Jerry Coyne: Let’s stop teaching philosophy of religion in secular colleges

I'm pleased he links to me. He's now expanded the debate by going after Divinity Schools in secular universities, which I also applaud. Let's have done with them too.

What we don’t need are entire Divinity Schools or Schools of Theology in secular universities. This privileges an entire discipline based on a human endeavor that itself rests on dubious and unsubstantiated claims. Further, they concentrate largely (but not exclusively) on active Abrahamic religions. There are few, if any, courses on atheism in divinity schools, but they should be at least as prominent as courses in religious apologetics. That is distasteful in a country that officially favors no religion in particular. If we are to have such schools, let us then have Ethical Schools, or Schools of Moral Thinking, or The School of Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. But all of these can simply be subsumed in departments of philosophy or history. LINK.

I'm Very Pleased My Call To End the Philosophy of Religion Made The Richard Dawkins Foundation Site

LINK. In a similar vein Matt DeStefano, a Ph.D. student, weighs in on this issue over at the "Secular Outpost" with a fair and balanced review, which I responded to. And Keith Parsons offered a major statement in agreement with me, saying "If proclaiming the 'death of PoR' only means the death of a certain way of doing it, then I would certainly applaud this...I think that we have had enough of theistic apologetics. It's over." But then he advocates "a post-Christian POR." LINK. However, the death of Christian apologetics posing as the POR means the death of the POR itself as a discipline. For when faith and apologetics are removed from the secular universities the secular professors would be undermining the discipline by arguing against faith and apologetics, at least if Peter Boghossian and Hector Avalos's proposals are accepted, and I think they should be. There would eventually be no arguments to take seriously enough to have classes on them. Answer me this Keith, which Christian theistic arguments merit discussing in a secular university? That would be the question and secular professors would have to decide, but in deciding they would be saying these arguments are worth discussing, which legitimizes them somewhat, I think. You could no longer teach this discipline because you just couldn't stomach it. Which secular POR professors would continue to bother at that point is the question. Other classes in the university should take over at that point, or soon afterward.

In the end, with secular professors alone arguing against religionist POR they would undermine the discipline by arguing against it and convincing students of this. So eventually students wouldn't bother nor would secular professors. This program, if kept up long enough, would render the POR useless and irrelevant to people who are atheists living in an atheist society. The discipline would eventually run out of material and die. At least we're getting somewhere. Progress is still progress.

I'm Calling For An End to the Philosophy of Religion As A Discipline In Secular Universities

Dr. Graham Oppy just published a book titled, Reinventing Philosophy of Religion. Below is an interview he did about it, where he both defended the philosophy of religion as a discipline and expressed a way to reinvent it.

Oppy rightly mentions that philosophy gave birth to the sciences. Philosophers discussed issues before there was any evidence for them, but once evidence was found then a new discipline was born. After all, the sciences we call physics, cosmology, and psychology were at one time considered the domain of philosophy. What Oppy doesn't talk about is whether this process can be reversed. What if philosophy spawned a discipline that, after a few centuries or decades, science has shown us it doesn't deserve to be a separate discipline? That's the argument of Richard Dawkins, Peter Boghossian, Jerry Coyne and myself. The discipline is so bad that Dr. Keith Parsons decided to quit teaching it because he could not take it seriously any longer. If he decided to quit teaching it then he agrees it should end as a discipline of learning (I look forward to him weighing in on this dispute).

Oppy tells us: "Philosophy of religion as a discipline, I would think, probably doesn't date much earlier than the second World War." This historical lesson is significant, I think, for we did without it for centuries and we can do without it again. Later Oppy offers his criticism, saying, "Most of the people who have done philosophy of religion have been theists." So it stands to reason "it has had an extremely narrow focus...It hasn't really been the philosophy of religion but rather Christianity with a very great emphasis on theism," and even apologetics/Christian theology. Okay then, as it stands today the philosophy of religion is dominated by Christian theists who discuss concepts and arguments germane to Christianity, and even defending it. Given what he said, the philosophy of religion needs reinvented if it is to survive. The unaddressed question is why we should have a discipline in any secular university where theism, or Christian theism, Christian theology or Christian apologetics is privileged and considered to the exclusion of all other religions or apologetics? It shouldn't. If this is the state of affairs then the only reasonable response is to call for the end of that discipline. NOW!

Oppy offers a solution to this malaise. He argues the discipline must be reinvented. I have a different solution based on the arguments of Dr. Hector Avalos, who has called for the end of biblical studies (see below). My position is that the philosophy of religion (and to be sure I have three master's degrees in that discipline) should end as a discipline in secular universities. This is not exactly a change from what I've stated before. This is based on further thought and reflection, for almost everyone does the philosophy of religion whenever we think about religion. Although, I find his criticism of Boghossian to be misguided, for Oppy says his rejection of the philosophy of religion "seems to be expressing views in the philosophy of religion." Boghossian's views are "just a position in the philosophy of religion," he said. The reason this criticism of Oppy's is misguided is because by the same token someone who rejects legitimate science by doing pseudoscience is doing science, or someone who does science badly is doing science, and so forth. It reminds me of the criticism thrown at atheists that we believe even though we don't, or that we're religious because we take a position on religion. Not!

Quote of the Day, By Jeffery Jay Lowder

[T]he philosophy of religion is not “dead,” but it is in serious condition, if not on life support. This can be shown by counting the number of philosophy departments at secular colleges and universities which have faculty lines for philosophy of religion. (They are very rare.) Why is this? I think that one contributing factor to this state of affairs is the blatant partisanship which is very much the norm in the philosophy of religion. Many philosophers of religion, including both atheists and theists, function as natural theologians (if theists) or natural atheologians (if atheists). In other words, they act as if their job description says, “If you’re a theist, defend theism; if you’re an atheist, defend atheism.” It’s rare for philosophers of religion to engage in genuine inquiry and to spend equal amounts of time defending theism and defending atheism. But, if a philosopher of religion is going to act like a philosopher, not an apologist, they should be engaging in inquiry. LINK.

Below is my response, which I guarantee will be worth a click of your time. ;-)

The Philosophy of Religion Is Under Attack, This Time via Argument Not Tweet

Jerry Coyne wrote:

I have to agree with Peter Boghossian that the bulk of work in that field (indeed, nearly all of it) is worthless. I am a fan of philosophy as a whole, or at least branches of it (especially the philosophy of science and ethical philosophy), and don’t think it’s worthless by any means, but I have no use for the philosophy of religion. Look at the above: the author is telling us that it’s likely that God, had he created the Universe, would have created a multiverse (that’s what Draper means by “many worlds”)! If you want a real laugh, go see why God would have been likely to create many universes. It’s garbage: pure mental masturbation. But such is the philosophy of religion, for it’s the philosophy of a nonexistent construct. It’s like a field called “the philosophy of fairies.” LINK

I have said that atheist philosophy of religion exists because there is bad Christian philosophy of religion that must be answered. And yet I don't think there is anything that atheists haven't already answered. My judgment is that atheists working in that field have trounced their opponents so badly there is nothing left to say. We can therefore dispense with it as an academic discipline in our universities as unworthy of serious attention. Let's replace it with the various sciences, like geology, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, psychology and neurology. Until Christians can come up with sufficient evidence to believe we should no longer have to deal with their rationalizations, gerrymanderings, non-sequiturs and baseless assertions masquerading as a reasonable discussion. I hereby declare the philosophy of religion dead. All we have to do from now on is quote what has already been written. Please move along. There is nothing here to see.

On Tweets, Blogs and Books, Oh My

The mere brevity of twitter feeds doesn't allow for better clarity, explanations and argumentation, which I'll label CEA. It's the lowest level of what an author can provide given its brevity. From what I've seen, Facebook is where many authors test ideas and provoke thought, so here again isn't the best place for a great deal CEA. Blogs and videos on YouTube are much better means for providing CEA. But sometimes they too are used to test ideas and/or provoke thought. Journal articles and book length treatments of ideas, especially written by scholars and especially when peer reviewed, are the highest means to provide CEA. Now let's say a scholar tweets. Is it reasonable to pick apart the tweet rather than his peer reviewed work? Surely not. The means of a tweet prohibits CEA. Therefore one must approach a tweet by a scholar with the utmost attention to the principle of charity. Furthermore, one must pay more attention to journal articles and peer reviewed books by scholars than any undergraduate student who has an audience.

Peter Boghossian's Famous Tweet Merits a Place Along With Other Important Satires

Taylor Carr just won't let up. Now he's trying to show the inconsistency of using the philosophy of religion in order to argue that it's an illegitimate discipline:

I'll just put this out there... is it not itself a philosophy of religion to claim that because religious language has no actual referents, therefore philosophy of religion is illegitimate?

More on Peter Boghossian's Controversial Tweet

Being published in the philosophy of Russell's teapot (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn, or Elves, Trolls or Faries) should disqualify one from sitting at the adult table.

How is this? What is the difference between this "tweet" and Peter Boghossian's controversial tweet? Okay, sure, Christians will not like it, but Peter isn't writing for them. Let's discuss this.

In Defense of Peter Boghossian's Tweet About the Philosophy of Religion

Here's Boghossian's tweet:

Being published in the philosophy of religion should disqualify one from sitting at the adult table. — Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) June 15, 2014.

Critics say that if published philosophers of religion should be disqualified to sit at the adult table then so should published atheist philosophers of religion. Since it's clear these atheist philosophers of religion are not to be disqualified as childish, therefore Boghossion's claim is absurd. Stay with me. I'm about to defend Boghossion. After all, I consider myself to be his bulldog.

Thinking Critically vs Skeptically

[Edit 1/2/2015: This is another post in my series, "Do You Want To Be A Christian Apologist?" This is number 17 in the series, which are tagged with the words "Christian Apologetics" below, seen in reverse chronological order. So, let's say you want to be a Christian apologist, someone who defends the Christian faith. Then what must you do? The 17th thing you must do is make a distinction between thinking critically and thinking skeptically and focus on the former to the exclusion of the latter. ]

There shouldn't be a difference between thinking critically vs skeptically, for to think critically is to think skeptically, and vice versa. So why do I write about this? The answer in a word: Faith. Believers can and do think critically, especially the best of the best, like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig. Other notable Christian scholars are Paul Copan, Randal Rauser, Victor Reppert, David Marshall, and Matt Flannagan who regularly engage in apologetics against atheists like me. But they are not truly critical thinkers since they do not think skeptically.

Teaching students to be critical thinkers is very important but teaching them to have a skeptical disposition is more important. Critical thinking should lead to this disposition. The problem is that faith is a critical thinking stopper. It builds up a wall that stops believers dead in their tracks. They dare not go beyond it to the proper conclusion when applying the standards of critical thinking. Now I taught critical thinking classes as a Christian believer. So I know exactly what they are doing. Norman Geisler, one of the leading Christian apologists who defends the indefensible, even co-wrote a book with Ronald M. Brooks titled, Come, Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking.I don't know enough about the leading defenders of other religious faiths, but I suspect in their universities they teach critical thinking classes from textbooks they have written too. And I expect we would all agree with what they teach and write, except for some of the examples they use to illustrate a particular logical rule.

So what's the problem? Faith. Faith stunts one's critical thinking skills. It prohibits a person of faith from applying the set of critical thinking skills we all agree about. You can see this by how they argue, which I am documenting here. What believers do is to defend their faith rather than look critically at it, no matter what the intellectual cost. Stephen Law is right: “Anything based on faith, no matter how ludicrous, can be made to be consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity.” (Believing Bullshit, p. 75). If Christian apologists could think logically, without the perceived need to defend their religious sect's faith, they would see they are not thinking consistently critically.

In the hopes I can help nudge them along this road I recommend reading Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn's college textbook, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age.There are newer, more expensive editions of this book than the one I linked to. But look inside this one then choose which edition at which price you can afford. But get it. You will see what I mean when I say there is no distinction between critical thinking and thinking skeptically. They are one and the same. That's why I argue faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities. I say believers operate by double standards. They do not think critically, in the sense I just wrote about and which this book could help show them. When we say the party of agnosticism and atheism is one of reason and science we mean it. We invite believers to the adult table, where an adult conversation can be had.

Dr. Peter Boghossian Seeks to Revolutionize Our Academic Institutions

I'm writing a few posts about Peter Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating AtheistsTo read other posts in review of his brilliant book click on the tag below. In this one I want to highlight how that he intends to revolutionize academic institutions, a big yet noble goal.

An Open Challenge to Dr. Keith Parsons and Other Atheist Philosophy of Religion Professors

On September 1st 2010 Keith Parsons announced he was no longer going to teach in the area of the Philosophy of Religion. He wrote: