Philosophy Word of the Day – Validity and Soundness

An argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false, or, to put it another way, if the premises were true the conclusion would have to be true, or again, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises.

An argument can be valid even though the premises are false. Note, for example, that the conclusion of the following argument would have to be true if the premises were true, (even though they are, in fact, false):

→All fire-breathing rabbits live on Earth

→All humans are fire-breathing rabbits

→(Therefore,) all humans live on Earth

The argument, however, is not sound. In order for a deductive argument to be sound, it must not only be valid, the premises must be true as well.

(Via Wikipedia)

Interview with Human Genome Scientist Francis Collins

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CT also has a good Q and A with Francis Collins who describes his new BioLogos Foundation that “aims to be a bridge in the debate over science and religion and provide some answers to life’s most difficult questions.”

What led you to this new project?

After my book (“The Language of God”) I got thousands of e-mails from people, many of them troubled, many of them excited, many of them puzzled by what they heard. They wanted to engage in a further discussion that would drill more deeply.

I tried to keep up with those letters and quickly found out there was no way I could. I felt bad because the point was to start a conversation and I wasn’t holding up my end. There needed to be a place to provide some kind of responses to the questions that came up over and over again, and that sounds like a Web site.

What kind of answers will the Web site give?

Many of those questions do not have straightforward answers and we’re not trying to come at them as if they’ve never been asked before. We’ve distilled some possibilities into essays of three or four pages that an interested person might find helpful. They present options for serious believers who also trust science to give reliable data, all of which are consistent with both Scripture and science. It’s not like we pound the table and say there is only one answer and here it is.

The BioLogos website is here and looks like a good resource on Christianity and science.

Review of The Bible, Rocks and Time

In other books reviews, Christianity Today gives some good insights into InterVarsity’s The Bible, Rocks and Time, an extended critique of young-earth creationism.  The review begins,

In The Bible, Rocks and Time (IVP Academic), geologists and Reformed Christians Davis Young and Ralph Stearley try to convince young-earth creationists (YECs) to abandon their position. First, they argue that the Creation account in Genesis 1 need not be understood as a historical narrative documenting the creation of the universe and its inhabitants in six normal (rotational) days. Second, they argue that the data from geology point unwaveringly to a planet of exceedingly ancient age.

I particularly appreciated Young and Stearley’s historical overview of church beliefs on Genesis and Creation. Their careful documentation puts to rest the claims of other old-earth proponents that the church fathers held views compatible with an ancient earth. They likewise present the origins of modern geology well, particularly within the broader historical backdrop of Christian influences on scientific thought.

Review of The New Testament in Antiquity

Cover via Amazon

Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth Blog has a helpful review of Zondervan’s recent New Testament introduction The New Testament in Antiquity.

One observation that stands out is the following:

But the old adage remains true; you can’t judge a book by its cover.  So what about the overall quality of NTA?  How useful a survey/introduction is it?  I think that for its intended audience (i.e., undergraduates) it’s a very useful resource.  We need to keep the authors’ four goals in mind when flipping through this volume.  They wanted a text that was: academic, accessible, contextual, and confessional.  I submit that they’ve succeeded on all counts but I’ll grant that it’s this last goal that will throw many readers.  The authors say:

[W]e wanted a volume that is responsive to the confessional commitments of the evangelical tradition. Too often academic treatments of the New Testaments view faith commitments as passé. We wanted a scholarly text that treated the pages of the New Testament as Scripture, which has spoken to the church through the centuries. (p. 9)

I think it’s rather refreshing to see this kind of honesty from the beginning, and it’s also commendable that the authors haven’t thought it necessary to check their faith at the door.  They’re quite content to view the NT as divinely inspired Scripture recognizing that “God is at work in and through th[o]se chapters to bring life and transformation to all who seek him there.” (p. 16)

Philosophy Word of the Day – Demiurge

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The ancient Greek word means “craftsman” or “artisan.”  Plato, in the Timaeus, uses the word for the maker of the universe.  Plato says of this maker that he is unreservedly good and so desired that the world should be as good as possible.  The reason why the world is not better than it is is that the demiurge had to work on pre-existing chaotic matter.  Thus, the demiurge is not an omnipotent creator.

Early Christian philosophers were quick to claim that the demiurge represented pagan philosophy’s anticipation of the God of revealed religion.

(Lloyd P. Gerson, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 183)

BMX Lives!

If you were into BMX bikes in the 80’s like I was, you’ll appreciate this YouTube video.  It shows some great street riding somewhere in Europe.  I’m not familiar with the rider, Danny MacAskill, but he’s pretty amazing.

Bruce Waltke and Peter Enns Discuss the Inspiration of Scripture

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This has been out for a couple of days, but if you’re interested in recent debates on inerrancy and the doctrine of Scripture, you’ll find this exchange interesting.  It appears in the most recent issue of the Westminster Theological Journal.

Peter Enns observes,

Waltke and I clearly have sharp differences on a number of issues but this exchange is (I trust) free of rancor and condescension. What has struck me in the last several months is the considerable gap there is among some between the manner in which important matters are discussed and the basic ethic that Jesus promulgated, an ethic that even the most ardent secularists throughout history have taken note of and even admired. This is not to deflect the importance of debate and sharp disagreement, as I hope this exchange demonstrates, but neither Watlke nor I want to contribute to such dysfunction in the church. We hope, rather, that the complex and perennial academic points can rise to prominence, as they should. I hope readers enjoy and profit from this exchange.

Download Revisiting Inspiration & Incarnation by Bruce Waltke (PDF)

Download Response to Bruce Waltke by Peter Enns (PDF)

I appreciate the spirit in which the discussion is approached.  Dysfunction is a good word to describe what happens when theological debates take an ugly turn.

Author Writes Novel on Cell Phone

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Forsaking more traditional tools like notebooks and laptops, high-tech novelist Peter Brett typed out a 100,000-word novel on his cell phone while riding the train to work every day.

The NY Daily News reports the nimble-fingered novelist could churn out 400 words during his 45-minute commute–producing a draft of “The Warded Man” on his phone.

(Via GalleyCat)

New Pew Forum Study on Changing Religions

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Ministry Today summarizes some interesting findings of a new Pew Forum study released on Monday on how often Americans change their religion.

Last year a massive nationwide survey discovered that 44 percent of Americans switch denominations in their lifetime. Now an in-depth study is taking it a step further by uncovering how many change religions —and exactly why they do.

A report released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that roughly half of Americans change their religious affiliation at some point in their lives. Most people who change do so before they are 24 years old, and many of those actually switch multiple times. Not surprisingly, most believers settle into their faith at an older age, with very few people leaving their religion after turning 50. (The majority of those surveyed found their current church home at age 36.)

Among Protestants, more than half who become unaffiliated with any denomination or religion say it’s because they “stopped believing its teachings.” In addition, almost 40 percent of those who no longer attend church remain unaffiliated because of their spiritual needs not being met.

Although the reasons for changing religions —or leaving a faith altogether —range from theological disagreements to simple spiritual drifting, pastors will be interested to find that the majority of Protestants who have changed denominations have done so because of life circumstances (marriage, relocating to different community) rather than doctrinal differences. Still, a full 36 percent say they leave their denomination because of their church, practices or people.

Philosophy Word of the Day – Emotivism

The meta-ethical theory according to which the meaning of moral language is exhausted by its expression, evocation, or endorsement of powerful human feelings. Thus, for example, saying “Stealing is wrong,” is just an especially strong way of reporting that I disapprove of stealing, evoking a similar disapproval from others, and thereby attempting to influence future conduct—both mine and theirs. Although its origins lie in the non-cognitivist morality of Hume, emotivism reached its height early in the twentieth century, with the work of the logical positivists and [Charles L.] Stevenson.

Recommended Reading: Charles L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (Yale, 1944); J. O. Urmson, The Emotive Theory of Ethics (London, 1968) {at Amazon.com}; and Stephen Satris, Ethical Emotivism (Martinus Nijhoff, 1987) {at Amazon.com}.

(Via A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names)