Right Reason

For those with an interest in Alvin Plantinga, and in particular his now notorious “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism,” you’ll be interested in his new article on “Religion and Science” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I just discovered this today. Reclaiming the Mind ministries have a regular paltalk room where prominent Christian scholars are guest speakers on a variety of subjects.

Previous guests have included such notables as Alvin Plantinga, John Frame, William Lane Craig, Dan Wallace and others. All you need is to download Paltalk. Check out the link above. This looks like a really good thing here, I’m certainly going to check it out!

I’m working on a paper on William Hasker’s Emergent Dualism and his model of how the mind survives the death of the body. This blog entry isn’t so much about whether he’s right or not, but about an astronomical claim that he refers to.

As a parallel to his claim that the mind survives the death of the body, he appeals to his claim that in a black hole, the matter that possesses the intense gravity literally ceases to exist, and the gravity field continues to exist with literally no matter at its centre.

Every astronomy resource I can locate indicates that this is false, and that the matter at the centre of a black hole continues to exist, or that if it were to dissipate, the black hole would evaporate. I don’t suppose anyone knows of any source that suggests the contrary, do they?

Well, it’s been a while but I’m back. I’ve just uploaded a new article in the philosophy section. “Is There an Echo in Here? Critiques of God based Ethics.”

It’s about the weak point in modern moral philosophy. Open any mainstream textbook on ethical theory, whether it’s by Singer, Timmons, Rachels, or Pojman (and many others), and turn to the section on religiously grounded ethics. Bingo, you found the weak point.

Philosophers – even those who specialise in ethics – lower their standards when it comes to religion. Straw men abound, and ignorance reigns supreme. In spite of the fact that the last forty years as seen a vast literature in philosophy of religion on the relationship between God and morality, especially divine command theories of ethics, the same old tired objections keep getting trotted out with absolutely no interaction with this literature. Heck, I guess religious theories are so stupid that it doesn’t matter how we convince people to reject them, as long as we do. Right?

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately. I’m trying to get pieces prepared for publication while I’m on the Publication Award from University, as well as applying for as many jobs as I can, and preparing for Christmas and all that.

But I thought I’d just pop back in briefly to let anyone who is interested know that my dialogue, “A New Euthyphro” will be published (not sure when) in the journal Think: Philosophy for Everyone.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

A number of you have no doubt seen this map of “Jesusland.”

I’ve seen a wide range of comments on this. It’s basically an illustration of where the conservative voting states are, as opposed to the left/liberal states. Some American bloggers (leftist ones, naturally) make comments like “Isn’t it scary/interesting how all the sane states are contiguous with Canada?”

I prefer to put it another way: Look out, apparently Canada is contagious. Avoid contact.

For a long time now, New Zealand has been a nuclear free nation. Not only do we not build nuclear weapons (which I think is a good thing), we also don’t have nuclear power generation, and we don’t even let nuclear powered ships come into our waters.

Back in the 80s, Labour Prime Minister David Lange worked hard to establish opposition to nuclear weapons. Good on him, I say. But his stupid, ignorant, anti-American colleagues (one of whom, Helen Clark, is now the Prime Minister) wanted to make sure American military vessels stayed out of New Zealand waters, so they wouldn’t vote for Lange’s legislation unless it was extended to ban nuclear propulsion and nuclear power generation. A generation of uninformed lefty liberal hippie nutters become unable to draw any distinction between the two.

Folks – especially folks from New Zealand – spend just a little while studying the issue before marching with a placard or getting all self righteous about nuclear power. What would you prefer, that we keep dgging out huge chunks of the earth for coal? Or that we keep damming up rivers? Nuclear energy is not the bogeyman. The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition is bang on in its recent comments. Opposition to nuclear power is based on widespread, vigorous, self sustaining and willful ignorance, and on a seemingly deliberate campaign of deception. Bryan Leyland of the NZCSC rightly takes the Green Party to task for contributing to all of these and more.

They claim that nuclear power is ‘unsustainable given the dangers of a Chernobyl type meltdown.’ Arguing against modern nuclear power stations because one badly operated power station failed when its protective devices were shut off and without secondary containment, is the same as arguing that we should not consider modern cruise liners because the Titanic did not have radar, or opposing modern cars because a model T Ford wasn’t crash tested and didn’t have seat belts.

and

“This government is opposed to nuclear power and weapons only because, as David Lange once said to me ‘Cabinet could not understand that there is a difference between a nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor,'” said Mr Leyland.

Well said. And just when the National Party gets new leadership in John Key, who some of us were hoping might bring an end to National’s ambiguity on the issue in a positive way, he lapses into the same politically correct ignorance driven nonsense as the left, when he affirmed that “For as long as I am leader of the National Party, the nuclear-free legislation will remain intact.”

A new magazine has been launched, called Salvo. I like it. In fact I like it a lot. Just browse the list of names of the editorial advisory board – Francis Beckwith, Paul Copan, Robert P. George and others – it’s an impressive lineup.

It’s a slick, snappy presentation, obviously geared towards a young audience – college freshmen perhaps – addressing a host of contemporary philosophical and ethical issues from a Christian perspective. The opening issue has material ranging from the thought provoking and profound (like an article on Hollywood’s mixed messages on cloning or a piece on DNA and its complex specified information) to the downright hilariously satirical (spoof advertisements for euthanasia services and the abortion pill).

I want to say those things first to make it clear that my opinion of the magazine as a whole is very positive. I think the concept is great. I haven’t seen anything quite this well put together addressed to this target audience in such an intellectually serious level while still retaining a popular appeal. In fact, I intend to contact these people and let them know just how much I liked the first issue, and tell them that this is just the sort of thing I would be very interested in contributing to.

Can you hear a “however” coming? Well here it is: At times, and sometimes in pretty major ways, this issue of Salvo appears to trade heavily on the fact that its audience is young, inexperienced, and already converted to a Christian outlook. It is my view that much greater editorial vigilance is required to bring this magazine up to a level where it delivers material to young Christians who can really use the arguments they find therein when talking with their skeptical peers. Here are a few examples of the kind of thing I think hamper the cause of Salvo:

1) On the front cover of this first issue, there is a quote from one of the lead articles, called “Grave New World” by Hunter Baker. The point of the quote is that Science – philosophical naturalism, really – does not provide a basis for genuine moral value. That’s a point worth making. But notice how the quote on the front cover goes: “If science can’t explain the conscience or the values by which we order our lives, then there must be some other way of knowing.” But think about that for a moment, and you’ll see that it is a fairly obvious argument from silence. It effectively claims that “if no scientific explanation of phenomenon Q is forthcoming, then it must be the case that our knowledge of Q is conferred in another way.” But that just doesn’t follow. Absence of evidence is not at all the same as evidence of absence. If a person is a committed naturalist, then the fact – assuming he grants it – that science cannot currently explain the phenomenon of moral value in no way means that we must know of moral value in some other non-scientific way. He may simply believe that science has not yet accounted for such a phenomenon. The quote on the front cover would be much stronger if it said something like “if naturalism is incompatible with the existence of the values by which we live, then they must have a supernatural origin.” I know, it brings God into the picture more explicitly and may therefore put the skeptical reader off, but let’s face it, this was never written for skeptics in the first place.

2) This is, in my view, a more serious example, because it involves importing a very strong theological bias into what is supposed to be a listing of the bare definitions of philosophical terms provided for the reader. The section is called “passwords” and the stated purpose is “to help you get through this issue of Salvo.” Since the reader is young and not necessarily well informed on these things yet, the magazine provides a list of definitions of terms like a glossary so that if they get to a word they are not familiar with they can consult the list. Now, that’s a great idea. But when providing such a list, agendas must take a back seat. Look at this example: “determinism: The idea that everything that happens, from the motion of planets to the actions of human beings, is merely a mechanical expression of heredity and environment. There is no free will on the part of man, nor can outside agents (such as God) have an effect on the course of events.” Wow. So there’s no longer any such thing as theological determinism, where God determines the course of history? The definition provided here is simply horrendous, and smacks of a person who wants to paint determinism as badly as possible to scare young minds away from considering it. It has basically been defined as naturalism, an appearance made all the more clear when we turn to the definition offered for naturalism: “naturalism: The insistence [note: why not just “the belief?] that the universe is an absolutely closed system; there is no God who intervenes in the universe and human affairs, only natural processes. Naturalists believe that science is the only way to come to an understanding of truth.” Apart from the last sentence, the definitions of “determinism” and “naturalism” are all but identical! One can only pray that ignorance is the culprit here.

3) Throughout the magazine there were peppered examples of the mistaken conflation of non-cartesian views of humanity with naturalistic views of human purpose and significance. This thinking is frequent yet unfortunate in a lot of contemporary North American evangelical philosophy (I – respectfully – noted the appearance of J. P. Moreland on the editorial board), and it is a fairly minor fly in the ointment overall when assessing the magazine.

But I do want to reiterate, I think this magazine is outstanding – in a real class of its own, and definitely worth keeping up with. If you haven’t encountered Salvo yet, then I do urge you to check it out at the website.

On Monday the 20th of November (New Zealand Time) I got back from Washington DC, where I attended and spoke at the annual conference of the Evangelical Theological Society. Firstly, Francis Beckwith did a stellar job putting together a jam packed program. I don’t envy his role. As far as the actual content of the papers presented is concerned, on the whole, it was a reflection of evangelical scholarship in general – some of it truly excellent, some pointless, some of it encouraging, some disheartening.

Some of the more outstanding parts of the conference that I was fortunate enough to see included:

Robert Larme, “Interpreting Hume on Miracles.” Dr Larme presented an excellent and tightly argued rebuttal of the attempts to rescue David Hume from himself, showing that Hume’s claim was as outrageous as it sounds, saying that it is impossible in principle to be justified in believing that a miracle has occurred, even if one has in fact occurred.

Francis Beckwith, “Faith, Reason, and the Christian University: What John Paul II Can Teach Evangelicals.” In spite of the title, the talk really wasn’t about John Paul II at all, although it did at one point refer to a comment he had made about the place of creeds. Beckwith’s engaging session addressed the anti-creedalism that he routinely encounters at his Baptist University, Baylor. He responded to such ridiculous platitudes as “aint nobody gonna tell me what to believe but Jesus,” and, in a nutshell, put anti-creedalism in its place.

J. Budziszewski, “True Tolerance and the Failure of Liberal Neutrality.” To be honest this one was a bit of a yawner for me personally, since I’ve just spent the past three years working on, among other things, the material that Dr Budzeszewski spoke about, namely the failure of Rawlsian liberalism to attain a genuinely neutral and tolerant perspective in political philosophy. But at the same time, I could see that what he said was right on the mark, and certainly worth hearing for those who had not heard it before – which is most evangelicals.

Next came my own talk, “Theo-Ethical Equilibrium?” It was on at 8:30am, which proved to be not such a good thing. On reflection, the title was also not terribly helpful to anyone who is not already familiar with the subject area. The audience was small, but what I had to say was well received (and besides, it will still be on the conference CD that a lot of people are buying). And trust me, it was a great talk!

Gary Habermas, “Historical Rivals of Jesus? An Evaluation of Apollonius of Tyana and Sabbatai Sevi.” Dr Habermas gave a great talk on two supposed historical parallels of “the Jesus myth,” namely myths that are said to have a lot in common with stories of the life of Jesus, and – especially by online atheists who are suitably qualified with degrees in chemistry and the like (because you know, they help) – are advanced as evidence that the “Jesus myth” was just copied and pasted from other messiah traditions. Habermas puts this hopelessly uninformed nonsense to bed for good, showing that not only do many modern sources of such claims fudge the historical evidence to make the comparison more “perfect,” but the evidence is such that either no such comparisons are reasonable at all, or if there is a parallel, it suggests that these rival traditions drew on the life of Jesus.

John Piper (The Crossway Lecture), “William Tyndale and the Vernacular Bible.” This wasn’t meant to be an academic lecture, and it certainly wasn’t. But it was really good. John Piper discussed the life and legacy of Bible translator and martyr William Tyndale. Piper also spoke about the theological issues that got Tyndale killed, and how today so many of us are cavalier about those things.

John Makujina (Central Seminary), “The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong: A Critique.” As expected, critiquing the claims of John Shelby Spong is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Fish that are already dead, for that matter. But it sure is fun to hear!

There were plenty of other talks that were well worth the time to attend I’m sure, but with so many speakers and so little time, I didn’t attend a lot of talks that I would like to have listened to.

Then there was the “other side” of evangelical scholarship, also visible at the conference. I’m not sure that there’s a convenient way to sum up what that side represents in just a few words (perhaps and “unfair and partial partisan spirit” gets close), but examples of the kind of thing that it represents would include carelessness when representing those with whom one represents. John Warwick Mongomery, for example, well-know as an advocate of evidentialist apologetics and critic of presuppositional apologetics, engaged in the widely repeated misrepresentation of Cornelius Van Till, telling his audience that Van Til taught that the unbelieving man cannot really know anything. He is not alone, as the error is repeated by other apologists well known to evangelicalism, like James Kelly Clark. But it’s wrong (and obviously so, to anyone familiar with Van Til). Evangelical scholars ought to be better informed about the claims they make, especially when it comes to the way they portray their brethren. This wasn’t the only example of misrepresentation I encountered. In his talk, “Enlightenment Challenges to the Existence of God: The Inexcusability of Belief,” Owen Anderson claimed that Alvin Plantinga’s apologetic was weaker than a Christian apologetic ought to be because all it managed – and all it claimed – to do was “show that Christian belief can be as warranted as unbelief,” as though Plantinga only presumed to protect the faith from the charge of irrationality by showing that Christianity could climb up to the level of rationality that unbelief possesses! Anyone familiar with Plantinga’s arguments will immediately see the way this claim contrasts with the facts of what Plantinga actually does say about the relative rationality of atheism and theism.

I was also somewhat surprised when I perused the book stalls to see that a space had been rented by the International Preterist Association (IPA). This is the group that has employed the linguistic shift of calling “full preterism” or “hyper preterism” by the much more orthodox term “preterist,” and then by approaching evangelicals and trying to win them over to this view they call “preterism” which is really hyper-preterism, a heresy. In a nutshell, these guys claim that every prophecy of Scripture has been fulfilled, and they deny the historic creeds of the Christian faith by saying that there is no future return of Christ or resurrection of the dead. I was a little disturbed that they were allowed to even be there, but I guess that is one of the consequences of not having a statement of faith that affirms anything more than inerrancy and Trinitarianism. It’s a little ironic really – the Evangelical Theological Society is so conservative that belief in inerrancy is required for membership (something never affirmed in the ecumenical creeds), yet they are liberal enough to let people who deny the future resurrection and return of Christ – both of which have always been affirmed in the creeds of Christianity – peddle their wares at their annual conference! Without any stretch of language or overstatement at all, it was like having a Mormon Stall at a conference of Southern Baptists. I took one of the free books on offer from the IPA. I figured it’s one less book for them to give away to the unsuspecting.

So on the whole – am I glad I went? Yes, certainly. Some of the best that evangelical scholarship has to offer was there to be digested. Would I suggest any changes? Yes, certainly! For one, I’m inclined to think that papers for presentation at a conference like this should be subject to peer review or something similar – something, at any rate, to filter out some of the nonsense that people think counts as genuine Christian scholarship. There are a few examples that spring to mind, some involving correction of errors of fact so that papers could be brought up to a presentable standard, and some papers that simply did not deserve attention, like Stephen Parelli (from an organization called “Other Sheep”) who spoke on “How Baptist Doctrine May Obligate the Evangelical to View Same-Sex Union as Primarily a Civil Matter and a Matter of Individual Conscience.” In a nutshell, he argued that if you believe in separation of church and state then you should believe in state endorsement of homosexual marriage. So I think that a bit of forced careful preparation for some presenters and a tougher screening process on the part of ETS would have made a positive difference in spite of the extra time and effort. The trouble, of course is that this would require papers to be ready considerably further ahead of time and it would require the willingness of people to serve as reviewers (and a willingness to do so fairly), but then, my own take is that the payoff would be worth it.