophical failure of naturalism.

In roughly 200 pages, you try to clarify, if not recapture, an emphasis on the recalcitrant imago Dei? Why this emphasis?

In its doctrine of the image of God, the Bible teaches that the human constitution has features in common with God; we are like God in important respects. Namely, we have a will, consciousness, reason, etc. If Christianity is true, one would predict that alternative worldviews whose basic entity or entities are not spiritual would find these features of the human person recalcitrant, that is, hard to explain or explain away. And that is exactly what one finds, especially in connection with philosophical naturalism. If, in the beginning was the Logos, then, I claim, it is easy to see how six features of human persons could obtain—consciousness, libertarian freedom, rationality, a unified/simple self, equal and intrinsic value, and moral action of a certain sort. But if, in the beginning were the particles, then one cannot adequately account for these features, and reductive or eliminative strategies must be employed. I argue that these strategies are a failure, and, therefore, these six features provide rebutting defeaters for naturalism and confirmation (to a degree I specify) for biblical theism.

What is the worldview of naturalism?

Naturalism has many incarnations, but if it is taken to be explanatorily superior to rival worldviews, then it may be fairly characterized according to a majority construal of it, which would be (1) a scientistic attitude, which says that all that is real is physical and that knowledge is only that which can be detected by the sciences; (2) an origins account constituted by an event-causal story explains how everything has come-to-be as a result of combinatorial processes and rearrangements of micro-physical entities to form various structurally different macro-objects, and centered on the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary biology; (3) a strictly physicalist ontology that quantifies over and only over those entities that conform to (1) and (2). I argue in the book that the naturalist ontology cannot account for real substances (besides atomic simples if such there be) or genuinely emergent, sui generis properties, especially those constitutive of the six features mentioned above.

It seems that most public policy and pop cultural discussions about what it means to be a human person are largely shaped by the offerings of the hard or soft sciences. How is your approach different and why does that matter?

The fundamental questions about the nature of human beings are these: Is consciousness real and is it non-physical? Do I have free will and, if so, what is it? How could human rationality be possible, and if it is, what does that tell us about the nature of the human person? Do I have a unified self that remains the same through change, or am I just an aggregate of parts? Do human persons have equal and high moral value, and if so, how could such a thing be the case? What is a moral action, and can human persons engage in such? None of these questions is capable of being formulated or answered by the hard and social sciences, because they are, one and all, descriptive and not prescriptive disciplines. They have nothing to say about what must be the case or what ought to be the case. The questions listed above are all philosophical and theological questions. That is how I treat them in The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, and the answers I provide require philosophical and theological evaluation.

Philosopher Howard Robinson (Budapest’s Central European University) says that the “great service” of your book is that you cumulatively demonstrate how naturalism fails to give us an accurate account of some of the most basic fundamentals of human existence. Can you further unpack the failure of naturalism?

I argue that the worldview of naturalism denies the objectivity of value, meaning in and to life, free will and responsibility, normative rationality, sameness of self through various changes, and the possibility of a ground for equal rights and moral action.

With an overreliance on the hard sciences, secularism reduces us to our brains, our wills to nerve reactions to inputs, our value to the dictates of the herd. In the process, we lose what is so special to us—our consciousness, freedom, rationality, self and value.

Naturalism has singularly failed to provide a plausible, deep analysis of human persons sufficient to account for who they are, how they can have value and purpose in life, and how they can flourish in a robust social and ethical way. As naturalist views of human persons proliferate, people turn to sex and entertainment, all centered on the satisfaction of immediate desire, as the rails upon which they run their lives. In turn, this generates passivity and all kinds of addictions.

The worldview is kept in business, intellectually, by its alleged—but non-existent—connection with physical science, and, spiritually, by anger towards God and hostility towards religion. The former is simply false—it is not science, but philosophical naturalism itself that underwrites its core intellectual commitments (and a troublesome argumentative circle is lurking in the neighborhood; to avoid this, one must provide independent epistemic and methodological arguments for adopting naturalism, but these are, in my view, extremely weak). The latter is becoming more apparent now that the resurgence of Christian philosophy has made it more difficult to justify intellectually the claim that belief in God is irrational.

Does one have to be a Christian in order to buy into your view of the human person?

One does not need to be a Christian theist to accept the analysis of human persons I defend in The Recalcitrant Imago Dei. But if that analysis is accepted, then one is obligated to offer an account concerning how human persons could be this way. In other words, one does not get a free pass in their ontology of the human person. One has to tell a broad worldview story, including a creation account, within which that ontology is intelligible and plausible.

Stay tuned for part two. More about J.P. Moreland's work can be found here.

Interview with Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel: The Love of Wisdom (part one)

2009-06-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce the latest book by Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel, titled, The Love of Wisdom: A Christian Introduction to Philosophy (Broadman & Holman, 2009). Steve and Jim are members of the EPS, contributors to Philosophia Christi, and professors of philosophy at Southeastern Bible College and Taylor University (Indiana), respectivelly. Look for future content from them to appear at the EPS blog. Below is part one of an interview with Steve and Jim about their latest offering.

What is unique about your intent, approach, and features in this Christian introduction to philosophy?

COWAN: We set out to produce a book that avoided two shortcomings we found in other Christian philosophy texts. On the one hand, we did not want to treat issues in a superficial and cursory way. We wanted to provide significant depth so that the reader could come away with a good grasp of the issues and the range of answers that have been given to major philosophical questions. On the other hand, we did not want our discussion to be limited to only a narrow range of topics. We wanted to introduce the reader to all the main areas of philosophy.

Secondly, we wanted the text to be as friendly as possible to the needs of teachers. This required that we include pedagogical aids like diagrams, illustrations, study questions, recommended reading lists, and the like. It also required that we leave a lot of philosophical discussions open-ended rather than stating and defending our own preferred answers to every question. So on issues where Christian philosophers are deeply divided, we resisted the temptation to come down firmly on one side. This way, no matter what view a teacher holds, he or she can comfortably use the text to inform students about the debate and generate classroom discussion.One unique feature of the book, as has been widely touted, is that it includes chapters on subjects that usually get shorted or ignored in other texts, namely political philosophy and aesthetics. Jim and I wanted our treatment of value theory go beyond the requisite chapter on ethics and include these other subjects as well. It is a much better book because of it.

Your text intends to take the acquisition of wisdom as a serious matter when “doing philosophy.” How is this intention realized throughout the book?

SPIEGEL: The two primary ways we do this are methodological and substantive. As a matter of method, we explain and apply the “Socratic method,” which emphasizes humility in inquiry, as well as defining terms and using well-constructed arguments. Substantively, at various places in the discussion we explain how a particular view or acquaintance with an issue will help readers to understand to make wise judgments regarding a wide range of practical issues in ethics, politics, and aesthetics. In addition to standard moral issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and animal rights, we address such issues as civil disobedience, religion in the public square, and how to assess artworks which are aesthetically admirable but morally problematic.

COWAN: Where possible, throughout the book, we try to bring out the practical implications of the views we discuss. Even in philosophical areas that are seen as more abstract we want the reader to see that whatever position he takes, it will have practical and ethical consequences. For example, it's hard to imagine a more abstract topic than the metaphysical debate between Platonism (the view that universals exist) and nominalism (which denies the existence of universals). We show that nominalism has adverse implications for the objectivity of moral values. If there are no universal essences, say, then there is no such thing as humanity. And this makes it hard to make sense of the concept of human rights. So even abstract philosophical topics can contribute to our ability to navigate wisely through life.

Who do you have in mind to most benefit from this book?

SPIEGEL: We wrote the book in such a way that Philosophy students at all stages would have much to gain by reading it. Beginners will appreciate the clear presentation of issues and definitions of terms, while intermediate and advanced students will appreciate the thorough review of arguments for and against the major positions on the issues. As Philosophy teachers ourselves, we appreciate texts that allow for flexibility in use. Professors will benefit from the thorough coverage of topics, which will enable them to tailor reading assignments according to the specific structure and aims of their courses.

Walk us through a brief overview of the three main parts of this book and their significance of content and organization.

SPIEGEL: The book is divided into three parts: knowledge, being and value. The first part contains chapters on logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The section on being features chapters on metaphysics, human nature, and philosophy of religion. And the last section includes chapters on ethics, political philosophy and aesthetics. Perhaps our Trinitarian Christian theology impacted our decision to go with all of these triads :), but the book really just seemed to make the most sense this way from an organizational standpoint. The early chapters on logic and epistemology provide readers with conceptual tools that are valuable for reading the other chapters. And understanding several issues in metaphysics, human nature, and philosophy of religion is critical for properly addressing a number of questions in value theory taken up in the last section of the book.

You can learn more about the work of Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel by visiting their websites: Cowan Chronicles and JimSpiegel.com

Interview with Chad Meister: Introducing Philosophy of Religion (part one)

2009-06-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to interview Chad Meister about his recently released Introducing Philosophy of Religion (Routledge, 2009). Chad is the Director of the philosophy program at Bethel College (Indiana) where he has been teaching philosophy for the past decade. Among other hats that he wears, Chad is one of the book review editors for Philosophia Christi.

What is the overall aim of this textbook?

The aim of this textbook is to help students and others reflect philosophically on important religious ideas, including religious diversity, concepts of God/Ultimate Reality, arguments for and against the existence of God, problems of evil, science and faith, religious experience, the self, death and the afterlife.

What is unique about your content, approach, intent, and scope for this introduction to philosophy of religion?

This book covers a broad array of topics—some of which are not typically covered in philosophy of religion texts but are nonetheless important in contemporary discussions—including non-Western conceptions of Ultimate Reality and conceptions of the self, reincarnation, and karma. Unlike other works I’ve done, I am not arguing in this book for any particular positions which I may personally hold. I attempt to be as fair and impartial as possible, and to provide arguments and evidences for each position.

Here is a quick overview of the chapter titles and main objectives:

Chapter 1: Religion and the Philosophy of Religion

Describe what is generally meant by the terms philosophy, religion, and philosophy of religion
Access an extensive philosophy of religion timeline
Explain religious realism and non-realism and note prominent adherents of each

Chapter 2: Religious Diversity and Pluralism

Describe several central elements of five major world religions
Explain six different philosophical approaches to religious diversity
Clarify five fundamental criteria for evaluating religious systems
Expound on some important reasons for manifesting religious tolerance with respect to the various traditions

Chapter 3: Conceptions of Ultimate Reality

Elucidate some major differences between Eastern and Western views of Ultimate Reality
Provide a concise summary of Hindu Absolutism and Buddhist Metaphysics
Present five attributes of the traditional concept of the God of theism and some challenges to them

Chapter 4: Cosmological Arguments for God's Existence

Explicate three cosmological arguments for God's existence and describe support for and objections to each of them
State scientific evidences for and against the claim that the universe began to exist
Concisely explain the cosmological argument for atheism

Chapter 5: Teleological Arguments for God's Existence

Explain three teleological arguments for God's existence and describe support for and objections to each of them
Expound on scientific findings which relate to alleged fine-tuning of the universe
Describe the intelligent design movement and arguments for and against irreducible complexity

Chapter 6: Ontological Arguments for God's Existence

Explain two ontological arguments for God's existence: one classic and one contemporary
Summarize several main objections and replies to each of these two arguments

Chapter 7: Problems of Evil

Classify various kinds of evil
Explicate the logical, evidential, and existential problems of evil and responses to them
Describe three major theodicies and some central objections to them

Chapter 8: Science, Faith and Reason

Explain three primary relationships between religion and science
Differentiate between rational validation and non-evidential views of religious justification
Understand the meaning of classical foundationalism, a reason for rejecting it, and the role of properly basic beliefs in a more recent version of foundationalism found in Reformed epistemology

Chapter 9: Religious Experience

Delineate three general features common to religious experience
Distinguish three general categories of religious experience
Provide reasons for and against the use of religious experience as justification for religious beliefs
Describe two scientific explanations for religious experience

Chapter 10: The Self, Death and the Afterlife

Explain four major conceptions of the self from the East and the West as well as arguments for and against them
Describe the doctrines of reincarnation and karma and their significance to two Eastern religious traditions
Expound on four arguments in favor of immortality and three arguments against it

There are a number of pedagogical features in the book and on a Routledge website dedicated to the book, including charts, diagrams, chapter outlines, objectives, timeline, glossary, PowerPoint slides, and other resources.

My hope is that students and others working through this text (along with an anthology which is relatively global in scope, such as my corresponding Philosophy of Religion Reader) will gain a broad and fairly comprehensive understanding of the field of philosophy of religion as practiced today, and that they will be enticed to further research and study on these topics.

How has your extensive experience as a professor and work as an editor of several philosophy of religion books shaped what is unique to this textbook?

Teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels over the past ten years has undoubtedly provided a plethora of dialectical encounters with students which proved fruitful in crafting this textbook as a dialogical work. I have also gained significant insight through various editing projects over the last few years. For example, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion (which I co-edited with Paul Copan), The Philosophy of Religion Reader (read the interview here), and The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity (which I am just now finishing), I have been engaged with the works of philosophers of religion from across religious and philosophical spectrums. It has been a most enlightening experience working with atheists, pluralists, feminists, Continental philosophers, and Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic scholars. I have leaned much from them and am deeply indebted to them, and this dialogue has enriched my own thinking about a number of issues.

For more about Chad Meister, visit his website: http://www.chadmeister.com/

Downward Causation

2009-06-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

It is always heartening to see other thinkers whom I admire moving in similar directions. My own recent work in philosophy of mind involves a defense of downward (or top-down) mental-to physical causation (e.g., see "Is Downward Causation Possible?" in the most recent issue of Philosophia Christi Vol 11, No. 1 2009, pp. 93-110). I have just read and reviewed an excellent work in defense of the soul, libertarian free will and teleological (downward) causation, namely Naturalism by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro. This is highly recommended. I found it so engrossing, I was able to give it a first read on the plane while tired during apologetics events! Since then I have taken copious notes and learned a great deal.

Naturalism is a concise yet potent anti-materialist salvo, and is perhaps the ideal appetizer for my main entree J. P. Moreland's Consciousness and the Existence of God. (See his book interview here.) This is a very important work, also defending downward causation and showing how the varieties of naturalism are in real trouble. In the last chapter, Moreland notes the strange fact that while the case for dualism has now been developed with impressive sophistication, there is a failure of physicalists to "enjoin the dualist literature" (186) and a repertoire of "dismissive maneuvers" used to camouflage this exercise in intellectual irresponsibility. So my hope and plea is that we can change this situation and invite (or if necessary, shame) naturalists to engage the actual positions of the best contemporary defenders of dualism and theism.

Finally, on the apologetics front, a definite thumbs-up for Peter Williams' A Sceptic's Guide to Atheism, which contains a lot of helpful material for responding to the new atheists' attempts to dismiss religious belief and experience as an illusion (which helped me considerably in presentations I gave at UCLA and Fort Wayne). See his interview here.

Right now I am working on a defense of libertarian free will against the claims of some scientists and philosophers that neuroscience has undermined conscious free will. This has become a hot issue in the philosophy of law, as some claim that retributive justice is obsolete, leaving only utilitarian, "crowd control" arguments for punishment. The paper I am working on will be delivered at the IVR World Congress meeting on Philosophy of Law in Beijing, China, September 15-20th of this year in the workshop on the connection between Punishment, Retribution and Free Will.

Closer to Truth

2009-05-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

For anyone teaching philosophy, I've found the content at www.closertotruth.com to be a great resource to "kick off" my classes. This sight is especially helpful for discussions in the philosophy of religion, as it includes interviews on teleology, cosmology, consciousness, morality, natural theology, Reformed epistemology, and much more. The interviews are with first rate thinkers (Plantinga, Craig, Tooley, Linde, Davies, Swinburne, Murphy, and more). In case you have not seen this sight, or the series on television, it is worth the time.

The Believing Primate

2009-05-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

EPS member Michael J. Murray, a Professor of Philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College, and also Vice President of Philosophy and Theology at the Templeton Foundation, recently edited a collection of writings (with Jeffrey Schloss) titled, The Believing Primate: Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (OUP, 2009)

In Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, he has a chapter titled, "Four Arguments that the Cognitive Psychology of Religion Undermines the Justification of Religious Belief."

Michael recently interacted with Paul Bloom (Yale) about much of the topics in the above mentioned book. The below interview is from Bloggingheads.tv:

Welcome Steve Cowan and Jim Spiegel

2009-05-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to have Steven Cowan and Jim Spiegel as contributors to the EPS blog. Stay tuned for a forthcoming interview about their recently released book, The Love of Wisdom: A Christian Introduction to Philosophy (Broadman & Holman).

Steve Cowan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Apologetics at Southeastern Bible College. He is also the Associate Director of the Apologetics Resource Center and the Editor of the Areopagus Journal. Within the EPS, he oversees our regional meetings and he is a frequent contributor to Philosophia Christi. For example, see his recent discussion on molinism in our Summer 2009 issue. More of Steve can be found at his Cowan Chronicles blog. We are pleased to have his thoughtful and unique contribution at the EPS blog in the areas of philosophy of religion, ethics and apologetics.

Jim Spiegel is a professor of philosophy at Taylor University. He has written, edited or contributed to a range of books and articles at the intersection of philosophy of religion, theology, ethics and aesthetics, including break-out titles like Faith, Film and Philosophy (with R. Douglas Geivett), Hypocrisy and his award-winning How to Be Good in a World Gone Bad. Jim is also a contributor to Philosophia Christi and a member of the EPS Executive Committee. In addition to his scholarly work, Jim is a devout music and recording enthusiast. More about Jim can be found at www.jimspiegel.com and also at his blog where he and his wife contribute. We are pleased to have his perspective and creative thinking at the EPS blog.

My Ways are not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible

2009-05-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

Given that a tremendous amount of attention is being given to the moral implications of divine commands in the Old Testament, I thought many of our readers will be interested in attending this event at the University of Notre Dame, from September 10-12. For any other information, including speakers, times, and such, please see the following link:

http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/conferences/HebrewBible/shtml

I think the docket of speakers is first rate, and expect much fruit from this event.

Symposium: Did God Mandate Genocide?

2009-05-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Philosophia Christi (Summer 2009) features a fascinating symposium that diversely addresses the theme, "Did God Mandate Genocide?" Primarily in view is the Old Testament destruction of the Canaanites.

Subscribe today!

Contributors to this discussion include: Wesley Morriston, Randal Rauser, Joseph Buijs, Clay Jones and Paul Copan.

This discussion was originally prompted by Copan's Philosophia Christi 10:1 (Summer 2008) article, "Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics."

Below is a snapshot of each of the contributions:

Did God Command Genocide? A Challenge to the Biblical Inerrantist
by Wesley Morriston

Abstract: Thoughtful Christians who hold the Old Testament in high regard must at some point come to terms with those passages in which God is said to command what appear (to us) to be moral atrocities. In the present paper, I argue that the genocide passages in the Old Testament provide us with a strong prima facie reason to reject biblical inerrancy—that in the absence of better reasons for thinking that the Bible is inerrant, a Christian should conclude that God did not in fact command genocide. I shall also consider and reject the attempts of two prominent Christian philosophers to show that God had morally sufficient reasons for commanding the Israelites to engage in genocidal attacks against foreign peoples.

"Let Nothing that Breathes Remain Alive": On the Problem of Divinely Commanded Genocide
by Randal Rauser

Abstract: In this essay I argue that God did not command the Canaanite genocide. I begin by critiquing Paul Copan’s defense of Canaanite genocide. Next, I develop four counter-arguments. First, we know intuitively that it is always wrong to bludgeon babies. Second, even if killing babies were morally praiseworthy, the soul-destroying effect these actions would have on the perpetrators would constitute a moral atrocity. Third, I develop an undercutting defeater to the claim that Yahweh commanded genocide. Finally, I argue that we ought to repudiate divinely commanded genocide given the justification this provides for ongoing moral atrocities.

Atheism and the Argument from Harm
by Joseph Buijs

Abstract: One line of argument commonly lodged against religion is that it is usually or alway sharmful, individually and socially, and for that reason should be abolished from our cultural landscape. I consider two variations of the argument: one that appeals to direct harm caused by religion and another that appeals to indirect harm on the basis of attitudes instilled by religion. Both versions, I contend, are seriously flawed. Hence, this so-called harm argument fails, both as a critique of theism and as a defense of atheism.

We Don't Hate Sin So We Don't Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to "Divine Genocide" Arguments

by Clay Jones

Abstract: Skeptics challenge God’s fairness for ordering Israel to destroy the Canaanites, but a close look at the horror of Canaanite sinfulness, the corruptive and seductive power of their sin as seen in the Canaanization of Israel, and God’s subsequently instituting Israel’s own destruction because of Israel’s committing Canaanite sin reveals that God was just in His ordering the Canaanite’s destruction. But Western culture’s embrace of “Canaanite sin” inoculates it against the seriousness of that sin and so renders it incapable of responding to Canaanite sin with the appropriate moral outrage.

Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely-Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment? Response to Critics
by Paul Copan

Abstract: The divine command to kill the Canaanites is the most problematic of all Old Testament ethical issues. This article responds to challenges raised by Wes Morriston and Randal Rauser. It argues that biblical and extrabiblical evidence suggests that the Canaanites who were killed were combatants rather than noncombatants (“Scenario 1”) and that, given the profound moral corruption of Canaan, this divinely-directed act was just. Even if it turns out that noncombatants were directly targeted (“Scenario 2”), the overarching Old Testament narrative is directed toward the salvation of all nations—including the Canaanites.

William Lane Craig vs. Christopher Hitchens

2009-04-05T22:17:00.000-07:00

On April 4th at Biola University, William Lane Craig debated Christopher Hitchens concerning the question, "Does God Exist?" The debate was moderated by columnist, law professor, and radio host Hugh Hewitt. Both Biola's student body and the graduate program in Christian apologetics co-sponsored the debate.

Below is a basic overview of the web coverage. A helpful, summary transcript can also be found here.

Some regional and local college papers covered the debate, including the Whittier Daily, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star, the Daily Titan (Cal State Fullerton), and Biola's Chimes.

Perhaps the best atheist response comes from the Common Sense Atheist blog.

And some of the best theistic blog coverage and analysis can be found from Doug Geivett (Biola philosopher), Melinda Penner (apologist), MaryJo Sharp (apologist), and the Evangelical Outpost (cultural commentary).

Recently Notable Philosophy Resources

2009-04-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

Just in case you were not already aware of these resources, take a browse of these helpful philosophy websites:

PhilPapers: Online research in philosophy - Over 186,000 entries are in this massive database, which has been developed and maintained by David Bourget and David Chalmers; this is the indispensible one-stop source for preprint philosophical work.

Sympoze: social bookmarking for philosophers - It helpfully utilizes social web features and functionality to encourage collaboration of philosophical linkage and content sharing among philosophers. Andrew Cullison, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Fredonia, is the founder of Sympoze and currently maintains it.

Philosopher's Digest: Timely Reviews of Current Philosophy Articles - Editors John Milliken, Ben Dyer and Galen Foresman, along with their notable advisory board and reviewers, provide useful and concise reviews of items diverse, peer-reviewed philosophy journals.

Cloud of Witnesses - Chris Reese not only provides some helpful philosophical and theological reflections at his blog, but his "Philosophy Word of the Day" is also informative.

For a full directory of other important links, please visit our directory of web resources.

2009 EPS Annual Meeting

2009-03-23T16:29:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all of you that submitted your paper proposals for this year's annual meeting of the EPS (New Orleans).

A final list of presenters has been chosen.

In due course, we will announce the details of the program for the annual meeting.

Tremendous thanks to Jeremy Evans for his outstanding job as program chairperson!

Interview with Peter S. Williams: Sceptics's Guide to New Atheism

2009-03-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

We interviewed Peter S. Williams, an EPS blogger and contributor to Philosophia Christi, about his just released book, A Sceptic's Guide to Atheism (Paternostre, 2009). A talk by Peter about his new book can be downloaded by clicking here.

What is unique about your book compared to other critical treatments on the “new atheists”?

The new atheism is characterised by the propositions that belief in God is false and evil. The new atheists believe that at the core of even the most outwardly benign theism is an immoral commitment to flouting one’s intellectual responsibilities. That means that the new atheism presupposes both an account of rationality and an account of morality. What’s unique about my book is that I examine those accounts and turn the results of this analysis against the new atheism. By systematically reviewing their major arguments, I show how the new atheism is grounded in incoherent accounts of knowledge and morality.

It’s not just that the new atheists are wrong to define ‘faith’ as ‘belief without evidence’ or ‘belief against the evidence’. It’s that their positive account of what it means to live up to one’s intellectual responsibilities is self-contradictory. I counter with an epistemology that isn’t self-contradictory, which frowns upon both ‘blind faith’ and belief despite overwhelming counter evidence, but which opens up the possibility of a faith in God that’s compatible with living up to one’s genuine intellectual responsibilities.

Then again, the new atheists put a lot of emphasis on arguments against belief in God, as opposed to arguments against the existence of God, and these arguments all have a moral dimension. For example, the argument that faith means being committed to ignoring one’s intellectual responsibilities presupposes that we have an objective moral responsibility to reason in a certain way. However, for the new atheists to invoke objective moral responsibilities is self-contradictory, since the naturalistic worldview of the new atheism excludes the reality of any objective moral values. For example, Dawkins says both that there are no normative facts, no good, no evil, and that faith is an evil that leads people to do evil things. These claims form an in consistent set.

Of all the different new atheist voices that are out there, who do you find to be the most compelling in their case against the existence of God?

Dawkins makes the most compelling case against the truth of belief in God; but that’s partly because, despite being such a poor logician, he is a good rhetoritician, and partly because the other new atheists are even worse on this issue! The God Delusion was the first new atheist book I read, and I thought at the time that it was a low point for atheistic apologetics. Dawkins clearly doesn’t even understand the theistic arguments he critiques, and his book is consequently full of embarrassing errors. When it comes to his ‘central’ argument against theism, it turns out to be an exercise begging the question. Dawkins’ engagement with natural theology is a litany of formal and informal logical fallacies; but he’s a zoologist and not a philosopher. I expected more from new atheists who are philosophers, and I was disappointed to discover that Dawkins is actually the high water mark for new atheist engagement with the question of God’s existence!

The new atheists spend very little time arguing against the existence of God, or trying to counter the arguments for God’s existence. Dawkins’ is the most sustained effort on offer. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is crucially predicated upon the non-existence of God, but he only spends eleven paragraphs (from pages 240-245) on this issue! Like his compatriots, Dennett skims over straw-man presentations of a small sub-set of theistic arguments which he dismisses using long discredited counter-arguments.

Anyone who didn’t know better and was inclined to trust what the new atheist’s say would come away from their books with the false impression that the cosmological argument depends upon the premise that ‘everything has a cause’ (thus leading to the question ‘Who made God?’), and that the moral argument claims that people can’t discern or behave in accordance with the good unless they believe in God (or in the Bible as the inspired word of God). As far as I’m concerned, that’s an academic scandal.

What are some of the sociological, cultural-historical or philosophical factors that have empowered the new atheism to emerge now compared to, say, fifty years ago?

I think the explanation is multi-factorial. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 clearly put the issue of religiously motivated violence smack in the centre of Western public consciousness; but I don’t think we can simply point the finger at the actions of a certain type of Muslim and say that the new atheism is a secular reaction to their actions. For one thing, Christians shouldn’t let themselves off the hook here. Many atheists have legitimate cause to feel themselves an oppressed minority. In 2006 researchers at the University of Minnesota identified atheists as America’s most distrusted minority, and the American Sociological Review reported that it is generally thought socially acceptable in America to say that you are intolerant of atheists. I think that the Church must ask itself if it is ‘speaking the truth’ to atheists ‘in love’, or in fear and hate? Perhaps we’ve had a hand in creating a stick with which to beat out own backs.

Another factor is the way in which the new atheism offers an apparently meaningful and purposeful existence to its converts. Materialism is the metaphysics of nihilism par excellence (cf. my book I Wish I Could Believe in Meaning: A Response to Nihilism) but the new atheism dresses itself up in fake robes of meaning and purpose, like the fairy-tale about the Emperor’s New Clothes. The fake meaning comes in the guise of moral outrage at the (generalised) behaviour of theists. The fake purpose comes in the form of an intellectual-cum-socio-political crusade against theistic belief and for a metaphysically naturalistic worldview. The ‘new atheism’ thus offers an apparently valuable meaning and purpose to people’s lives, a daring intellectual identity and a community of like-minded fellow-pilgrims. And the Emperor’s new tailor appeared to offer him the finest new robes…

Where do you think the discussion is going between new atheists and theists in the years to come?

I suspect that the new atheism has already had its cultural hay-day. It has now lost something of that ‘lure of the new’ to which our media-saturated culture is so in thralled, and it seems unlikely that Dawkins et al can sustain their movement’s momentum even if they manage to write a new set of books to keep their ideas in the public eye.

Nevertheless, significant numbers of people have been profoundly influenced by the new atheism. If there’s one thing to be said for the new atheism it is that antipathy towards Christianity is better than apathy; and the new atheism means Christians will meet more antipathy, albeit an intellectually under-resourced antipathy. Christians must ‘speak the truth in love’ to those influenced by the new atheism, engaging them with the real reasons for the hope that we have (rather than the straw-men boldly eviscerated by Dawkins et al), but also engaging with them on a personal level as friends whom Christ loves. If the new atheism can lead to more disagreements that are not disagreeable, then it may be a blessing in disguise!

Peter S. Williams is a philosophy and apologetics researcher, lecturer, and author with the UK based Damaris Trust.

New Metaphysics Blog

2009-02-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Gabriele Contessa has started a group blog devoted to metaphysics.

Take a look at Matters of Substance. Contributors will include:

Elizabeth Barnes
Karen Bennett
Ross Cameron
Gabriele Contessa
Kit Fine
Katherine Hawley
John Heil
Thomas Hofweber
Jonathan Jacobs
Dan Korman
Dan López de Sa
E.J. Lowe
Ned Markosian
Kris McDonald
Jennifer McKitrick
Stephen Mumford
L. A. Paul
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
Jonathan Schaffer
Robbie Williams
Jessica Wilson
Dean Zimmerman

Recent Articles of Note from Philosophy Compass

2009-01-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

"Preempting Principles: Recent Debates in Moral Particularism"
Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge

ABSTRACT
Moral particularism, as recently defended, charges that traditional moral theorizing unduly privileges moral principles. Moral generalism defends a prominent place for moral principles. Because moral principles are often asked to play multiple roles, moral particularism aims at multiple targets. We distinguish two leading roles for moral principles, the role of standard and the role of guide. We critically survey some of the leading arguments both for and against principles so conceived.

"Welfarism"
Simon Keller

ABSTRACT
Welfarism is the view that morality is centrally concerned with the welfare or well-being of individuals. The division between welfarist and non-welfarist approaches underlies many important disagreements in ethics, but welfarism is neither consistently defined nor well understood. I survey the philosophical work on welfarism, and I offer a suggestion about how the view can be characterized and how it can be embedded in various kinds of moral theory. I also identify welfarism's major rivals, and its major attractions and weaknesses.

"Three Strands in Kripke's Argument against the Identity Theory"
Jesper Kallestrup

ABSTRACT
Kripke's argument against the identity theory in the philosophy of mind runs as follows. Suppose some psychophysical identity statement S is true. Then S would seem to be contingent at least in the sense that S seems possibly false. And given that seeming contingency entails genuine contingency when it comes to such statements S is contingent. But S is necessary if true. So S is false. This entry considers responses to each of the three premises. It turns out that each response does not fully withstand scrutiny, and so Kripke's conclusion is hard to resist. Section 1 lays out Kripke's argument, and Sections 2 to 4 then discuss responses to each of the three premises respectively.

"Can Physicalism Be Non-Reductive?"
Andrew Melnyk

ABSTRACT
Can physicalism (or materialism) be non-reductive? I provide an opinionated survey of the debate on this question. I suggest that attempts to formulate non-reductive physicalism by appeal to claims of event identity, supervenience, or realization have produced doctrines that fail either to be physicalist or to be non-reductive. Then I treat in more detail a recent attempt to formulate non-reductive physicalism by Derk Pereboom, but argue that it fares no better.

"The Fine-Tuning Argument"
Neil A. Manson

ABSTRACT
The Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) is a variant of the Design Argument for the existence of God. In this paper the evidence of fine-tuning is explained and the Fine-Tuning Design Argument for God is presented. Then two objections are covered. The first objection is that fine-tuning can be explained in terms of the existence of multiple universes (the 'multiverse') plus the operation of the anthropic principle. The second objection is the 'normalizability problem'– the objection that the Fine-Tuning Argument fails because fine-tuning is not actually improbable.

* Neil Manson also helped guest edit our "philosophical issues in intelligent design" issue (vol. 7, no. 2).

Interview with Carl Raschke: GloboChrist

2009-01-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

We interviewed Carl Raschke, a professor and chairperson of the department of religious studies at the University of Denver, about his recent book, GloboChristi: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn (Baker Academic, 2008).

What is “GloboPomo” and how might Christian philosophers pay attention to it in the way that they engage ideas?

The term “globopomo” is a word I crafted in the book to convey forcefully the sense that what we in the developed world blandly term the “postmodern world” these days is ultimately the emerging globalized world. The process of globalization , which is often misunderstood as involving mainly finance and communications, challenges Christian thinkers in particular to think through questions that have been in the past remained largely local, regional, or simply hemispheric – we might also add culture-specific, sectarian, and denominational - in scope.

Borrowing from the argot of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, we can say that globalization is an ongoing, simultaneous transformation of nations, cultures, and religious outlooks and practices everywhere on the planet which they term “de-territorialization.” De-territorialization, especially in the field of anthropology, has come to mean the uncoupling of meaning from its specific historical site, or locus. Thus, for example, “Mexican food” really has little to do with cuisine consumed regularly in Mexico. The growth of Christianity in Roman times represented a de-territorialization of what were once exclusively Jewish signs and symbols - e.g., the notion of the Messiah. Paul’s writings is a treasure trove of globalized, and thus de-territorialized, Jewish soteriology and eschatology.

But this “de-territorialization” is what makes Christianity distinctive historically. It is also the key to what we understand as the unique Christian revelation. Now we are witnessing on an impressive scale the de-territorialization of what until recently was considered a “Western religion.” The book plays off the unquestionable sociological reality that the center of gravity of world Christianity is rapidly moving from the developed West (or the “global north”) to the developing world, or the “global south.” That is far more than a geographical trend. Our very notion of what it means to be “Christian” is being de-territorialized. De-territorialization is a word that applies to the history of culture and ideas in the same way that “de-construction,” which is closely associated with postmodernism, applies to the reading of texts. God is using history to deconstruct Christianity. But, of course, he is “deconstructing” it to fulfill what Christ commanded us to do in the first place – “make disciples of all nations.” The theology of globopomo is the incipient new theology of the Great Commission.

Tell us about yourself. How would you describe your own journey as a Christian? How has that journey helped shape what you are passionate about in GloboChrist?

A good bit of my own “journey” or long process of spiritual formation is laid out in my earlier book The Next Reformation (Baker Academic 2004). I won’t rehash it here. All I can say is that God is constantly encountering me, transforming me, and of course using me in both subtle and obvious ways, which have varied from era to era. I’m chronologically older than a lot of people who know me realize, which means only that I’ve been around. I guess I could best sum up my life with the famous words of The Grateful Dead – “it’s been a long, strange trip.” But so is God’s story from Abraham through the prophets through Jesus to the present. The story keeps going on. That story is “His-story,” and of course his-story and her-story. As to why I’m passionate about what I write in GloboChrist, that’s pretty easy to explain.

I was getting tired of all the controversy – and really rather silly and unproductive bickering about whether we should, shouldn’t, or shoulda or woulda consider ourselves “postmodern.” Or “emergent,” or non-traditional, or whatever. So I asked myself, okay, what does that word “postmodern” really mean. Well, I went one Sunday to a rather mainstream, relatively large church in Arlington, Texas and I heard an aging missionary give a passionate testimony about why he was living out his seeking to fulfill the Great Commission. The pomo crowd doesn’t usually take missionaries very seriously, but for some reason it just hit me (or God hit me over the head, take your pick), not quite like on the road to Damascus, but close. The guy didn’t talk all about the “souls” he was saving. He talked about doing his own little part to be obedient to Christ’s global command to us on his resurrection appearance. And I thought to myself, “that guy is more postmodern than anyone who’s read all of Derrida five times over.”

You claim that “Relational Christianity is postmodern Christianity” (italics in original, 20). Can you briefly explain what you mean? How and why is “relational Christianity” not premodern Christianity, for example?

I’m not sure how to answer such a question, because I’m not making a “claim.” Claims are for lawyers, argumentative philosophers, and mining assayers. As one of my good friends and former grad students who is a “missional” megachurch pastor in Denver would put it, if it’s in the Word of God, which it is, it’s not a “claim.” There’s a difference between a claim we make about God and how God reveals himself to us. God reveals himself to us as the “relational God.” We can start with the nature of human beings made in the “image of God,” which is an image of pure relationality, as Karl Barth has insisted. But we need only to reference the Emmanuel prophecy. Our God is inextricably “God with us.” That’s what makes Christianity unique, and it’s why all evangelicals say you have to have a relationship to God (not “claim” you have a relationship to God) to be saved. It’s also an argument against those who deny the Trinity.

Now when I say that “is” postmodern Christianity, I’m not historicizing it. Obviously, it is Christianity, as I’ve indicated. But I find it not a little significant that those who spend most of their times among evangelical theologians attacking the straw man of “postmodernism” and insist they are defending Biblical Christianity rarely dwell on this fact of God’s relationality. They want to defend the “truth claims” of Scripture, etc. Scripture doesn’t make claims about anything at all. Through Scripture God claims us, and claims our lives, or whole lives, our whole being. Christian Scripture is not our “revelation.” Our revelation is the person of Jesus Christ himself, a person with whom we are in relationship with and who dwells in the midst of our relationship with others, who reveals himself in those relationships. As I’m fond of saying, if you want your revelation to be a book or set of texts, you might as well become a Muslim. When I say “relational Christianity is postmodern Christianity” I’m saying that, theologically speaking, we’ve finally got a handle in our postmodern age what Christianity is all about. We lost that sense long ago, maybe as far back as the second century.

In GloboPomo, a decent amount of attention is given to the influence of Islam and eschatology and its relevancy in the “postmodern moment”. Can you briefly explain their importance for understanding the times we live in and the sort of realities that confront global Christian witness.

Let’s go back to what I just said in answer to the last question. Islam is the 800-pound gorilla in today’s world, and that includes the Christian world. We in the West don’t seem to want to talk about it in a honest way, though I can say most Muslims do, if we would let them. We either want to make it a ferocious bogey (on the right) that somehow threatens the foundations of our “American way of life”, or on the left we want to trivialize it as a bunch of people with “alternative life styles” that we need to be more understanding of. A lot of those on the religious left seem to put Islam in the same category as being gay or being vegan – in other words, one more colorful specimen of “otherness” that we can admire while we’re pushing our conceptual shopping cart down the great supermarket isle of cultural and religious diversity.

Of course, if any of these people actually studied Islam closely, which they don’t, they might have quite a different take. Islam claims to be the “final revelation,” and that Mohammed is the “seal of the prophets.” In other words, Islam purports to have the final truth – about everything. That’s why I say we are experiencing not a “clash of civilizations,” but the historical working out of what is a “clash of revelations.” And revelation is about what is final, i.e, about how things are shown to be the case in the final summation, i.e, about eschatology. Before the worldwide Islamic revival that really started in the late 1960s, we didn’t have to take Islam that seriously, because it didn’t take itself that seriously. But now it does. The Islamic revival is not at all about a bunch of “extremists.” That’ s our own condescending, wishful thinking. It’s about people taking seriously the depth and passion of their own eschatological commitments. We ignore our own real Christian commitments at our own peril.

What we have in the West, and just as much in the “emergent” church as in the traditional church, is a tendency to substitute the spiritual version of “consumer choices” for committed Christianity. It’s what I call “Burger King Christianity.” We say to our followers, like the old Burger King slogan, “have it your way.” You want a good, intellectually satisfying, evidentially grounded defense of Christian doctrine? We’ve got it. You want to get transported away in the ecstasy of worshiping God through music and swaying with the music? Well, we’ve got that too. You want a group of people who think like you, and believe God is a Republican, if you’re a Republican, or God is a Democrat, if you’re a Democrat, hey, of course we aim to please. Take your pick. It’s your choice. No, actually, it’s not our choice. We are the ones who are chosen. We only have the choice, as in Mission Possible, of accepting the mission for which we are chosen. I ask basically in the book, are we as Christians “eschatologically committed” to our own revelation (not to our own personal ideologies and life-style choices), the reality of the Personhood of Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Are we committed in a global sense?

If a North American Christian philosopher is to take your GloboChrist seriously and attempt to apply your thesis and perspective to their thinking Christianly about matters of philosophy, theology and apologetics, how would you like to see your book influence them?

As I’ve indicated, I haven’t customized my writing for what I think you might mean when you say “North American Christian philosopher.” I’m writing for Christians who happen to have an interest in postmodern philosophy – and theories of globalization - rather than, say, gourmet cooking. But I’m writing for those who are willing to let go of what they think they require to be convinced. As the Gospels show us, the people who always had the best, technical – and often “philosophical” - arguments were the Pharisees. And Jesus didn’t seem to ever convince them. How could he? “Hearing they will not hear.”

I’m not saying the “North American Christian philosopher” can’t be convinced (though he should be “convicted”), nor am I necessarily comparing him, or her, to a Pharisee. But people who have the best arguments often have the least sensitivity to what God is trying to say. That’s perhaps why, as the Gospels tell us, Jesus spoke in parables. All I can say to them, or anyone else for that matter, is “study the Bible, go listen to some people, read some philosophical and social theoretical books, and ultimately experience God in a way you’re not used to doing.” That’s how I came to write this book in the first place.

More of Carl Raschke can be found at his www.carlraschke.com. This interview was the result of an advertisement agreement with Baker Academic.

Byrne on Theistic Philosophers

2009-01-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

In his recent Boston Review article, Alex Byrne seriously misrepresents the lay of the land in current Anglo-American philosophy, especially when we take the long view of the last several decades. As Quentin Smith has documented, (Philo 4/2 [2001]: 3-4), there has transpired since the late 1960s a veritable revolution in Anglo-American analytic philosophy with respect to the philosophy of religion in general and natural theology in particular. It is atheism that is in retreat and theism that is on the rise. Tangible measures of the sea change that has occurred is evident in the number of new philosophy journals devoted exclusively to the philosophy of religion, in the burgeoning market in philosophy of religion textbooks, in the demand among university students for courses in philosophy of religion, and in the percentage of graduate students in philosophy who are Christian theists. The difference between the discipline as it appeared back in the 1930s or 40s and today is like the difference between night and day. Byrne’s tendentious spin on Dean Zimmerman’s words obscures the point that outspoken, highly respected Christian philosophers are numerous today, even though many of their colleagues (like Byrne?) are dismissive of their religious beliefs.

Equally misrepresentative is Byrne’s characterization of contemporary Christian philosophers as content with “pulling up the drawbridge and manning the barricades, rather than crusading against the infidel.” Never mind the ugly militaristic imagery. Insofar as they have engaged in defensive operations, Christian philosophers have done so in order to show that the shopworn anti-theistic arguments like the meaninglessness of religious language, the vaunted presumption of atheism, the incoherence of theism, and the problem of evil are, to borrow Byrne’s phrase, “underwhelming” and do not stand up to scrutiny. Moreover, Christian philosophers certainly have gone on the offensive as well, as all of the traditional theistic arguments—cosmological, teleological, axiological, ontological—find numerous articulate defenders today (I list some in my piece in Christianity Today, July 2008, pp. 22-27).

Byrne similarly misrepresents Plantinga’s work on religious epistemology, epitomized in Warranted Christian Belief. On one level, Plantinga’s work is defensive in showing that Christian belief can be wholly rational, justified, and warranted even in the absence of arguments and that atheistic objections to the contrary all fail. On another level, however, the work is a frontal assault on atheistic naturalism, as Plantinga argues that there is no acceptable account of warrant (and, hence, of knowledge) that does not appeal to the notion of the proper functioning of our cognitive faculties, a notion best cashed out in terms of their functioning as they were designed to, and, moreover, that naturalism is rationally unaffirmable, since on naturalism our cognitive faculties are selected not for their being truth-conducive but survival-conducive, so that we can have no confidence in the truth of their deliverances—including, ironically, the truth of naturalism.

The question raised in the final paragraph of Byrne’s article is squarely addressed by Plantinga’s religious epistemology. Plantinga agrees that, for the most part, Christian theists “do not believe that God exists on the basis of any argument.” Plantinga thinks that there are, in fact, good arguments for God’s existence and has defended over two dozen of them; but he thinks they’re not necessary in order for religious belief to be justified or warranted. In that sense Plantinga concurs with Byrne that “The funny thing about arguments for the existence of God is that, if they succeed, they were never needed in the first place.” That is to say, if theistic arguments are sound, then God exists and has likely furnished us with cognitive mechanisms that yield warranted theistic belief independent of argument. But when Byrne opines, “How they know that God exists, if they do, is itself unknown,” then he has simply failed to be attentive to Plantinga’s epistemological model, for that model does explain how it is that Christian belief is warranted apart from argument. To assert otherwise is just to ignore all that Plantinga has written on the subject.

Interview with Bruce Benson: Evangelicals and Empire

2009-01-04T21:57:00.000-08:00

We interviewed Bruce Ellis Benson, a professor and chairperson in the philosophy department at Wheaton College, about his recently co-edited book (with Peter Heltzel), Evan gelic als and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo (Baker Academic, 2008).

Please provide a brief overview of the book's scope and thesis.

This groundbreaking collection considers empire from a global perspective, exploring the role of evangelicals in political, social, and economic engagement at a time when empire is alternately denounced and embraced. It brings noted thinkers from a range of theological perspectives together to engage the most explosive and discussed theorists of empire in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Using their work as a springboard, the contributors challenge evangelicalism's identification with right-wing politics and grapple with the natures of both empire and evangelicalism.

Why the focus on "Evangelicals and Empire"?

As my co-editor and I considered the evangelical landscape, it became apparent that there was a rapidly developing critical mass of younger—and even somewhat older—evangelicals (such as the emergents, Jill Wallis, the red-letter Christians) who simply didn’t buy the evangelical embrace of empire. Hardt and Negri helped us think through the problem of empire not simply in terms of the nation state but also in terms of global capitalism. While we find Hardt and Negri’s vision of “multitude” problematic, the term resonates with a new generation of prophetic evangelicals who seek the embodiment of the kingdom of heaven.

Tell us about your own journey with this topic. How did you get interested?

Both of us happened to move to New York City just days before 9/11. That event awakened us to political realities in a remarkably new way. For my co-editor, that meant returning to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon at Riverside Church in 1967, in which he spoke of the need to forsake the idols of racism, materialism, and militarism and live into what he termed “the beloved community.” For me, it meant feeling in a deep and practical way the call of the marginalized other that is so central to the thought of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the Christian philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. Both of them remind us that God judges us on how we treat the least in society—the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.

In terms of the "political status quo" to which you offer "Christian alternatives," what is in view here and why does that status quo require a Christian alternative?

At the time we began working on the book, the hold of the so-called “religious right” on the Republican Party was remarkably strong. While we as editors hold many things regarding orthodox Christianity in common with the “religious right,” we felt that an important missing aspect was what we term the “unified Gospel,” in which the personal Gospel is fully united with a concern for social justice (the so-called “Social Gospel”). I think it is safe to say that, however much the contributors to this volume differ on all sorts of things, they all agree on that commitment to a unified Gospel.

What is distinctly Christian about the alternatives that are presented?

In line with that commitment to a unified Gospel, the contributors to this volume take the truly radical aspects of the Gospel quite seriously. They are “prophetic” in the sense of returning to the calls of the Hebrew prophets, which Jesus repeats and even intensifies. Contributors to this volume take seriously the idea that the witness of the Christian community is distinct because we testify to the living Christ and are empowered by the Spirit to work for justice in the world. Whereas secular activists think that they can make the world a better place, we are saying—like King—that justice will flow like a mighty stream through the power of a loving God. We find this all to be deeply humbling, since we realize that we are merely repeating anew what the Hebrew prophets and Jesus said.

The book appears to be mostly focused on Western political policy and philosophy? Why is that?

Given that Hardt and Negri are working out of Marxist philosophy as inflected by Michel Foucault, they are western philosophy. In contrast, we are pushing back against them by way of world Christianity. We explicitly draw on world Christianity—whether African, Asian, or Latin American—to speak to the west. Although western Christians tend to think that Christianity is a “western” religion, the contributors to this volume try to remind those in the west that Christianity’s roots and certainly much of its history are distinctly eastern.

For Christian philosophers working on Christian and public policy issues, what advice would you offer for how to approach the subject of political power?

Read the four Gospels and do what Jesus commands.

More of Bruce Benson can be found at his website. This interview was the result of an advertisement agreement with Baker Academic.

Interview with Paul K. Moser: Kerygmatic Philosophy

2008-12-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

In November, Paul K. Moser presented a plenary paper at the annual EPS meeting, titled, "Kerygmatic Philosophy." We interviewed Moser about his paper in light of one of his most recent books from Cambridge University Press: The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology.

What is “Kerygmatic Philosophy”?

Kerygmatic philosophy is philosophy anchored in and motivated by the Good News of God’s personal redemptive intervention in human lives, particularly through God’s authoritative call to humans as represented paradigmatically in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The key term “kerygma,” as used here, means “proclaimed Good News.” Christian philosophy, according to the metaphilosophical position developed in The Elusive God (Cambridge University Press, 2008), is inherently kerygmatic in virtue of stemming from God’s Good News call as personified (in human form) in Jesus.

What does kerygmatic philosophy uniquely offer compared to other Christian approaches to philosophy?

It preserves a unique role for God’s personal redemptive call to humans, and it encompasses an epistemology that is pneumatic and incarnational. The accompanying epistemology is pneumatic owing to a distinctive cognitive role for personal divine Spirit (who cannot be reduced to Calvin’s sensus divinitatis), and this epistemology is therefore foreign to secular epistemology and even to much philosophy of religion that claims to be Christian. It is also an incarnational epistemology, given its distinctive cognitive role for God’s Spirit dwelling in humans, in such a way that they become a temple of God’s Spirit (see 1 Cor. 6:19). We may think of incarnational epistemology as requiring that human inquirers themselves become salient evidence of God’s reality in virtue of becoming God’s temple. According to this approach, characteristic evidence of God’s reality is increasingly available to me as I myself am increasingly willing to become such evidence, that is, living and personified evidence of God’s reality. Philosophy in general and epistemology in particular thus take on an irredeemably existential significance and thereby exclude any merely spectator, armchair, or ivory tower approach.

The epistemology offered in kerygmatic philosophy is grace-based, in that firsthand knowledge of God’s reality is a direct gift of God’s grace. The cognitive grace in question supplies a cognitive gift that replaces any demand for intellectual earning, controlling, or dominating with a freely given presence of God’s inviting and transforming Spirit who seeks morally transformative fellowship with humans. This cognitive, irreducibly personal gift must be appropriated by humans in Gethsemane struggles (of submitting one’s will to God’s non-coercive will), given the human condition of sin, but it is not shrouded in philosophical sophistication of the sort accompanying contemporary natural theology. This gift is directly challenging toward natural human ways that resist God, including toward human cognitive idolatry (that exalts cognitive standards inimical to God’s character), but it does not get bogged down in its own intellectual complications. The EPS paper on kerygmatic philosophy shows how natural theology fails in areas where incarnational epistemology makes a needed contribution.

How does the thesis of this paper reflect your recent CUP book, The Elusive God.

The EPS paper develops the volitional epistemology of The Elusive God in a way that bears directly on natural theology. The motivation is to challenge some harmful effects of natural theology, including its neglect of (a) divine elusiveness, (b) the cognitively crucial role of God’s call to humans, and (c) the cognitive importance of human repentance before God. More specifically, natural theology obscures the desperate human needs for (i) the cognitive grace of God’s call to humans and (ii) human turning, in repentance, to receive and obey that life-giving transformative call to fellowship. This obscuring arises from the focus of natural theology on merely de dicto arguments rather than on an experienced divine call de re to humans. In effect, the history of natural theology has been the history of trying to secure knowledge of God’s reality without acknowledging evidence of God’s authoritative personal call to humans.

If Christian philosophers are to take seriously kerygmatic philosophy as both an approach to and the content of philosophical work, what would kerygmatic philosophy work look like?

I offer The Elusive God as an attempt to instantiate kerygmatic philosophy with special attention to epistemological issues, including issues of skepticism. Its metaphilosophy makes a case for the central role of God’s personal redemptive call in Christian philosophy. Given its argument for kerygmatic philosophy, people are well-advised to look carefully for a divine call in their lives. In particular, they should be attentive to experiences that convey a divine call to fellowship with God. Philosophy can and should help with this life-giving project. It can make such contributions as (a) an elucidating phenomenology of a divine call to humans, (b) a clarification of the human conditions for noticing and receiving a divine call, and (c) an account of how evidence of a divine call can be conclusive and thus resistant to skeptical challenges. It is, however, very rare to find such contributions in the philosophy of religion. In neglecting the potential divine call to humans, philosophy of religion has neglected the vital cognitive role of the Good News that God has reached out to confront humans directly in their distressed and dying condition, for the sake of divine–human fellowship. Kerygmatic philosophy can revitalize and redirect philosophy in ways that make it vital and urgent for human life and relationships. This kind of provision is long overdue in philosophy, which has become a fractured discipline without a unifying guide. See chapter 4 of The Elusive God for some details of kerygmatic philosophy and its contrasts with some other philosophical approaches.

Who are some thinkers that have influenced your reflection and development of kerygmatic philosophy and its significance?

My perspective on philosophy and epistemology is based on various New Testament writers, particularly Paul and John. I read the Gospel of John as an inherently epistemological gospel, offering the basics of an epistemology of human knowledge of God. I read some sections of Paul’s letters as similarly epistemological, for instance, 1 Cor. 1-2, Rom. 5, 8. It’s noteworthy that the New Testament writers show no need of arguments of natural theology. They do, however, make important cognitive use of the human experience of God’s call, and they acknowledge the importance of the human will in apprehending evidence of divine reality (see, e.g., Jn. 7:17; 1 Jn. 4:8). For some Pauline remarks on God’s call, see, for instance, 1 Cor. 1:9; cf. 1 Cor. 1:2, 26, 7:17–24, Rom. 1:6–7, Eph. 1:18-19. For 20th-century efforts to preserve the central role of God’s call in philosophy and theology, see Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative, and the works of two evangelical Quaker Christians, Rufus Jones and Thomas R. Kelly (especially the latter’s Testament of Devotion).

If you were to communicate and relate pastorally to Christians that are laboring in philosophical work, how would you encourage them about their life and vocation, their priorities and aspirations, their relationship to both the church, to the academy and to their communities?

I would note that God tries to meet us in our daily lives even when we are unaware of God’s presence. Usually we are looking for the wrong kind of thing. God does not favor the circus settings of the contemporary revivalists or the rarified arguments of academic philosophers. Matt. 25:31-46 tells us where we should expect to find God’s presence. The cognitive problem is squarely with us humans, not with God or with the evidence characteristic of God. We tend to want the wrong kind of evidence, the kind we can use take self-credit or otherwise to puff up ourselves. God offers the kind of evidence that promotes unselfish love and fellowship. So, we need eyes to see the crucial evidence, and we need to ask God for the needed clear vision. Perhaps prayer, then, is central to epistemology done right. Philosophers do well to redirect their attention, and their lives, to that neglected but vital area. The need for transformation is not easy, but it is, in the end, the only road to life without end.

Paul K. Moser is a professor of philosophy and the chairperson of the department of philosophy at Loyola University (Chicago). He is also working on an ongoing philosophical and theological project that discusses the nature and significance of idolatry and its various forms. More info can be found at his faculty website.

Another Consideration for the Problem of Evil

2008-12-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

I am currently writing a book on the problem of evil. No doubt this is a monumental task, and I'll admit I probably will not be completely satisfied with the final result. That nothwithstanding, something has come to my attention concerning the literature ranging over the evidential problem of evil. We recall the famous article by William Rowe (1979) entitled "The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism." His argument (simplified) is that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God is unlikely given the extent, distribution, and apparent existence of gratuitous evil. Of course, by gratuitous it is generally agreed that these are evils where no outweighing good results as a consequence of their having obtained. The vast majority of the literature in response to Rowe centers on a debate as to whether or not we can understand the reasons God has for allowing certain instances of evil to occur (often called theistic skepticism). Would we expect, given our finitude, to understand all of God's ways and workings in creation--or is it more reasonable to believe that there are goods "beyond our ken" that only God apprehends that result from evil having occurred? Many suggestions as to what God is up to have resulted, ranging from various free will theodicies, soul making theodicies, or even eschatological theodicies (or perhaps some combination of these). Admittedly, I still do not understand the need for resulting goods from evil to be "outweighing" goods (perhaps someone can enlighten me). In terms of the consequences of actions, it seems that God can remunerate a "matching" good for the harm done, and that be a sufficient response to the problem (if in fact the matching goods theory were worked out--which is not what I'm doing here).

My observation is that there is an underlying assumption in the evidential argument that provides its force, namely that God has some obligation (moral) toward his creation that binds Him to act in ways that correlate to human relationships. In an excellent article entitled "The Persistent Problem of Evil," Bruce Russell argues the following:

1. If God exists, then nothing happens which he should have prevented from happening.
2. If something happens that any human moral agent should have prevented if he knew about it and could have prevented it without serious risk to himself or others, then something happens which God should have prevented from happening.
3. Something has happened that any human moral agent should have prevented if he knew about it and could have prevented it without risk to himself or others.
4. Therefore, God does not exist. (the numbering of the propositions is changed for our purposes).

Of course, the critical premise is 2, and in the rest of my post I want to offer an initial line of thought (admittedly sketchy at this point) to respond to Russell. Rather than worry about the problem of outweighing goods, my concern is to ask "in what sense is God obligated to any of His creatures?" If there is no account of divine obligation, then we have sufficient reason to reject premise 2, and with it goes the rest of Russell's argument.

Obviously we cannot obligate God in any meaningful sense. We do not have the status to legislate the moral values of actions to Him. The only account of divine obligation that makes any sense is that God obligates Himself to certain actions, and perhaps this obligation obtains as a result of His covenant or promises. But such a contruel is far from clear, and I think part of the confusion rests on conflating what is "good" with what is "right". In perfect being parlance God is the sum of all perfections, His goodness is perfect. I understand this to mean that when he promises to work in a certain way (say, to bless Abraham as a result of His covenant with him) He will do what He says He will do. But more importantly, God does not need the force of an obligation to "draw" Him to fulfill His word. If God needed the force of an obligation to carry through with His promises, then that would imply a defect in His character--in effect saying that He doesn't want to fulfill His promises, but will since He promised. Such a defect would give us reason to doubt his goodness (which is ontological), and to provide a moral injuction binding Him to His word (which would be deontological).

Thomas Morris provides a helpful distinction between an agent acting "under a rule" and acting "in accord with a rule." (see his excellent introduction to philosophical theology called Our Idea of God. For a good buy see Amazon at http://amazon.com/dp/9781573831017?tagevangephiloss-20). Acting in accord with a rule means an agent carries out actions without any need of external motivation (such as a moral injunction). Acting under a rule speaks of when an agent requires the force of an injunction to carry out what they have said they will do. In other words, moral obligation only obtains on morally defective agents. God, being perfectly good, has no moral obligations. Therefore, saying that God should bring about an outweighing good implies that He is morally obligated to act in just such a way--a notion, I contend, is incoherent (contra premise 2).

Again, these thoughts are preliminary, but I think if they can be developed more sufficiently, then a different undermining objection to the evidential argument is on the horizon.

Take Advantage of the New Subscriber Discount Before it Expires!

2008-12-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

Only a few more weeks before we expire our first-time subscriber discount to Philosophia Christi.

Now is time to purchase a subscription to Philosophia Christi!

Regardless if you are full-time professor, a student, or you want a subscription for your library, here's the deal that we are running, which is set to expire 12/31/2008:

$30 = current issue + 2 year subscription (4 issues).

Order now before this opportunity expires!

The current issue has two major symposiums; one on Allison's Resurrecting Jesus and the other on Abraham's Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation. Of course, there's other great articles, notes and book reviews by such authors like Graham Oppy, William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, and Michael Rea -- and yes, Antony Flew reviews Dawkins' God Delusion!