Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Religion

  • Is There Any Excuse for Unbelief? Romans 1: 18-20

    Rather than quote the whole of the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20, I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation…

  • Kant on Abraham and Isaac

    What I said about Abraham and Isaac yesterday is so close to Kant's view of the matter that I could be accused of repackaging Kant's ideas without attribution. When I wrote the post, though, I had forgotten the Kant passage. So let me reproduce it now. It is from The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), the…

  • Abraham, Isaac, and an Aspect of the Problem of Revelation

    God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"God say, "You can do what you want Abe, butThe next time you see me comin' you better run"Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"God says, "Out on Highway 61." Bob Dylan, Highway…

  • Philosophy, Religion, and the Philosophy of Religion: Four Theses

    T1. The primary purpose of the philosophy of religion is neither to debunk nor defend religion. Its main aim is neither dismissive in the manner of Dawkins, Dennett, and Co., nor is it apologetic or ancillary in the sense of the Medieval Philosophia ancilla theologiae, "Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology." The central task of…

  • The Anatta Doctrine and its Soteriological Relevance

    The anatta (Sanskrit: anatman) doctrine lies at the center of Buddhist thought and practice. The Pali and Sanskrit words translate literally as 'no self'; but the doctrine applies not only to persons but to non-persons as well. On the 'no self' theory, nothing possesses selfhood or self-nature or 'own-being,' perhaps not even nibbana 'itself.' If…

  • Dennett on the Deformation of the God Concept

    I had an excellent discussion with Mike Valle on a number of topics yesterday afternoon.  The following post exfoliates one of the themes of our discussion. One of the striking features of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking 2006)  is that Dennett seems bent on having a straw man to attack. This is…

  • Islam and the Euthyphro Problem

    Horace Jeffery Hodges  has a couple of informative and well-documented posts, here and here, on the divine will and its limits, if any, in Judaism and Christianity on the one hand, and in Islam, on the other. One way to focus the issue is in terms of the Euthyphro dilemma. The locus classicus is Stephanus…

  • Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief?

    I coined the phrase 'ego surfari' some years ago. To go on ego surfari is to type one's name into a search engine in order to see what turns up. The results are often surprising. Today I found Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief? by Sami Pihlström, Helsinki. Excerpt: One of the few recent…

  • 100+ Living Philosophers of Religion

    A list.  (Via Victor Reppert)

  • A Liberal Asks: What are the Bases of Liberal Opposition to Religion?

    Harriet E. Baber, professor of philosophy, "unrepentant liberal," and proprietor of The Enlightenment Project writes, I'm an academic. Most of my friends and colleagues are atheists, have no sympathy for religion of any kind and, in particular, detest Christianity. Being a good liberal I read good liberal sources because I like to read people who agree…

  • Questions About Religion and Superstition. Superstitious Materialism

    1. Is there a difference between religion and superstition, or is religion by its very nature superstitious? There seem to be two main views. One is that of skeptics and naturalists. For them, religion, apart perhaps from its ethical teaching, is superstitious in nature so that there could not be a religion free of superstition.…

  • Is Religion the Problem? Why Isn’t Belief As Such the Problem? The Special Pleading of Some Atheists

    One of the arguments against religion in the contemporary atheist arsenal is the argument that religious beliefs fuel war and terrorism. Rather than pull quotations from such well-known authors as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, I will quote a couple of passages from one of the contributors to Philosophers Without Gods, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. His piece…

  • Hypocrisy and Pope Benedict

    Is the Pope a hypocrite for protesting Islamic violence when the church he heads engaged in violence itself? To answer this question, we need to consider the nature of hypocrisy. I once heard a radio advertisement by a group promoting a "drug-free America." A male voice announces that he is a hypocrite because he demands…

  • What is Wrong and What is Right with Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion

    One source of the appeal of ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is that it reinstates much of what was ruled out as cognitively meaningless by logical positivism (LP) but without rehabilitating the commitments of old-time metaphysics. In particular, OLP allows the reinstating of religious language. This post explains, with blogic brevity, how this works and what…

  • Religion and the Inculcation of Morality

    Many of us internalized the ethical norms that guide our lives via our childhood religious training. We were taught the Ten Commandments, for example. We were not just taught about them, we were taught them.  We learned them by heart, and we took them to heart. This early training, far from being the child abuse that A.…