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Philosopher of Religion Keith Parsons Calls It Quits

Brian Leiter

This is striking:

Over the past ten years I have published, in one venue or another, about twenty things on the philosophy of religion. I have a book on the subject, God and Burden of Proof, and another criticizing Christian apologetics, Why I am not a Christian. During my academic career I have debated William Lane Craig twice and creationists twice. I have written one master’s thesis and one doctoral dissertation in the philosophy of religion, and I have taught courses on the subject numerous times. But no more. I’ve had it. I’m going back to my real interests in the history and philosophy of science and, after finishing a few current commitments, I’m writing nothing more on the subject. I could give lots of reasons. For one thing, I think a number of philosophers have made the case for atheism and naturalism about as well as it can be made…..

Chiefly, though, I am motivated by a sense of ennui on the one hand and urgency on the other. A couple of years ago I was teaching a course in the philosophy of religion. We were using, among other works, C. Stephen Layman’s Letters to a Doubting Thomas: A Case for the Existence of God. In teaching class I try to present material that I find antithetical to my own views as fairly and in as unbiased a manner as possible. With the Layman book I was having a real struggle to do so. I found myself literally dreading having to go over this material in class—NOT, let me emphasize, because I was intimidated by the cogency of the arguments. On the contrary, I found the arguments so execrably awful and pointless that they bored and disgusted me (Layman is not a kook or an ignoramus; he is the author of a very useful logic textbook). I have to confess that I now regard “the case for theism” as a fraud and I can no longer take it seriously enough to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position—no more than I could present intelligent design as a legitimate biological theory. BTW, in saying that I now consider the case for theism to be a fraud, I do not mean to charge that the people making that case are frauds who aim to fool us with claims they know to be empty. No, theistic philosophers and apologists are almost painfully earnest and honest; I don’t think there is a Bernie Madoff in the bunch. I just cannot take their arguments seriously any more, and if you cannot take something seriously, you should not try to devote serious academic attention to it. I’ve turned the philosophy of religion courses over to a colleague.

My anecdotal impression is that this attitude towards philosophy of religion (which has been, as a matter of the sociology of the profession, a 'growth' area over the last two decades) may be fairly widely shared, though primarily among philosophers who have not devoted as much time to the literature and the issues as Professor Parsons.  What do readers think?  I invite non-anonymous comments from readers:  full name in the signature line, valid e-mail.

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50 responses to “Philosopher of Religion Keith Parsons Calls It Quits”

  1. Anon (grad student who does not wish to anger anyone higher on the food chain)

    I completely sympathize with Parsons' remarks. Two things that he said ring particularly true:

    (1) Although debates in the philosophy of religion are often conducted at an embarrassingly low level, some of the participants in the debate are philosophers of very high quality. It is probably inappropriate to single out people on this blog by name, but I recall reading an excellent book recently published in analytic metaphysics, which is rigorous and clear throughout – until an extended section came along discussing some utterly absurd view about the powers of God. I bet that *every single person not working in the philosophy of religion* who read that book felt awkward even skimming the section in question, which was so much lower in quality than the non-religious content of the book as to almost ruin one's experience of reading the rest of it. In fact, in analytic metaphysics one often finds excellent philosophers who are willing to tolerate and take seriously (and sometimes even advocate) the most outrageous and unsupported religious claims.

    (2) Very few people outside of the philosophy of religion believe any of the distinctive claims which are gaining "consensus" in the field. For example, most philosophers of religion I've spoken to think that the argument from evil was refuted long ago. At the same time, I've never spoken to anyone *outside* the philosophy of religion who thinks that there is a truly convincing rejoinder to the argument from evil.

    Two further comments:

    (3) The philosophy of religion is home to what can only be described as the worst argument ever made in philosophy. I do not bestow this title lightly, but here's how the argument goes: either Jesus was a lunatic, liar, or the son of God. Obviously he's not the first two, since so many people believe that he wasn't! Therefore Jesus is the son of God. Q-E-fuckin'-D! Only in the philosophy of religion does one hear such claims!

    (4) Also, Leiter notes that the philosophy of religion is an expanding field. This is true, and I think the explanation for it – unfortunately – is the huge amount of money swirling around the USA available to fund projects in the philosophy of religion of otherwise low quality, and to employ theist philosophers at religious institutions.

    BL COMMENT: Students may submit comments with a valid e-mail address, but no name. Student comments may not, however, criticize named philosophers.

    Reply
  2. Neal Tognazzini

    If teaching a certain course becomes terribly frustrating, then it only makes sense to let someone else take it over for awhile, so I don't blame Professor Parsons. It's worth remembering, though, that a philosophy of religion class need not consist solely, or even mostly, of arguments for and against the existence of God. A lot of "straight up" metaphysics and epistemology can be done in such courses, as well — including exploring the conflict between freedom and foreknowledge, for example, or the possibility of life after death (with all the associated issues about personal identity), or the troubles with miracles, or the epistemology of religious experience, or the epistemology of testimony, and so on.

    If approached in this way, I would hope that teaching a philosophy of religion course could be as rewarding for an atheist philosopher of science as for a theist philosopher of religion. It is, after all, just another venue for teaching students how to think hard and well.

    Reply
  3. Pelin Zagosrki

    I fully agree with you.Professor Parsons has devoted a lot of time to this question indeed,but he did not mention that his opponents think the same about his arguments ( you may read above how Professor Parsons defines these arguments ) So one is never sure
    Pity for the time one devotes to this subject

    Reply
  4. A.P. Taylor

    Just a heads up: there is a lively discussion underway of Professor Parsons' announcement over at the Prosblogion philosophy of religion blog:

    http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2010/09/atheist-burnout.html

    Reply
  5. Mark Murphy

    Brian, I think you forgot to add the "The less they know, the less they know it" tag to this post.

    Reply
  6. kurt

    Without the kind of background Parsons has, I have taught this kind of course a large number of times, at a Roman Catholic school, often to very good students. My reaction parallels that of Parsons, with a couple of exceptions:

    1) My students often come to see how weak the theistic arguments are; even those offered by philosophers who do otherwise excellent work, they seem to lose their minds (or something) when dealing with this set of issues

    2) My students who are not so disposed to religion as their parents and friends assume discover that it is not just an intellectually respectable but possibly a wholly defensible position to be an atheist; they discover they are not alone, and that has its benefits.

    Thus, I will continue teaching philosophy of religion and related courses. "Fairness" is a tricky term, to be sure, in presenting some of the theistic views.

    Reply
  7. Aldo Antonelli

    Quite independently of Keith Parsons' reasons, there is something to be said for change. Change is good. The late Jon Barwise used to say that one needs to "move" every five years or so: either geographcially, or by picking up a new field. By Barwise's standard, it seems like Parsons was overdue.

    Reply
  8. Peter Hawkins

    I can't comment on Anon Grad Student's first or fourth points (though I've encountered pretty bad articles in areas of philosophy that aren't philosophy of religion, so it's not as if PoR has a monopoly there!) but his second and third points seem pretty weak to me.

    That those who aren't involved in philosophy of religion often do not believe claims that there's taken to be a consensus over (in PoR) isn't really indicative of anything. In contemporary political philosophy, there's probably a consensus over some sort of egalitarianism with regards to the distribution of resources (I include Rawls under the egalitarianism umbrella). That some (or many) non-political philosophers think that heinous levels of inequality (such as those prevalent in the UK) can be justified doesn't count against the egalitarians' claim. Or in philosophy of mind, amongst non-philosophers of mind it's often taken as uncontroversially true that dualism of all stripes is obviously false, whereas I doubt many people who specialist in philosophy of mind would agree there (they may think it false, but there's at least a real debate to be had over property dualism etc). It doesn't matter what those from outside the specialisation think. What matters is whether the arugments are any good. Anon Grad Student singles out the argument from evil. I happen to think that Plantinga's argument against the logical Problem of Evil is actually pretty strong (sure, intelligent people will disagree about this, but that's true of 99% of debates in philosophy), and in my experience those who are so quick to trumpet the logical problem of evil as some sort of devastating argumentative airstrike against theism simply aren't familiar with a lot of the work that's been done on it post-Mackie. Again, that's no poor reflection on philosophy of religion – it's a poor reflection on those who comment on areas of philosophy without being familiar with the standard introductory literature. Indeed, Mackie himself conceeded that Plantinga had refuted his argument. Was he just an idiot for subscribing to what Anon Grad Student takes to be the consensus view? Clearly not. Of course, the evidential problem of evil is different, but I wouldn't say that there's a consensus that the ePoE can be overcome. That's a much more controversial claim within philosophy of religion.

    Anon Grad Student's 3rd argument (that C.S. Lewis' "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" argument is rubbish, therefore philosophy of religion is tosh) is also weak. I don't think C.S. Lewis is really considered a philosopher of religion (instead I'd just say he was a Christian apologist), and at least where I studied an undergraduate course in philosophy of religion (Oxford), the argument wasn't covered in either lectures or the tutorials I attended. Indeed, I'm about 99% sure that nothing by C.S. Lewis was even on the philosophy of religion reading list (I can't check, as I'm no longer at the institution so cannot access the reading lists). Is C.S. Lewis' liar, loon or Lord argument commonly taught as part of respected philosophy of religion courses? I don't know for sure, but I suspect not. In which case, Anon Grad Student's argument is like saying that the fact Glen Beck makes bad arguments reflects badly on political philosophy. Which of course it doesn't.

    Reply
  9. Justin Capes

    It's not clear that Anon grad student has read Parsons correctly, and, moreover, he/she seems misinformed about the state of philosophy of religion in general. Two points in particular seem worth mentioning.

    1. Parson's didn't say that "debates in the philosophy of religion are often conducted at an embarrassingly low level" did he? The work of many central figures in the field–non-believer and believer alike–certainly does not fit that bill. I doubt Parsons thinks that the philosophers of religion he names in his post do work at an embarrassingly low level. Perhaps Anon meant his remark about the quality of work done in philosophy of religion to be restricted to those philosophers of religion who have religious commitments. Perhaps Parsons would agree to the statement thus restricted, but perhaps not. In any event, the remark seems wrong even if restricted in this way.

    2. I doubt that most philosophers of religion believe that the argument from evil has been soundly refuted. Off the top of my head, I can think of seven or eight proponents of (some version) of this argument who pretty obviously don't think it's been refuted. It is true that many philosophers of religion think that the logical problem of evil has been refuted, but that's just one version of the argument. Other versions may fair better. Philosophers of religion–believer and non-believer alike–continue to devote significant efforts to the discussion of various versions of the argument, which suggests that in fact no consensus within the field has been reached, at least not on this particular matter.

    Reply
  10. Tom Hurka

    I'd love to hear how the argument from evil was refuted long ago. Any takers?

    Reply
  11. Anon (grad student who does not wish to anger anyone higher on the food chain)

    Let me clear one thing up: Peter Hawkins, and perhaps others, got the impression from my post that I put forth the following argument: because one terrible argument ("Lord, Liar, or Lunatic") has been made in the philosophy of religion, we should conclude that the whole discipline is worthless.

    This is a misunderstanding, but not Hawkins' fault. I had originally put further information in my post describing how a recent major textbook in the philosophy of religion claims that the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is actually quite good. My suggestion is that only in the philosophy of religion would one find a *textbook* advocating such a preposterous claim, and that this is symptomatic of problems of quality within the field. However, Leiter removed this information – on reflection, rightly – because it named and criticized a scholar in the field, whereas I wish to remain anonymous. Hopefully this clears things up a little.

    I'll respond to the other posters later when I have more time.

    Reply
  12. Anon (grad student who does not wish to anger anyone higher on the food chain)

    In response to Justin Capes: Parsons writes, "I found the arguments [in a prominent theist's book] so execrably awful and pointless that they bored and disgusted me." If this isn't tantamount to holding that some debates in the philosophy of religion are conducted at an embarrassingly low level, then I don't know what is.

    Also, of course there is dissent within philosophy of religion about whether the argument from evil works. But there are a very significant number of people who believe that it doesn't. That is not reflected within the wider philosophical community, where it is very hard to find anyone who believes that the argument from evil has any serious flaws at all. Note that I never claimed that this is a bad thing – just an observation about discord between phil. religion and most other people.

    Indeed, I agree with other commentators that one often finds a similar issue in other areas of philosophy. For example, most people in analytic metaphysics think that e.g. debates about the special composition question, coincidence, four-dimensionalism, etc., are "substantive", whereas many outside the field don't. So there is often discord between what specialists in philosophy say about a given topic and what non-specialists in philosophy say about it. Plausibly this is due to some sort of selection effect (I think that David Chalmers made this point somewhere). So I don't claim that philosophy of religion is special in this regard. I do stand by my claim, however, that much work in the philosophy of religion is not very good at all, even when compared to mediocre work in the philosophy of language, mathematics, metaphysics, mind, and ethics.

    Reply
  13. Another Student

    I think some of the disconnect and frustration might be due to the libertarianism about free will that theist philosophers of religion tend to endorse. Looking at the PhilPapers survey, 57.4% of philosophers of religion endorse libertarianism, whereas in philosophy of action it's 18.6%; mind, 10.9%; epistemology, 16.8%; metaphysics, 21.3%; normative ethics, 11.5%.

    Contra Peter I'd suggest that people become frustrated with PoR because a large number of philosophers of religion do accept as basic premises of arguments views that are pretty far out of the mainstream of all the other subfields. It's hard to get behind the "consensus" about the logical problem of evil if you think libertarianism is goofy, which 80-90% of philosophers outside PoR apparently think.

    I haven't looked too hard at the survey result on these yet, but it seems like PoR also differs from the rest of philosophy in other ways, such that it is sort of isolated from the rest of philosophy on a whole host of issues, including moral realism, deontology, rationalism, etc. Whereas you can find a general consensus or at least a trend within fields dealing with ethics and related issues on egalitarianism (ironically PoR's endorsement of egalitarianism is very low, at 14.8%), PoR's only "buddy" seems to be metaphysics. And even so, my informal glance seems to tell me that metaphysics isn't nearly as far out as PoR is.

    I don't know if this is a symptom of lack of cross-talk between PoR and the other fields, because of where philosophers of religion tend to be located academically, or what. I wouldn't be surprised though if serious divergence in basic views is part of why philosophers outside of PoR have trouble taking it seriously.

    Reply
  14. Mike

    I have no idea what 'the' problem of evil is supposed to be? It would be good to know which problem of evil you have in mind. There are several. But tell me which of the following illustrates the bad philosophical work you are alluding to: Jordan Howard Sobel's , Logic and Theism, John Mackie's, Miracle of Theism, Al Plantinga's, Nature of Necessity or his God, Freedom and Evil, David Johnson's, Hume, Holism and Miracles, John Earman's, Hume's Abject Failure, Robert Fogelin, A Defense of Hume on Miracles, Peter van Inwagen & Dean Zimmerman, Persons: Human and Divine, Peter van Inwagen, God, Knowledge and Mystery, or his, The Problem of Evil, Linda Zagzebski's, The Problem of Freedom and Foreknowledge, or her Divine Motivation Theory, William Hasker's, God, Time and Knowledge, Michael Tooley and Al Plantinga's, Knowledge of God, Daniel Dennett and Al Plantinga, Science and Religion. Is this in the ballpark of the work you find below par? You don't have to name names. Just give me a percentage of how much of this is bad.

    Reply
  15. Ken Taylor

    As pretty much a pure outsider to the Philosophy of Religion – -though I did make one brief foray into that field a few years ago — I'm probably not entitled to offer an opinion on this topic. Still I couldn't resist. Judging from talks I have attended and papers I have read, I wouldn't say that the standards of philosophical argumentation deployed by the very best analytic philosophers of religion are markedly worse than those operative in other areas of philosophy. I suspect that if I set about seriously to teach certain well known arguments against, say, the so-called logical problem of evil, I'd probably have reaction similar to my reaction to, say, the consequence argument. I find that argument beguiling but completely unmoving. When I teach it, after giving it its due on its own terms, I try to engage my students in an extended philosophical discussion of opportunity, motivation and ability and then have them look at the argument again. I suspect many arguments in analytic philosophy of religion are at least as beguiling and at least as good philosophical foils as the consequence argument. I should also say, by the way, that many papers in philosophy that I absolutely adore and even some I actually believe often limp when the going gets tough. One example from the same course in which I teach the consequence argument is Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment." Powerful and deep paper — one of my all time favorites. But I doubt that I'm alone in finding it argumentatively elusive in the extreme. I think the best analytic philosophers of religion are taking on big, important philosophical challenges. The total measure of their philosophical merits can't simply be the air tightness of their arguments. Cause by that measure lots of really powerful and important works in philosophy fall short.

    Reply
  16. Mike

    "I'd love to hear how the argument from evil was refuted long ago. Any takers?"

    For a widely accepted solution to the only problem of evil that anyone (that I know of) has claimed is solved, see 164-191, _The Nature of Necessity_. For another version of that argument, a bit easier to follow, see _Profiles: Alvin Plantinga_.

    Reply
  17. Amy Lara

    I can't speak to the phil of religion issue, but there are plenty of truly painful arguments to be dealt with in applied ethics. The worst, I think, are the ones made against legalizing same sex marriage. Every semester I write the slippery slope argument up and plod through the premises, wishing I could be anywhere else on earth. But recently I was reading a political blog where many intelligent people post, most of them academics but not philosophers, and they were musing about how to respond to the "but then people will be able to marry their dogs" argument. They honestly had no idea how to respond to the argument; they knew it was bad, but couldn't articulate the problem. It made me feel better about having to teach this ridiculous stuff every semester — someone has to address these arguments and show other people how to address them. The "arguments" are horrible, but they're out there and they're being taken seriously by a lot of people. Our intro courses are the only exposure to philosophy most of our students will ever get. On the other hand, it's perfectly understandable to reach burn-out at a certain point and hand the job off to someone else.

    Reply
  18. Alexander Jee

    It is, I believe, inappropriate to mention a philosopher by name scant moments before unsubstantially defaming his work in a public forum. Had Professor Parsons given some thoughtful defense of why he felt justified in pin pointing Layman's work as representative of his issues with the philosophy of religion at large, his statement could at be at least loosely construed as genuine philosophical discourse. Philosophy of religion as a field has certainly sustained its fair share of tenth rate thinking and irresponsible postulating but I have read Layman's book and found it to be clear, exhaustively researched and a suitable text for any philosophy of religion course.

    The real point is, one can air their compaints about a trend within a branch of philosophy while refraining from targeting individuals, but if one must single out philosophers, give good reason for doing so!

    BL COMMENT: Professor Parsons's comment about Professor Layman's book is not defamatory, and I see nothing objectionable about one scholar expressing his opinion about the work of another scholar, and putting his own name and reputation behind the criticism, as Professor Parsons has done. I think this is true even if Professor Parsons is ultimately adjudged to be mistaken in his particulra assessment.

    Reply
  19. Fritz Warfield

    1. The anonymous graduate student needs to read only a bit more widely to discover that his "suggestion" is false. A great many *textbooks* in a great many subfields of philosophy include defenses and/or sympathetic portrayals of straight-forwardly bad arguments. This includes textbooks in ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and yes, even logic. I don't think there is any one explanation of why this occurs in all of the cases in which it occurs. Anyone who teaches from textbooks on a regular basis and in a wide variety of subfields encounters examples of this every few weeks.

    2. Philosophy of religion is one of the few subfields with the following strange property: People who don't know much about the field and work done in the field take themselves to be well positioned to comment authoritatively on the quality of the work done in the field by both typical philosophers and also leading philosophers. I almost never encounter this attitude about work in philosophy of action, sometimes (but rarely) encounter it about work in epistemology, but regularly encounter it about work in philosophy of religion.

    3. Here's a take home exercise for those who might be wanting to investigate the comparative quality of work done in philosophy of religion on the one hand and nearby non-philosophy of religion fields on the other. Read some of the best contemporary work on the problem of freedom and determinism. Read, for example, the work of Peter van Inwagen and John Martin Fischer both in "textbook" contexts and in specialized work written for professionals. Along with that and because of interesting parallels between the 2 debates, read philosophy of religion work on the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. Read, for example, Fredosso's introduction to the Cornell U Press Molina volume and (for somewhat more popular level work) the SEP entry on freedom/foreknowledge. Does one notice that the work on foreknowledge/freedom is at much lower level of philosophical quality and sophistication than the work on determinism/freedom? Give it a try and see.

    4. AnonymousGradStudent seems not to take a stand on the comparative quality of the best work in philosophy of religion and other fields. He seems more interested to claim that there is lots of work in philosophy of religion that is very bad. I don't dispute that claim. But the claim is true of many other subfields isn't it? There is a lot of really bad work in other subfields too(including ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology). "Mediocre", to put the point another way, is actually better than a whole lot of what is written in many central sub-fields.

    Reply
  20. Ben Murphy

    Philosophy of Religion is my main area of expertise, and I don't think there is a consensus that the problem of evil was solved. A different claim that is frequently made is that the logical problem of evil was solved.

    This does have some basis. In the late 1970's, Alvin Plantinga published an influential response to the logical problem of evil, and William Rowe published an influential paper pushing the evidential problem of evil. So there was a big shift in the nature of analytical discussion of evil – everyone, or most people, wanted to focus on the evidential rather than the logical problem. Then there were those who thought that the whole analytical discussion, whether logical or evidential, was too intellectual.

    So, it is true that after Plantinga's work, much less attention was paid to the logical problem of evil. Plantinga's supporters naturally interpreted this as a vindication for his effort to solve the logical problem.

    Reply
  21. Justin Capes

    A quick rejoinder to Anon and then I'll bow out. So Parsons finds an intro text that, in his opinion, is full of shoddy argumentation. You also describe a book that, in your opinion, has some bad philosophy of religion despite being an otherwise acceptable bit of metaphysics. Is that really "tantamount to holding that some debates in the philosophy of religion are conducted at an embarrassingly low level"? I sometimes receive sample desk copies of intro to ethics books from publishing companies trying to get me to use their texts in my courses. A fair number (though certainly not all) of these books are not really that good and a few are downright awful. Is this evidence that some debates in ethics are conducted at an embarrassingly low level, or is it instead evidence of something less interesting (e.g., sometimes books get published that perhaps shouldn't; some participants to a debate don't always (ever?) produce quality work)?

    Reply
  22. the original anon grad student

    Of course, as Fritz Warfield says, there are textbooks which say silly things all across philosophy. I own a textbook on Nietzsche which is hopelessly confused about his talk of the "will to power". I own a textbook on Godel's incompleteness theorems which handles them pretty badly too. I have a well-known set theory textbook, often used by mathematicians, which begins with a brief but utterly incoherent discussion of the philosophy of set theory. All these textbooks are published by serious publishers. I concede all this.

    The question, though, is whether any of these textbooks contain errors on par with holding that the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is defensible. This argument, recall, effectively states that because people gain comfort from the teachings of Jesus, he must be the Son of God. Endorsing this argument is an unbelievably bad philosophical error, on par with endorsing creationism in a biology classroom. It is not on par with misinterpreting the writings of a enigmatic and challenging philosopher like Nietzsche. It is not on par with confusion about primitive recursive functions. A closer analogy would be a textbook which claims that Russell's paradox is a reductio of the axiom of extensionality, or that Nietzsche was a ardent supporter of the categorical imperative, or which reported that Kripke's story that Schmidt, not Godel proved the incompleteness of PA, is actually true. But I know of no textbooks which make such errors. Only, as I said, in the philosophy of religion can one find something like that.

    My claim is not that non-religious philosophy contains no bad moments. My claim is that the very worst of the worst in philosophy often comes from the philosophy of religion. (Also, I have never said that there is NO good work being done in the field: why do people keep putting these words in my mouth??)

    Reply
  23. John Fischer

    I agree with most of what Ken Taylor says, including the confession that I can't resist a few brief comments here. (I have one small disagreement with Ken; whereas I am not completely moved by the Consequence Argument, I am not completely unmoved by it, and I think that even a careful discussion of the notions of ability and opportunity might not yield a decisive refutation of it. Same with the classical and contemporary [Nelson Pike et. al] argument for the incompatibility of God's foreknowledge and human freedom.)

    I am an atheist, and I have been for as long as I can remember, including my early days in religious school, my Bar Mitzvah (nice presents, though), and so forth. I am, to use Ken's phrase, pretty much "completely unmoved" by the basic intuitive engines that seem to drive a belief in God.

    But nevertheless I have great respect for our intellectual heritage, which is shaped to a great extent by religion. That is not to say that the influence of religion on human life has always been felicitous, or even on balance good. But, for better or worse, it is a deep part of our intellectual heritage–in art, music, literature, architecture, and philosophy.

    Further, philosophy of religion is (in my view) a rich and fascinating area. No doubt, there is here, as in other sub-fields, a spectrum of quality. Perhaps the spectrum is wider in philosophy of religion than in other sub-fields; maybe this is because religion is of wide interest, whereas say reference or metaphysical principles of compositionality are more arcane and rarefied. This implies that a larger population will be attracted to issues concerning religion; I think this is also the case in discussions of free will. But anyone who dismisses the great questions of philosophy of religion, such as the problem of evil (in its various forms and guises), the problem of the relationship between God's omniscience and human freedom, and the relationship between a belief in God (traditionally construed) and science (just to mention three), does so at his or her peril, and, in my view, exhibits a lamentable intellectual narrowness.

    Again, allow me to emphasize that I myself am an atheist. But I want also to say how fascinating and compelling I find at least some of the argumentation in philosophy of religion. I also wish to say that I have worked with many outstanding students and young philosophers who are deeply religious and also deeply interested in philosophy of religion, and I have the greatest respect for them intellectually and as humane, kind, generous, and just plain cool people. I think it is unfortunate that they often feel that our profession has it in for them. Paradoxically, it is often the "liberal" professors who preach egalitarianism and concern for others who are most dismissive of philosophy of religion (and, by extension, those who are engaged in it). Perhaps part of the animus comes from the very baleful influence of George Bush and his hideous cronies. But of course it would be unfair to tar philosophy of religion with that brush, just as it is unfair to conflate or confuse the failings of religious insitutions with the fundamental ideas behind religion.

    Reply
  24. Mike

    "The question, though, is whether any of these textbooks contain errors on par with holding that the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is defensible. This argument, recall, effectively states that because people gain comfort from the teachings of Jesus, he must be the Son of God."

    I've nothing but the vaguest awareness of this argument, but I'm prepared to wager whatever you have on hand that that's not the argument. I'll bet it's not even in the right ballpark. But someone more familiar with the argument will have to confirm.

    Reply
  25. Greg Janzen

    Professor Parsons' message is the second most exhilarating thing I've read in the last few years; the first is G. Rey's article "Meta-Atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-Deception."

    I don't specialize in the philosophy of religion, but I've published a few pieces in the area and I've taught it several times, and I know of no other area of philosophy where the arguments for one side of the debate (the atheist's side) are so patently and overwhelmingly more compelling than the arguments for the other side (the theist's side). Some of the work in other subfields is bad, of course, but MOST of the work done to bolster "the case for theism" is laughably bad.

    Reply
  26. Chris Hallquist

    @Peter Heather: I'm puzzled by the claim that Mackie admitted Plantinga had refuted him. Here's Mackie at the end of the chapter on the Problem of Evil in The Miracle of Theism:

    "In short, all forms of the free will defence fail, and since this defence alone had any chance of success there is no plausible theodicy on offer. We cannot, indeed, take the problem of evil as a conclusive disproof of traditional theism, because, as we have seen, there is some flexibility in its doctrines, and in particular in the additional premisses needed to make the problem explicit. There may be some way of adjusting these which avoids an internal contradiction without giving up anything essential to theism. But none has yet been clearly presented, and there is a strong presumption that theism cannot be made coherent without a serious change in at least one of its central doctrines."

    Does this sound like a concession that Plantinga refuted him?

    Reply
  27. Robert Gressis

    Anon grad student,

    I disagree with your formulation of the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument. You describe it twice, as follows:

    (1) "either Jesus was a lunatic, liar, or the son of God. Obviously he's not the first two, since so many people believe that he wasn't! Therefore Jesus is the son of God."

    (2) "This argument, recall, effectively states that because people gain comfort from the teachings of Jesus, he must be the Son of God."
    The way I’ve always heard the argument, it goes more like this: many people say that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but that he was not God. However, he claimed that he was God. It is implausible to think that someone could both be a great moral teacher and sincerely believe he was God; instead, such a person would be a lunatic, and lunatics aren’t great moral teachers. Similarly, it is implausible to hold that someone could both be a great moral teacher and intentionally deceive people into thinking he was God; such a person would be a liar, and liars aren’t great moral teachers. Therefore, the only way it could be true both that Jesus was a great moral teacher and that he sincerely believed he was God is that he was, in fact, God. Thus, you can believe that Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or divine, but you can’t believe that he was a great moral teacher who was not God.
    Now, there is certainly a lot to question about this argument: first, did Jesus really claim he was a great moral teacher? Second, is it really so implausible to hold that someone who was not God could sincerely believe he was God and nonetheless be a great moral teacher? Third, is it really so implausible to hold that someone who intentionally deceived people about his divine status could nonetheless be a great moral teacher? I’m sure there are more questions to ask about it, too. But the argument doesn’t (to me) seem to be straightforwardly *atrocious*. I’d have to do some research into New Testament studies and into abnormal psychology to have really strong feelings about the answers to the three questions I asked. Regardless, even if you think this argument is really, really bad, it still seems to me to be quite a few steps up from the way Anon grad student has presented it. And I also don’t think that its (barely visible) presence shows philosophy of religion to be a subfield with a lower quality of argumentation than other philosophical subfields.

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  28. Eric

    I don't know if this is the 'conclusive' refutation to the problem of evil, but I've been told by some reputable philosophers of religion that van Inwagen's Gifford Lectures from 2003 (which were published by OUP in 2006) were the best single-authored response to the problem of evil out there.

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  29. Mike

    @Chris Hallquist

    It's true that Mackie gave up on the logical argument from evil that he offered in 'Evil and Omnipotence'. He retrenched to an evidential argument from evil that he called 'the problem of unabsorbed evils'. These are evils that are not justifiably permitted by God. He allowed that some evils are so allowed, and that concedes the logical problem. But he claims that FWD does not work against this new evidential argument. Anyway, see _The Miracle of Theism_ (Oxford: OUP, 1982), 150-76, esp. 155.

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  30. Peter Hawkins

    Chris Hallquist,

    The free-will defences that Mackie criticises in The Miracle of Theism are subtly different from the one that Plantinga offers. Mackie basically says "OK, grant libertarian free will. Why can't free agents always freely choose the good?". And that seems a a really good response to traditional free-will defences. Plantinga gives some reasons as to why they might not always be able to choose the good that (Plantinga claims) do not impugn theism's central claims.

    I don't have a copy of Mackie to hand, but the IEP has this to say:

    http://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-log/#H8

    "Since this defense [Plantinga's defence – Peter H]is formally [that is, logically] possible, and its principle involves no real abandonment of our ordinary view of the opposition between good and evil, we can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another. But whether this offers a real solution of the problem is another question. (Mackie 1982, p. 154)"

    That sounds like a concession to me. Of course, it's up for debate as to whether Plantinga's argument actually does what Plantinga (and Mackie, seemingly) think that it does. But it seems fairly clear from the above that Mackie thought it did successfully do that.

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  31. Ben Murphy

    The "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" argument is also known as "Mad, bad or God?" The phrasing of the question "Mad, Bad or God?" is based on the version of the argument by C.S.Lewis who, as far as I'm aware, was the first person to propose the argument. Robert Gressis is correct that the point of this argument was to refute the idea that Jesus was nothing more or less than a great moral teacher. Lewis thought that this was a condescending approach, the kind of thing that might be said by someone trying to be polite about Christianity, but who has not thought things through very carefully.

    Lewis did not think that there was any way to sort through the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament and separate genuine teachings of Jesus from later additions, but he did accept that someone might simply reject the New Testament as a reliable source of information.

    Lewis was also aware that much of the moral teaching ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament is not original, and for that reason, he thought it was wrong to treat Jesus as someone who was great because he achieved some wonderful breakthrough in moral thinking – as though Jesus were to ethics what Newton or Einstein was to philosophy.

    Of course, Lewis hoped to bring people to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and the "Mad, bad or God/Lord, Liar, Lunatic" argument was meant to be a stage in the process of persuasion. But I don't think Lewis himself saw this argument, on its own, as being a proof of Jesus' divinity. Rather, he wanted to eliminate the "just a great moral teacher" idea, and, insofar as that is the goal, I think it is a pretty good argument. I think it also provides students with a good example of the kind of results they can expect from analytical philosophy of religion – it sharpens the options, revealing the weak and fuzzy nature of what initially appears to be an attractive compromise – the view that Jesus was nothing more or less than a great moral teacher – even though it does not settle the really big question – was Jesus the Son of God?

    Still, I don't know in which text-book original anon grad student found a reference to the argument. Perhaps it was badly presented there.

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  32. Another Anon Grad Student

    As a PhD student with an interest in philosophy of religion, I particularly appreciate Professor Fischer's comments. And I find it surprising that the Parsons "announcement" is getting the attention and support that it is. Many people have mid-life research crises. If a small-town epistemologist had decided after years of study that he found contextualism pointless, would it merit a full-blown Leiter report? Probably not.

    There is an awkward and unbecoming closed-mindedness among analytic philosophers. Any topic is free and fitting for reason to wrestle with… except theology. As some of the commentators note, there is so much bad philosophy of religion because there is SO MUCH philosophy of religion. The existence of God is a topic that nearly everyone has wrestled with at least long enough to self-identify as an atheist or a theist. Some of us wrestle with the question our whole lives. Very, very few people stay up at night wondering over the best semantics for indexicals or whether they have modal counterparts.

    Analytic philosophers can decide to ignore religion. But in doing so, we'll cede a great source of our relevance. That said, it is probably good that disillusioned or burnt out philosophers like Parsons bow out of the debates. Leave it to those that still have the energy and fire to go after a big question.

    BL COMMENT: I also found John Fischer's comment especially interesting. The commenter, however, has no grounds for dismissing Professors' Parsons as a mid-life research crisis. If someone who devoted a lot of their career to metaphysics suddenly decided it was bogus, that would be notable I should think (I think most metaphysics is bogus, but I haven't devoted my career to it, so that's not notable!). It's obviously nonsense to say that 'analytic' philosophers (whoever they are!) wrestle with everything except theology. In fact, they have examined theological claims and arguments for hundreds of years.

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  33. Steven Hales

    I wonder if some of the dissatisfaction with phil of religion is the perception (genuine empirical studies welcome) that there is a party line, namely, that theism is true. Then the arguments all look like window-dressing on the foreordained conclusion. Sort of like Russell's quip about Kant that he learned all he needed to know about ethics at his mother's knee. If the overwhelming majority of phil of religion specialists really are theists, that makes the field unlike other subfields in an important way. There's no party line among metaphysicians about eternalism vs. presentism, or among epistemologists about invariantism vs. contextualism, or ethicists about deontology vs. consequentialism. Yes, there is near-consensus about certain specific arguments about narrow issues, (e.g. that Gettier refuted the JTB analysis), but that is not analogous. If 90% of ethicists were convinced of moral realism, that's equal cause for worry, in my book. Who has been raised from childhood to be a four-dimensionalist, and now spends their professional career defending four-dimensionalism? I'd wager no one. 4D beliefs are causally related to reading/hearing the arguments about persistence. Are philosophers (those not in their dotage, as in one famous, recent case) generally brought to theism by argument alone? I doubt it. But maybe I'm wrong about this.

    BL COMMENT: I think Professor Hales has hit on something important, namely, that so much work in philosophy of religion looks like post-hoc rationalization of foreordained conclusions. I would just observe, in a mischievous Nietzschean spirit, that a lot of philosophy actually looks that way, even a lot of the 'secular' stuff. I mean, seriously, if you're not already a Kantian, how else does one interpret most of the literature in Kantian moral philosophy? But that's one of many examples.

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  34. Allen Hazen

    What surprised me in Professor Parsons's statement was a presupposition rather than anything he had stated. He seems to believe that teaching a philosophy of religion class requires the instructor to present as worthy of attention arguments for theism that [insert ambiguous gender neutral pronoun here: I can't make up my mind as between "the instructor" and Parsons as antecedent] doesn't request. This might be an institutional requirement where Parsons teaches, in which case it is disgracefuland worthy of our sternest condemnation, or it might be lack of imagination on Parsons's part. Nobody expects a course on, e.g., the problem of universals to propagandize for platonism, and philosophy of religion courses shouldn't be expected to endorse theism.

    I have two friends in my previous city who taught philosophy of religion classes regularly, one a committed Christian, the other convinced atheist. Both, I think, tried to maintain a sort of neutrality in their lectures (the atheist told me that students weren't always sure of his own beliefs), but both were able to find texts and topics they felt they could present honestly.

    —

    On another topic: C.S. Lewis's Oxford degrees were partly in philosophy, and he applied for philosophy jobs before becoming an English "professor" (American terminology: in English English, he only became a "professor" late in his career). His theological views would now, I think, be thought of as close to the fundamentalist extreme, but his discussions of them are reasoned, and there are some intriguing ideas. I think he deserves to be considered at least an amateur philosopher of religion, and — this might be relevant to the choice of readings for an undergraduate course — he's more readable than many academic professionals.

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  35. Allen Hazen

    Oops! TYPO: second word of fifth line of my previous post should be "respect," not "request"

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  36. Hw1

    I'm one who has come over the years to philosophy of religion as a central interest. It's not because of the arguments for the existence of God, nor for the various attempts at theodicy, all of which I find unconvincing. It's because religion, like the arts, is perennially at the center of human concern, and philosophy ought to have something serious to say about these matters.

    I have come to the at first unlikely-seeming conclusion that the question of God's existence is a sort of red herring. Here's an analogy: Richard Feynman had little patience for the question of the "existence" of numbers, but lived in a kind of intimacy with them, or so he is alleged to have said. I'm not sure existence is the right idea for numbers, or for God. (Big topic) But the powerful religious experiences that some have had cries out for a, by my lights, non-reductive account. What does one make of religion without the claim the God exists? (If existence is the wrong idea, a kind of category confusion, then non-existence likewise.) But what does one do with the truths of mathematics without the metaphysical claim that numbers exist. I raise these as questions that I find fascinating.

    Let me add that very notion of belief that we take to be at the heart of the game was not even formulable in the idiom of biblical Hebrew. And if Buber is right, it's not a dominant idea in the New Testament until rather late, the Gospel of John. So a religious orientation of the most serious kind was not thought of a belief in God's existence. Anyway, I pursue some of these things in recent work, and their implications need a lot of thought. But what's becoming more and more powerful for me is that the terms of the standard philosophical debate may be lacking pertinence not only to religious life as practitioners lead it, but to the theoretical treatment of that life.

    Howard.Wettstein@ucr.edu

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  37. Chris Hallquist

    Peter,

    I just checked that quote from Mackie earlier today, but not because of the IEP article. Problem is, it isn't a reference to Plantinga, it's a reference to a generic higher-order-goods defense, something Mackie had already discussed in "Evil and Omnipotence." He even paid this defense similar (if milder) compliments in E&O, and by the end of the Miracle of Theism chapter he's still talking about consistency.

    There's some subtle tweaking of Mackie's position going on, but he doesn't say the tweaking is due to Plantinga, and that would seem unlikely, as Mackie's assessment of Plantinga's argument comes out quite negative.

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  38. Chris Hallquist

    Mike,

    See the quote I already posted. Mackie is still presenting this as a consistency issue, not a evidential issue. The shift seems to me to be that in MoT, he concedes that theists have enough wiggle room that there's a chance they'll be able to find a viable, consistent version of their beliefs, but he doesn't think they have yet.

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  39. differing anon grad student

    My research is in the philosophy of religion. The main conversation about Parson's leaving PoR because of his inability to take seriously the positions that run counter to his own, seems to have been derailed somewhat. I find the original conversation philosophically interesting, since I'm sure that we have all felt like this from time to time, regardless of our field. I'll say something very quickly about anon grad students claims and then move on to (what i take to be) the original topic.

    The crux seems to be over whether there are an abundance of laughably bad arguments in PoR compared to other sub-fields. As I see it, Anon Grad Student and those in agreement have the burden of proof. They have made a sweeping, devastating, and frankly odd claim by extrapolating from only 1-2 cases. Moreover, these cases may not in fact represent anything important or be founded on a misunderstanding of the argument. More evidence is really required to decide what, exactly, this is evidence of, as Justin Capes points out. Without any more evidence, I can only entertain this claim as an intuition of some sort. And a bit of an odd one at that.

    As for Parson's predicament, I'm sympathetic. Philosopher's do their best work when they enjoy the questions they are tackling. Teachers are at their best when they can tell us why people can seriously hold their views. If we find ourselves unable to understand why some people hold their arguments, it is very hard to teach these arguments in a *good* way. Understanding how we can best get a grip on views we find ludicrous is especially important for philosophers.

    To me, a small dose of the principle of charity is required when it comes to circumstances like Parsons. When there are many people that hold a particular view and we believe these people to be intelligent and rational the principle of charity tells us that the view must have some sort of substance. Parsons seems to agree that many people hold theistic views and that these people are rational (or earnest at least). By the PoC, there must be some substance to theistic views. As philosophers it is are job to find and understand that substance. It is also our job to agree or disagree with whatever substantive claim we are able to distill from the arguments of others.

    So again, I am sympathetic with Parsons, in that I know it is hard to work and teach if one cannot bring oneself to reasonably consider certain arguments. But, by the PoC i only take this as evidence of one's own inability to discern the real crux or point of an argument. Though I'd like to take "never give up on charity" as an ideology, perhaps, at a certain point, its just time to move on to something that does invigorate you.

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  40. J. Edward Hackett

    The given animosity to philosophy of religion stems from two larger underlining basic positions that form the background of contemporary philosophy: A) Some form of overall naturalism (broadly construed to include both ontological and methodological naturalism or one over another) about the world is true, and the only reliable way to explain the world is scientific. and B) Philosophy should only concentrate on areas of inquiry corroborated by the sciences (broadly construed to include social and naturalistic sciences).

    I take it that A and B are accepted by most analytic philosophers without much attention to questioning these two implicit assumptions. Now, admittedly A and B are so broad, they include a variety of positions given the breath of contemporary philosophical research. The point of drawing our attention to A and B is explanatory of possible animosity that form the experience of many theists.

    Of course, this also leaves aside the mythos that philosophy's origin is an overcoming of superstition when in fact philosophy's origin is rather a sublime encounter with an overwhelming totality of nature found first in Thales. It's a nice mythos we like to tell ourselves at night so much in fact it makes for lively parties. Anecdotally, I was at a cocktail party once where a noncognitivist yelled at a neo-Kantian that his philosophy wasn't naturalistic enough. A two hour debate ensued over much beer whether or not being naturalistic enough was a criteria for rejecting in whole an entire research program.

    BL COMMENT: Among the "analytic" philosophers who do not accept A and B are Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, Thomas Nagel, Nelson Goodman, and Ronald Dworkin. I realize these are obscure figures in "analytic" philosophy, but perhaps before making statements about "analytic" philosophy, one should know something about it.

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  41. Anonymous

    Why is PoR so heavily dominated by Christians/Christian thought?

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  42. Joshua Blanchard

    Despite reading these comments and other blog entries, I'm finding it hard to locate exactly what the problem is supposed to be. Parsons et al obviously think some work in phil religion is worthwhile, e.g. their own. Anyone can submit articles and books for publication in this field, like any other. Religious concepts, like anything else, can be analyzed in a philosophical way. So far there hasn't been any complaints about discrimination in publishing. If anything, one occasionally hears complaints in the other direction.

    Aside from some surprising misunderstanding about the kinds and histories of problems of evil, only one argument has been submitted for evidence that phil religion steeps to unique lows – one of C.S. Lewis' arguments from a radio broadcast, sometimes called the "The Trilemma," which continues to circulate in apologetic circles and apparently in somebody's textbook somewhere. I have four major and one minor phil religion textbooks on my shelf: Rowe; Pojman ed.; Stump and Murray eds.; Quinn and Taliaferro eds.; and an obscure one by William Abraham. None of these, as far as I can tell or have read, mention The Trilemma.

    I have read this argument addressed in a scholarly context only once – by an atheist. In Erik Wielenberg's book God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell, he has a chapter called "Lewis's Mitigated Victory and the Trilemma." However this is not a textbook, but an exercise in charitably developing popular work in a rigorous way. Hence the discussion was appropriate. You can read a review of the book here, although without reference to Lewis' argument: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13785

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  43. Craig Duncan

    I am an atheist who counts the philosophy of religion as an area of research (along with ethics and political philosophy). I find myself partly agreeing with both sides of this "debate."

    Like John Fischer, I think there is some very interesting work being done in the philosophy of religion, work that has improved our understanding of some key issues (the distinction between the logical and evidential problems of evil comes to mind, as do recent discussions of the "Divine Hiddeness" argument).

    Also, I find it an interesting area to teach, since you can introduce students to some sophisticated notions of metaphysics and epistemology, without these notions seeming "academic" in the pejorative sense. (I like to think of my Philosophy of Religion class as really a class in "applied metaphysics.")

    That said, the phenomenon that Brian refers to above as "post-hoc rationalization of foreordained conclusions" strikes me as a real phenomenon in the field. That is not to say it is absent in other fields of philosophy. It just seems more bald-faced in the philosophy of religion.

    The problem of evil is a case in point. Consider some replies of several top theistic philosophers:

    Notoriously, Alvin Plantinga suggests that natural evil may be due to Satan and his cohorts abusing their supernatural powers (Plantinga 1974, pp. 57-62).

    Peter Van Inwagen suggests that not even an omnipotent god could make a world without natural evils, that for all we know, tornados, tsunamis, hurricanes, diseases, etc., are logically necessary concomitants of any world complex enough to contain human life (Van Inwagen 2006, p. 119). He goes on to suggest that for all we know, early humans, living in union with God, somehow had the preternatural power to detect and avoid natural disasters, to tame wild animals with a glance, and to cure diseases with a touch—these powers being lost once union with God was severed in a “fall” (ibid., p. 86; Van Inwagen 1988, pp. 169-170).

    Richard Swinburne claims that animal suffering is a good thing on the whole because it makes possible phenomena such as animal courage, sympathy, and patience (Swinburne 1998, p. 173; Swinburne 1996, p. 111).

    There are other examples from other areas of the field. In a discussion of immortality (in Paul Edwards' 1997 anthology), Van Inwagen suggests, as a possibility to take seriously, that God bodily resurrects people upon death and leaves an imposter corpse made of new matter in their place. Then there is the question of how, if knowledge of Jesus is needed for salvation, it was fair of God to damn people who had no chance of hearing of Jesus (say, people in Africa, Asia, etc. before the "good news" reached that far). I recall William Lane Craig writing that God must have known these people would have rejected the message of Jesus had they been exposed to it.

    These examples make me slap my forehead in a way I don't find myself doing too often in other fields (although the more libertarian writings in political philosophy I read, the flatter my forehead gets). Sometimes I think examples like those just listed have an uncanny resemblance to conspiracy theory reasoning (as if religion were a "conspiracy of goodness"!). Conspiracy theorists are capable of great ingenuity. But more than ingenuity is needed!

    I don't mean to insult these writers, who undoubtedly have made important contributions to the discipline of philosophy in general. So in the end I don't really go in for the conspiracy theory analogy. A better comparison, perhaps, is with the case of Linus Pauling, a brilliant scientist with an unfortunate obsession with Vitamin C.

    In short, I have some mixed feelings about one of my own areas of research. But fortunately, so far the good feelings have significantly outstripped the bad, and I find my interest in the field continuing.

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  44. Jon Cogburn

    I mostly just want to second Howard Wettstein's incisive comments above. I think on spiritual, historical, and philosophical grounds it is a mistake to focus too much on arguments for and against God's existence- as if believing in some set of purported historical/metaphysical facts is either necessary or sufficient for being faithful in the relevant sense. Representatives from the contemplative traditions of all major religions are not committed to this connection (people working in the Wittgensteinian tradition such as Phillips and John Whittaker are really good at showing this; but you can also just read the poetry of Rumi).

    And there is a lot of good philosophy of religion along the lines of what Wettstein articulates. For example, a few years ago I taught Peter Byrne's (ed.) excellent "Realism and God" anthology as part of a metaphysics class and the essays in the volume were uniformly interesting and thought provoking in just the way he puts forward.

    This being said, as a Christian I find philosophy of religion really, really difficult to do because there is always the danger of deciding beforehand what you are going to defend and as a result being sophistically closed off from following the evidence where it leads you. While Brian is right that this is a perennial danger in philosophy, the problem is that my love of the Jesus of the Q gospel (the material in common to Mathew and Luke that doesn't occur in Mark) is quite a bit deeper than my love of, for example, subvaluational approaches to vagueness (though to be honest I have to admit that I might take subvaluationism over some of the stuff in John).

    I mean, the bit in Aristotle's ethics where he says we love our teachers but we love the truth more is one of the founding commandments of philosophy I think.

    I'm *not* saying Plantinga or anybody else is sophistically failing to follow Aristotle's dictate, just that I have to be honest and state that my experience as a religious person is that it's extra hard to do it with matters of religion.

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  45. L.A. Paul

    I feel like Parsons' frustration is being conflated with antagonism towards philosophy of religion generally. I'm not quite sure what Parsons' point is, but with respect to the comments here I think it should be said that one needs to have respect for the problems and debates in the philosophy of religion even if one personally could not believe in a God or in gods. It's part of being intellectually honest and recognizing that intelligent others have different intuitions. I have benefited greatly from reading the work of Plantinga, van Inwagen, Adams and Zimmerman (just to name a few), even if I'm not convinced.

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  46. Mike

    "See the quote I already posted. Mackie is still presenting this as a consistency issue, not a evidential issue."

    Chris,

    Both the evidential problem and the logical problem are formulated as 'consistency issues'. The difference is that the evidential argument calls into question the compossibility of God and certain sorts of evils. The logical problem calls into question the compossibility of God and evil simpliciter. Mackie clearly concedes that God is not incompossible with evil simpliciter, since he concedes that there are absorbed evils which present no problem. It's the existence of unabsorbed evils that is supposed to be the problem.

    I think the main point, setting aside the taxonomical issue, is whether Mackie found credible that God is not incompossible with evil simpliciter. The answer is yes, I think, and that's what Plantinga aimed to show. But this can be missed, since Mackie hastens to add that there's a different but equally serious problem of evil awaiting.

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  47. Joshua Blanchard

    Craig Duncan writes: "That said, the phenomenon that Brian refers to above as "post-hoc rationalization of foreordained conclusions" strikes me as a real phenomenon in the field. That is not to say it is absent in other fields of philosophy. It just seems more bald-faced in the philosophy of religion."

    Sometimes post-hoc-ish arguments (e.g. Plantinga's appeal to demonic activity) are nevertheless adequate for the task at hand. In Plantinga's case, if the point is to just demonstrate the logical consistency of other propositions, then it doesn't matter how extravagant the story is, or whether he is having post-hoc thoughts in his head.

    However, even if there are these "post-hoc rationalizations," then one should be able to easily refute them, and then move on. Unless they are good arguments, in which case it doesn't matter (from a scholarly standpoint) if they are post-hoc.

    Finally there is a question of why such rationalizations seem more "bald-faced" in phil religion than in other fields. Rather than being more bald-faced, I suspect they are just more frequent. There seems to me to be an easy explanation for this: As in like cases already mentioned (e.g. moral realism, practical ethical issues, etc.), phil religion deals in topics already pervasive in one's thoughts, culture, and so on. So if someone is blinded by preconceptions, *and* it hinders the relevant argumentation, then point it out and move on. There are trivial cases of this phenomenon as well – say, discussions of skepticism about the external world. Is it even worth mentioning that we come to this debate with preconceptions, or biases, or whatever? It just so happens that on that one, an overwhelming majority of us agree. I don't think epistemology is somehow curious because so many philosophers are trying so desperately to "rationalize" their childhood belief that they know some things.

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  48. anon grad (new)

    In the hopes that another data point might somehow be helpful, I want to echo Howard Wettstein's point, from an outsider's perspective.

    I am curious about philosophy of religion, but have not studied it in anything like a serious way. Part of the reason for this is that I strongly suspect, as I take it with Parsons and the first anonymous grad student, that arguments for traditional (broadly Christian) formulations of theism probably cannot be very good, and I am uncomfortable about a subdiscipline where many participants come to the table already convinced of extremely controversial claims.

    More importantly, however, I find them very boring. This is not because they are technical or implausible: it's rather because the discussions in philosophy of religion that seem most prominent in analytic philosophy seem to be very insensitive to questions about the significance of religious experiences or beliefs in the lives of most people (those who do not have vaguely Scholastic sensibilities?), in a way that (for example) Kant, Kierkegaard, or James were not. I don't really care whether libertarian freedom is compatible with divine foreknowledge, or if technical considerations about warrant license evangelicals to retain their beliefs about immortal souls. (In fact, if I know that part of a writer's motivation in defending some view is its compatibility with traditional theism, I take it as reason to be extra suspicious of the argument.)

    On the other hand if the literature focused rather on sensitive (though still rigorous) analyses of what faith consisted in (and the extent to which it required straightforward, propositional belief in divine beings), or whether [some] religious commitments were in some way necessarily related to [some] moral ones, or what different paradigms of religious love could consist in, and whether they have any application in secular contexts, I'd think it could be an occasion for deep, difficult, and interesting work.

    (I know that some philosophers of religion do work on these questions, but my impression is that they're sort of marginal ones in analytic circles, rather than continental ones. But it would be very helpful for me—and maybe for other people who are down on philosophy of religion—to be told otherwise!)

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  49. Jeremy Pierce

    On the other hand if the literature focused rather on sensitive (though still rigorous) analyses of what faith consisted in (and the extent to which it required straightforward, propositional belief in divine beings), or whether [some] religious commitments were in some way necessarily related to [some] moral ones, or what different paradigms of religious love could consist in, and whether they have any application in secular contexts, I'd think it could be an occasion for deep, difficult, and interesting work.

    There's a fair amount of that (and other matters that I think you'd find equally acceptable). A quick way to gauge this is to scan the online list of Faith & Philosophy articles. I see a number that might fit your criteria just in the names beginning with A and B. It's probably not the majority, but it's enough to constitute a worthy presence.

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  50. Blinn Combs

    I sympathize with Parsons, in a way that has driven me, on occasion, to despair. When one teaches, say, Aristotle's argument against Empedocles' "theory" of animal generation, one can illustrate, to some degree, a progress of thought and argumentation, and similarly with things like Anselm's (or even Descartes') arguments for God's existence; we always have the ability, at the end of the lecture, to remind students that we are studying a chapter in the history of human thought, and to relate that chapter in interesting ways to both its antecedents and its effects. Moreover, we might find the intricacies of such argumentation fascinating, all while remaining utterly unconvinced by any of them.

    At the same time, we might be, say, utterly convinced defenders of externalism in epistemic justification, but presumably our coming to this position would entail our developing the ability to provide a strong defense of internalism, and usually a respect for the strengths of the position.

    (Notice that there is no need to raise the very real specter of bad work in either domain–historical or contemporary.)

    Two contrasts with the philosophy of religion are instructive. First, our students don't tend to approach either historical or contemporary secular philosophical disputes with terribly strong preconceptions (though there are, of course, exceptions). Second, professional philosophers do not, as a rule, tend to pursue careers in philosophy as a way to advance an ideological agenda that preceded their philosophical education (again, with exceptions–objectivists and Christian apologists leap to mind, and both cases are plagued by financial incentives that place a question mark over academic neutrality).

    Lastly, I am struck by the extent to which contemporary defenders of theism are fighting an almost completely rearguard battle. The argument, e.g., that it is not logically incoherent to believe in both God and evil gives us no reason to accept the former. Worse, the apologists, even well-informed and -intentioned ones like Gutting, put up a very poor front. Gutting recently complained on these pages that no philosophers chimed in to help him dispell the philosophically uninformed comments from atheists. But his performance against Dawkins put all of the usual suspects of apologetic argument on display. He comments only on the "ultimate Boeing 747" gambit, without pointing out that the argument is an ad-hominem directed against the suppositions of the argument from design; he indulges in [what PZ Myers has usefully called] the courtier's reply that Dawkins fails to engage critically with the vast literature on God's simplicity or necessity, even directing his readers' attention to a SEP article about divine simplicity [the introduction to the article begins with a brief background on the problem, and then promptly lauches into the treatment with the following question: "What could motivate such a strange and seemingly incoherent doctrine?"!] without giving us the least motivation for finding any such view either compelling or cogent; he (indefensibly) attempts to shift the burden of proof onto Dawkins, claiming that "Dawkins does not meet the standards of rationality that a topic as important as religion requires," all while neglecting to give us any reason why Anselm's apparently incoherent description of God should be taken seriously–not as a matter of the history or sociology of religion, but as a contender for our contemporary allegiance and advocacy–and worse still, simply ignoring the (seemingly problematic) fact that his epistemic requirements are completely one-sided, since no Christian church that I'm aware of makes fluency in esoteric philosophical doctrines a precondition for membership, however such things are viewed among their respective elite. Like Parsons, I don't think that people like Gutting are charlatans; but I do question the transparency of their motivations–even and sometimes especially to themselves. (I should point out that my only reason for singling out Gutting is for his recent and highly public entry into the fray, which I took to be illustrative, not of his own independent professional work, of which I am admittedly ignorant, but some typical ill-conceived moves by religious apologists.

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