Recently in News Category

William Lane Craig tells his story of the process by which he earned his PH.D.s. I found it quite interesting, fun, and encouraging to read, and I thought it would be interesting to readers of this blog. Unfortunately, I couldn't link directly to the story, but it was his answer to the question of the week. You just have to scroll down and go to the place where you see someone asking about his PH.D.s, and click on the "Read Answer" tab. There's a lot of other interesting material in the Q&A archive (and, indeed, in the site generally).

Just a quick reminder that the 2008 Pacific Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers—featuring papers from Prosblogion contributors Andrew Moon and Kevin Timpe—will be held next week at UC Riverside. The program is now online (with most of the papers available for download), and if you like what you see it's not too late to register!

Hope to see you there.

William Lane Craig wrote the cover story for this month's edition of Christianity Today. It can be found here. He speaks of a renaissance of Christian/theistic philosophy in secular academia, he reviews some of the main arguments for God's existence, and he talks about the relevance of arguments in today's "postmodern culture".

I've read about the need for good PR for philosophy over at Leiter's blog. One thing I'm happy about is that, in Christian circles, there's been an increasing amount of positive PR for philosophy, primarily by way of Christian apologetics. Lee Strobel's books The Case for Faith and The Case for a Creator feature interviews (and philosophical discussions) with professional philosophers such as William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, and Robin Collins. I rarely meet Christians nowadays who have never heard of Strobel's books, and a surprising number of them have actually read and enjoyed the books. Other Christian apologists who are not active, professional philosophers (e.g., Norman Geisler, Ravi Zacharias, Gregory Koukl, etc.) all speak with high regard for the value of philosophy. More recently, Pastor Timothy Keller's very popular book The Reason for God makes use of arguments that draw right out of the professional literature (mostly from Plantinga and Alston). I've found that many Christians walk away from reading/hearing these apologists with a higher appreciation for philosophy. Some enjoyed the arguments so much that they went into a full time study of philosophy. (I believe that many Talbott graduates fit this description.)

So I'm happy that there is this PR for philosophy in Christian circles. We can hope that this will contribute to good PR for philosophy in society generally!

Here's a news story for those of you who do not particularly like The Beatles and think you will not particularly like Expelled. (In other words, it is a post for me, everyone else in humanity that died before The Beatles, and no one else?)

If you're too lazy to click:

John Lennon's sons and widow, Yoko Ono, are suing the filmmakers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" for using the song "Imagine" in the documentary without permission.

HT to PZ.

I have very little idea what's going on here. The story begins like this

"A Polish priest and mathematician who was a friend of the late Pope John Paul II has won the world's richest academic prize for work that shows how maths can offer circumstantial evidence of God's existence. Professor Michael Heller, 72, a pioneering cosmologist and philosopher specialising in mathematics and metaphysics, received the £820,000 prize yesterday in New York."

but then starts to crack up with science-religion writing that is bad even for the Times.

So I went to the Templeton site and it didn't get much clearer. Here's a claim attributed to the winner.

"if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws"

At first I was worried that he was talking about the cause of necessary mathematical equations, but maybe he just means the cause of why certain mathematical laws apply to the world. I just don't know, the reporting is so bad.

Back to the Times:

"His theories do not so much offer proof of the existence of God as introduce doubt about the material existence of the world around us. He specialises in complex formulae that make it possible to explain everything, even chance, through mathematical calculation."

I searched for some time on the web trying to find out what in the world his work is. Never found out. There is a serious reporting gap here.

An interesting interview with Catholic theologian John Haught, which can be found here. Tagline: "Theologian John Haught explains why science and God are not at odds, why Mike Huckabee worries him, and why Richard Dawkins and other 'new atheists' are ignorant about religion."

Haught has a forthcoming book, God and the New Atheism, which promises to be interesting. Plus, we can never have enough criticism of Dawkins, can we? Some of you might also be interested in what he has to say about the relationship between faith and biological evolution, like his statement that "Darwin's thought is a gift to theology."

The September issue of Nous is out and it contains a discussion between Cory Juhl--we briefly mentioned our disapproval of his "Fine Tuning is not Surprising"--on whether there is a reasonable argument for a multiverse in the neighborhood. 

I find this discussion much more interesting that the Find Tuning paper and I find myself mostly siding with Juhl this time--at least on proceedural issues of the Bayesian use of evidence.  Leeds makes many fine points on procedural matters as well. 

Also just out is the September issue of the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly and in it is the paper "Probabilistic arguments for multiple universes" by Draper, Draper, and Pust.  It is more of a survey and a bit more open ended.

Both papers will be relevant to those interested in probabilistic versions of the fine-tuning argument and both papers yield some interesting insights on the nature of probability and evidence.

On the lighter side, I thought this was a new urban legend, but it's on MSNBC and Newsweek so it's a pretty good urban legend if it is. 

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Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

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I thought surely the Dalai Lama would, in a translife act of civil disobedience, declare that he was going to reincarnate in Tibet, but he says he will abide by this directive.  He says he doesn't want to be born in Tibet anyway.  Sour grapes?

Interestingly, officials are worried about rival claimants to the succession inside and outside of Tibet--Avignon Lamacy?  Perhaps they'll read the discussion on the post below--Onward Christian Spaceman--and conclude that they can *both* be the Dali Lama! 

The story is available here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/

I didn't think it philosophical enough to post here, but I did want to mention that on my blog X-Catholics I've posted a story concerning the "return of the Latin Mass" which might be of interest to some Prosblogion readers. 

Like many of you I try to keep an eye on the various journals on philosophy of religion in order to keep abreast of what's new. Philo, the publication of the Society of Humanist Philosophers, is one of those journals that I've tried to keep up with. The editorial board of the journal is simply topnotch, and the journal has published some really fine volumes. I knew there was a recent change in editorship, however, I'd started wondered if the journal was still in operation since I haven't seen a new volume in sometime.

Happily it looks like Paul Draper has gotten control of the reins and new issues are forthcoming. Out now is volume 9.1 (2006) guest edited by Jeffrey Grupp on "Theories of Simples". Paul tells me that volume 9.2 (2006) guest edited by John Shook is currently at the printer, 10.1 is ready for copy editing, and that by 10.2 we can start blaming holding him responsible for the contents of the journal. So, it's good to see that we wont be losing a fine journal in the area, and it's even better news if you've got an essay looking for a home.

Several years ago Trent and I were biking in the hills of Missouri thinking about design arguments when one of us (we don’t recall who) said “isn’t it odd that the ID folks stress how hostile the universe is to life while the fine-tuning folks stress how universe is fit for life.”  It took us a while to work out this intuition but the result is coming out in Religious Studies.  Thanks to all who gave us excellent feedback on earlier drafts of this paper!

Carl Gillett, Illinois Wesleyan University, has been awarded a John Templeton Foundation Grant for his work on reductionism and emergentism in the metaphysics of science. Gilett will use the funds to work on his tentatively titled monograph The Roots of Reduction and the Fruits of Emergence.