April 2005 Archives

I posted earlier about the connection between the traditional account of the Incarnation and the knowability paradox. I've now got a draft of the paper, and the takeaway result is that traditional Christians have to find a solution to the paradox that is different from either of the standard approaches in the literature. The paper can be found here.

A quick note to let readers of the blog know about, and ask for help in publicizing, the first annual philosophy of religion conference at the University of Missouri. It will be January 27th and 28th, 2006, in Columbia, and Eleonore Stump will be the featured speaker to open the conference on Friday.

Soon I'll be putting a call for papers on our departmental website as well as my home page, but the call is open to any topic in philosophy of religion, though there will be some preference for topics of the sort Eleonore has worked on. Anyone wishing to submit a paper should send it to me as an attachment to:
last name followed by first initial at missouri dot edu

We'll also be using commentators and session chairs, and we'll give preference to those who can secure funding by being on the program in this way. Anyone in that position can email me at the above address as well.

Clayton Littlejohn offers some thoughts on William Lane Craig's defense of the Kalam argument in Don't Fear The Regress. I have to cast my lot with Clayton in thinking that there is something wrong with Craig's argument against the possibility of an actual infinite set. While it is true that "infinity is, like, weird" I think there is more to be said against Craig's argument. A good place to start would be Paul Draper's A Critique of the Kalam Cosmological Argument found in Pojman's Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. Clayton like Draper picks up on the difficulty of putting two infinite sets in a 1-to-1 correspondence. Craig thinks that if the members of two sets can be places in 1-to-1 correspondence, then neither set has more members than the other. However the 'has more members' will prove troubling for Craig's argument.

To motivate this problem Draper offers an "inconsistent triad" of statements.

S1: A set has more members than any of its proper subsets.
S2: If the members of two sets can be places in one-to-one correspondence, then neither set has more members than the other.
S3: There are actually infinite sets.

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews has posted a review of the second edition of Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God by Joshua Golding, Bellarmine University. Apparently this edition is a substantial update over the 1991 revised edition. Tighter arguments are always nice, but it is a bummer that I will now have to purchase a new copy of the book. The review does a good job of summarizing the structure, aim, and flow of the book, and I find myself in agreement with his criticism of Swinburne's reliance on the principle of simplicity. Of possible interest to some of our readers (Clayton) it looks like Swinburne has changed some of his views on the problem of evil; conceding that that evil reduces the probability that God exists.

Golding offers some other questions and criticisms that I think the theist philosopher probably has a ready answer to. I want to shine light on one passage that struck me as odd. Golding says that, "It seems very plausible that even if God did not exist, people would be inclined to imagine that there is a God and even imagine that they are having experiences of God, when in fact their experience is not veridical." Perhaps I'm simply conceptually blocked, or I give the ontological argument to much credence, but I don't find it plausible at all that in a world where God did not exist people would simply imagine that he existed anyway. Not only would they imagine that he existed but they would imagine that they were having experiences of him. What good reason do we have for thinking that this is true? You might object that it isn't logically impossible that such a world exist, but that doesn't rise to the level of making such a view plausible. Golding goes on to suggest that our "tests and checking procedures for a religious experience should be more rigorous than in other cases," but why should religious claims have a special burden. There are plenty of people who base some of their everyday beliefs on wishful thinking, but we don't subject them to an extra burden in order to justify their belief. Further, to borrow from Alston, why think that our religious perceptual practices are, or should be, subject to the same kinds of tests and standards as our regular perceptual practices.

The 12th Philosophers' Carnival is at Inessentials. There are a few posts on philosophy of religion: two on ontological arguments, one on teleological arguments (in their contemporary intelligent design form), and a number of others that I think are indirectly important for questions in philosophy of religion but are themselves more directly of another sub-field.

James Beverley, professor of Christian apologetics at Tyndale Seminary, has a good article on why Antony Flew now believes in God. Reading the words of Richard Carrier accusing Flew of "willfully sloppy scholarship" I am struck by how quickly partisan intellectual controversy can turn nasty. A marked contrast can be seen in the collegial words Flew and his theist interlocutors have for one another.

The words of the skeptical blogger at the beginning of the article put me in mind of something else I have been thinking of lately. The skeptical blogger gives a jaundiced psychological account of why Flew would switch from being an atheist to a theist. In a good sign for rationalism Flew reports that he was convinced by the arguments. Why should someone doubt his first person report in favor of the least charitable interpretation of his change of mind? Proponents of naturalism seem to often come up with speculative Freudian explanations to explain religious belief. However, I have yet to see a theist resort to such a move to explain an atheist's lack of belief. Perhaps theists should start telling Freudian stories about theists just show the absurdity of such accounts. Feel free to leave your best Freudian explanation of atheism in the comments.

Alvin Plantinga makes the AP wire again. The article actually packs a bit of Plantinga's personal history in with snippets of his philosophical views. Given what Plantinga says in Warranted Christian Belief about evidential arguments, and here I should plug Tim McGrew's recent paper "Has Plantinga Refuted the Historical Argument?" (Philosophia Christi), the following is a striking statement.

The external evidence, assessed by Oxford's Richard Swinburne and others, includes the Apostles' Easter testimonies and the dramatic spread of their belief. Mr. Plantinga finds this convincing: "Maybe it's not knockdown, drag-out 100 percent conclusive evidence, but it's pretty strong evidence."

Everybody's favorite "friendly atheist" gets a nice send up in the Tribune-Star. I actually found this rather informative in regards to Rowe's personal history. For obvious reasons he keeps failing to make the cut for Philosophers Who Believe. I had no idea Rowe started out as a very serious theist. I find it interesting that his "unlikely route to atheism was a gradual and very personal process, not the result of philosophical or scientific arguments contradictory of his theistic beliefs." This sounds remarkably similar to the accounts of theist philosophers who started out atheist or agnostic. If even the philosophers are not convinced by arguments we might start to worry that we are doing something wrong... I also found the article interesting because Rowe's trajectory on the problem of evil seems to be the opposite of Daniel Howard-Snyder's. As I heard it Howard-Snyder originally intended to defend the problem of evil in his dissertation, but half way through writing the dissertation he saw that the arguments let the other way.

Update:I emailed Professor Plantinga about the apparent discrepancy above and asked the following. I was wondering if perhaps Ostling misconstrued what you said, if we've failed to understand what you were saying in Warranted Christian Belief, or if you've changed your view on evidential arguments. Any help in setting us straight would be greatly appreciated. What follows is Plantinga's response.

"I think that was about arguments for Christ's resurrection, right? I go up and down about how strong these arguments are. Given theism, I think they are pretty strong, but not strong enough to support the sort of belief Christians usually have. I'd also say that there is pretty strong evidence for our universe's beginning in a big bang, but (given the way in which scientists have been changing their minds on this over the last 100 years) I wouldn't really believe--certainly not very strongly. I'd say it was pretty likely, or very likely given current evidence."

I'm going to be teaching an ancient and medieval course for the first time this summer. I think I'll be fine on the ancient stuff. I'm planning to use Julia Annas' anthology that organizes readings by topics. I'm required to cover Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes(!), but I'd like to focus a good deal on the Hellenistics and Augustine as well, and I hope to do a bit on the pre-Socratics as well. I think I'm good on the ancients and ok on Augustine, as long as I can find my notes from the Hellenistic seminar Bonnie Kent did in her one graduate course in her one year at Syracuse (she spent the last two weeks on City of God).

What I don't have much of a sense with is what to do with the medievals beyond Augustine or how to integrate him with the others (besides the Hellenistics, which I could do passably). Does anyone know of any good resources for teaching medieval philosophy, preferably online? Does anyone have any ideas as to how to integrate the later people with the earlier ones? Annas' book organizes topically, and I'd prefer to do the whole course that way and not just for the ancient portion and then by philosopher from then on. I refuse to do the theory of forms or problem of universals in an introductory course, and much of what people talk about is related to that. Any ideas? I'm also interested in any insight into particular sections of Augustine or Aquinas that would tie in with the other philosophers I'll be dealing with, so if anyone knows of a convenient list of those I'd appreciate it.

The 12th Philosophers' Carnival is coming up next week. Here's the submission page. The host will be Inessentialism.

Pope John Paul II 1920-2005 As I am sure most of our readers know by now Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla, passed away today. Many news outlets have focused their remembrance of John Paul as the champion of human freedom. This is generally portrayed in light of his influence in helping to topple communism in Europe. I am sure that this Pope will remain a figure of controversy with some seeing him as a defender of the dignity of human life and the integrity of the family, and others seeing his doctrinal conservatism - opposition to contraception, abortion, and women priests as setting back both the church and human progress for decades. For those not familiar with the philosophical aspects of John Paul's life I offer "Pope John Paul II: The Philosopher Pope." (Hat tip: Max Goss)

Evangelical Outpost has joined a debate I've been having on intermediate state debate (cf. my contribution to that discussion here). The views on the table were cessation of existence and then resurrection, an intermediate state of complete consciousness, and my own tentative suggestion that there's a conscious intermediate state but not fully conscious and not involving much of what we normally consider to go along with our conscious states now. Since it was mostly scriptural interpretation, I was keeping it at my own blog, but now that it's philosophical I'm cross-posting it at Prosblogion.

Joe says that he's surprised not to see a fourth view, that we simply cease to exist in time but don't cease to exist altogether. We live in time until we die, and then we leave time to go be with God in eternity, a timeless existence. He says he doesn't think his view conflicts with Christian scripture. I agree that his view need not conflict with scripture, but I don't think it can make any sense philosophically without conflicting with one of the most crucial Christian beliefs about God's creation of the universe.