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Posts from the ‘Epistemology’ Category

Jun 5

5 Comments

Willard on Faith, Myth Making, and the “Intellectual Slums”

I’ve been looking forward to Dallas Willard’s latest book for a while now, and was happy to see it arrive on my doorstep yesterday afternoon.  Willard is tackling the question of whether/how the claims of faith constitute genuine knowledge (as opposed to private beliefs, opinions, emotions, blind commitments, etc).  I’ve only had time to read the introduction thus far, but it looks like a very intriguing, not to mention timely, project.  Here’s a few quotes from Knowing Christ Today: Read more

Oct 27

20 Comments

Truth, Fear, and Fairy Tales

Three or so odd months after finishing my thesis, I still find myself perking up when I come across some headline or article discussing the latest bit of wisdom from the pen of Richard Dawkins. Apparently the good professor is now directing his attention toward children’s fairy tales and myths, hoping to uncover the pernicious effects on scientific rationality contained therein (h/t: First Things). Those familiar with Dawkins’s bestseller, The God Delusion, will notice some similar themes: Read more

Oct 4

6 Comments

Do You Believe…?

This past week I headed over to the mainland for my credentialing interview at the MB Conference centre in Abbotsford.  The purpose of this meeting (and the twenty or so odd page document I had to produce beforehand) was to determine if I was fit to become a pastor in the BC Mennonite Brethren Conference—to see if I would be admitted into the “pastors guild” as it were.  There was a touch of anxiety on Tuesday afternoon, but all in all it was a very affirming and encouraging experience for Naomi and I.  To top it off, I passed, so I suppose that’s the main thing. Read more

May 9

12 Comments

The Peculiar Human Organism

One of the central components of my thesis (which is, mercifully, coming closer to completion) is that the new atheist account of reality is not “deep” enough—it does not provide a rich or satisfying enough account of the phenomenology of being human. Huge swaths of human existential concerns are relegated to the realm of evolutionary peculiarities or “misfirings” in the attempt to squeeze everything into what John Haught has called an “explanatory monism” which assumes that one mode of explanation—the scientific one—is all we need. This reductive approach to human beings is then held alongside (awkwardly and incoherently, in my view) an arrogated moral authority in the attempt to discredit the very religious traditions which it is unwittingly borrowing from. Read more

Apr 14

15 Comments

How Do You Know?

This weekend, a friend alerted me to an interesting DVD special where four of the more prominent atheists out there right now (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) get together for a round-table discussion. The two hour unmoderated discussion is, interestingly, entitled “The Four Horsemen“—a reference, presumably, to the protagonists’ understanding of themselves as the agents entrusted with the hastening of the demise of the blight upon human history that is religion.
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Apr 7

72 Comments

Offended by God?

Over the course of my thesis research over the last year or so, I have come across a lot of different reasons for doubting the existence of God. One major stumbling block for those who reject Christianity is those parts of the Bible which seem to justify actions that we consider to be culturally backward, confusing, and irrelevant or, even worse, immoral. And I think that most Christians, if they’re honest, will agree that there are parts of the Bible that they find baffling, frustrating, or, possibly, just plain offensive. Read more

Feb 27

12 Comments

Love and Knowledge

Near the end of Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, tucked away in a chapter entitled “The Resistance of the Rational,” is the following definition of an educated person, approvingly attributed to Socrates: “All he really “knew,” he said, was the extent of his own ignorance.” Read more

Feb 22

3 Comments

“Belief” in God

One of the things I find interesting, whether in the course of my thesis research or just ordinary conversations, is the matter of what inclines people to belief or unbelief in God. How is that person A, when presented with the raw data of the natural world, will incline toward atheism while person B will look at the identical data and choose belief? Is faith simply an arbitrary “gift” given by God to some and withheld from others? Or, as fundamentalists on either side of the atheism/theism divide would have us believe, is belief/unbelief simply a matter of who is intelligent (or spiritually perceptive) enough to see the “obvious” truth? All of us, as twenty-first century “modern” people, live in what Charles Taylor has called “the immanent frame”—a set of social, technological, scientific, and political structures which can be understood on its own terms without reference to the supernatural. Why do some choose to see this frame as “open” to the possibility of the transcendent while others see it as “closed?” Read more

Aug 27

7 Comments

Selectively Skeptical

A couple of days ago, a friend gave me a copy of the latest Skeptical Inquirer due to the fact that it contained an article which referred to the recent swell of popular books characterized by a rather aggressive form of atheism (a central part of the thesis that I am in the process of researching and writing).  I had seen this magazine a few times in Regent’s library over the last couple of months, but had not had the chance to check it out. I’m not sure what I was expecting as I don’t know much about Skeptical Inquirer (i.e., whether it is a publication that is taken seriously in the broader philosophical/scientific communities or not), but I was surprised and disappointed by what I found. Read more

Aug 21

2 Comments

The Persistence of Religion

Columbia professor Mark Lilla wrote a very interesting article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine which deals with the relationship between religious belief and politics (adapted from his forthcoming book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West). It’s an interesting article—one well worth taking the time to read and think about. Among the many interesting issues raised by this article, I was drawn to one in particular—the persistence of religious belief, and what might account for it. Read more

May 4

11 Comments

But Why, Daddy?

The other day one of the moms from our kids’ kindergarten class asked me for some “pastoral” advice about how to deal with what was for her son, the traumatic discovery that everybody dies (this discovery came via the film Charlotte’s Web). I fumbled and mumbled my way through some explanation of how we try to teach our kids that God is ultimately going to reclaim and redeem the world of our present experience, validating all that is good and true etc. My response may or may not have been adequate, but I was reminded of some of the questions that arose when our kids recently encountered death. One of their preschool friends was tragically killed in a traffic accident last year, and I remember being surprised (and heartened) by their bewilderment—even outrage—that such a thing as death should occur. Read more

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