Where the conflict really lies

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga's new book Where the Conflict Really Lies seeks to show that a popular belief about science and religion is backwards- the popular claim is that there's deep conflict between science and Christian faith. Plantinga claims there's superficial conflict but deep concord. This is definitely going on my "to-read" list.

Articles about the book have been all over the place this week, for example the New York Times and Christianity Today, but the most in-depth interview to appear was one conducted by Philosophy News 6 months ago. Meanwhile this interview by Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 combines some of Plantinga's thoughts on his new book with more general comments about Philosophy of Religion and apologetics. It's well worth listening to.

Plantinga is someone who has revolutionised the entire discipline of Philosophy of Religion. He is referred to so incredibly often by contemporary Christian apologists and philosophers that one cannot help but be in awe of his colossal influence. His arguments on reformed epistemology- basic beliefs, the need or otherwise for evidence- and his evolutionary argument against naturalism have changed the dynamic of the entire discipline and will be debated for years to come.

Lifelong Learning

Recently I discussed philosophy of reading, that is, questions like what you should read, and how you should go about reading.

But there's a bigger picture issue at play. It's all good and well to have ideas about how to read, but what about finding time to do it? We're all busy people, that's the practical reality. So if we're serious about reading and learning, then we need to find ways to work that into our lives. We humans are creatures of habit. This leads us the question of what habits can I put in place in order to be a lifelong learner?

This article provides 15 useful tips for cultivating lifelong learning.

They are:

1. Always have a book.
2. Keep a to-learn list
3. Get more thinking friends
4. Guide your thinking- (Be reflective. Contemplate. Don't just consume or swallow a book and move on)
5. Put it into practice
6. Teach others
7. Clean your input
8. Learn in Groups
9. Unlearn assumptions
10. Find jobs that encourage learning
11. Start a project
12. Follow your intuition (Note: Not sure I agree. Being intentional is often a good thing).
13. The morning fifteen
14. Reap the rewards
15. Make it a priority

Summary of Natural Theology

Below I have reproduced a taxonomy of theistic arguments from the blog Appeared to Blogly, formerly doxazo theos.com. I have copied the site in full, and take no credit or responsibility for the contents. The formatting is better over at the actual site, so I really should just link to it, but I thought it was such a good summary that I wanted it on my own blog!

Many of the sources are available online via hyperlink, but I wasn't able to copy those across without much time and effort. So please visit the site if you're interested in reading more, because there's many good resources linked to.


Appeared-to-Blogly

Theistic Arguments

This page is a continual work in progress.

This will be an outline of a class on the project of natural theology, emphasis on evidence for Christian theism. The purpose is twofold: (1) Provide an taxonomic overview of some of the most important topics and arguments related to the project of natural theology. (2) Provide a resource guide (references in print and/or on the internet) in the form of numbered endnotes. The resource guide will by no means be exhaustive, but rather will reflect what I perceive to be the most influential or important contemporary written work on each topic or argument. Many of the referenced work have critical replies, rejoinders and surrejoinders. It is beyond the scope of this page to cite them all.

I hope this outline will be particularly useful to those interested in putting together lesson material on the subject, but also hope it to be a useful guide for personal research in general. I will periodically update the outline and resources as new pertinent issues and arguments become available. Questions about the outline? Feel free to E-mail me at mcintosh_chad@hotmail.com

*I would greatly appreciate being notified of any broken or dead hyperlinks!

Evidence for Christian Theism

I. The Nature of Evidence

1. The Nature of Proof

A. Cartesian Certainty

a. The question of whether God’s existence can be proved with certainty uninteresting

i. Nothing meets the standard of Cartesian certainty


B. Justification and Rationality1

a. The more interesting question is whether belief in God can be rational or justified

i. What does it mean for a belief to be rational or justified?

ii. A belief can be either externally justified (arguments) or self-justified (basic beliefs)


2. Religious Epistemology2

A. Belief in God sans Evidence3

a. Belief in God may be a properly basic (self-justified) belief4

b. Natural theology and religious epistemology are best thought of as separate but consistent projects


i. Natural theology focuses on external, evidential justification

3. Good Arguments


A. Varieties of Arguments

a. Deductive


b. Inductive or Probabilistic

c. Abductive


B. Criteria for Good Arguments5

a. Deductively valid or inductively strong

b. Premises more plausible, more probable, or stronger than their respective negations

4. Making a Case for Theism6

A. Restricted Cases (Single Argument)

a. Strengths of offering restricted cases

i. Allows for a much more elaborate and sophisticated defense

b. Weaknesses of offering restricted cases

i. The force of an entire restricted case usually depends on the plausibility of just one or a couple of the argument’s premises

ii. If sound, conclusions are more narrow

B. Cumulative Cases (Multiple Arguments)7

a. Strengths of offering cumulative cases

i. Combines the strengths of multiple, perhaps more modest arguments into one powerful case (internally reinforced)

ii. Allows a much wider and informative conclusion to be inferred

b. Weaknesses of offering cumulative cases

i. Individual arguments remain merely sketched and undeveloped

C. God as Best Explanation8

a. Criteria for best explanation or hypothesis9

i. Fecundity (relevance and fruitfulness)

ii. Simplicity

iii. Explanatory scope

iv. Explanatory power

v. Plausibility

vi. Degree of ad hoc-ness

vii. Fits well into background knowledge

viii.

Exceeds rival explanations in fulfilling conditions (2)-(7)

b.
Bayes’ Theorem [Pr(HE) = Pr(EH) x Pr(H) / Pr(E)]10

II.

A Taxonomy of Theistic Arguments

1. Cosmological Arguments11

*
Definition: A family of arguments that postulate God’s existence as the ultimate cause, ground, or explanation of the universe or cosmos
A. Three Main Types

a. Kalam12
i. Demonstrates the need for a first cause based on the finitude of the past

b. Thomistic13
i. Demonstrates the need for a first cause in terms of rank or kind (necessary, contingent), not necessarily temporality

c. Leibnizian14

i. Demonstrates that God is the only sufficient reason or explanation for either some part or the whole of existence

ii. Relies on the validity and applications of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)15

B. Contemporary Versions
a. A modal cosmological argument16

b. An inductive cosmological argument17

2. Design Arguments18

*
Definition: Argues there are features of the universe or things within the universe that are best explained by design, or the causal activity of intelligence

A. Variety of Design Phenomena19

a. Design as order and nomology,20 simplicity, complexity, beauty, purpose and cognition,21 information,22 cosmic constants, et al.


b. It is argued design can be detected in almost any hard science (E.g., chemistry and biology,23 cosmology and physics24)

B. Detecting Design25
a. An inference to design is justified when the explanandum is

i. imporbable or unlikely, and

ii. conforms to an independently discernable pattern

3. Axiological Arguments26

*Definition: Argues that the only adequate ground or explanation for the nature of value and morality is God

A. Morality27

a. The justification of belief in moral facts28
i. Including the objective moral facts of evil and suffering29

b. The connection between morality and theism30

c. Problems with non-theistic accounts of morality

i. Naturalistic accounts31

ii. Non-theistic accounts of moral realism32

iii. Moral relativism33

B. The Nature of Value and Persons34
C. Moral Normativity35
a. Our sense of moral obligation, accountability, responsibility, punishment, praise, blame, etc.

D. Altruism and Supererogation36

4. Ontological Arguments37

* Definition: Argues a priori that the very concept of God entails his existence

A. Classical Versions
a. Anselmian38
b. Other39

B. Contemporary Treatments40
a. Plantinga41
b. Maydole42
c. Gödel43

5. Noölogical and Epistemological Arguments

* Definition: Argues that certain mental phenomena (I.e., the mind, knowledge) is best explained by the existence of God

A. The Incompatibility of Naturalism and Knowledge44
B. The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism45
C. The Argument from Reason46
D. The Argument from Proper Function47
E. The Argument from Consciousness48
F. Arguments for Dualism & Life After Death49
a. A priori arguments50
b. A posteriori arguments51
i. Scientific (e.g., empirical, neuro-based arguments)52
ii. Testimonial (e.g., NDEs, OBEs, historical, etc.)53

G. The Incompatibility of Naturalist-Epistemology and Realisms54
H. The Argument from Truth-Antirealism55

6. Conceptualist and Nomological Arguments
* Definition: Argues that God is the ground or explanation of metaphysically necessary entities such as abstracta (numbers, propositions, properties, etc.) and laws (natural or logical).

A. The Conceptualist Argument56
B. The Incompatibility of Naturalism and Abstracta57
C. The Laws of Nature58
D. The Transcendental Argument59

7.

Religious Experience60
* Definition: Attempts to show that religious experiences either require a religious explanation or justify religious beliefs

A. Kinds of Religious Experience

a. E.g., Feeling-based, perceptual, interpretive, mystical, etc.

B. God as Casual Explanation of Religious Experiences

C. The Veridicality of Religious Experiences

a. The Principle of Credulity (Swinburne)

b. Direct-Perception

i. Sense perception (Alston)

ii. Other kinds of perception (e.g., numinous)


8. Pragmatic Arguments61

* Definition: Seeks to justify religious beliefs on practical, prudential, and/or existential grounds

A. Pascal’s Wager62

B. Other Wager Arguments

a.

E.g., The Jamesian Wager, J. S. Mill’s wager63

b. Kierkegaardian Rationality64

C. The Presumption of Theism

a. Argues that God and immortality is the only adequate source of objective meaning, purpose, and/or value65

b. If we are justified in believing in objective meaning, purpose, and/or value, we are justified in believing that God exists

9. Miscellaneous Arguments

A. The Argument from Language66

B. The Argument from Beauty & Aesthetics67

C. The Argument from Desire68

D. The Anthropological Argument69

E. The Ontomystical Argument70

F. Teleology and Free Will71

10. Historical Arguments

* Definition: Argues that the historicity of certain events or documents is as evidential support for Christianity and/or the existence of God

A. The Historical Reliability of the Bible

a. Old Testament72

b. New Testament73

i. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels74


B. The Historical Jesus75

a. Jesus’s Claims to Divinity76

b. Jesus in Extrabiblical Literature77

C. The Historicity of the Resurrection78

D. Miracles79

E. Fulfilled Prophecy80


Endnotes

1.

Two excellent resources on general epistemology is Ernest Sosa and Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Epistemology: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2000); Michael Huemer (ed.) with introduction by Robert Audi, Epistemology: Contemporary Readings (Routledge, 2002). Particularly good books on the subject are Alvin Plantinga’s volumes, Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford, 1993), Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford, 1993) and Paul Moser’s Knowledge and Evidence (Cambridge, 1991).

2.

A very thorough guide on the literature here (up to 1999) is Michael Sudduth’s “Reformed Epistemology Bibliography.” Outstanding books are include Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Cornell, 1967), Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Faith & Rationality: Reason & Belief in God (Notre Dame, 1984), in which is Plantinga’s chapter “Reason and Belief in God.” Plantinga, Warranted Christian belief (Oxford, 2000). Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford, 1992). For a tidy outline of the project of religious epistemology, see William Lane Craig’s chapter “Religious Epistemology” in his and Moreland’s book, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (IVP, 2003), pp. 154-170. For a somewhat different approach to religious epistemology, see Paul Moser, The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology (Cambridge, 2008).

3.

Kelly James Clark’s “Without Evidence or Argument” is an excellent article-sized treatment of religious epistemology.

4.

The standard paper here is Plantinga’s “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Nous 15 (1981), pp. 41-51.

5.

Brief but good discussions on the criteria of good arguments can be found in William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Crossway, ed. 2008), pp. 51-56; “Arguing Successfully About God: A Review Essay of Graham Oppy’s Arguing about Gods,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008), pp. 435-442. Alvin Plantinga’s new preface to his “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,” in Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 203-209. Stephen T. Davis, “What Good Are Theistic Proofs?,” in Louis Pojman, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (Wadsworth, 1987). A more thorough treatment is Davis’s in God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs (Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 1-12, 176-190. One of the best discussions is found in George Mavrodes small but wonderful book, Belief in God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religion (Random House, 1970), 3-48. The most thorough treatment of condition b. in the outline is James Freeman, Acceptable Premises: A Epistemic Approach to An Informal Logic Problem (Cambridge, 2005). Freeman argues that a good argument is one whose basic premises have a presumption.

6.

The various approaches to making a case for theism can be found in Steve Cowan (ed.), Five Views on Apologetics (Zondervan, 2000), which features a very able representative of each.
7.

A cumulative case exemplar is Alvin Plantinga’s “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments.”

8.

Gregory Dawes, Theism and Explanation (Routledge, 2009). Kelly James Clark, “The Explanatory Power of Theism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 25 (1989), pp. 129-146. Clark’s paper is a nice overview of how Bayes’s theorem has been used in natural theology. R. Douglas Geivett, “Reflections on the Explanatory Power of Theism,” ch. 3 in Stan Wallace (ed), Does God Exist? The Craig-Flew Debate (Ashgate, 2003). Wilko van Holten’s “Theism and Inference to the Best Explanation” Ars Disputandi 2 (2002) is excellent, especially for its bibliographical strength.

9.

Par for the course is Peter Lipton’s Inference to the Best Explanation (Routledge, ed. 2004). See also Paul Thagard, “The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice” The Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978), pp. 67-92. Gilbert H. Harman, “Inference to the Best Explanation” The Philosophical Review 74 (1965), pp. 88–95. On the nature, justification, and criteria for best explanation, chs 1-4 of Richard Swinburne’s The Existence of God (Oxford, ed. 2004) has been influential.The story is a little different for historical explanations. To begin with, there is a difference in justifying a document’s historicity and justifying some historical explanation or hypothesis. The former usually makes reference to so-called “criteria of authenticity.” There have been volumes written on such criteria, but a good overview is Robert H. Stein’s “The ‘Criteria’ for Authenticity,” in R. T. France & David Wenham (eds.), Gospel Perspectives Vol. 1: Studies of History and Tradition in the Four Gospels (JSOT, 1980), pp. 225-263. On the latter, much discussion seems to be owed to C. Behan McCullagh’s Justifying Historical Descriptions (Cambridge, 1984).

10.

Bayes’s theorem has broader applications, but for much of its philosophical underpinnings, see Swinburne (ed.), Bayes’s Theorem (Oxford, 2005). Almost all of Swinburne’s writings, including both his restricted and cumulative cases for theism, utilize Bayes’s theorem. See also Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation (Routledge, ed. 2004), pp. 103-120. See also James Joyce, “Bayes’ Theorem,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Brandon Fitelson, Studies in Bayesian Confirmation Theory (University of Wisconson dissertation, 2001).

11.

For an overview of some recent issues and literature relevant to the cosmological argument, see David Beck, “The Cosmological Argument: A Current Bibliographical Appraisal” Philosophia Christi 2 (2002), pp. 283–304. Bruce Reichenbach, “Cosmological Argument,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Alexander Pruss, “Some Recent Progress on the Cosmological Argument” (Presented at the Two Tasks Conference, 2006). For a historical exposition, see William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (Wipf & Stock, 2001).

12.

See William Lane Craig’s numerous writings. Major defenses are Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Wipf & Stock, ed. 2000); Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford, 1995). Mark Nowacki, The Kalam Cosmological Argument for God (Prometheus, 2007). A very up-to-date defense is Craig & James Sinclair, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument,” in Craig & Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 101-201. “A concise, article-sized treatment is Craig, “The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe” Truth: A Journal of Modern Thought 3 (1991), pp 85-96. For a good article-sized defense not by Craig, see James Beebe, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God.”

13.

This argument fell on hard times but is recently making a strong comeback. See Timothy O’Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Ultimate Shape of Contingency (Blackwell, 2008). O’connor’s argument is a sort of blend of the Thomistic and Leibnizian cosmological arguments. But because the structure is largely Thomistic and the conclusion is buttressed by Leibnizian considerations, I classify his argument as Thomistic. See his “And This All Men Call God” Faith and Philosophy 21 (2004), pp. 417-435. William F. Vallicella, A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated (Kluwer, 2002). Robert Koons, “A New Look at the Cosmological Argument” American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1996), pp. 193-212; “Defeasible Reasoning, Special Pleading and the Cosmological Argument” (2000). Koons identifies his arguments as in line with Thomistic tradition, though they have a distinctly modal tint (as does O’Connor’s).For an explicitly modal spin on the Thomistic cosmological argument, see Robert Maydole, “The Modal Third Way” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47 (2000), pp. 1-28. For an unpublished version of this paper, see his “Aquinas’ Third Way Modalized.” Peter van Inwagen, “Necessary Being: The Cosmological Argument” in Metaphysics (Westview, 2002), pp. 115-133.

14.

Brian Leftow, “A Leibnizian Cosmological Argument” Philosophical Studies 57 (1989), pp. 135-155. The explanandum in Leftow’s paper is abstract objects, so could be seen as a type of conceptualist argument as well. Stephen T. Davis, “The Cosmological Argument and the Epistemic Status of Belief in God” Philosophia Christi 2 (1999). I can’t recommend more highly Alexander Pruss’s “Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments,” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 24-100.

15.

Book-length treatments are Bede Rundle’s critical, Why there Is Something rather than Nothing (Oxford, 2004) and Pruss’s defense, The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (Cambridge, 2006). Two good article treatments are Pruss, “Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit: Arguments New and Old for the Principle of Sufficient Reason” (2002); “A Restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Cosmological Argument” Religious Studies 40 (2004), pp. 165–179.

16.

Brian Leftow, “A Modal Cosmological Argument” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 24 (1988), pp. 159-88. Richard Gale & Alexander Pruss, “A New Cosmological Argument” Religious Studies 35 (1999), 461–476.

17.

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford, ed. 2004), pp. 133-152.



18.

The literature here is truly inexhaustible. Good anthologies include Neil Manson (ed.), God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science (Routledge, 2003). For Manson’s introductory chapter, see his “Introduction to God and Design” pp. 1-23. For an updated version of Elliot Sober’s chapter in the volume (pp. 27-54), which is a critical assessment, see his “The Design Argument.” J. P. Moreland (ed.), The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (IVP, 1994). William Dembski (ed.), Mere Creation (IVP, 1998). Other overviews of deign arguments are Del Ratzsch’s entry “Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, James Beebe’s “The Design Argument for the Existence of God,” and the penultimate draft of Trent Dougherty & Ted Poston’s “A User’s Guide to Design Arguments,” published in Religious Studies 44 (2008), 99-110. See also Swinburne’s “The Argument from Design,” which appears to have been originally published in Philosophy 43 (1968), pp. 199-212. A much more technical presentation is ch 8, “Teleological Arguments” of his The Existence of God (Oxford, ed. 2004), pp. 153-191.

19.

J. P. Moreland has a commendable typology of design phenomena in Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Baker, ed. 2004), pp. 43-75.

20.

See note 58.



21.

Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Current Issues in Teleology (UPA, 1986). Colin Allen, Marc Bekoff, & George Lauder (Eds.), Nature’s Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology (MIT, 1998), especially ch. 10. Mark Bedau, “Can Biological Teleology be Naturalized?” Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991), pp. 647-57. See Colin Allen’s “Teleological Notions in Biology” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For design as sense and cognition, see note 47.

22.

Stephen C. Meyer, “DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification, and Explanation,” in Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (2007), pp. 223-285; “An Inference to the Best Explanation for the Origin of Biological Information,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 1/4 (1998), pp. 519-556. Walter Bradley and Charles Thaxton, “Information and the Origin of Life” in J. P. Moreland, The Creation Hypothesis (IVP, 1994), pp. 173-210. See also the tour de force, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (Lewis & Stanley, 1992) by Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen. Alexander Pruss, “Programs, Bugs, DNA and a Design Argument,” Ch. 4 in Yujin Nagasawa (ed.), New Waves in Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan 2009).

23.

Much relevant literature here can be found in the aforementioned anthologies. Systematic book treatments are Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (The Free Press, ed. 2003). Fazale Rana, The Cell’s Design (Baker, 2008). Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (The Free Press, 1998). Stephen C. Meyer, “Evidence for Design in Physics and Biology: From the Origin of the Universe to the Origin of Life,” in Michael Behe, William A. Dembski, and Stephen C. Meyer, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe: The Proceedings of the Wethersfield Institute (Ignatius, 2001), pp. 53-111. Walter Bradley, “Is There Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God? How the Recent Discoveries Support a Designed Universe.”


24.

Again, much relevant literature here can be found in the aforementioned anthologies. Important books are John Leslie, Universes (Routledge, ed. 1996). John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford, 1986). See William Lane Craig’s review essay, “Barrow and Tipler on the Anthropic Principle vs. Divine Design,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1988), pp.389-395, and his “The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Principle” in his The Logic of Rational Theism: Exploratory Essays (Edwin Mellen, 1990), pp. 127-153. Rob Collins is pioneering work in the area of fine-tuning. See especially his “The Teleological Argument: An Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe,” in Craig & Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 202-281; “The Case for Cosmic Design,” in Paul Draper (ed.) God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Online book, 2007-2008); “God, Design, and Fine-Tuning” and “The Evidence of Fine-tuning.”

25.

William Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge, 1998). See William Lane Craig’s positive review “The Design Inference” Human Events (July 23, 1999), p. 16. Aimed at a more general audience is Dembski’s “Detecting Design in the Natural Sciences,” and a more detailed defense is his “Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design” in (co-ed., Michael Ruse) Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA (Cambridge, 2003).

26.

On the moral argument in general, see Peter Byrne, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Robert Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” in The Virtue of Faith (Oxford, 1987), pp. 144-163. Paul Copan, “The Moral Argument” in Paul Copan & Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Rationality of Theism, (Routledge, 2003), pp. 149-74. Mark Linville, “The Moral Argument” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 391-448. Christopher A. Shrock, “Three Flavors of Moral Argument for the Existence of God.”

27.

Many of the books and articles cited here provide arguments for the justification of belief in and objectivity of morality, but here are two direct treatments: Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defense (Oxford, 2003). Richard Swinburne, “The Objectivity of Morality,” Philosophy 51 (1976), pp. 5-20.

28.

Although many of the works cited here provide accounts of justifying belief in moral facts, a specific way of doing this that deserves mention is developed by Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value (Princeton, 2004) and, most excellently, Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). See also William Lad Sessions, “Coherence, Proper Basicality and Moral Arguments for Theism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 22 (1987), pp. 119-137. This line of thought is also taken up by Copan and Linville.

29.

Douglas R. Geivett, Evil and the Evidence for God: The Challenge of John Hick’s Theodicy (Temple, 1993). Gordon Graham, Evil and Christian Ethics (Cambridge, 2001).

30

A good survey here is John Hare’s God and Morality: A Philosophical History (Oxford, 2006). See also Hare’s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, “Religion and Morality.” Books that argue for such a connection are Philip Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford, 1978); Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford, 2002). William J. Wainwright, Religion and Morality (Aldershot, 2005). An essential article is George Mavrodes, “Religion and the Queerness of Morality,” in Robert Audi & William J. Wainwright (eds.), Rationality, Religious Belief and Moral Commitment: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (Cornell, 1986), pp. 213-226. A Nice summary of Mavrodes’ argument is “Mavrodes, ‘Religion and the Queerness of Morality.’” A more general approach is Michael Murray, “Do Objective Ethical Norms Need Theistic Grounding?”.
31.

William Lane Craig, “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality,” Foundations 5 (1997), pp. 9-12. Stephen C. Layman, “God and the Moral Order,” Faith and Philosophy 19 (2002), pp. 304-16. John Hare, “Is There an Evolutionary Foundation for Human Morality?” in Philip Clayton & Jeffrey Schloss (eds.), Evolution and Ethics (Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 187-203. Michael Rea, “Naturalism and Moral Realism” in Thomas Crisp, David VanderLaan, & Matthew Davidson (eds.), Knowledge and Reality (Kluwer, 2006), pp. 215-242. James M. Sias III, Naturalism and Moral Realism (MA Thesis, 2007). Linda Zagzebski, “Does Ethics Need God?”, Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987), pp. 294-303.

32.

Gregory Ganssle, “Necessary Moral Truths and the Need for Explanation,” Philosophia Christi 2 (2000), pp. 105-12. Paul Copan, “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality,” in Robert Stewart (ed.), The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue (Fortress, 2008), 141-161; “Is Michael Martin a Moral Realist? Sic et Non,” Philosophia Christi 2 (1999), pp. 45-72; “Atheistic Goodness Revisited: A Personal Reply to Michael Martin,” Philosophia Christi 2/1 (2000), pp. 91-104; “Morality and Meaning Without God: Another Failed Attempt,” Philosophia Christi 6/1 (2004), pp. 295-304.

33.

One of the finest critiques, which is both philosophically informed and generally accessible, is Paul Copan’s True for You but Not for Me (Bethany House, revised ed. 2009). On a more popular level, see Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl, Relativism (Baker, 1998). Francis Beckwith, “Why I Am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Norman Geisler & Paul Hoffman Why I am a Christian (Baker, 2001), pp. 15-29. Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism (Ignatius, 1999); “A Refutation of Moral Relativism,” audio and transcript. A good philosophical anthology is Paul Moser & Thomas Carson (eds.), Moral Relativism: A Reader (Oxford, 2001). See especially chapters 9 & 10. For a good summary of problems with moral relativism, see Lewis Vaughn, Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (W.W. Norton & Co, 2007).

34.

See William Sorely, Moral Values and the Idea of God (Cambridge, 1918). Illtyd Trethowan, Absolute Value: A Study in Christian Theism (Humanities, 1970). Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford, 2002). J. P. Moreland, “The Ethical Inadequacy of Naturalism,” Promise (May/June 1996), pp. 36-39. More developed is his The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM, 2009), pp. 143-164. Stuart Hackett, “The Value Dimension of the Cosmos: A Moral Argument” in William Lane Craig (ed.), Philosophy of Religion (Rutgers, 2002), pp. 149-154. Philip Quinn, “On the Intrinsic Value of Human Persons” in Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford, 2007), pp. 237-260. Stewart Goetz & Charles Taliafero, Naturalism (Eerdmans, 2008), ch. 4.

35.

Terrence Cuneo, The Normative Web (Oxford, 2007) and Ralph Wedgwood, The Nature of Normativity (Oxford, 2007). Both Cuneo and Wedgwood argue that there are irreducible normative facts, which entails moral realism (objectivity).

36.

On Altruism, see Colin Grant, Altruism & Christian Ethics (Cambridge, 2000). Jeffery Schloss, “Evolutionary Accounts of Altruism & the Problem of Goodness by Design” in William Dembski (ed.), Mere Creation (IVP, 1998), pp. 236-261. Alexander Pruss, “Altruism, Teleology, and God” (2005).

37.

The variety of approaches to and authors on the ontological argument makes it hard to narrow down the most important contributions. The sixties saw an explosion of literature on the ontological argument. Three books that came out of that decade are Alvin Plantinga (ed.), The Ontological Argument: From St. Anselm to Contemporary Philosophers (Doubleday Anchor, 1965). Charles Harthshorne, Anselm’s Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Argument for God’s Existence (Open Court, 1965). John Hick & Arthur McGill (eds.), The Many-Faced Argument: Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God (Wipf & Stock, 2009 reprint of 1967 ed.). Jonathan Barnes, The Ontological Argument (Macmillan, 1972).Much more recently is Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge, 2007). Kevin Harrelson, The Ontological Argument from Descartes to Hegel (Humanity, 2008). For a very extensive historical and contemporary bibliography, see Raul Corazzon’s page, “History of the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.” See also Graham Oppy’s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, “Ontological Arguments” as well as Kenneth Einar Himma’s “The Ontological Argument” in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A Highly recommended paper is John Baggaley, “The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God.”

38.

Some technical papers sympathetic to Anselm’s argument include: Norman Malcolm, “Anselm’s Ontological Arguments,” Philosophical Review 69 (1960), pp. 41-62. Robert Adams, “The Logical Structure of Anselm’s Argument,” Philosophical Review 80 (1971), pp. 28-54. Paul Oppenheimer & Edward Zalta, “On the Logic of the Ontological Argument” in Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991), pp. 509-29; “Reflections on the Logic of the Ontological Argument,” Studia Neoaristotelica 4 (2007), pp. 28-35.

39.

E.g., Lawrence Nolan, “Descartes Ontological Argument” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.


40.

Peter van Inwagen, “Necessary Being: The Ontological Argument” in Metaphysics (Westview, 2002), pp. 91-114. Stephen Davis, “The Ontological Argument” in Paul Copan & Paul K. Moser (eds.), The Rationality of Theism, (Routledge, 2003), pp. 93-111. William Lane Craig’s “The Ontological Argument” in To Everyone An Answer (IVP, 2004), pp. 124-137 is very accessible, which focuses on Plantinag’s version. Brian Leftow, “The ontological Argument” in William Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 2007), pp. 80-115. Jason Megill and Joshua Mitchell, “A Modest Modal Ontological Argument” Ratio 22/3 (2009), 338-349.

41.

Alvin Plantinga, “The Ontological Argument” from God, Freedom, and Evil (Eerdmans, 1974). Plantinga’s most developed version appears in The Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974), pp. 196-221. A unique defense of the main possibility premise in Platinga’s S5 ontological argument is Alexander Pruss, “The Ontological Argument and the Motivational Centres of Lives,” Religious Studies 46 (2010), 233-249.

42.

Robert Maydole, “A Modal Model for Proving the Existence of God,” American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980), pp. 135-142; “The Modal Perfection Argument for the Existence of a Supreme Being,” Philo 6 (2003), pp. 299-313. “The Ontological Argument,” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 553-592.

43.

E.g., Alexander Pruss, “A Gödelian Ontological Argument Improved,” Religious Studies 45/3 (2009), pp. 347-353. James Baird, “God and Gödel: Gödelian Incompleteness in Mathematics and the Confirmation of Theism,” (1997). C. A. Anderson, “Some Emendations of Gödel’s Ontological Proof,” Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990), 291-303. Robert Koons, “Sobel on Gödel’s Ontological Proof” Philosophia Christi 8 (2006), 235-247. See also Robert Maydole’s treatment of Gödel in “The Ontological Argument” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 574-580.


44.

Many of the arguments in the following footnotes are concisely analyzed in James Anderson’s fine article, “If Knowledge then God: The Epistemological Theistic Arguments of Plantinga and Van Til,” Calvin Theological Journal (2005). James Anderson, “The Theistic Preconditions of Knowledge: A Thumbnail Sketch, ” (2006). Dallas Willard, “Knowledge and Naturalism,” in Craig & Moreland, Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (Routeledge, 2000), ch. 2.

45.

First proposed in chapter 12 of Warrant and Proper Function, “Naturalism Defeated” (Cornell, 1993). See also his draft “An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.” A helpful volume is James Beilby (ed.), Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (Cornell, 2002). A revised version of the EAAN appears in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000), pp. 227-40. Plantinga’s latest statements and defenses are: Alvin Plantinga, “Naturalism vs. Evolution: a Religion/Science Conflict?” in Paul Draper (ed.) God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Online book, 2007-2008); Alvin Plantinga & Michael Tooley, Knowledge of God (Oxford, 2008); Plantinga “Content and Natural Selection,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming). See also Omar Mirza, “A User’s Guide to the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism,” Philosophical Studies 141/2 (2008), pp. 125-146; especially Troy Nunley, A Defense of Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (Dissertation, 2005).

46.

Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (IVP, 2003); Philosophia Christi 5/1 (2003): Symposium on The Argument from Reason; “The Argument from Reason” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 344-390; “The Argument from Reason,” (1998).

47.

See Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford, 1993), especially Ch. 11. Alvin Plantinga & Michael Tooley, Knowledge of God (Oxford, 2008), pp. 20-30. One of the best presentations of the argument from proper function is in James Anderson’s, “If Knowledge then God: The Epistemological Theistic Arguments of Plantinga and Van Til,” Calvin Theological Journal (2005).


48.

J. P. Moreland, Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008); “The Argument from Consciousness,” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 282-234. See his popular summary, “Argument from Consciousness.” Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford, ed. 2004), pp. 192-212. For a less technical version, see his Is There A God? (Oxford, 1996), pp. 69-94. Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge, 2005). Stuart Goetz & Charles Taliaferro, “An Argument from Consciousness and Free Will,” in Paul Draper (ed.) God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Online book, 2007-2008). Robert Adams, “Falvors, Colors, and God” in The Virstue of Faith (Oxford, 1987), pp. 243-262. Adams calls his argument “a version of the argument from consciousness,” but it is essentially the argument from qualia for dualism presented as an argument for theism. A recent book critiquing materialism from a broad range of issues, prominently consciousness, is Robert Koons and George Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism (Oxford, 2010).

49.

Book-length defenses include: John Foster, The Immaterial Self (Routeledge, 1996). Stewart Goetz & Charles Taliafero, Naturalism (Eerdmans, 2008). William Hasker, The Emergent Self (Cornell, 2001). David Lund, The Conscious Self: The Immaterial Center of Subjective States (Humanity, 2005). J. P. Moreland & Scott Rae, Body & Soul (IVP, 2000). Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford, revised edition 1997). More theological is John Cooper’s Body, Soul, & Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthrolology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Eerdmans, 1989). Anthologies include: Joel Green & Stuart Palmer, In Search of the Soul (IVP, 2005). John Smythies & John Beloff (eds.), The Case For Dualism (Charlottesville, 1989). Peter van Inwagen & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford, 2007). Representing more materialist perspectives is Warren Brown, Nancey Murphy, & H. Newton Malony (eds.), Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Fortress, 1998). A tidy overview of a case that can be made for substance dualism can be found in Moreland & Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (IVP, 2003), pp. 228-246. Also for an accessible overview, see Scott Brisbane, “Case for Dualism” and John DePoe, “A Defense of Dualism.” Excellent papers defending dualism include: Brian Leftow, “Souls Dipped in Dust” in Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons (Cornell, 2001), 120-138. John Foster, “A Defense of Dualism” in The Case For Dualism (Charlottesville, 1989), pp. 1-23. Keith Yandell, “A Defense of Dualism,” Faith and Philosophy 12/4 (1995), pp. 548-566. Alvin Plantinga, “Against Materialism,” Faith and Philosophy 23/1 (2006), pp. 3-32. William G. Lycan, “Giving Dualism Its Due,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2008). For a thorough introduction including arguments pro and con, see Howard Robinson, “Dualism” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Dean Zimmerman, “Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind” Encyclopedia of Philosophy (MacMillan, 2nd edition), pp. 113-122; Scott Calef, “Dualism and Mind” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Important naturalistic accounts of dualism are David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford, 1996). Though Chalmers might object to being called a full-fledged dualist, his arguments for the irreducibility of consciousness are important. One might also include Jaegwon Kim, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton, 2005), where he concedes the irreducibility of qualia. For discussions on naturalists who defend dualisms, see William Lycan, “Recent Naturalistic Dualisms,” (2007) and Yujin Nagasawa, “Australian Dualisms.” These “naturalistic dualisms” receive severe chastisements from William Hasker, “How Not to be a Reductivist,” Progress in Complexity, Intelligence, and Design 2/3 (2003) and J. P. Moreland, “If You Can’t Reduce, You Must Eliminate: Why Kim’s Version of Physicalism isn’t Close Enough,” Philosophia Christi 7 (2005), pp. 463-473; Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routeledge, 2008). On arguments for life after death, see J. P. Moreland & Gary Habermas, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wipf & Stock, ed. 2004). William Hasker, “Afterlife,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

50.

Most philosophical defenses of dualism include a priori arguments. See especially Plantinga, Swinburne, and Yandell, on concievability arguments.


51.

A nice overview is J. P. Moreland & Gary Habermas, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wipf & Stock, ed. 2004), in which both a priori and a posteriori arguments are presented.
52.

Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, Theo Meyering, & Michael A. Arbib (eds.), Neuroscience and the Person: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (Notre Dame, 2000). Joel Green, What About the Soul? Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology (Abingdon, ed. 2004) Mario Beauregard & Mario Beauregard, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul (Harper, ed. 2008). See especially Angus Menuge, “Is Downward Causation Possible? How the Mind Can Make a Physical Difference,” Philosophia Christi 11/1 (2009), pp. 93-110 and the literature cited therein. Andrew Clifton “An Empirical Case Against Materialism,” AntiMatters 3/2 (2009), pp. 65-98.

53.

One of the best studies of NDEs as evidence against naturalism is chapters 7-9 of J. P. Moreland & Gary Habermas, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wipf & Stock, ed. 2004).

54.

Robert Koons, “The Incompatibility of Naturalism and Scientific Realism” and Michael Rea, “Naturalism and Material Objects” in Craig & Moreland, Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (Routeledge, 2000), chs. 3, & 5. Michael Rea’s chapter is a condensed version of his most excellent book, A World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism (Oxford, 2004). A good discussion of Rea’s argument is his “Naturalism and Ontology: A Reply to Dale Jacquette,” Faith and Philosophy 22 (2005), pp. 343-357.

55.

See Alvin Plantinga, “How To Be an Anti-Realist,” APA Proceedings and Addresses 56/1 (1982), pp. 47-70. Michael Rea, “Theism and Epistemic Truth-Equivalences,” Noûs 34/2 (2000), pp. 291–301.

56.

Quentin Smith, “The Conceptualist Argument for God’s Existence,” Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994), pp. 38-49. Alvin Platninga, “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments,” section I arguments (a)-(c), pp. 210-213 in Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga (Cambridge, 2007). John Byl, “Theism and Mathematical Realism,” Proceedings of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences (2001), pp. 33-48. See especially the work of Richard Brian Davis, who is pioneering work in this area: “God and Modal Concretism,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008), pp. 37-54; “The Conceptualist Argument: A New Defense,” (forthcoming). For a defense of the coherence of grounding abstracta in God, see Greg Welty, An Examination of Theistic Conceptual Realism as an Alternative to Theistic Activism (Oxford, 2000). Richard Brian Davis, The Metaphysics of Theism and Modality (Peter Lang, 2001).

57.

J. P. Moreland, “Naturalism and the Ontological Status of Properties,” in Craig & Moreland, Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (Routeledge, 2000), ch. 4. Mark Steiner, The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (Harvard, 2002). Russell Howell, “Does Mathematical Beauty Pose Problem for Naturalism?” (2005). Arguments here are independent of but buttressed by the conceptualist argument and vice versa.

58.
John Foster, The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God (Oxford, 2004), book based on his “Regularities, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (2001), pp. 145-161. Del Ratzsch, “Nomo(theo)logical Necessity,” Faith and Philosophy 4/3 (1987), pp. 83-402. Richard Swinburne, “Relations Between Universals, or Divine Laws?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84/2 (2006), pp. 179-189. Good but a bit dated is F. R. Tennant, “Theism and Laws of Nature,” The Harvard Theological Review 17/4 (1924), pp. 375-391. Nancy Cartwright, “No God, No Laws.”

59.

Ronney Mourad, Transcendental Arguments and Justified Christian Belief (University Press of America, 2005). Stuart Hackett, The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim (Baker, 1984), pp. 90-96. Hackett calls his argument “a conceptual argument,” but it more closely resembles the transcendental argument. Sebastian Heck, “Transcendental Arguments in Apologetics – The Current State of Affairs,” (2005). One of best analyses of transcendental arguments, in addition to some of the aforementioned epistemological arguments, is James Anderson, “If Knowledge then God: The Epistemological Theistic Arguments of Plantinga and Van Til,” Calvin Theological Journal (2005). Very thorough is Michael R. Butler, “The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence.” John Frame, “Transcendental Arguments.” A handy outline of the argument is provided by Matt Slick, “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God.”

60.

Before the argument became hot in recent analytic philosophy, there was William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (19902) and Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (1917). Among more recent book-length defenses are William Alston, Percieving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Corness, 1991). Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge, 1993). Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Oxford, 1999). Jerome Gellman, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief (Cornell, 1997). Jerome Gellman, Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry (Ashgate, 2002). Most defenses of this argument are indebted to Richard Swinburne, “The Argument from Religious Experience,” ch. 13 in The Existence of God (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2004), pp. 293-327. A shortened version is his “The Evidential Value of Religious Experience” in Arthur Peacocke (ed.), The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, ed. 1986), pp. 182-196. One of the best overall synopses I’ve read is in Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, & David Basinger (eds.), Reason & Religious Belief (Oxford, 2nd ed. 1998), pp. 18-42. Accordingly, a good collection of essays on the topic is in their companion, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2001), pp. 5-64. A nice presentation is also given by C. Stephen Layman, Letters to Doubting Thomas: A Case for the Existence of God (Oxford, 2007), pp. 38-78. For some of the recent history and defensive strategies, see Kai-man Kwan, “Can Religious Experience Provide Justification for the Belief in God? The Debate in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy” Philosophy Compass 1/6 (2006), pp. 640–661. Two of the best systematic defenses are Douglas Geivett, “The Evidential Value of Religious Experience,” in Paul Copan & Paul Moser (eds.), The Rationality of Theism (Routeledge, 2003). Kai-man Kwan, “The Argument from Religious Experience,” in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 498-552. See also William Alston, “The Experiential Basis of Theism,” (2002). Alexander Pruss, “A Religious Experience Argument for the Existence of a Holy Transcendent Being,” (2001). Travis Dumsday, “Neuroscience and the Evidential Force of Religious Experience,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008), pp. 137-163.

61.

Jeff Jordan, “Pragmatic Arguments for Believing in God,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.


62.

Worthwhile books include Nicholas Rescher, Pascal’s Wager: A Study Of Practical Reasoning In Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, 1985). The best collection of essays is found in Jeff Jordan (ed.), Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager (Rowman & Littlefield, 1994). See Kelly James Clark’s review, “Gambling on God” in Perspectives (1995), pp. 30-31. Jeff Jordan, Pascal’s Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God (Oxford, 2006). See too Jordan’s entry “Pascal’s Wager,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Noteworthy articles, aside from the collection in Gambling on God, are: Richard Swinburne, “The Christian Wager,” Religious Studies 4 (1969), pp. 217–228. Thomas V. Morris, “Pascalian Wagering,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (1986), pp. 437–454. William Lycan and George Schlesinger, “You Bet Your Life: Pascal’s Wager Defended,” in Joel Feinberg (ed.), Reason and Responsibility (Wadsworth, 7th ed., 1989). Alexander Tabarrok, “Believe in Pascal’s Wager? Have I got a Deal for You!” Theory and Decision 48/2 (2000), pp. 123-128. Robert Peterson, “Pascal’s Wager: Logical Consistency and Usefulness as an Argument for the Existence of God,” Global Journal of Classical Theology 5/1 (2005). Joel Esala, “The Epistemology of Pascal’s Wager: A Christian Presuppositional Argument,” Reformed Perspectives Magazine 8/2 (2006). Though more similar to a Jamesian-style pragmatic argument, see Stephen T. Davis, “Pascal on Self-Caused Belief,” Religious Studies 27 (1991), pp. 27-37.

63.
A systematic defense of the Jamesian wager is Jeff Jordan, Pascal’s Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God (Oxford, 2006), pp. 164-187. L. Stafford Betty, “Going beyond James: A Pragmatic Argument for God’s Existence,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 49 (2001), pp. 69–84. Sami Pihlström, “Pragmatic and Transcendental Arguments for Theism: A Critical Examination,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 51/3 (2002). Philip Quinn, “Gale on a Pragmatic Argument for Religious Belief,” Philo 6/1 (2003). Mill’s wager, also discussed in Jordan (pp. 187ff), is similar to what is called “the presumption of theism” below.

64.

Robert Koons, “Faith, Probability, and Infinite Passion,” Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993), pp. 145-160.


65.
Thomas Morris, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life (Eerdmans, 1992). An excellent collection of essays is E. D. Klemke (ed.), The Meaning of Life (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2000). William Lane Craig, “The Absurdity of Life Without God,” from Reasonable Faith (Crossway 1994), pp. 51-75. J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Baker, 2004), pp. 115-132. Jerry Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford, 2002), especially ch. 7, “Heaven, Morality, and the Meaning of Life.” Important articles include: Michael Levine, “What Does Death Have to Do with the Meaning of Life?” Religious Studies 23 (1987), pp. 457-465. Phillip Quinn, “How Christianity Secures Life’s Meanings,” in J. Runzo & N. Martin (eds.), The Meaning of Life in the World Religions (Oxford, 2000), pp. 53-68. Thaddeus Metz, “The Immortality Requirement for Life’s Meaning” Ration 16/2 (2003), pp. 161-177. Jacob Affolter, “Human nature as God’s purpose,” Religious Studies 43 (2007), pp. 443–455. A helpful summary of a lot of the issues involved in the question of the meaning of life is Thaddeus Metz, “The Meaning of Life” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.


66.

The best work on this is John Oller Jr. & John Omdahl, “Origin of the Human Language Capacity: In Whose Image?” in J. P. Moreland (ed.), The Creation Hypothesis (IVP, 1994), pp. 235-269. Jeffery Johnson & Joyclynn Potter, “The Argument from Language and the Existence of God,” Journal of Religion 85/1 (2005), pp. 83-93. James Bohn, “Beyond the fire of Prometheus: The capacity for human speech: Empirical evidence of the Image of God,” Quodlibet Journal 4/2-3 (2002). And, for reference’s sake, Brad Harrub, Dave Miller, & Bert Thompson, “The Origin of Language and Communication,” Reason & Revelation 22/8 (2002), pp. 57-63, though I hasten to disassociate with anything related AIG or ICR.


67.

Good but brief treatments are J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Baker, 2004), pp. 48-49. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford, 2nd ed., 2004), pp. 190-191. More extensive philosophical treatments appear in Donald Wayne Viney, “The Aesthetic Argument,” ch. 9 of Charles Hartshorne and the Existence of God (SUNY, 1985), pp. 119-128. Mark Wynn, “Providence and Beauty,” ch. 1 in God and Goodness: A Natural Theological Perspective (Routelegde, 1999), pp. 11-36. Many hark back to F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology Vol. 2. (Cambridge, 1930). Excellent, though not especially technical are: Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet (Ignatius, 1999). Benjamin Wiker & Jonathan Witt, A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (IVP, 2006). For beauty as a theodicy, see Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford ), pp. 49-53. Alexander Pruss, “The Cosmos as a Work of Art,” (2004). One of the finest treatments is Peter Williams, “Aesthetic Arguments for the Existence of God,” Quodlibet Journal 3/3 (2001). Eleonore Stump, “Beauty as a Road to God,” Sacred Music 134/4 (2007), 11-24.. A common premise in the argument from beauty asserts the existence of objective beauty, a book-length defense of which is Eddy M. Zemach’s Real Beauty (Penn State , 1997). Though unpublished, Jim Speigel has some good thoughts on the argument from beauty in a series of posts entitled, “An Anti-Naturalist Argument from Beauty” and “Why Beauty is an Objective Quality in the World.” Russell Howell, “Does Mathematical Beauty Pose Problem for Naturalism?” (2005).

68.

See Alexander Pruss’s interesting but brief thoughts in “The Ontological Argument from Desire”

69.

See Douglas Groothuis’s two articles, “Deposed Royalty: Pascal’s Anthropological Argument,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41/2 (1998); “A Royal Ruin: Pascal’s Argument from Humanity to Christianity.” See also Robert Verlarde, “Greatness and Wretchedness: The Usefulness of Pascal’s Anthropological Argument in Apologetics.”

70.

Alexander Pruss, “Samkara’s Principle and Two Ontomystical Arguments,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 49 (2001), pp. 111–120. T. Ryan Byerly, “The Ontomystical Argument Revisited,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (forthcoming).



71.

Jan Cover and John O’Leary-Hawthorne, “Free Agency and Materialism,” in Jeff Jordan & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), Faith, Freedom and Rationality (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 47-71. J. P. Moreland, “Naturalism and Libertarian Agency” Philosophy and Theology 10/2 (1997), pp. 353-383; “The Explanatory Relevance of Libertarian Agency as a Model of Theistic Design,” in William Dembski (ed.), Mere Creation (IVP, 1998), pp. 265-288. Stewart Goetz, “Naturalism and Libertarian Agency,” in Craig & Moreland (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (Routledge, 2000), pp. 156-186. Stuart Goetz & Charles Taliaferro, “An Argument from Consciousness and Free Will,” in Paul Draper (ed.) God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence (Online book, 2007-2008).



72.

Edwin Yamauchi, The Stones and the Scriptures (IVP, 1973). Walter Kaiser, The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? (IVP, 2001). K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2003).



73.

Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Oxford, 1964). John A. T Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (Eerdmans, 1977). Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament History? (Servant Publications, 1986). F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (IVP, 1982). Colin Hermer, & Conrad H. Gempf, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Eisenbrauns, 1990). A wonderful resource is Darren Hewer, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (2nd Ed., 2010). For a nice general overview, see J. P. Moreland, “The Historicity of the New Testament,” ch 5 of Scaling the Secular City (Baker, 1987), 133-157.



74.

Craig Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels (Broadman and Holman, 1997). Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (IVP, ed. 2007); The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel (Apollos, 2001). Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Eerdmans, 2006).



75.




76.




77

Some of the better resources here are the following (and the bibliographical materials therein): F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974). Gary Habermas, Gary Habermas, “Ancient non-Christian Sources” ch 9 of The Historical Evidence: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (College Press, 1996), 187-228. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Eerdmans, 2000). Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Jesus Outside the New Testament: What is the Evidence?” in Michael Wilkins & J. P. Moreland (eds.), Jesus Under Fire (Zondervan, 1995), 207-229. See “Jesus Outside the Bible,” Part II of Craig Evans (ed.), The Historical Jesus: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (Routledge, 2004), especially Evans’ article, “Jesus in non-Christian Sources,” pp. 375-406.

78.

More robust treatments are: Gary Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Rational Inquiry (Michigan State University Dissertation 1976). William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (The Edwin Mellon Press, ed. 2002). A condensed and popular treatment this study is his The Son Rises (Wipf & Stock, 2000). An excellent scholarly and up-to-date treatment is “The Resurrection of Jesus” ch 8 in Reasonable Faith (Crossway, 3rd ed.), pp. 133-407. Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Eerdmans, 1993). Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (eds.), The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus (Oxford, 1997). N. T. Wright’s magnius opum, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003). Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford, 2003). One of the more philosophically sophisticated and thorough treatments is Timothy and Lydia McGrew, “The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,” in Craig and Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 593-662. Smaller treatments: William Lane Craig, “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Truth 1 (1985), pp. 89-95. Habermas, “The Case for Christ’s Resurrection” in Beckwith, Craig, and Moreland (eds.), To Everyone an Answer (IVP, 2004), pp. 180-198.


79.

David Basinger and Randall Basinger, Philosophy and Miracle: The Contemporary Debate (Edwin Mellen Press, 1986). Gary Habermas and Douglas Geivett (eds.), In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History (IVP, 1997). Richard Swinburne, The Concept of Miracle (Macmillan 1971); Swinburne (ed.), Miracles (Prentice Hall 1989); “For the Possibility of Miracles” in Louis Pojman (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology (Wadsworth, 4th ed., 2003), pp. 269-275. A wonderfully balanced look at the issues is “Miracles: Does God Intervene in Earthly Affairs?” ch. 9 of Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, & David Basinger (eds.), Reason & Religious Belief (Oxford, 2nd ed. 1998), pp. 190-211. William Lane Craig, “The Problem of Miracles: A Historical and Philosophical Perspective,” In Gospel Perspectives VI (1986), pp. 9-40; A substantially updated treatment can be found in Reasonable Faith (Crossway, 3rd ed. 2008), pp. 247-283. See also Craig’s great discussion of the concept of miracle in “Creation, Providence, and Miracle,” in Brian Davies (ed.), Philosophy of Religion (Georgetown University Press, 1998), pp. 136-162. John DePoe, “How to Confirm a Miracle: A Bayesian Approach” (Presented at APA Central Meeting, 2007) and “Vindicating a Bayesian Approach to Confirming Miracles” Philosophia Christi 10/1 (2008), pp. 229-238. Michael Levine, “Miracles” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005). See also James Arlandson’s impressive “Bibliography of Miracles” (2007).

80.

See Peter Winebrenner Stoner and Robert C. Newman’s peer-reviewed book, Science Speaks (Moody Press; 3rd revised ed., 1969). See also Newman (ed.), The Evidence of Prophecy: Fulfilled Prediction as a Testimony to the Truth of Christianity (Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1990). Newman, “Fulfilled Prophecy as Miracle,” in Gary Habermas and Douglas Geivett (eds.), In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History (IVP, 1997), pp. 214-225. Robert C. Newman, John A. Bloom, and Hugh G. Gaugh, Jr. “Public Theology and Prophecy Data: Factual Evidence That Counts for the Biblical Worldview”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46:1 (2003), pp. 79-110. For a similar attempt to assign probabilities to prophecies, see Hugh Ross, “Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible”. On prophecy as design, see Gregory Koukl, “Prophecy and People: Both Designed to Fit”

5000 years of religion in 90 Seconds

Islam

Islam is one of the controversial topics of our time. Who could forget where they were and what they were doing at the exact moment in time when they found out about the tragic events of 9/11? In the past decade Westerners have become increasingly suspicious of Muslims, and the media has taken full advantage of this and some would say promoted this fear by it's coverage of events such as the Danish Cartoon episode and the Cronulla riots. One Muslim recently responded by posting billboards in Sydney and Adelaide and had civil discussions with Christian leaders on publicchristianity.com and at The City Bible Forum in order to boost and positively influence the public's understanding of his faith.

But ultimately, is there any basis for believing in Islam? This is a question that David Wood seeks to answer- in the negative. Wood is a philosopher and a former atheist who converted to Christianity but then became increasingly interested in Islam as a result of his interactions with Muslim friends. One of his close friends converted to Christianity and then became a ministry partner of Wood's, and so Wood continues his work on Islam.

Go here to download a 90 minute interview with Wood.

The interview covers many topics:

- The Dearborn Arab Festival in the US, in a town where 30% of the population is Arabic, they hold a festival each year. Wood details his exploits and the trouble he's found himself in over the years- semi-interesting but insignificant in the big picture.

- His own background and how he became interested in Islam. Skip the first 20 or 30 mins of the interview- the good stuff comes later.

- Arguments Muslims use for their own position such as the Argument from Literary Excellence which says that the poetry in the Koran is perfect thus it has a perfect source.

- The Koran's claim that the Torah and New Testament predict the coming of Mohammed. Thus, Muslims claim that Deutoronomy 18 and the Gospel of John 14-16 both predict his arrival.

- The idea of abrogation. This is the hermeneutical principle that contradicting ideas are resolved by appealing to a chronological evolution, based on the idea that God would only give a revelation equal to or better than a prior one.

Wood discussed various verses from the Koran-to the effect of "There is no compulsion in religion" and "You have your religion and I will have mine" and contrasts these with later verses on violence and later dictations about the treatment of unbelievers, who were forced to pay a tax or submit to Islam. He argues that the journey of Mohammed's life saw him go from advocating peacefulness when his followers were in the minority, towards negative jihad and then finally towards positive jihad when the numbers allowed it, and that this could help explain why Muslims in the West usually have a more tolerant attitude to unbelievers than do Muslims in Muslim dominated regions. He warns that Muslims may be well meaning and uneducated about their own faith but that the proper use of abrogation (which is funnily enough more popular in Muslim countries, he claims) inevitably will result in negative behaviour towards unbelievers in the long term.

- The need to understand Muslims on their own terms and thus respond appropriately to their arguments with this understanding in mind. He says that no apologetics type books actually do this well enough, and that no apologetics works give the fullest, deepest responses (Although he says Answering Islam by Geisler and Saleeb is the best book answer to Islam that he knows of). He says Answering-Islam.org is the most comprehensive archive or responses to Islam and that it will not fall foul on the charge he levels against the books that are in print.

He gives the example of responding to the Muslim charge that the Bible has been corrupted. He says the first response should be that Surah 6:115 and Surah 18:27 claim that God's word can't be corrupted or changed, that the Koran teaches that the Torah and the Gospel are God's word, and that therefore if God's word cannot be corrupted then the Muslim shouldn't be arguing that the Koran is wrong and that God's word has been corrupted. Then, he says, after making this argument you should go onto make the standard textual criticism type arguments on the basis of manuscript evidence and the like.

The Art of Persuasion

John Dickson has a new article titled Art of Persuasion Not so Simple. In many ways it's similar in theme and argument to a prior article of his titled The Way we Believe which I mentioned last year except with discussions of some different sources to illustrate his points.

His conclusion is worth taking heed of:

Whether on climate change, politics, religion or ethics, we do not change our minds on the basis of facts alone. Indeed, they may even bolster contrary views. What environmental campaigners, refugee advocates, gay rights lobbyists, atheist evangelists and churches need if they are to be persuasive are not just more facts but a narrative that stirs our hearts and a social movement that wins our trust.

Thoughts on Philosophy of Reading

Why read? Are there different types of reading? What should I read? Is there any specific advice I should take heed of when it comes to reading?

For those of us for whom reading is a relatively big part of our lives, the above questions will inevitably be crucial. Here I'll lay out some general thoughts on reading.

Why Read?

- It enhances literary skills- both reading and writing.
- It broadens ones perspective and develops ones understanding of issues with a depth that other forms of learning will inevitably fail to achieve.
- It helps develop the ability to disseminate information and process it.
- It is enjoyable.

Are there different types of reading?

- According to the Classic How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren, there are three types of reading or purposes for reading: Reading for entertainment, reading for information, and reading for understanding.
- Fiction and Non Fiction.
- Genre: History, science, philosophy, theology, etc etc.
- Format: Books- scholarly books, popular level books, textbooks, website articles, scholarly journal articles, blog entries, magazines, newspapers.

What Should I Read? is a far more complicated and difficult question. Using Adler's 3 categories, generally I personally read for understanding. Many other issues come into play here- this is now an interpretive issue rather than just a basic question like the first two above.

Some random thoughts follow:

- Read old and new books. CS Lewis suggests at least one old work for every 3 contemporary works. We're all a product of our times to one degree or another, regardless of whether we want to be or not. Opening one's mind to the exchanges at the table of ideas from days gone past can serve many purposes: Helps free our thinking and helps us avoid getting stuck in our own cultural vortex thus avoiding chronological snobbery, teaches us that "there's nothing new under the sun", opens our eyes, allows us to consider different frameworks for understanding or new ways of looking at issues that we may not have considered.

Read things at an appropriate level for you. . Fairly self explanatory I would have thought, but failing to take stock of this one could have drastic consequences. What can happen is picking up a book and realising it's just way above your head and then losing interest as a result. As per my list before, writing comes in various formats and at various levels. Also, different writings presuppose different levels of existing understanding within their readers. Always look at things like: How many pages long is the book? How technical is the language? Have I read anything else on the specific topic or issues from this book? Always flick through a book, read the table of contents, and read a few paragraphs here and there. Even the blurb and commendations may help because they may indicate who the book is intended for and at what level it is written.


Tips?

Again, a complicated question.

- Understand what you are reading and read thoroughly and deeply: This is a difficult one for me because I constantly see new books I want to read. But I'm still convinced that the whole enterprise of reading is almost pointless unless one gets a thorough understanding of what one is reading, remembers the main points or arguments that the author has made, considers consequences of their reading and how the ideas presented may be true or false, the assumptions and presuppositions, and how they may relate to, complement or conflict with existing ideas, thoughts and frameworks of understanding.

Use tools to help you read more effectively Underline, highlight key points, make notes, whatever works for you really.

Connect the dots. Keep an eye on th author's Big Picture. Attempt to follow the author's argument- if he is a good author this should be relatively clear. Inevitably, a book will have a central theme. It may be structured in various ways; with standalone chapters, or with chapters that build on each other and thus presuppose a reading of the prior chapters, etc. The argument will usually build as the book continues, though. Always try to understand where your current bit fits into the whole. This will help you make sense of the book's main line of thought and critically consider how ideas are interconnected and how the various arguments depend on each other or are interconnected.

Remember the finiteness of human attempts to reason through problems in any form, even including the literary form- the best form I know of for gaining understanding This may seem a bizarre inclusion but allow me to justify. This is more of an epistemological observation but it relates to reading hence I've included it. (Anyone who reads through more than a couple of my blog entries will observe the importance that generally I place on epistemology; thus there is almost nowhere where epistemological thoughts aren't welcome).

I disagree with the argument of Adler (if I remember correctly- I do not have the book in front of me) to the effect that one is compelled to action- or changing one's beliefs if one cannot pin the author on one of the four possible criticisms Adler offers, ie: The author is not aware of/has not considered other information that could render his thesis less plausible, the author has made an error of logic etc etc. It appears to me that Adler is guilty of an overestimation of the powers of human reason here, an overtly rationalistic approach that is untenable in light of the inability of humans to solve all the necesaary puzzles they wish they could with the powers of their grey matter alone.

I would perhaps agree with Adler but reduce some of the force of his suggestion: I'd suggest that readers are obligated to critically consider what they read, but I wouldn't say that necessarily they owe the author and that it is their duty to change views because they personally cannot, at that point, show exactly why the author is wrong. Note: I'm not advocating irrationalism here, I'm merely attempting to work in an understanding of human finiteness as it relates to reading. One should initially contemplate and take time to work through the author's conclusions, and seek to look at the problem from various angles through different frameworks, and examine the author's assumptions. If, through the cold light of day and after considering the issue carefully one comes to a different conclusion or changes their view to align with the author's that is good and should be welcomed, but one should always take the time to digest what a particular view means and balance the importance of that view or it's strength against opposing views.

If one comes across an unanswerable puzzle, there may in fact be a good answer that one has not yet come across. This is related to the general observation that conflicting ideas do exist and often need to be balanced against each other, and that occasionally one can be justified in believing in the existence of unanswerable paradoxes or simply not committing to any given idea; for example if other conflicting ideas exist and there is evidence in both directions. (Also, as I previously noted, one of the marks of an educated mind is holding different ideas in tension).

Take a speed reading course . I haven't done this but would like to do it one day. All reports suggest it's a worthwhile exercise.

Don't become a dogmatic know-it-all. We must also remember the vast pool of human knowledge that exists. Even the most learned and intelligent members of society know only a miniscule amount of the possible pool of current human knowledge, thus it seems that one should always keep in mind that having too much certainty about one's knowledge or views is often a bad thing. In my own experience, the more I learn the more I realise how much I don't know.

Enjoy and grow without being consumed or isolated Reading is enjoyable, as I already noted. And reading helps one grow one's knowledge, as I already noted. But reading is like many other things: there is something known as "too much of a good thing". Always keep in mind the purposes for which you read nd if you find those purpose unwittingly changing then consider this carefully. For example, you may read to increase your understanding of issues A, B and C, but could there be other purposes slipping in- for example to pridefully prove how much you know to other people? (This was a dot point on a sermon I recently heard at my home church on the Discipline of Study), or to escape from life because life itself isn't really working for you? These are just examples.

Be careful, because the mere mechanics of reading open up the possibility of becoming overly engrossed to an unreasonable point. Reading is an isolated activity; being social creatures, this can mean reading too much can mean we are too isolated.

That's about all I have- this has been unlike most of the posts on this blog thus far in the sense that this is probably more random and less well proof-read. But the purpose of this was to simply jot down my thoughts on reading- and I've accomplished that purpose. I hope these thoughts benefit anyone who might read this.

The Problem with "Universal" Values

Atheists regularly claim that they support "Universal values". This claim is often made in the context of a Christian arguing that they support "Christian values" like love, goodwill and caring for each other. The atheist will reply with something like this: "How dare you claim those as Christian values! I support those values too, and they've been around since before your ridiculous religion even got started". Sound familiar? The implication here is that those values fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking. I would like to challenge that implication.

Here I think we have a problem that we could call the social conditioning problem. We are all conditioned, to some degree by the time and place in which we live, and the influences of our society do impact on the lens with which we view the world. Everyone who lives in a Western Country lives in a location whose heritage has been strongly influenced by Christianity. So atheists have been socially conditioned to accept values that we take for granted in our Western way of thinking, which has historically been influenced by Christianity. In other words, a large part of the reason why the atheist claims that Christian values fit in with their way of thinking is because their way of thinking has been indirectly influenced by...you guessed it, Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins has referred to himself as a "cultural christian". Professor Edwin Judge makes the following comments in an interview entitled Christianity and the 21st Century:

"In Australia, very many of the ideals of the general culture, Australian values so-called, clearly come from that tradition (Edit note- ie: Christian tradition), and what the churches need to do, and what indeed the public needs to do is to inform itself better of the true sources of these things. The matter should be studied historically"

"We stand in this dual heritage from Greece and Israel but people have lost awareness of the sources of it".

"We must make the study of the Biblical tradition available to everybody, not just under church auspices but part of the commitment of our culture as a whole to the historical study of it not as a matter of personal belief but as a matter of explanation for why our values are such as they are. We should not accept that they can be declared, as people do, to be secular values".

He concludes:

"The true source of the value system needs to be clear. Everybody needs to know that, particularly people who have no church connection".

The atheist must account for the origin or basis of their values- do they have a consistent basis within their own worldview for exclusively supporting those values? Christians certainly do. The entire Bible has a consistent theme of putting others first and loving others, right through from the ten commandments to Jesus and through to the writings of Paul in the New Testament (for example see Romans 12: 9-21). When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied with the following:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).

But what about the atheist? Can the atheist naturalist honestly claim a similar consistent basis for their values within their own view of the world? I'm inclined to agree with John Dickson, who says the following:

if human beings are only accidents in an unknowing universe, how can this choice be anything more than a mere preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker?

Dickson concludes:

only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.

So do the values of love, compassion and goodwill really fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking? History and common sense would suggest otherwise.

Do Extraordinary Events Require Extraordinary Evidence?

The statement that "extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence" is a gross over-simplification.

It all depends on your prior assumptions and the surrounding ideas that you take into the discussion. If naturalism is true, then miracles are clearly impossible or at least exceedingly unlikely, so it would make sense that any claim of a miracle would constitute a claim that an extraordinary event had happened.

However, there are good reasons to doubt naturalism and there is a reasonable case to be made that a God-like being exists. Furthermore there’s a strong historical basis for Jesus claiming to be divine. Given those things, Jesus’s miracles and resurrection aren’t extraordinary at all- they become highly possible in their own right.

Following on from this, we can take Dr William Lane Craig's basic point that the evidence needs to be considered in the context of the likelihood of other explanations and whether or not the evidence would appear the way it does if another explanation were true. By reviewing the evidence concerning the events surrounding the resurrection, we can see that the various natural explanations seem highly implausible. If we consider the evidence without assuming naturalism, and instead consider it within the context of God probably/maybe existing and Jesus previously making the verbal claim that he possessed divine power then the resurrection appears to be the most likely explanation of the evidence.

The Cosmological Argument

The "Cosmological Argument" refers to a a branch of arguments for the existence of God. The cosmological argument comes in various forms but the general idea is that we begin with an undeniable fact- the existence of the universe- and reason to the existence of God, by arguing that God is the best explanation for the universe or that the universe requires a cause.

Recently the most popular version has been the Kalam Cosmological Argument which has been vigorously defended in both popular and scholarly works over the past 30 years by Dr William Lane Craig. That argument proposes that the universe began to exist and that God is it's cause.

However other versions of the cosmological argument propose a principle called the "principle of sufficient reason" or other causal principles and propose that God is the necessary explanation of the universe. Dr Alexander Pruss is one scholar today who argues for the principle of sufficient reason. Here is a wide-ranging article titled "Some Recent Progress on the Cosmological Argument" where Pruss covers various issues in contemporary philosophical debates about cosmological arguments and the problems with the principle of sufficient reason. He focuses on various grounds for attack that opponents of Cosmological Arguments use. Here's an outline of the structure:

1. Introduction
2. Need the first cause be God?
3. Can there be an explanation not involving a first cause?
4. The principle of sufficient reason
5. Four justifications of belief in the PSR or the CP
6. The Taxi cab objection
7. Alternatives to the PSR
8. Conclusions

Pruss concludes that "The last fifty years of analytic philosophy has focused our attention on three critical questions about cosmological arguments. Each of these questions can receive a plausible answer from a defender of the cosmological argument. Moreover, a cumulative case argument can be run from the number of different principles on which a cosmological argument can be based. There is thus good reason, even on the basis of the cosmological argument alone, to suppose that a
God-like being exists.".

Is his conclusion reasonable? Read the article and see what you think! And beware: Some of it is very heavy going, especially if you're relatively uninitiated in philosophy like I am.

Update

I haven't paid sufficient attention to this blog recently, as is evident from the time it's been since my last post. I've still been spending time reading books, however I've kept my thoughts to my minimal personal notes, along with the notes in the margins of the books I've been reading.

Here are some good links I've recently discovered on various topics:

The Christ Myth

In internet circles, many atheists consider it fashionable to make statements like "What's the point of arguing about Jesus's Resurrection? After all, Jesus might not have even existed". This is called "The Christ Myth", or the idea that no man named Jesus ever even walked the earth. This claim is fairly radical. Most intelligent skeptics argue that Jesus was a travelling wise man, or was an apocalyptic prophet who was put to death for his anti Temple rantings. However the Christ Myth claim says that not only did Jesus fail to have any supernatural powers; actually he didn't even exist.

I've heard the anti-Jesus argument refuted many times, for example in the following places:

- John Dickson's various materials: The New Atheism DVD, The Christ Files DVD and book, and The Life of Jesus book.

- John Dickson's videos on Public Christianity's web site.

- Gary Habermas and Michael Licona's A Case For The Resurrection of Jesus, where an extensive footnote lays out why Josephus is very good evidence of the existence of Jesus.

However, I was interested to hear a fuller and more detailed representation of the alternative argument, as the above sources only provided small quotes here and there. This is one reason why I purchased Five Views On The Historical Jesus, where Robert Price is alloted 20 or 25 pages to make his case. Price is one of two historians in the world that I'm aware of who argue for this view. As is obvious from the review I posted on Amazon, I was not impressed. The case that Jesus never existed relies on ignoring a lot of evidence, twisting the rest of the evidence with bizarre leaps of (il)logic and relying on mere possibility when it's crystal clear that the probability suggests another interpretation.

This is why I'm glad to have recently found James Hannam's four part series on the issue. This is a succint and clear refutation of The Christ Myth. You could read the whole thing in half an hour or less and you'd have received a solid summary of the reasons why the arguments for The Christ Myth are exceedingly weak. In another entry, I will either explain or link to an article explaining why it's historically certain that Jesus at very least existed.

Audio Bible

Go here for a fully dramatised NIV audio bible. The only downside is that you'll have to download each chapter seperately- there doesn't seem to be an option for downloading entire biblical books at a time.

Communication, information, and the beauty of the internet

One important aspect of communication is this: The medium of communication must match it's target audience.

Often I'll read a book or an article on a particular subject and I'll want to talk about this subject with others, or will want to suggest the resource to someone (on a forum for example). However, many people simply aren't interested enough to buy books; they might not be the type of person who'll sit down and read for an hour or two. Alternatively, even when people are the reading or studying type, they often don't consider the issue enough of a priority at that point in time to consider alloting any significant amount of time on it. This is one reason why the internet can be so good: The variation and amount of information on the internet is astounding. Journal articles? Look around, you will find plenty. Some professors upload their journal articles on their faculty pages. And there's some good resource websites out there too: Last seminary.com, for example. Full length books? You'll find a few for free (for example go here and scroll down the left hand side till you find "Online Books"). Or look through bookdepository.co.uk,amazon.com and booko.com.au for the cheapest prices. Shorter, less scholarly articles? Plenty, of varying quality. Videos? Again, plenty of varying quality. Want to find further resources on a particular subject? Google is your best friend. Wiki is a good friend too, as is the "people who purchased this book also purchased...." section on Amazon.com.

I'm continually aiming to A. Build up a list of the best sites to visit online, B. Hone my internet information searching skills and C. Work through ways to best collate or record the information I find for further thought, connect the new information with other knowledge I've gained, and store information for later reference. One of the main roles I see this blog as serving is providing a summary of solid information gleaned from the depths of the vast Internet Ocean.

Women In Ministry


This is an interesting issue and it's one that I don't like being dogmatic about. It's definitely an "open hand" rather than a closed fist issue for me, to borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll. But I strongly lean towards the idea that women should have just as much of a place in ministry as anyone else. Perhaps, for pragmatic and socialogical reasons it may be wise to have a male head pastor in most cases however I don't see that as a hard and fast rule as far as the theology of it goes.

Many people have a reasonable level of interest in this topic, but I'd wager few would consider it important enough to read any extended treatment on the issue. I myself have only read one extended treatment, and that was due to the topic being couched inside a book on something else- the issue was used as a case study for Scot McKnight's approach to reading the Bible in The Blue Parakeet, a book I highly recommend.

Without further ado, check out Ben Witherington's interview with PublicChristianity.com. . The most relevant section is 3:10- 4:26. Here are my comments following brief summaries of Witherington in bold:

- Examples of Bibical Women and the roles they fulfilled: Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla etc. If women in the early church were church leaders ("apostle") and taught men, what makes us think we possess a better system for the church in the 21st century?

- An explanation of passages in 1 Corinthians and 1st Timothy which makes good sense of the fact that women acted in the various roles in point 1. This explanation highly contextualises those passages, and Witherington summarises his point very briefly. This explanation makes more sense of the Bible as a whole and the big picture than the view that women should, to put it crudely, sit in church quietly and not take any major role in church leadership or teaching type ministries.

Many would no doubt complain that Witherington's take doesn't involve a plain vanilla reading of the passages. However, as Witherington says: "A text without a context is simply a pretext for whatever you want it to say". The pastoral epistles and the doctrinal books of the NT were written to specific people in specific places and were used for particular purposes at particular times. This does NOT mean that we can simply write them off as irrelevant. However, it does mean that we ALWAYS need to be aware of the historical and contextual issues surrounding the texts and that these issues will impact on our interpretations. (Although I don't want to go along that line of thinking any further here, other than state my view of the application to the issue at hand).

With Women in Ministry, 1. We have strong reasons to doubt that a vanilla reading makes sense of other parts of the Bible. (Paul describes and works alongside women leaders and teachers in the early church and then explicitly forbids women leaders and teachers forever and beyond. Really?) AND 2. There's a case to be made that the texts in question were utilised for a particular time and are not relevant today. Scot McKnight discusses some historical and textual arguments for point 2 in his book and Witherington summarises one brief argument in the linked vid.

In combination, these two points make the interpretation given by Witherington and McKnight more plausible than the interpretation that we should take Paul at his literal word, as if it were directed to 21st century western culture and command women keep silent in churches.