Dallas Willard on Outrageous Claims Made in the Name of Science

Philosopher Dallas Willard writes, “[I]ndividuals with standing in a particular professional field sometimes feel free, or even obligated, to cloak themselves in the authority of their area of expertise and make grandiose statements such as this by a professor of biological sciences [Willard quotes William B. Provine of Cornell University]:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear. . . . There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind.  There is no life after death.  When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead.  That’s the end for me.  There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.

“Logically viewed, this statement is simply laughable.  Nowhere within the published, peer-reviewed literature of biology—even evolutionary biology—do any of the statements of which the professor is “absolutely certain” appear as valid conclusions of sound research.  One trembles to think that an expert in the field would not know this or else would feel free to disregard it.  Biology as a field of research and knowledge is not even about such issues.  It simply does not deal with them.  They do not fall within the province of its responsibilities.  Yet it is very common to hear such declamations about the state of the universe offered up in lectures and writing by specialists in certain areas who have a missionary zeal for their personal causes.”

— Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne, 2009), 5.

Well said.  I do admire Provine, however, for following his naturalism to its logical conclusions, and being willing to state those conclusions openly:  there are no purposes, no life after death, no objective right and wrong, no meaning to life, and no free will.  I absolutely agree with Provine that these are the logical implications of metaphysical naturalism.  They are the stark realities that atheists of previous generations (such as Nietzsche and Sartre) embraced—and lamented.  But most popularizers of atheism today want to have their atheism and eat their cake, too.

They want to proclaim a universe without deity, but also make moral pronouncements (as if they were something more than mere opinion), live as if the will is free (do they embrace atheism because it’s rational or because they couldn’t choose otherwise?), and maintain an unjustified optimism about human life and progress through science (why bother doing science if life has no meaning?  Why even get out of bed every day?  And how do we explain the great evil human beings are prone to do?).

Provine is right.  But why anyone wouldn’t fall into the deepest depression if they held such beliefs is incomprehensible.  Such propositions can live freely in the ivory tower of abstract academic thought, but they’re unlivable in concrete human experience.  Thus, I can only conclude that those who hold such views don’t actually take them very seriously.  If they did, we would witness their lives spiraling into chaos in a very short time.

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Current Bestsellers in Philosophy

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Library Journal lists the top 20 from October ‘09 to July ‘10. These are the top 10:

1) Machiavelli’s Ethics
Benner, Erica
Princeton University Press
2009. ISBN 0691141762 [9780691141763]. $75

2) Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker
Stroumsa, Sarah
Princeton University Press
2009. ISBN 0691137633 [9780691137636]. $39.50

3) Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas
Brandom, Robert
Belknap: Harvard University Press
2009. ISBN 067403449X [9780674034495]. $29.95

4) Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933–1935
Faye, Emmanuel
Yale University Press
2009. ISBN 0300120869 [9780300120868]. $40

5) On Evil
Eagleton, Terry
Yale University Press
2010. ISBN 0300151063 [9780300151060]. $25

6) Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography
Young, Julian
Cambridge University Press
2010. ISBN 0521871174 [9780521871174]. $45

7) The Brain and the Meaning of Life
Thagard, Paul
Princeton University Press
2010. ISBN 0691142726 [9780691142722]. $29.95

8) Who Was Jacques Derrida? An Intellectual Biography
Mikics, David
Yale University Press
2009. ISBN 0300115423 [9780300115420]. $30

9) The Beast and the Sovereign. Vol. 1
Derrida, Jacques
University of Chicago Press
2009. ISBN 0226144283 [9780226144283]. $35

10) On Compromise and Rotten Compromises
Margalit, Avishai
Princeton University Press
2010. ISBN 0691133174 [9780691133171]. $26.95

(continue to the top 20)

If you’ve read any of these, please share your appraisal.

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David Bentley Hart on the New Atheism

In this article from the April issue of First Things, Hart provides a reliably incisive commentary on the many flaws of the New Atheists’ writings, and especially their failure to understand the gravity of their own proposals to abolish religion compared with their atheist forbears like Nietzsche.

* On the recent book 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists:

Simple probability, surely, would seem to dictate that a collection of essays by fifty fairly intelligent and zealous atheists would contain at least one logically compelling, deeply informed, morally profound, or conceptually arresting argument for not believing in God. Certainly that was my hope in picking it up. Instead, I came away from the whole drab assemblage of preachments and preenings feeling rather as if I had just left a large banquet at which I had been made to dine entirely on crushed ice and water vapor.

* On the lack of conceptual seriousness and scholarship among the New Atheists:

The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that todays most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants. . . .

But how long can any soul delight in victories of that sort? And how long should we waste our time with the sheer banality of the New Atheists–with, that is, their childishly Manichean view of history, their lack of any tragic sense, their indifference to the cultural contingency of moral “truths,” their wanton incuriosity, their vague babblings about “religion” in the abstract, and their absurd optimism regarding the future they long for? . . .

A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

* On Christopher Hitchens who frequently illustrates these serious shortcomings:

On matters of simple historical and textual fact, moreover, Hitchens’ book is so extraordinarily crowded with errors that one soon gives up counting them. Just to skim a few off the surface: He speaks of the ethos of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as “an admirable but nebulous humanism,” which is roughly on a par with saying that Gandhi was an apostle of the ruthless conquest and spoliation of weaker peoples. He conflates the histories of the first and fourth crusades. He repeats as fact the long discredited myth that Christians destroyed the works of Aristotle and Lucretius, or systematically burned the books of pagan antiquity, which is the very opposite of what did happen. He speaks of the traditional hostility of “religion” (whatever that may be) to medicine, despite the monastic origins of the modem hospital and the involvement of Christian missions in medical research and medical care from the fourth century to the present. He tells us that countless lives were lost in the early centuries of the Church over disputes regarding which gospels were legitimate (the actual number of lives lost is zero). He asserts that Myles Coverdale and John Wycliffe were burned alive at the stake, although both men died of natural causes. He knows that the last twelve verses of Mark 16 are a late addition to the text, but he imagines this means that the entire account of the Resurrection is as well. He informs us that it is well known that Augustine was fond of the myth of the Wandering Jew, though Augustine died eight centuries before the legend was invented. And so on and so on (and so on).

The whole essay and the material on Nietzsche’s atheism in contrast with the contemporary version is worth pondering.

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Book Review – The Making of an Atheist

Paperback: 144 pages

Publisher: Moody Publishers (February 1, 2010)

Official Website (Introduction in PDF)

Amazon

Christian Book Distributors

First, I should disclose that I agree with Spiegel’s thesis that “atheism is caused by a complex of moral-psychological factors, not a perceived lack of evidence for God’s existence. The atheist willfully rejects God, though this is precipitated by immoral indulgences and typically a broken relationship with his or her father. Thus, the choice of the atheist paradigm is motivated by non-rational factors” (113-114). I noticed the patterns first in the lives of Nietzsche (whom Spiegel mentions) and Foucault (whom he does not) prior to this reading.

Spiegel expects that the idea will encounter resistance (and it probably will). He compiles previously released information and packages it for popular consumption, drawing significantly from Alvin Plantinga, Antony Flew’s “conversion,” and Paul C. Vitz. In fact, Spiegel does Plantinga the honor of dedicating the book to him as “a gigantic intellect with a humble heart.” Moreover, Spiegel maintains a humble tone throughout which honors Plantinga and is often lacking in apologetics.

Spiegel’s goal is unique. He is not making a case for theism or defending it against the attacks of atheists. His argument is a flanking attack that responds to the “New Atheists” by calling into question the source of their unbelief.  Even though they claim their unbelief is rooted in reason, Spiegel sees the rational component of their unbelief secondary to their immorality or broken paternal relationships.

He blends biblical ideas (Romans 1, Ephesians 4, etc.) and virtue epistemological concepts to produce an account of how behaving badly and thinking badly decay into a downward spiral of moral and intellectual blindness (particularly in the areas of ethics, theology, and human nature).

For the link between atheism and broken paternal relationships, Spiegel draws heavily on  Paul C. Vitz’s Faith of the Fatherless. “The lack of a good father is a handicap when it comes to faith (70),” but not an insurmountable barrier. While this link will likely be unpopular or attacked as irrelevant on ad hominem grounds, let’s not forget that non-theists have already applied similar psychoanalytical criticisms against theists. Furthermore, enough examples are given to give us pause to reconsider the role of a paternal relationship in shaping our perceptions of God.

I think the value of this book is really threefold. First, it helps encourage believers that matters of belief and unbelief are not purely a matter of the intellect, but are issues of the heart and will. Secondly, it should remind believers to be sensitive to the things which may be going on in the hearts of the unbelievers they want to reach with the gospel. Thirdly, it is a call to unbelievers to consider non-rational factors that may be barriers to their belief in God.

It is a witty, quick read and is worth the couple of hours invested. I hope it is read by many. If you are strapped for time, but the concept interests you, please check out the author’s blog post on the topic here.

– Reviewed by (polymath) Adam Reece

Philosophy Audio and Video on the Web – Updated

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Given that it’s a new year, I wanted to bring this list up to date by adding resources and streamlining what was already there.  As I find more, I’ll continue to add to the collection.

If you know of other good audio or video resources in philosophy, especially philosophy of religion, please leave a comment.

(Updated January 2010)

Courses

• Consciousness – MP3s here – Susan Stuart, University of Glasgow
• Death – Download Course – Shelly Kagan, Yale
• Existentialism in Literature & Film – iTunes – Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• Heidegger – iTunes – Feed – MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• Heidegger’s Being & Time – Feed – MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument, iTunes – Daniel Coffeen, UC Berkeley
• Kant’s Epistemology – iTunes – Dr Susan Stuarts, University of Glasgow.
• Man, God and Society in Western Literature – iTunes – Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
• The Examined Life – iTunes – Greg Reihman, Lehigh University
• Ancient Philosophy – iTunes – Feed – Stream – David Ebrey, UC Berkeley
• Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? – YouTube –  Michael Sandel, Harvard
• Introduction to Political Philosophy – YouTube – iTunes – Download Course, Steven B. Smith, Yale
• Philosophy for Beginners – iTunes – Marianne Talbot, Oxford
• Proust & Philosophy – Feed – Johns Hopkins
• The Examined Life – iTunes – Greg Reihman, Lehigh University

Podcasts

• Philosophy Bites iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A British podcast featuring interviews of top philosophers that delves into some essential philosophical questions — what is the meaning of life? what is the nature of reality? what is evil?, etc.
• Philosophers’ Cafe Feed Web Site
  • Comfortable surroundings for vibrant street level discussions on burning issues of the day. No formal philosophy training required; real life experience desired. Come early, stay late. Presented by Simon Fraser University.

(HT: Open Culture)

Philosophy of Religion and Christian Ethics

Courses

• Paul Copan’s five-session course in philosophy of religion is available free from Reclaiming the Mind Ministries.
• Ron Nash’s History of Philosophy and Christian Thought is available at biblicaltraining.org (which has nearly an entire seminary curriculum on mp3 available to download).
• Ron Nash’s Christian Ethics Course is also available at biblicaltraining.org.

Interviews

• Closer to the Truth has a great collection of video interviews with Christian and non-Christian philosophers on topics in philosophy of religion.  The interviews are streaming video and don’t appear to be available for download.

Podcasts

• Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot (iTunes) is a podcast hosted by Common Sense Atheism and interviews both Christian and non-Christian philosophers on topics in philosophy of religion.

Talks/Lectures

• William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith Podcasts (iTunes) contain Dr. Craig’s commentary on issues in philosophy and theology and his answers to questions posted on his Reasonable Faith website.
• The Veritas Forum website contains dozens of talks and debates by Christian scholars and thinkers on topics that range across every academic discipline.  Among the notable speakers are Alvin Plantinga, Dallas Willard, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland.

Apologetics

Podcasts

• Apologetics 315 lists the top 16 apologetics podcasts.
• Unbelievable Radio Program – Weekly debates between top Christian apologists and scholars and leading atheist thinkers. (iTunes)

General Philosophy

Podcasts

• Apologetics 315 Logical Fallacies Podcasts
  • Part One (iTunes)
  • Part Two (iTunes)
• Philosopher’s Zone – Radio interviews with philosophers covering all branches of philosophy.
• In Our Time – This BBC radio program focuses on the history of ideas and often includes discussion of important philosophers and topics in philosophy.
• Oxford University Philosophy Podcasts – Links to the annual John Locke lectures, the “Interviews with Philosophers” series, and Marianne Talbot’s “Philosophy for Beginners” (also linked to above).

Talks/Lectures

• Nietzsche on Mind and Nature – These 7 lectures were given at the international conference “Nietzsche on Mind and Nature” held at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, on 11-13 September, 2009, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. (iTunes)

Nietzsche on Mind and Nature on iTunes

The following lectures were given at the international conference “Nietzsche on Mind and Nature” held at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, on 11-13 September, 2009, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.

• The Genealogy of Guilt – Bernard Reginster
• Who is the ‘Sovereign Individual’? Nietzsche on Freedom – Brian Leiter
• Nietzsche’s Metaphysics – Galen Strawson
• Nietzsche on Soul in Nature – Graham Parks
• Consciousness, Language, and Nature: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Mind and Nature – Gunter Abel
• Nietzsche’s Value Monism – Saying Yes to Everything – John Richardson
• Nietzsche Source: Scholarly Nietzsche Editions on the Web – Paolo D’lorio

(HT: @philosophybites)