Recently in Philosophy Category

Recently, Stanley Fish wrote about the problems with the way the liberal intelligentsia thinks about religion vs. science -- or reason vs. faith. He was, of course, slaughtered in the comment section of his NYTimes blog by, um, the liberal intelligentsia of Times readers. So this week, he defends himself against their onslaught, referring to Barthes and Foucault specifically, to harp on a subject he often revisits. To summarize: Get over it, people -- science is no more objective than any other human endeavor.

Why this strikes me as particularly interesting today is that yesterday I appeared on the internet radio show of John Chisham, my long-time nemesis. John's a conservative (he might even say fundamentalist) Nazarene Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor from Southern Minnesota who, among other things, has mentioned that he may protest outside of the Christianity21 event in October. John also appeared in a video about my book:

I've long admired Stanley Fish, and I've written about my reliance on his fantastic book of essays, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Fish is a leading postmodern literary critic and occasional commentator on politics, academia, and religion.

In his NYTimes column this week, he wrote about Terry Eagleton's new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Although a left-wing (aka, Marxist) literary critic, Eagleton has recently taken his fellow Brits Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (to whom he refers as "Ditchkins") to task for miscontruing the role of religion in modern society.

In one of my early posts on same sex marriage, I wrote that I used to be in the "natural law" camp of persons who said that, thought there's not an overwhelming amount of verses in the Bible about homosexuality (six, to be exact), there's a strong argument to be made from Genesis. It's the old "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Or, as I wrote in the earlier post, "The plumbing's not right." For a funny take on this argument, watch the first few minutes of this video, then read more from me after the jump...

Scientist/Theorist/Philosopher of Emergence Biology, Phillip Clayton, speaks directly to me and you.  Honestly, the importance of what he's saying cannot be overstated.  Watch it...twice.  Then go to YouTube to see my response.

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, is magisterial in its scope, and timely in its topic.  It's a massive book at over 800 pages, but I'm tackling it because several persons have said it will be invaluable to my dissertation.  The...

Occasional blogger and always philosopher, Kevin Corcoran, has written a bit about his experience on the emerging church panel at the recent Calvin Worship Symposium.  It seems that the panelists were asked about what beliefs are necessary to be a...

Yes. Theologian-Scientist-Believer Philip Clayton answers that question, and has some hard words for pastors.  He and I tend to agree that theology is latent in all human endeavors (see chapter 4, "The Theology, Stupid!")....

"We live in a condition where we cannot help but be aware that there are a number of different construals, views which intelligent, reasonably undeluded people, of good will, can and do disagree on. We cannot help looking over our...

Philip Clayton (who is, by the way, da bomb!) tells us:...

The Original Sin SeriesIntro-Intuition-Definition-Genesis-Jesus-Paul-Augustine-Calvin-ConclusionWell, much to the chagrin of my biblicist commenters, I'm not going to start this series of reflections on Original Sin with the Bible, but with my own intuition.  (Don't read too much into this.  I will...