100 living philosophers of religion

From Common Sense Atheism. I'm in pretty good company here.

Relativism and tolerance

One surprising result is that if relativism is true, then it is a virtue to be tolerant of other cultures just in case your culture approves of tolerating other cultures. If it doesn't, then you are supposed to be intolerant. So relativism doesn't lead to tolerance, it can just as easily lead to intolerance.

Getting clear on naturalism

I have been working through Barbara Forrest's essay "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connections." In this she argues on the one hand that there is a difference between methodological naturalism and philosophical (or metaphysical naturalism). However, the supernatural, if it is real, is not knowable by humans in any systematic, intelligent fashion. Therefore, we must proceed naturalistically if we are to get to know the world around us at all, and this gives us a powerful reason to accept naturalism metaphysically, while leaving open the bare logical possibility that naturalism is false.

The tricky part, however, is getting an account of naturalism that doesn't simply presuppose a conception of the natural. Natural, you know, just whatever ain't supernatural. And you know what supernatural is, right? It's anything having to do with God, that they talk about in church and stuff.

She starts of with a quote from Kurtz:

First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible....

There is a second meaning of naturalism, which is as a generalized description of the universe. According to the naturalists, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry. This is a non-reductive naturalism, for although nature is physical-chemical at root, we need to deal with natural processes on various levels of observation and complexity: electrons and molecules, cells and organisms, flowers and trees, psychological cognition and perception, social institutions, and culture....

OK let's work with these definitions for a minute. The first of these definitions assumes that we know what a natural cause is. Surely, we say, God must be supernatural. But must he? If you are enunciating a principle of methodological naturalism, then it is incumbent on you to tell me what it is about the theistic God that would make him not a part of nature. If nature is what is, and there is a mentally driven what is and a non-mentally driven what is, have we really excluded anything?

The other requires that naturalism maintain that the world is at root physical. Whatever is real either is physical or supervenes on the physical. But now we have to define what "physical" means, and here we have the same difficulties as we find for defining "natural."

My dissertation advisor once said that a scientific theory could possibly quantify over God, in which case it would make God physical. But surely, in defining the physical, or the natural, God is precisely the very sort of being you are trying to exclude. Can we define methodological naturalism in any kind of systematic way, such that advocates of intelligent design can't just embrace the principle?

A piece of political cynicism I put in the combox of an abortion discussion a few months ago

Both parties have turned abortion into a political football. The Democrats can count on a body of voters to vote for them to protect "a woman's right to choose." They benefit from the idea that abortion rights are truly in danger. The Republicans have their army of pro-life voters, and leaders like Karl Rove, who care nothing for fetuses, want to keep this army of voters voting and volunteering. Both sides at least say they agree that the abortion rate is too high, (safe, legal and rare, you know) but neither side wants to alienate their base by doing things that could seriously lower the abortion rate.


Too cynical?

Keith Parsons' critique of the argument from common consent

THE LIE: Heliocentrism

This is funny. I see that nobody has corrected me and pointed out that the lie would have to be heliocentrism; geocentrism is the truth they are purportedly defending.

Another instance of Poe's Law, I suppose.

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

I would just add that the same would have to be true of fundy atheism.

Jonathan Edwards on the Blessed enjoying the Torments of the Damned

When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so exceedingly different from it! When they shall see how miserable others of their fellowcreatures are, who were naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the mean time are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be in it to all eternity ; how will they rejoice!

The link links to the entire essay on why the blessed should not at all be concerned about the fate of people in hell. There either has to be something wrong with him, or something wrong with me.

ET phone home---to Satan??

“I have become thoroughly convinced that UFOs are real....I believe these beings are not only extraterrestrial but supernatural in origin. To be blunt, I think they are demons.”
- Hal Lindsey

Scripture: The word of a demon, or just a Paine for sinners

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon rather than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest all that is cruel (Paine, 1974, p. 60).

What are you doing, Jesus?

I wonder what would have happened if someone were to walk up to Jesus during his lifetime and ask him what he thought he was doing. I can imagine a number of answers, but "founding a religion" is not one of them.

This is a discussion of the Bible and homosexuality

Is the anti-gay reading of Scripture a slam dunk? There are alternative interpretations available.

Is there a morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide?

This is what I call the Melissa Drexler dilemma. She did hard time, but an abortion doctor could have done the same thing and had it be perfectly legal.

Unless someone can explain to me the morally relevant difference.

Does the Argument from Reason have a basis in Peirce?

See this discussion on Bill Vallicella's blog.

The real issue: More arguments that don't mix

I think the discussion in the last post picked up on a soft target in Ross's discussion that is tangential to the issue I wanted to bring up.

Yes, I do have a problem with him saying that if there is an intelligent cause of the universe, it has to be the God of the Bible. I suppose the Allah of the Qu'ran would be equally unacceptable to philosophical naturalists, but would also be unacceptable to Christians like Ross. But this is not the point I wanted to make. The point I wanted to make was to question whether someone could, at one and the same time, accept the multiverse hypothesis as a response to the fine-tuning argument, and at one and the same time think that atheism is to be preferred to theism on the basis of parsimony. That just seems really implausible to me.

The Multiverse Hypothesis

The weight of evidence for a divinely designed universe is now so overwhelming that it has forced astronomers and philosophers who reject the God of the Bible as the Author of the cosmos to propose the existence of an infinite number of universes. - Hugh Ross

Well, there goes parsimony!

Some hallucination debate from the Christian Think-Tank

This is some discussion at the Christian Think-Tank on the hallucination hypothesis.

Welcoming Ilion to the Blogosphere

This is a long overdue development. All of you intellectually dishonest people will welcome the opportunity go comment over there.

An online Meynell paper on rational theism

Meynell's The Intelligible Universe

Meynell wrote a book defending a sort of Lonerganian version of the AFR. I read it around the time it was written; I think Darek Barefoot has referenced it a couple of times in the course of his trench battles on behalf of the AFR on DI2.

I took a class from Meynell during my last semester at Emory's Candler School of Theology. Meynell was then a visiting professor from the University of Leeds. I remember I wrote a critique of Josh McDowell as my paper for him.

Let's stop beating Basil's car: Richard Dawkins on moral responsibility

A redated post.

Ilion linked to this little piece of Dawkiana, in which Our Hero maintains that holding a person morally responsible for their actions is absurd as Basil Fawlty beating his car for not starting. No namby-pamby soft determinism for Dawkins! I guess Dennett's Elbow Room didn't convince him. (Oh well, it didn't convince me either). Of course, that means that the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials (duck-scales from which are, I'm told, preserved in the Salem City Museum), the Great Wars of Religion, and the 9/11 attacks are really no one's fault. It's no one's fault if you don't believe in evolution, or if you invade Iraq without sufficient reason. In fact, it isn't your fault if you have Dawkins burned at the stake. This is sounding better all the time.