Recently in Religion and Life Category

Assume we know theism is true. Can we theists ever tell that our prayers have been answered? I pray for E and E occurs. Can I ever know that God acted on my prayer rather than E occurring completely independently of my prayer? It turns out that the answer is simpler than one might think, and that we can know this much more often than one might think.

Consider the property of Reasons Maximalism (RM) that an agent might have. An agent has RM if and only if whenever she chooses an action A, she chooses it on account of all the unexcluded reasons she is aware of in favor of A. Suppose, for instance, that I have a duty to visit a sick friend and I enjoy her company even when she is sick, but, on the other hand, it's a long drive and the hospital is depressing. Nonetheless, I do visit her. If I don't have RM, I might be visiting her only out of duty or only for pleasant companionship. But if I have RM, I am visiting her because of both duty and pleasant companionship. And if I have RM and decide not to visit her, then I will decide to do that because of both the long drive and the depressingness of the hospital.

I submit that God has RM. Being perfectly morally good and perfectly rational, in every decision God takes into consideration all the unexcluded reasons he has. Of course, in the end, it may not be possible for him to act on all the reasons, because some of the reasons will pull in different ways. But his choice will have been made on the basis of all the reasons he is aware of in favor of it. Moreover, in the case of an omniscient being, the reasons she is aware of in favor of A is the same as the reasons she has in favor of A. Thus, God chooses A on the basis of all the unexcluded reasons he has that favor A.

Now, that I've requested something good and grantable is always a reason to grant the request. In rare cases, it will be an excluded reason--perhaps I earlier authoritatively commanded the person to stop granting my requests for a day. But I cannot think of an exclusionary reason God might have against considering our requests for good things. (If God promised not to hear our requests, that would be an exclusionary reason, but he made no such promise.)

I don't know exactly how to analyze "grantable". One class of non-grantables are states of affairs ruled out by divine promises. Another class of non-grantables are states of affairs that cannot be brought about, whether because they are metaphysically impossible or because they are metaphysically necessary. It may also be that people's free choices are non-grantables. However, perhaps when we pray that x (where x is not God) might freely do A, God reinterprets our prayer charitably as a prayer that x be given lots of reason to do A, and that is a grantable. I do not know whether things that God has already promised are grantables, but I am inclined to think they are (cf. the sick friend visit case).

So, our requests for grantable good things are always an unexcluded reason for God to grant the request, and God being omniscient is aware of this. Moreover, God is a concurrent cause in all good events (in fact, in all events, because evil is a mere privation, but nevermind that), so that all good events count as caused by God. Therefore, by RM, if I pray for grantable good, and God brings about the request, then God produces the good in part because of the request. So, a sufficient condition for my knowing that an event has happened as a result of my request is that (a) I prayed for it, (b) it was good, (c) it was grantable and (d) it occurred.

In particular cases, these conditions are very commonly satisfied. If you pray for someone's safety during a trip, and she returns safely, she does so in part because of your prayers. If you pray that you find a lost object, and you do find it, you find it in part because of your prayers. If you pray that a friend might recover from an illness, and she recovers, she recovers in part because of your prayers.

In case people missed it, Thomas Nagel gave a positive review of Stephen Meyer's book defending intelligent design. Brian Leiter gives his response here, along with a number of helpful links to further criticisms. Bradley Monton is more sympathetic with Nagel.

Also, William Lane Craig recently debated Fransisco Ayala on the subject of intelligent design. Ayala is supposed to be a prominent anti-ID proponent. From a quick skim of the blogosphere, it looks like Craig thoroughly won the debate. Monton was the moderator and gives his thoughts here. He also provides some further links.

From September 10-12, Notre Dame held a conference called "My Ways Are not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible". The focus of the conference was on the"hard passages" from the Bible, particularly from the Old Testament: instances where God seems to command genocide, rape, child sacrifice, and other such things. I can't remember a conference that I was more excited to see. And it didn't disappoint--it may have been the most rewarding conference I've attended.

Originally, I thought I would live-blog the conference, but because I fell under the impression both that the presentations, along with their responses, would be collected into a book, and that videos of at least the Q&A sessions would eventually be posted to the website (don't quote me on that, though), I decided I would instead post something more impressionistic.

I have a question maybe people on this blog can help me answer.

1) What is worship? (I take an answer to this question to be in the form of a filling in of the analysans of an illuminating biconditional of the form: S worships T if and only if ... )

'Worship' is sometimes used as an adjective, and I'm not concerned with understanding what 'worship' means when people talk about "worship services". I'm concerned with 'worship' as a verb. Here are some paradigm worship ascriptions. Call this group A:

- Sally worships her boyfriend.
- Todd worships money
- Gina worships God.

Now I'm wondering if 'worship' in these sentences is different from 'worship' in these sentences:

- when John was appeared to by the Lord in Revelation, he fell prostrate and worshiped.
- the Israelites worshiped the Lord at Mt. Sinai.
- "Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him." (John 9:38)

Call this group of sentences Group B. Are these uses of 'worship' different? The latter sentences appear to be true at more localized periods of time. The former appear to be about a more general attitude towards an object. Do people see what I'm getting at?

I'll be happy to analyze 'worship' once I get clear on whether there are two different senses of 'worship' in Groups A and B or not. If people want to take a stab at an analysis anyway, that'd be welcome as well.

Last week in my philosophy of religion class, I had my undergrads read and discuss Richard Dawkins' article "Is Science A Religion" in Pojman and Rea's Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. In that text Dawkins says:

"Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists."

Dawkins' fideistic reading of this episode intrigued me. So, I looked up the relevant passage (John 20: 24-29 NIV) to see whether it did indeed demand a fideistic reading and found the following:

Alexander Pruss mentioned this counterpetition toward the end of the previous discussion, but I decided I'd put it up front for more to see.

The distinction the counterpetition strikes me as a relevant distinction; it's actually the distinction I tried to make in the earlier discussion. Here's what I said.

A school can have a policy against adultery without having a policy against those who have an orientation to act adulterously. Probably better, a school might discriminate against those who use pornography without discriminating against those who have an orientation to use pornography. (And the number of the latter is legion.)

But do such policies violate the spirit of the anti-discrimination clause as the original petition suggests? Consider the following scenario. Suppose the APA had a clause which said that you could not discriminate on the basis of whether or not you have an orientation to look at pornography. Now suppose a school has a policy which discriminates against those who view pornography. It's not at all obvious to me that such a school would be violating the spirit of the APA clause which I am imagining.

Are there any disanalogies between my scenario and the current issue?

I was going to write a post on the subject of the APA petition, but Andrew beat me to it. That said, I notice that on the Leiter thread, people in support of the petition are quite certain of the rectitude of their views, whereas people urging caution, or rejection, of the petition, use much more cautious/defensive language. Moreover, almost all of the people who support the petition use their real names, whereas many of the people opposed to it, or who urge caution regarding it, write in anonymously.

Assuming I'm right about this, I wonder what it amounts to? I think this:

Many, if not all, traditionally Christian (and, I imagine, Jewish and Muslim) philosophers are afraid of posting their thoughts on this matter. First, they are afraid of being personally attacked. "Fear of personal attacks" should be construed broadly: it doesn't refer just to being scared of what your colleagues will say or think of you; it refers also to fear of the emotions that will arise within you upon being personally attacked. That is, you may be afraid that you will write something in emotion-induced haste.

Second, I bet a lot of traditional Christians are in fact unsure what is wrong with same-sex relations. They accept that people should not have sex with members of the same sex, and/or that people should not marry people of the same sex; but they don't really accept or understand any of the rationales offered for why. Or perhaps even stronger, they side with a lot of the philosophers posting in Leiter's thread, and their beliefs on this score are an abiding source of tension for them.

Third, assuming that philosophers in support of the petition will in fact personally attack someone who publicly defends the propriety of the APA's position, is this behavior warranted? Many philosophers, including Christian philosophers of all stripes, seem to think that there are cases where personal attacks are appropriate. I can't remember where she said this, but I recall G. E. M. Anscombe writing that there are some positions so corrupt that they shouldn't be met with arguments but rather with disgust, condemnation, or something of that sort. I'm actually inclined to disagree with Anscombe on this score. I think that such condemnation is rarely productive in philosophical debate, and I think there are indeed good arguments that can be offered in favor of lots of positions that most people hold unreflectively (e.g., a lot of people look at necrophilia with disgust, and think that no one should engage in it. But why? I bet a lot of people won't be able to offer very good answers to this, other than just to say that it's disgusting. But a clever philosopher could quickly, I think, move most people to aporia over this). In other words, I think a lot of the philosophers posting in Leiter's thread are not behaving as they should. But I might be rash in saying this--after all, how would I feel if people were defending philosophy departments that, say, required their theistic students to sign statements giving up their theism under threat of expulsion? I should think I'd be very dispirited if even a few philosophers supported such a notion, and I would quite possibly describe them as bigoted. Of course, under such circumstances I don't think it would be appropriate to use such language, even though I think it would be factually correct.

EDIT: I should add, in elaborating my third point, that I thought it inappropriate to make personal attacks on people at least when you are trying to convince them of the wrongness of their position. Thus, calling discriminating Christian universities bigoted in the comments section of The Leiter Reports is not itself inappropriate, and, to the extent that the language is factually correct, fine, perhaps even to be encouraged. Now that I think about things a little more, though, whether it's appropriate to call a person bigoted depends not only on whether he actually is bigoted, but also on whether such remarks are liable to convince him. There could definitely be some people who, when described as bigoted by people of good will, will rethink their positions. In such cases, then, calling a spade a spade is fine, perhaps even recommendable.

Nonetheless, though, I think there's a kind of civility that it's important to maintain in such arguments, at least when you're writing to someone. You don't want someone to accept your position out of fear, and you don't want them to reject your position out of defensiveness. Instead, you should want, if you're a philosopher, your interlocutors to focus on the reasons you offer for your position rather than on the consequences that their beliefs and conduct will have on your assessments of them.

Michael Huemer (in his book Skepticism and the Veil of Perception 2001, APQ 2006, PPR 2007) has marshalled interesting and challenging arguments for phenomenal conservatism:

(PC) If it seems to S that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p. (PPR 2007, p. 30)

In his remarks, Huemer seems to imply that the degree of justification depends on the strength of the seemings. Now (PC) entails the following about hearing God's voice:

(PC*) If it seems to S that God is saying X, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that God is saying X.

I'm afraid that the answer to my question might be obvious; if so, then it'll be answered quickly!

I come from a Christian background which told me that God has forgiven all of my sins, past, present, and future. I also come from a background which tells me that I should ask God for forgiveness. I also have the background belief that it's not the case that you should ask for what you already have. These beliefs seem to me to conflict. Let's be more precise.

I've heard from older, experienced professors that doing a dissertation on or specializing in philosophy of religion may hurt your chances of getting a philosophy job or getting tenure at a secular university. It's better to focus on some other subject and then do philosophy of religion after you get tenure.

Is this true? If so, why? It doesn't make sense to me; it seems that schools would want professors who could teach philosophy of religion.

In a story that concerns the interesting question of how we should take into account the beliefs (especially the religious beliefs) of others that we take to be false in deciding how to treat those people, a University of Central Florida student walked out of a Catholic Mass on June 29 with a consecrated communion wafer. Given their beliefs, this is a rather big deal to Catholics, some of whom seem to have reacted very strongly against the student. Bill Donohue and the Catholic League became involved, calling on the University to take strong action against the student. The biologist, P.Z. Myers, of the University of Minnesota, Morris came to the defense of the student in this post of Myers's blog, Pharyngula, and called on readers to steal consecrated wafers from Catholic churches so that he could publicly desecrate them, posting pictures on the web. Donohue and the Catholic have taken note of Myers's blog post, and seem to have begun something of a campaign against him. From what I understand, despite some very negative encounters with some of those who protested his actions, the student himself was nonetheless able to hear the appeals of others who explained to him why the matter was so important to them, and he responded humanely, returning the wafer.

Readers here may have heard of this case already, because it entered the world of philosophy blogs when Brian Leiter wrote about it in this blog post. However, Leiter's position seems to me very one-sided, so I thought I would post a different perspective. (Thanks to Matthew Mullins and Prosblogion for allowing me to use this forum. For those who don't know, I should make clear that I am a Christian, but not a Catholic, so readers can know where this commentary is coming from.)

In particular, Leiter seems to me to go way too easy on Prof. Myers. To put my opposition in context, please note that I do not support any efforts to get Prof. Myers fired or disciplined at his job over this incident, that I agree with Prof. Myers that the reaction against the Florida student by many was too strong, and that I find it admirable that Prof. Myers would come to the student's defense. However, Myers's proposed retaliation, which would hurt many Catholics who are completely innocent in this whole matter, strikes me as extremely nasty. To my thinking, it is morally more problematic than anything Donohue has yet done in this case. I can understand those who might disagree with that comparative judgment of mine, but have a hard time understanding the judgment of those who see the matter as so one-sidedly favoring Myers as Leiter seems to see things.

Myers's retaliation hurts Catholics because of beliefs they hold that he disagrees with, and, admittedly, it's not easy to say, in general terms, just how we should take the beliefs of others into account in deciding how to treat them. However, Myers's retaliation seems so aimed at hurting innocent parties and so incapable of producing any good, and, well, just so nasty, that this seems an easy call. So readers can judge for themselves, here's the relevant paragraph of Myers's post (follow the link above to read the whole thing):

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them -- my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure -- but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I'll send you my home address.

Is he perhaps just joking? To some extent, this is clearly all a joke to Myers. But it doesn't seem to be just a joke in the sense that it's clear nobody should really steal the items and send them to him. The Washington Times reports:

In an interview Friday, Mr. Myers said he already had received "a double-digit number" of positive responses, from people saying that they would try to get consecrated Catholic hosts for him and that the writer already had one.

"Enough that I could sculpt a statue of them," he said, declining to say what he'd do to desecrate them. "I've got a few ideas, but I want to keep the surprise."

I hope that this is a joke at least to the extent that Myers won't follow through on his sick plan, but it will be very revealing to see people's reactions if he does. In any case, if a joke, this would seem a rather nasty joke -- perhaps to be compared with those who would publicly ask for others to raid burial grounds sacred to Native Americans and send them remains so that they might publicly desecrate them. ("They're just frackin' bones!") "Wickedly funny"?

For the record, I'll paste below the fold the e-mail I sent to Prof. Myers on July 11. It now appears to me too smug and sanctimonious in tone, but I stand behind the position there expressed:

Welcome to the Knowledge of God Prosblogion reading group! Each week, we will read a section of the book, and the section breakdown and ordering is as follows:
C. 1 (1-30), C. 1 (30-69), C. 4, C. 5, C. 2 (70-108), C. 2 (108-150), C. 3, C. 6.

Each Monday, a different Prosblogion contributor will write an opening post. Other contributors can post on that section two or three days later in the week. Everybody is welcome to read along in the book and comment.

It's a pleasure to kick-off all the fun. Let me summarize the main claims that I take Plantinga to argue for in my section.

I) If God exists, then it is likely that many people know that God exists.
II) If Christian belief is true, then it is likely that many people know that it is true.
III) If naturalism is true, then no biological organs function properly or improperly.

Plantinga's defends (I) and (II) as follows: