An Interview With Progressive Spirit About My Book "How to Defend the Christian Faith"
LINK.
In the end, the issue of whether religion is addictive for you comes down to similar questions to the ones you might ask yourself about your drug use: Has your religion eaten your life? Does it feel freely chosen or compulsive (and how would you know)? What are the good things about it? And what price are you or others around you paying for the good stuff you get? LINK.
Labels: Robert Conner
Our bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactitude. The portrait is substantially that of a man -- if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage whom no one would desire to associate with, now that Nero and Caligula are dead.
In the Old Testament His acts expose His vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless, and thousand-fold severity; punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending populations for the misdeeds of their rulers; even descending to wreak bloody vengeance upon harmless calves and lambs and sheep and bullocks, as punishment for inconsequential trespasses committed by their proprietors.
It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere; it makes Nero an angel of light and leading, by contrast.
The problem is precisely that the New Atheists think it appropriate to dismiss theology and philosophy of religion without understanding the first thing about it. Some New Atheists say, "I know enough about it. I was brought up as a Catholic or an Anglican or ...." But that's not qualification enough. Arguing from this point of view, where you really do not know what your opponent is arguing, because you have made no attempt to find out, is a simple informal fallacy known as special pleading. And the New Atheism is full of it. That's where Keith Parsons is way ahead of the New Atheists. Be an unbeliever by all means. But don't say that you know that there is no God or that theology is all make believe until you have really tried to understand what theologians are saying. And when you have done so, you will, I think, qualify your dismissal. --Eric MacDonaldI think this criticism of the New Atheism fails to understand the very phenomena being criticized. Let's just re-purpose MacDonald's quote: "The problem is precisely that the New Atheists think it appropriate to dismiss Scientology, or Mormonism, or militant Islam, or Hindu theology, or Haitian Catholic voodoo without understanding the first thing about it..." Need I go on? If anyone is special pleading it is MacDonald, for it didn't enter his mind to consider the many other religious faiths out there he easily dismisses without knowing that much about them. So I think reasonable people don't have to know a lot about religious faiths to reject them. We can dismiss these and other faiths precisely because they are faiths. The evidence is not there and even runs contrary to them. The moralities of these faiths also count against them. Do we need to know something about them to dismiss them? Sure, we should know something about them. In fact, to reject one of them we should at least hear about it. But even a rudimentary level of knowledge is enough for that, since faith is the problem. As outsiders we don't need to look into the many varieties of faith to know the results of faith are not likely to be true. We can do this simply by generalizing from the many mutually inconsistent false faiths to the probability that any given particular faith is false, even before getting an in-depth knowledge about it.
Do you need a Ph.D. in philosophy to be a legitimate and respectable participant in the theism/atheism debate or the science/religion debate? Of course not. But you do need to know what you are talking about. Those, however accomplished in other fields, who leap into the debate philosophically uninformed inevitably commit freshman mistakes that expose them to the scorn of sophisticated opponents. LINK.
Labels: Ending Philosophy of Religion
Labels: Ending Philosophy of Religion
Labels: Robert Conner
sir_russ, I have just reread your OP, and again. I like it a lot, erudite, insightful. I had written this observation elsewhere but it equally fits yours. Your OP is a candid critique into what I coin the anachronistic class of 'philosopher-kings' in contemporary society, those self-described and self-identified doyens of philosophical discourse. They are indeed legends in their own minds.Parsons is on record as saying these kinds of posts are personal attacks and he won't respond to them. If he thinks these are attacks then what does he think of Edward Feser's personal attacks against people whom he disagrees?
Parsons, sadly, seems to have lost sight that the battle of ideas is not so much about the finer construct of the argument but the substance of the argument, whether the claims are verifiable or not. In his misplaced loyalty Parsons aids and abets the Fesers and Plantingas of the world who want you to believe, as someone I read elsewhere had written, that their [Feser's classical Catholic and Plantinga's Protestant Theistic Personalist] God impregnated his own mother to give birth to his own son who is himself, as if it were historical fact, meriting intellectual consideration as a truth.
The problem is, today's operant philosophy tracks a more rigorous and evidentiary-based line of reasoning with its supervening metaphysics ever more deeply grounded, both epistemologically and intellectually, into its underpinning physics. Pontification has been replaced with verification. And the 'philosopher kings' don't like it one bit, even prepared [as Parson's has done to Dawkins, Loftus et al] to eat their own kind [atheists] who might be perceived, wrongly or otherwise, to have crossed into their 'intellectual' territory.
Philosophy of Religion is an exercise in rhetoric to its core; insubstantial, imaginative, with an unhinged metaphysics grounded in the supernatural, a wholly untestable and inconsequential line of reasoning that bears little resemblance to reality of the natural world. Parson's knows that. In his defence of Feser, Plantiga etc., why is he defending the indefensible?
Parsons would do well to take stock.
Vincent Torley: Hi John, if you really believe that sophisticated theology no longer deserves to be taken seriously, then you should be able to take on its ablest exponents in a debate and wipe the floor with them. Are you confident that if you were to publicly debate someone like Ed Feser before a live audience and an impartial panel of adjudicators, you would win?I guess one person's sophisticated theologian is another's "wimpy theist", eh? I wonder what Randal Rauser thinks of Edward Feser's sophisticated theology? Sophisticated atheologian Keith Parsons would agree with Torley that Edward Feser is someone to be taken seriously. Does Rauser? Curious minds want to know.
JWL: Hi Vincent, why the emphasis on debates? I doubt I could effectively debate a Scientologist or a Mormon, or a Muslim. So? That just means someone is better at debating sophisticated theology. That does not say anything else.
VT: OK, then. What about a written debate - say, a book where you and some philosopher like Feser can argue it out? My point is that if there isn't some kind of ideal argumentative format in which you can present your case, take on all comers and win, then why should I (or anyone else) believe you're right?
JWL: Vincent, I already co-wrote such a book.
VT: You did indeed, John. The problem was that your opponent, Randal Rauser, is a trained theologian and Christian apologist, but not a philosopher - and it showed. As one reviewer of your book politely put it: "Rauser is perhaps not the best (or at least, not the more forceful) advocate for the Christian position that could have been featured." I also watched some of the online debate between you and Rauser on God's existence, via the link you presented. The opening statements were vigorously argued, but there were no 10-minute rebuttals on both sides, so there was no good follow-up. Instead, a third guy, a self-styled anti-apologist, interposed himself between you both, which upset the flow of the debate. It was a lost opportunity. I wish there had been a more lively free-for-all at the end. Anyway, you really need to debate a proper Christian philosopher - and not a wimpy theist who thinks belief in God is "properly basic," but someone who's prepared to defend classical theism (and Christianity) on rational grounds. LINK.
Labels: Sophisticated Theology
Jesuitical (ˌjeZHo͞oˈitikəl) adjective, (1) of or concerning the Jesuits (2) dissembling or equivocating, in the manner associated with Jesuits.
Ancient immanentist philosophies such as panpsychism that might have sacralized the world and its life were largely extinguished by the advent of Christianity. A partial corrective is Hector Avalos' The End of Biblical Studies. Like professor Avalos, I have long advocated that we stop taking "Jesus Studies" nonsense seriously:
That Jesus Studies is rife with flawed scholarship, special pleading, fideism, rank speculation, manufactured relevance, careerism, homophobia and the misogyny that homophobia implies, sectarian allegiances, personal agendas, fraud and simple incompetence should come as no surprise to anyone conversant with the field. Indeed, whether Jesus Studies is even an academic discipline as usually understood is debatable, and that Jesus Studies has precious little to do with history is certain. [From Conner's essay Faking Jesus].
Labels: Robert Conner