Series on Faith and Reason

Kevin,

Thanks for posting that. Nice discussion. I'm sure you didn't miss McGinn's observation that the good reasons for believing in God are good "psychological reasons". He no doubt has in mind that there are good practical reasons to believe, but not very good theoretical ones. I was a little surprised to hear him say that there were not many theists in the profession (maybe he said that he didn't *know* many theists in the profession, which is more plausible).

Mike,

No, I didn't miss that. But I didn't want to give it all away right up front!

I listened to the Rushdie podcast on my way back from surfing this afternoon [take that Mizzou folks! :) ], and found it very interesting too.

I mentioned this on my personal site last month and the thing that puzzled me was the focus on talking to writers. PBS is a great place for slow paced discussions that advance the public understanding, but even after listening to Moyers introduction I'm not convinced of the benefit of enlisting writers. One would expect that there are plenty of theologians, scientist, biblical scholars, philosophers, etc, who could have furthered our understanding. What is it that gives writers special insight in navigating the "tug of war" between faith and reason? What is the different kind of truth that writers exposes us to? Should we really expect writers to guide us through ambiguity. I'm all for the project, but dubious as to whether it has any real value.

The McGinn interview was interesting, but what do you think the lay person would take away from it?

I think the focus on writers is explained thus. All those interviewed were participants in a conference for writers on issues of faith and reason organized by Rushdie and held in New York. I think Moyers was just using this conference as a way to get material fairly easily. Of course, one could then ask why Rushdie would invite only writers (which is understandable I guess) or whether such a conference is the best possible conference on faith and reason (I doubt it).

As to your last question, Matthew, I have no idea.

Kevin,

Hope it didn't sound like I was raining on your post. My concern in the closing question is that I suspect the average person isn't going to pick up on things like the distinction between good "psychological reasons" and "theoretical reasons". They are also likely have the common assumption that philosophers are a bunch of godless atheists reinforced.

Not at all, Matthew. No rain here--it's San Diego after all! :)

My guess is that you are right that most of the 'folk' wouldn't catch the distinction on their own, but would be sensitive to it if it were pointed out to them (at least for a while, until the latest celebrity drunk-driving story was on the news. Then they'll likely go mentally dead again).

Of course, there are tons of individual counterexamples to the 'common assumption that philosophers are a bunch of godless atheists', but this does seem to be a fairly good (over-generalized) description of the profession as a whole, does it not?

Thanks for posting this link. Best moment of unintentional comedy in the interview: 5 minutes after (rightly) complaining that people so often make the mistake of running together the distinction between toleration and insulation from criticism (McGinn said tolerance means that you don't persecute people for their beliefs, not that you don't criticize the beliefs), McGinn says, "Well I think there's too much tolerance of faith."

Kevin-
I guess I have a hard time making a judgment about the whole because I seem to run in very unrepresentative circles. There seems to be some consensus that up to a third of the profession is constituted by theists of some stripe, but there is no hard data. That seems like a fairly large segment for the going assumption to have purchase. Maybe some of this stems from the many theists who are quietists. I know there are philosophers who are serious theists but you'd never know it from their work or casual conversation. (eg I discovered Greg Restall is a Christian from a blog post.)

Yes, you shouldn't presume the absence of religious commitment from the fact that a philosopher doesn't work in areas immediately related to the philosophy of religion. (Though I have written two pieces in the philosophy of religion: not exactly the dominant slice of my research work yet, I agree.) But there's a tradition of this, too, of the believer trying to do their area of philosophy well, perhaps informed by their belief, and perhaps simply motivated by the desire to do all things for the Glory of God -- even those things that are not obviously explicitly about God. (Michael Dummett is a good example here.)

As to figures and proportions, I'd suspect that this would differ in different parts of the world. Here in Australia my feeling would be less that relgious believers among philosophers of any stripe form less than the 1-in-3 you report for serious theists. But that is conjecture. I've not done a serious survey.

I think that here in the US the 1 in 3 is probably an accurate number, as long as it includes theists of ANY stripe, such as UU Christians like me.

I do think the public perception of philosophers as "godless" is particularly strong here in the American South. Many of my community college students definitely come to their first Ethics, or History of Philosophy, class armed with that opinion. Often they have been warned ahead of time by their preacher to beware of secular humanist philosophers.

The only "cure" for this disease is to have them read contemporary philosophers who are theists and who are both accomplished and clear enough for beginning students to understand. Keith DeRose, for example.

I believe it was in an essay by Quentin Smith called something like "Metaphilosophy of Naturalism" (in Philo and online) that the fairly consistent anecdotal evidence is that "between one-fourth and one-third" of academic philosophers in the U.S. are theists, and most of those are Christians. Smith, naturally, bitterly laments this fact.

That's almost certainly a much higher proportion, interestingly, then you'll find in other academic departments.