Who's Afraid of Religion?

Michael Murray's Franklin & Marshall Faculty Inaugural Lecture, "Who's Afraid of Religion?" is an excellent read. If you have to pick one thing to read from the links in this post, read Murray's paper. Murray's topic is an uncomfortable one for many and he addresses it head on. His chosen topic is what he calls theo-phobia, and particularly academic theo-phbia. Murray's five proposed reasons for theo-phobia are:

1. Religion supports oppression, violence, and tyranny and is thus best ignored, excluded or perhaps even actively opposed.
   
2. Religion is a personal or subjective matter and as a result can't be subjected to canonical standards of rational scrutiny. It thus has no place in the academy.
   
3. Religion can't have a role in scholarly inquiry since it at best plays a balkanizing role in the scholarly world.
   
4. If religion is allowed to have a role in the academy it will quickly intrude into domains where it does not belong.
   
5. The truth of religion implies that there is something in the universe over and above the natural which deserves my attention, allegiance, or honor and I find that distasteful or irritating.

The SCP "Mystery Meeting" (hereafter MM I) was one of the better conferences I've been to. Highlights included everything from arguing vociferously with Alvin Plantinga about univocity and analogy in deduction to drinking rum with a pirate-costumed Michael Rea at Tim and Faith Pawl's house. I met several new grad students, heard some great papers--the most interesting of which was Shieva Kleinschmidt's one on composition and the Trinity, and had a lot of great food.

The theme was mystery and we were treated to the views of Oxford's Richard Cross, Alvin Plantinga, Merold Westphal of Fordham, and William Wainwright. It was a pretty diverse group and one lesson was that even analytic philosophers and continental philosophers can get along if they listen to one another and try to translate what they are saying. In form there are tremendous differences, in content there is--in some arenas--significant overlap.

For example Merold Westphal raised a lot of hackles by speaking repeatedly of "relative truth". When I pressed him to explain what that meant in a way an analytic philosopher would understand--and be able to distinguish from the sophomoric relativist--he said that his notion of relative truth was that of truths whose full content overflowed natural language so that the words did not adequately express the fullness of the reality. Now I'd never use the term "relative" to describe such a phenomenon and I don't think it a particularly apt term upon reflection. However, what's important is that at least I have some notion of what he's saying and needn't interpret him as a sophomoric relativist.

I'm sure there will be some bloggage which flows out of reviewing my notes over the next few weeks as it was a time of considerable reflection for me. The only thing missing from the conference, just as in last October's ACPA, was Peter van Inwagen.

Finally, I'd like to give a shout out to all those who showed me hospitality and great conversation: Josh, Luke, Justin, Tim, Faith, Mike, Gloria-not-Emily, Shieva, Alex^e, Alex^m, and all my dinner companions from OBU, Davidson, UMSL, and U Dallas.

I am pleased to announce that Patrick Taylor has accepted a funded offer to enter the graduate program at SUNY Buffalo starting this fall. Patrick plans to concentrate on work in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language. I know he is looking forward to doing challenging and stimulating work while enjoying bitterly cold winters.

As some of you already know, I have accepted a funded offer to enter the graduate program at the University of Kentucky. While at Kentucky I will be focusing on work in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science. Along the way I hope to pick up a graduate certificate in cognitive science (in hopes of having something to say about cases of brain commissurotomy). My wife and I are very excited about this move as it means a move back to my home state after a fourteen-year absence.

Above all we're both exceedingly happy that we'll never, ever, have to take the dreaded GRE again.

I'm happy to announce that Jonathan Kvanvig has accepted an offer to join Baylor University's Philosophy Department where he will be Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. Jon's move represents a real boon to Baylor's fledgling Ph.D. program and is certain to contribute to Baylor's goal of becoming a first rate Christian research institution. [Update:] Since a few have emailed to ask, next year's Annual Philosophy of Religion Conference will be held at Baylor though the date has yet to be worked out.

In a very brief and intriguing post, Prosblogium's Trent Dougherty suggests the following near-argument:
The goodness of (ordinate) guilt and shame can be understood with a simple exercise: imagine the history of this world with all guilt and shame removed. If you have any power of imagination you'll shudder at the thought.
It's posted at The Council of Trent here. Let's suppose the argument is directed to those who complain that guilt and shame are intrinsically bad emotions that on balance, make the world worse. What exactly is the argument that guilt and shame make the world better? Here's an approximation.

1. If the history of the world had included no experiences of guilt and shame, the world would be on balance (much?) worse than it is.
2. Therefore, the closest world w to ours at which there have been no experiences of guilt and shame is worse than our world @. (from 1, w/ an obvious simplification)
3. If @ > w, then it is better that there have been experiences of guilt and shame than that there have not been.
4. Therefore it is better that there have been experiences of guilt and shame than that there have not been. (from 2,3)

If you haven't heard this report yet, check it out.

I'm of to the Midwest SCP at Notre Dame tomorrow. It's the first time I've ever been to an SCP not to present or comment. I think I'll enjoy the relaxation. I'll give a report when I get back. Pray that my experience at O'Hare will go better than last time!

I have previously expressed on Prosblogion my belief that Rowe's argument — made most recently and thoroughly in Can God be Free? — against the existence of God from the impossibility of creating the best world founders on the concept of sufficient goodness and satisficing action and I don't wish to revisit that issue. However, I do think there is an issue in the neighborhood which suggests a conclusion which will be unpopular with many: that God must create a world.  The argument starts with a kind of dominance principle and I'll call it the "swamping principle"--(SP) for short--because one category swamps the other.

(SP) For any two types of actions A and B if every token of A is better than any token of B, then God must bring about a token of A.

It looks, then, like on this assignment (SP) entails that God must create.

I don't think this is a very interesting proposition given the operative sense of "must" and that I'm not an unrestricted libertarian.

What I find interesting is the following dialectic: Leibniz and Clarke agree that there's a best possible world and dispute whether this is consistent with God being free and the nature of that freedom. Rowe denies that there is a best possible world and argues from that that there is no God, since a God would have to create the best. I agree with Rowe that there is no best possible world, but reject his argument on the grounds that God can satisfice. However, the satisficing response assumes that there is a class of action-types like A above which, together with (SP), entails that God must create which brings us back to the Leibniz/Clarke debate on God's freedom.

There are lots of interesting threads leading out of this, but I wonder if anyone thinks they have a counter-example to (SP).