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Posts from the ‘Epistemology’ Category

Feb 2

14 Comments

If Functional… Well, What?

I’ve been reading books/articles related to science, faith, and philosophy over the last few weeks as I finished off an article on the (increasingly not so) new atheism for Direction Journal. One article I came across this week was Jesse Bering’s “Are You There God?  It’s Me, Brain” over at Slate. The article is not terribly original or new in the approach it takes—the basic idea is that our evolved psychological capacity to imaginatively reconstruct the mental states of others is thought to lead to the conclusion that our idea of God is just the biggest and most elaborate version of this process—but I think it provides an opportunity to identify a common error in discussions around this topic: the idea that if this or that feature of human thought and behaviour can be shown to have been evolutionarily useful at some point in human development, it is therefore explained without remainder by its function. I believe it was Holmes Rolston III who called this the “if functional, false” fallacy. Read more

Jan 5

15 Comments

A Personal Response

While I’m still in the reflection mode occasioned by a new year and a trip through my journals, I’ve been thumbing through a few of the books that I was reading and reflecting upon in my younger years.  Lesslie Newbigin was a writer and a thinker that was immensely helpful to me as I was beginning to negotiate such themes as the uniqueness of Christianity, the nature and limits of reason and faith, and the shape of discipleship.  Newbigin’s books were a gift then, and they remain so today. Read more

Oct 26

16 Comments

Commending the Faith

This past Saturday, I attended John Stackhouse’s lectures on faith, reason, and the new atheism down at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre. Evidently, there is still some interest in this topic as the event sold out—even in hyper-secular Nanaimo! Around twenty people from our church attended which was fantastic to see! I was in and out of the sessions throughout the day due to carting kids to hockey, friends’ houses, etc, but a couple of things struck me about his presentations: Read more

Oct 20

12 Comments

The Goodness of Good

It’s a busy week around here, so apologies for the lack of original posts. In the meantime, I continue to come across interesting articles and posts discussing the justification for/origins of our moral intuitions (which has been the subject of conversation around here for the last little while). Here are a few quotes on these matters from the eminently quotable David Bentley Hart who last week wrote this essay for First Things’ On the Square: Read more

Oct 17

18 Comments

More on Morality

Given some of the discussion that has been taking place on an earlier post, I thought I would pass on this link to an interesting article by biologist Frans de Waal in today’s edition of “The Stone” (a philosophy forum from The New York Times). The entire article is worth reading as I think he touches on a number of very important points (including the limits of science), but I was especially drawn to one particular section. Read more

Oct 12

27 Comments

Good For Us

Later this month Prof. John Stackhouse from Regent College will be here in Nanaimo to talk about the New Atheists (can we still call them “new?”) and whether or not it is crazy to be a person of faith.  Those who have been long-time readers of this blog will know that this is an event that has special interest for me because a) I wrote about the New Atheists for my masters thesis a few years back; and b) John Stackhouse was my supervisor for this project.  So I’ll be there with bells on.  And if you are on Vancouver Island on Saturday, October 23, I would encourage you to attend this event (you can register here).  I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say. Read more

Sep 11

5 Comments

Listening for Life

Of the many things back to school week represents a return to, more regular breakfasts with the kids is among them.  Yesterday morning, the kids were poring over a calendar that mom had laid out on the table in an attempt to get our fall schedule coordinated as a family.  Aside from the events that happen to pertain to them, the kids have always taken an interest in the various holidays that show up on the calendar. Read more

Sep 6

5 Comments

The Question is Worth Asking

A few more loosely connected thoughts and links for a (holiday) Monday morning…

“The Stone” is a New York Times philosophy forum that I have enjoyed spending time at recently. Yesterday’s post by Tim Crane called “Mystery and Evidence” is one of the best attempts I have seen from an atheist to honestly lay out the difference between religious approach to the world and a scientific one. Crane critiques the view popularized by Richard Dawkins (and others) that religion and science are two competing alternatives for the same explanatory slot—as if religion were a kind of primitive science that offered the same kinds of explanations that science now offers in a much more comprehensive, rational, and intellectually satisfying manner. Read more

Jul 29

22 Comments

What Does God Want?

After a couple of weeks away from home on vacation where I tried to limit my reading to novels, I picked up Samir Selmanovic’s It’s Really All About God again this morning. As I’ve alluded to before, it’s a bit of a rambling and not altogether coherent apologia for a kind of “let’s just embrace mystery and all get along” approach to the challenges of the religious plurality that currently characterizes many parts of our increasingly globalized world. So far, the book strikes me as a commendable enough practical approach to living peacefully with those who do not share our beliefs, but one that tends to wander too frequently into confusing a practical political and social strategy for a coherent philosophical/theological worldview. Read more

Jun 18

11 Comments

Searching for God Knows What

Last night at our young adults group we talked about, among other things, the frequently encountered view that Christianity is a strange relic of the past, that has nothing useful to say to us in the present, no normative force or existential/moral relevance in a world that has “grown up.” It is a well-rehearsed and often repeated story: once upon a time, primitive people thought there was objective meaning in the cosmos, we now know this to be false, and our only course of action is to salvage what personal meaning we can from the scrap heap of a random and chaotic universe. Read more

Jun 2

28 Comments

Only Two Scenarios?

It seems like every time I walk into a bookstore these days there are a handful of new books on the shelf, confidently explaining how science has shown this or that religious understanding of the world to be unfounded, misguided, false, naive, etc. The obvious response to such claims—and one that is frequently made—is to question just how it is that science could “prove” or disprove anything about an overall worldview within which science is located.   Read more

May 6

26 Comments

This is My Father’s World

In what is becoming a most enjoyable annual tradition, I find myself back at Regent College for their pastors conference during this, the first month of May. This year, the theme of the conference is the interaction between science and faith and is called “Wonder and Devotion: Bringing Science and Faith Together for the Church.” We’ve talked about creation and evolution, the immanence and transcendence of God, issues around the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and a whole host of other very interesting things. It’s been a great week thus far. Read more

Apr 13

20 Comments

A “Thick Enough” Worldview

The controversy around the Bruce Walke story has led to some interesting conversations (on this blog, and elsewhere) about the relationship between science and faith, questions about how we read Scripture, and others. One of these conversations took place this morning. Read more

Mar 17

34 Comments

Doubt

A feature ran by The Washington Post yesterday has generated a bit of discussion around a study called Preachers Who Are Not Believers by prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola from the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University (those familiar with “The Four Horsemen” of the new atheism will know Dennett well). The study outlines interviews with six “courageous” clergy who maintain their jobs in the pulpit while privately nursing unbelief. It is a classic modern tale of the triumph of reason and the inconsistencies and dissonances that come with the slow, inevitable drift away from faith in the modern world. Read more

Mar 8

38 Comments

Varieties of Unbelief

I’m a little all over the map this morning, but here’s a few loosely connected thoughts/reflections about unbelief on a Monday morning…

This month’s issue of our denominational magazine, the MB Herald, is about atheism/unbelief and contains an article by yours truly. It is a bit of a hybrid piece—a discussion of the new atheists (Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris), a reflection upon conversations with a friend (no stranger to regular readers of this blog), among other things. Based on what I’ve read of the issue thus far, there are a number of articles and features definitely worth checking out. Read more

Jan 27

21 Comments

A World Suffused with Value

Spending parts of the last few days writing an article about atheism has given me the opportunity to revisit some of the notes and quotes I accumulated during my thesis research a few years ago. Discussions about the relationship between the discoveries of science and the claims of faith seem to occur quite regularly, both on this blog and in my everyday conversations. This quote from John Polkinghorne’s Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context isolates an important dimension of the conversation, in my view: Read more

Dec 15

12 Comments

On Empathy and Exclusivity

I couldn’t help but be curious when I saw the title of Vancouver Sun spirituality and ethics columnist Douglas Todd’s latest article come through my reader this afternoon: “Embattled Clergy Could Use Christmas Empathy.” Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I read on to discover why I might be the appropriate destination for someone’s Christmas empathy. Read more

Jun 18

17 Comments

How Do We Know God?

A quick look at the calendar shows that we are coming up on the one year anniversary of a very happy day in my life—the completion of my thesis. This is probably one of those anniversaries that will remain significant in my mind only, but I figured it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the subject matter I spent sixteen months of my life reading/writing about. I’ve continued to follow the exploits of folks like Dawkins and Hitchens over the last year as well as those who “defend the faith” against them. Mostly, the tone and the content of the discussions have seemed fairly belligerent, sterile, and unhelpful to me. The same old arguments, the same old defenses. People on both sides simply dig in their heels, talk a little louder (or more condescendingly), and try to prove who’s really the smartest. All in all, it’s not very inspiring stuff. On this level, I do not miss the debate. Read more

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