Quote of the Day, By Dr. Keith Parsons
The qualities that make religion matter so much to people are the same ones that make it so dangerous. LINK.
The qualities that make religion matter so much to people are the same ones that make it so dangerous. LINK.
A caliphate is an Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader known as a caliph – i.e. "successor" – to Muhammad...under Islamic law (sharia). ISIS claims religious authority over all Muslims across the world and aspires to bring much of the Muslim-inhabited regions of the world under its political control, beginning with Iraq, Syria and other territory in the Levant region, which includes Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus and part of southern Turkey.So let me get this straight, okay? ISIS wants to establish an Islamic theocracy under sharia law ruled by a caliph and this isn't a religion? Every important aspect of ISIS is religious in nature. Remove the religion and it guts everything important they hope to achieve. Without the religion there would be no ISIS. With no theocracy, no sharia law and no caliph there would be no ISIS. Their religion provides the rationale, the agenda, the justification, and the motivation to do what they are doing. It doesn't matter whether other Muslims around the world reject their religion by saying it doesn't represent true Islam. It still is a religion, a hybrid if you will of Islam, in the same way as other types of Christianities are still representative of Christianity in general. Just call it the religion of ISIS then, if you still disagree. It is a religion. To see this just ask yourself what would happen if we extracted their religion from them, every aspect of it. Would they still seek to set up an Islamic theocracy based on sharia law under an Islamic caliph? No, they wouldn't.
As the Philosophy 4: Critical Thinking class satisfies the college level reading requirement, I'm having the students read both "Why Evolution is True" and "Monkey Girl." Coyne's book provides excellent support for scientific reasoning, verificationism and falsificationism.That's what I'm talking about when it comes to ending the philosophy of religion subdiscipline in secular universities!
Labels: Ending Philosophy of Religion
Labels: j. m. green, Jesus Behaving Badly
Can you afford not to trust him?! |
Labels: faith, Pascal’s Wager, salvation
It is very difficult to see the matter of theism as something to treat seriously as a philosophical object. We shouldn't. It is a theological object, and theology is only "pseudo-philosophical," as Carrier puts it, and pseudo-academic, as I outlined above. No one is required to take such a thing seriously or engage its "best" arguments, as if it has any, as if the real contenders haven't already been dealt with thoroughly and repeatedly, and as if any argument stands up to the simple and straightforward question that's been waiting for them all along: "Where's the evidence?"
But because the idea that we should engage any position's best case is generally true in philosophy proper, and all academic debate, it is an easy value to turn into a false virtue. The principle simply doesn't apply here because theology is pseudo-academic, though. Misapplying it as a false virtue, a moral value defining a particular kind of thinker, I think, is exactly what apologists for the philosophy of religion are doing, and I think it constitutes a confusing and unproductive avenue in the conversation that should not continue. LINK.
Labels: Philosophy of Religion
Labels: gambling, j. m. green, Pascal's Wager
My proposal is "to end biblical studies as we know it" (The End of Biblical Studies, p. 15),which means in its current religionist and apologetic orientation. So I am for ending the philosophy of religion if its only mission is to defend religion and theism. So, akin to my vision of the end of biblical studies, I would say that the only mission of the philosophy of religion is to end the philosophy of religion as we know it.He also provided a progress report so far on his call to end biblical studies:
Labels: Ending Philosophy of Religion
Labels: Philosophy of Religion
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.
Labels: Philosophy of Religion
Researchers took 66 children between the ages of five and six and asked them questions about stories — some of which were drawn from fairy tales, others from the Old Testament — in order to determine whether the children believed the characters in them were real or fictional.
“Children with exposure to religion — via church attendance, parochial schooling, or both — judged [characters in religious stories] to be real,” the authors wrote. “By contrast, children with no such exposure judged them to be pretend,” just as they had the characters in fairy tales. But children with exposure to religion judged many characters in fantastical, but not explicitly religious stories, to also be real — the equivalent of being incapable of differentiating between Mark Twain’s character Tom Sawyer and an account of George Washington’s life. LINK.