Methodological naturalism is the assumption or working hypothesis that understanding nature (the physical world including humans and their thoughts and actions) can be understood in terms of unguided laws. There is no need to Suppose interventions (miracles) from outside. It does not commit one to metaphysical naturalism, the belief that there is nothing other than nature as we can see and observe it (in other words, that atheism is the right theology for the sound thinker). Recently the Intelligent Design movement (...) has been arguing against methodological naturalism, and in this project they have been joined by the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. In this paper I examine Plantinga’s arguments and conclude not only that they are not well taken, but that he does no good service to his religion either. (shrink)

History and the modern sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a methodological naturalism that disregards talk of divine agency. Some religious thinkers argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism: a non-negotiable and a priori commitment to a materialist metaphysics. In response to this charge, I make a sharp distinction between procedural requirements and metaphysical commitments. The procedural requirement of history and the sciences—that proposed explanations appeal to publicly-accessible bodies of evidence—is non-negotiable, but has no metaphysical implications. The metaphysical (...) commitment is naturalistic, but is both a posteriori and provisional, arising from the fact that for more than 400 years no proposed theistic explanation has been shown capable of meeting the procedural requirement. I argue that there is nothing to prevent religious thinkers from seeking to overturn this metaphysically naturalistic stance. But in order to do so they would need to show that their proposed theistic explanations are the best available explanations of a range of phenomena. Until this has been done, the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences remains defensible. (shrink)

The logical relationships between the ideas of evolution and of special creation are explored here in the context of a recent paper by Alvin Plantinga claiming that from the perspective of biblical religion it is more likely than not that God acted in a “special” way at certain crucial moments in the long process whereby life developed on earth. I argue against this thesis, asking first under what circumstances the Bible might be thought relevant to an issue of broadly scientific (...) concern. I go on to outline some of the arguments supporting the thesis of common ancestry, and argue finally that from the theistic perspective, special creation ought to be regarded as, if anything, less rather than more likely than its evolutionary alternative. (shrink)

Many things in the natural world work so well that they seem to have been designed. But by what? Could nature itself, by processes including those of evolution, be the designer? Or must their complex structure and function be attributed to some intelligent designer or God? Is natural design compatible with intelligent design? How good is the argument from the presence of design to an intelligent designer? And if we could legitimately infer the probable existence of an intelligent designer from (...) the presence of design in the natural world, what could we then infer about that designer's nature? (shrink)

In the 2005 Kitzmiller v Dover Area School Board case, a federal district court ruled that Intelligent Design creationism was not science, but a disguised religious view and that teaching it in public schools is unconstitutional. But creationists contend that it is illegitimate to distinguish science and religion, citing philosophers Quinn and especially Laudan, who had criticized a similar ruling in the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas creation-science case on the grounds that no necessary and sufficient demarcation criterion was possible and (...) that demarcation was a dead pseudo-problem. This article discusses problems with those conclusions and their application to the quite different reasoning between these two cases. Laudan focused too narrowly on the problem of demarcation as Popper defined it. Distinguishing science from religion was and remains an important conceptual issue with significant practical import, and philosophers who say there is no difference have lost touch with reality in a profound and perverse way. The Kitzmiller case did not rely on a strict demarcation criterion, but appealed only to a “ballpark” demarcation that identifies methodological naturalism (MN) as a “ground rule” of science. MN is shown to be a distinguishing feature of science both in explicit statements from scientific organizations and in actual practice. There is good reason to think that MN is shared as a tacit assumption among philosophers who emphasize other demarcation criteria and even by Laudan himself. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism states that evolution cannot produce warranted beliefs. In contrast, according to Plantinga, Christian theism provides properly functioning cognitive faculties in an appropriate cognitive environment, in accordance with a design plan aimed at producing true beliefs. But does theism fulfill criteria I–III? Judging from the Bible, God employs deceit in his relations with humanity, rendering our cognitive functions unreliable. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that God's purpose would be to produce true beliefs in (...) humans. Finally, from the theistic/religious perspective, it is impossible to tell whether observations have natural or supernatural causes, which undermines an appropriate cognitive environment. Reliable identification of deceit or miracles could alleviate these problems, but the theistic community has failed to resolve this issue. Dismissal of parts of the Bible, or attempts to find alternative interpretations, would collapse into skepticism or deism. Thus, Plantinga's problem of epistemic warrant backfires on theism. (shrink)

The development of a methodologically naturalistic approach to physiological and experimental psychology in the nineteenth century was not primarily driven by a naturalistic agenda. The work of R. Hermann Lotze and G. T. Fechner help to illustrate this claim. I examine a selected set of central commitments in each thinkers philosophical outlook, particularly regarding the human soul and the nature of God, that departed strongly from a reductionist materialism. Yet, each contributed significantly to the formation of experimental and physiological psychology. (...) Their work was influenced substantively by their respective philosophical commitments. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the merits of their specific proposals, Fechner's psychophysics and Lotze's local sign hypothesis respectively, did not depend upon sharing their metaphysical views regarding the human soul or the nature of God. A moderate, but significant, distinction between the contexts of discovery and of justification aids in understanding this balancing act. (shrink)

Of articles which are submitted for publication in Philosophy, a surprisingly large proportion are about the views of Richard Rorty. Some, indeed, we have published. They, along with pretty well all the articles we receive on Professor Rorty, are highly critical. On the perverse assumption that there must be something to be said for anyone who attracts widespread hostility, it is only right to see what can be said in favour of Rorty's latest collection of papers, entitled, Truth and Progress,.

There is a rather striking video currently used in police training. A firearms officer is caught on video shooting an armed suspect. The officer then gives his account of what happened, and there is no suggestion that he is tying to fabricate evidence. He says that he shot the suspect once; his partner says that he fired two shots. On the video we see four shots being deliberately fired. Memory, it seems, is an unreliable witness in situations of stress.

La doctrina del «Diseño Inteligente» formulada por Phillip E. Johnson, Michael Behe, William A. Dembski o Stephen C. Meyer se presenta como una alternativa científica al Neodarwinismo. Para el naturalismo filosófico o el ateísmo, pero también para la comunidad científica, sólo es una forma de pseudo-ciencia dependiente de la doctrina del «creacionismo protestante» y la interpretación literal bíblica. Las críticas filosóficas más importantes, sin embargo, proceden del neo-tomismo norteamericano. El presente artículo expone los principales argumentos utilizados por el tomismo en (...) su polémica contra la doctrina del «Diseño Inteligente». (shrink)

A survey and interpretation is offered of the broad range of contemporary thinking that concerns itself with the relationships between religion and science. The survey consists of a spectrum of six types of thought: (1) The modern option: translating religious wisdom into scientific concepts; (2) the postmodern/new‐age option: constructing new science‐based myths; (3) the critical post‐Enlightenment option: expressing the truth at the obscure margin of science; (4) the postmodern constructivist option: fashioning a new metaphysics for scientific knowledge; (5) the constructivist (...) traditional option: interpreting science in dynamic traditional concepts; (6) the Christian evangelical option: reaffirming the rationality of traditional belief. The interpretive effort considers these options under the rubric of the contemporary search for meaning and takes note of controversy and convergence within this search. Thinking on the religion/science interface is representative of much contemporary thinking that deals with the question of meaning in the present intellectual and cultural situation. (shrink)

Back in 1922, American essayist H. L. Mencken wrote a little essay titled "Memorial Service". Here's how he began: Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance [power] was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And what of Huitzilopochtli [wee-tsee-lohpoch'-tlee]? In one (...) year-- and it is no more than five hundred years ago--50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Mencken went on to name a total of 189 pagan gods.1 He told how millions worshipped them; how men laboured for generations to build them vast temples; how priests, evangelists, bishops, and archbishops served them; how to doubt them was to die, usually at the stake; how armies took to the fields to defend them against infidels; and how villages were burned, women and children slaughtered, and cattle driven off. All these, he pointed out in conclusion: were gods of the highest standing and dignity--gods of civilized peoples--worshipped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead. The death of the gods. (shrink)

This paper argues that God is not logically able to condemn a person to Hell by considering what is entailed by accepting the best argument to the contrary, the so-called free will defense expounded by Christian apologists Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. It argues that the free will defense is logically fallacious, involves a philosophical fiction, and is based on a fraudulent account of Scripture, concluding that the problem of postmortem evil puts would-be believers in a logical and moral (...) straightjacket from which there is no escape without heresy or contradiction. -/- 1. Imagining an Afterlife in Hell -- 2. Essential Doctrines of Christianity -- 3. The Logical Puzzle Involved -- 4. Plumbing the Depths of Christian Doctrine a Little - 4.1 Christianity’s Commitment to Theism - 4.1.1 God’s Omnipotence - 4.1.2 God’s Omniscience - 4.1.3 God’s Omnibenevolence (Moral Perfection) - 4.2 The Doctrines of Salvation and Damnation - 4.2.1 Salvation and Heaven - 4.2.2 Damnation and Hell - 4.2.3 The Inhabitants of Hell – 5. The Issue of Inconsistency Again - 5.1 The Missing Concept of Responsibility - 5.2 God’s Responsibility for Evil in General - 5.3 The Charge of Inconsistency Reinforced -- 6. The Christian Cross: A Logical Straightjacket -- 7. The Art of Apologetics -- 8. Craig’s Apologetics - 8.1 Craig’s Purported Proof of Consistency - 8.1.1 A Problem with the Entailment Condition - 8.1.2 A Problem with the Consistency Condition - 8.1.3 Is Craig’s Optimal World the Best God Could Create? - 8.1.4 A Heavenly Refutation - 8.1.5 “Heaven Isn’t a Possible World” - 8.1.6 “Heaven Isn’t a Feasible World” -- 9. Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Predestination - 9.1 Compatibilist versus Incompatibilist Meanings of “Free Will” - 9.2 Free Will, Predestination, and Being Sent to Hell - 9.3 Consequences of Being Predestined to Hell -- 10. Summary. (shrink)

زبان دین خواهان کشف و تببین ماهیت زبانی است که در الفاظ و گزاره‌های دینی به کار رفته است. این کشف به ما کمک می‌کند تا مراد اصلی یا فحوای حقیقی مضامین دینی را که در قالب زبان بشری بیان شده است دریابیم. غزالی، متأثر از نگرش‌های کلامی و یافته‌های عرفانی خود و با لحاظ مراتب مختلف ادراک مردمان، دیدگاه‌های متفاوتی را در این موضوع ابراز داشته است. از این رو، گاه اجتناب از تأویل را لازم می‌داند، گاه ضرورت عدول (...) از معنای ظاهر را خاطرنشان می‌سازد و گاه با بحث از «روح معنا» که خود طراح آن است، بدون آن که معنای ظاهر انکار شود، گوهر حقیقی معنا را فارغ از ویژگی‌های مصادیق آن منظور می‌نماید. در عین حال، جریان اندیشۀ او در این باب به منزل اشتراک لفظی نیز ورود می‌کند و پایان سیر آن در معناشناسی اوصاف‌ الهی چنین است که حقیقتش نصیب فهم هیچ کس نخواهد شد و معانی آن در صید هیچ ادراکی درنخواهد آمد. (shrink)

Traditional Islamic theism gives us a certain picture of the world, in which the concepts of belief, providence and eschatology are involved. According to the traditional picture, belief in God is a universal phenomenon. This is because God has providentially arranged the world in such a manner that the signs of God are everywhere and which lead to knowledge of His existence. And, because the world is ‘providentially unambiguous’, those who do not have faith in God are culpable for their (...) lack of it, and therefore deserve eternal punishment in hell. In this paper, I argue that this traditional picture is simply false, or at the very least seriously contestable. I also explore the implications of my argument for those who might be interested in assessing the viability of some form of (Islamic) ‘revisionary theism’, in which the concepts of belief, providence and eschatology feature. (shrink)

الهیات طبیعی فهمی الهیاتی است که مستقل از حقایق وحیانی و تنها از طریق معارف بشری در پی ارائۀ دلیلی موجّه برای باور به وجود خداوند است. الهیات طبیعی همواره به عنوان حلقۀ ارتباط همدلانه میان علم و دین مورد توجه بوده است. زیرا اگر منظور از دین حقایق وحیانی و منظور از علم مجموعه معارف بشری است، الهیات طبیعی را می‌توان همواره تبلور تلاش خداباوران برای برقراری گونه‌ای ارتباط میان دین و معارف بشری دانست. آیا چنین شیوه‌ای اعتبار دارد (...) و در صورت اعتبار آیا ضرورت نیز دارد؟ پلانتینگا در این خصوص دو دیدگاه متفاوت را در حیات فکری خود برگزیده است. او در دیدگاه اول نه تنها الهیات طبیعی را غیرضروری بلکه آن را همچون الحاد طبیعی بی‌اعتبار می‌خواند، و در عین حال با تشبیه باور به وجود خدا به باور به دیگر اذهان بر عقلانیت آن تأکید می‌کند. اما در دیدگاه دوم، علی‌رغم تأکید بر نفی ضرورت الهیات طبیعی، آن را به لحاظ معرفتی معتبر می‌داند و کارکردهایی را برای آن برمی‌شمارد. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider V. S. Ramachandran's in-principle agnosticism concerning whether neurological studies of religious experience can be taken as support for the claim that God really does communicate with people during religious experiences. Contra Ramachandran, I argue that it is by no means obvious that agnosticism is the proper scientific attitude to adopt in relation to this claim. I go on to show how the questions of whether it is (1) a scientifically testable claim and (2) a plausible (...) hypothesis, serve to open up some important philosophical issues concerning interpretive backgrounds that are presupposed in the assessment of scientific hypotheses. More specifically, I argue that naturalism or scientific objectivism in its various forms is not simply a neutral or default methodological backdrop for empirical inquiry but involves acceptance of a specific ontology, which functions as an implicit and unargued constitutive commitment. Hence, these neurological studies can be employed as a lever with which to disclose something of the ways in which different frameworks of interpretation, both theistic and atheistic, serve differently to structure and give meaning to empirical findings. (shrink)

In the 2005 Kitzmiller v Dover Area School Board case, a federal district court ruled that Intelligent Design creationism was not science, but a disguised religious view and that teaching it in public schools is unconstitutional. But creationists contend that it is illegitimate to distinguish science and religion, citing philosophers Quinn and especially Laudan, who had criticized a similar ruling in the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas creation-science case on the grounds that no necessary and sufficient demarcation criterion was possible and (...) that demarcation was a dead pseudo-problem. This article discusses problems with those conclusions and their application to the quite different reasoning between these two cases. Laudan focused too narrowly on the problem of demarcation as Popper defined it. Distinguishing science from religion was and remains an important conceptual issue with significant practical import, and philosophers who say there is no difference have lost touch with reality in a profound and perverse way. The Kitzmiller case did not rely on a strict demarcation criterion, but appealed only to a “ballpark” demarcation that identifies methodological naturalism as a “ground rule” of science. MN is shown to be a distinguishing feature of science both in explicit statements from scientific organizations and in actual practice. There is good reason to think that MN is shared as a tacit assumption among philosophers who emphasize other demarcation criteria and even by Laudan himself. (shrink)