Read about it here.

Peter Singer is a writer I’ve had some interest in over the last few years as I’ve written on ethics. He’s a fairly notorious ethicist at Princeton University who advocates feticide for the purpose of organ harvesting or on the grounds of mental handicap or more minor problems, necrophilia, bestiality and a bunch of other peachy things like that. He’s a respected academic, mind you, who thrives on the controversy. It’s publicity you can’t buy.

Robert George is also a writer I’ve had some interest in over the last few years. He’s a philosopher who writes on ethics, especially on natural law and related issues. He also teaches at Princeton University, but he’s not nearly as notorious as Peter Singer.

A magazine called The Nation published a story recently suggesting that Robert George and others were on a mission to promote their philosophy as correct and influence Princeton and the world of academia in a conservative direction. How shocking. But Peter Singer came to the defence, explaining that he values the diversity on a campus like Princeton, and it’s a great place to debate issues like those on which he and Dr George differ. He’s been hoping for a debate with George, but alas, George always declines, and Singer always accepts.

Peter Singer obviously wasn’t counting on the mild mannered conservative Robert George to be so uppity as to actually complain about being impugned in this way. Big mistake, Dr Singer.

As Robert George explains in First Things magazine, the impression given by Dr Singer is misleading in the extreme. In fact, in response to a request for a debate, George suggested to Singer that the best approach would be for the two of them to go toe to toe and teach graduate seminar together. They could present their views and respond to one another in an academic format for all to see. The course would run for twelve weeks, and all the cointentious issues could be well and truly hashed out.

Dr Singer never replied to the proposal, and then implied, publicly, that Dr George was too afraid to face him.

Dr Singer fibbeth.

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According to Juilan Baggini, the cartoon show The Simpsons wrestles with serious philosophy, and does it well. What?

No, it’s true, apparently. Here’s an example:

We now know we’re just a bunch of naked apes trying to get on as best we can, usually messing things up, but somehow finding life can be sweet all the same. All delusions of a significance that we do not really have need to be stripped away, and nothing can do this better that the great deflater: comedy.

The Simpsons does this brilliantly, especially when it comes to religion. It’s not that the Simpsons is atheist propaganda; its main target is not belief in God or the supernatural, but the arrogance of particular organised religions that they, amazingly, know the will of the creator.

For example, in the episode Homer the Heretic, Homer gives up church and decides to follow God in his own way: by watching the TV, slobbing about and dancing in his underpants.

Throughout the episode he justifies himself in a number of ways.

• “What’s the big deal about going to some building every Sunday, I mean, isn’t God everywhere?”
• “Don’t you think the almighty has better things to worry about than where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week?”
• “And what if we’ve picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder?”

Homer’s protests do not merely allude to much subtler arguments that proper philosophers make. The basic points really are that simple, which is why they can be stated simply.

Of course, there is more that can and should be said about them, but when we make decisions about whether or not to follow one particular religion, the reasons that really matter to us are closer to the simple truths of the Simpsons than the complex mental machinations of academic philosophers of religion.

Well…. I guess this explains why Baggini thinks The Simpsons is good philosophy. It takes the kind of prejudices he just happens to like, namely the prejudice against religious faith, and states them in a way that he happens to agree with, even though they are such that no philosopher of religion, or philosopher at all really, would ever utter them with the hope of feeling any sense of intellectual satisfaction.

In other words – this is crap philosophy, but since real philosophers don’t say the things I want them to, I’m going to say that this crap philosophy is good philosophy. Search around until some big fat yellow cartoon bozo says what you’re thinking, and it’s good philosophy. Gotcha.

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Here’s an argument I’ve seen from time to time in theological circles, but it never becomes more plausible, no matter how many times I see it.

One of the apparently embarassing doctrines of Christianity is the resurrection of the dead. That dead people could return to physical life by a miracle of God is utterly absurd to many. Apparently it’s absurd to a number of people who say they believe the teaching of the New Testament as well. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example say that they believe in an immaterial invisible “spiritual” resurrection. Mind you, they only had to start teaching that when Jesus failed to return in 1914 as the WatchTower society predicted, so they had to start saying that He did…. invisibly! But what about the resurrection that was supposed to happen? Well, they said, that is happening too. Invisibly. OK….

Then there are a wee group called “full preterists,” who also believe in an invisible, immaterial resurrection, that started happening in AD70 or thereabouts. We will never again have a physical body, say these people, and we will be better off as non physical beings forever.

But how do people like this who claim to adhere to the teaching of the New Testament get around what the New Testament says, namely that there will be a bodily resurrection? Well, here’s one way. They point out that 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says that we currently have a “natural” body, but at the resurrection we will have a “spiritual” body, showing that we will be immaterial.

This view of the biiblical teaching has literally nothing going for it. In the first place, a body that is not physical is not a body, just like a drink that’s not liquid is not a drink.

But secondly, this view involves importing highly dualistic concepts into texts that really don’t contain them at all. The assumption being made is that the word “spiritual” just means “immaterial.” But in the writing of the Apostle Paul who wrote 1 Corinthians, we know this is just not true at all. In fact, we can see this in 1 Corinthians itself. have a look at 1 Corinthians 2:14-15

The natural (psuchikos) man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual (pneumatikos) man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.

The Greek words for “natural” and “spiritual” here are psuchikos and pneumatikos, respectively, the same words used in 1 Corinthians 15 when talking about the present natural body and the future spiritual body. Notice that the Apostle Paul is talking about living people in 1 Corinthians 2. What is the difference between the natural man and the spiritual man? Is one physical, and the other immaterial? This is clearly not what is meant. But if this is so, why should we assume that “spiritual” means “immaterial” when it comes to the resurrection?

The contrast in 1 Corinthians 15 is not one of physical and immaterial. It is one of “mortal” and “immortal.” “Corrupt” and “incorruptible.” Spirituality is about being right relation with your creator, not about being made of different stuff.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Judge Gregory Presnell has discovered a way to get lawyers to reach the conlcusion of endless bickering much more quickly than ever before. Instead of consuming the valuable time of the federal District Court in Orlando arguing about which room to conduct the deposition of a witness in, the good judge ordered the lawyers to settle it the spat outside of court, the traditional way: by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Apparently one of the lawyers isn’t terribly impressed and doesn’t want to talk about it. Get over it you word mincer. Someone was paying you to stand around having a pointless argument. You’re supposed to be a lawyer, not a philosophy blogger! The least you can do is have the good grace to look stupid for it.

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Have you ever heard of Fredrik Bendz? Of course you haven’t, who has? After reading this blog, you could be forgiven for never seeing his name again. But apparently he’s about to become world famous, because he has proved that God doesn’t exist. In fact, he’s given us a do it yourself test.

There is a test, based on the ontological evidence against god, that you can do to try the existence of god. Pray, and ask god to provide you with a clear proof for his existence within a week. After that week, if you have got a proof that god exists, send me the evidence. If not, there are only three reasons I can think of that are plausible: (1) God does not exist, (2) God does not want to or (3) God can’t give you this evidence. Because of the ontological evidence, alternative (2) and (3) are not worth your worship and thus they equal alternative (1). So if you get no response there is no god.

Wow. I don’t know whether to call it “stunning” or “embarassing” in its simplicity. Apparently unless God offers a new proof of His existence in response to a prayer on your part, then there’s no God. Perhaps Mr Bendz is looking for an autographed photo?

The trouble for our cyber fiend is that this argument suggests that if there is already any good reason to believe in God, then God has fulfilled this obligation. But of course, assuming there is no good reason to believe in God, then sure, maybe a good God doesn’t exist. And sure, we could always just skip over the question of whether there are such good reasons as our zealous atheistic evangelist has. But doing so in the name of proof is a quick path to permanent anonymity in the world of philosophy of religion.

“Fredrik Bendz.” Read that name one more time. Chances are you’ll never see it again. Sadly, that’s not to say you’ll never see another lame argument.

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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I like Ed Feser. I discovered fairly recently that he has written a number of pieces on the topic of my current PhD research, namely religious convictions in public life.

One issue that I’m writing on at the moment is the following claim: We should only advocate policies in public that rest entirely on assumptions and convictions that can be defended in such a way that we could reasonably expect that our fellow citizen should take those assumptions and convictions seriously, and if we cannot defend those assumptions and convictions, then we should not support those policies. Therefore, we should not advocate any policies that depend on religious beliefs.

That’s it, premise and conclusion. I could comment on the premise, but that would be a different subject altogether for now. I want to ask, is there anything missing from the above argument? Well yes, there’s a second premise which is apparently so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be stated, let alone defended. here it is: “no religious assumptions and convictions are such that they could be defended in such a way that we could reasonably expect that our fellow citizen should take those assumptions and convictions seriously.”

So there you have it, religious citizens. In order to be good citizens, a number of left leaning liberals tell us (e.g. Rawls, Gaus, Macedo, and to an extent Robert Audi) , you just have to accept that your religious beliefs are indefensible.

When writing a PhD, I have a tendency to not be too scathing if I can help it. Thankfully I get to quote people like Ed Feser, who do not have such tendencies.

The problem, in the view of many liberals, is that religious considerations are matters of faith, where “faith” connotes in their minds a kind of groundless commitment, a will to believe that for which there is no objective evidence. Opinions on matters of public policy, they would say, can only appropriately be arrived at via methods of argument assessable by all members of the political community, not by reference to the idiosyncratic and subjective feelings of a minority. If religious arguments were in general really like this, then I would agree with the liberal that they ought to be kept out of the public square. But in fact this liberal depiction of religion is a ludicrous caricature, and manifests just the sort of ignorance and bigotry of which liberals frequently accuse others.

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One of the reasons I wanted to get this site off the ground is so that I could get my name out there. I’m about to complete my PhD, and I’d rather not be homeless when I’m done. So I’ve put a bunch of material that I’ve written and in some cases gotten published on the site, and Today I put up my CV.

So if you’re reading this and as it turns out by some amazing chance you’re the head of a philosophy department at a University in the States (yes, that’s where we’d like to go, but we’re in New Zealand now) and there’s a vacancy coming up, by all means check it out and drop me a line! The chances of a University seeking me out are, of course, pretty small at this stage, but hey, you have to start somewhere!

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