tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post113658307109581687..comments2024-03-28T17:53:43.541-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: Who cares if it's science?Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1136831162426961392006-01-09T13:26:00.000-05:002006-01-09T13:26:00.000-05:00Anonymous,You make a fair criticism. Honestly, it...Anonymous,<BR/><BR/>You make a fair criticism. Honestly, it was partly just a flip statement, mainly thinking of the WSJ article that I'd just read (see above). I do think that there is something of a pattern, but it's more that the dislike for overly independant analysis that tends to go with excessive biblical literalism will tend to also make people dislike philosophy in general. <BR/><BR/>I think there's also an extent to which knowing too much about the historical tradition of philosophy in Western Culture will tend to bring one to Catholicism, Orthodoxy or one of the forms of Protestantism that lies closer to the historical Christian tradition.<BR/><BR/>Although I'll openly admit to a bit of playful prejudice on such topics, I think it probably is accurate that you're far more likely to have an Episcopalian or Lutheran philosopher than one from the Church of God.<BR/><BR/>MrsDrP,<BR/><BR/>I keep toying with the idea, my main fear being that I'm not as well educated as I often try to sound, and so I fear I'm not all that qualified to write such a book.<BR/><BR/>What I've been thinking of is setting up a wiki linked to the blog here and writing something up chapter by chapter so that I can mooch of the expertise of occasional readers like Scott Carson who actually know what the heck they're talking about philosophically speaking.<BR/><BR/>We shall see...Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1136829597955497882006-01-09T12:59:00.000-05:002006-01-09T12:59:00.000-05:00Darwin, I think you should write that book. I'd r...Darwin, I think you should write that book. I'd read it. I always thought philosophy was nonsense about angels dancing on pins. Until I read Mere Christianity. Now I can't get enough of it. I realize that we never teach people how to think philosophically. Most critical thinking only teaches analysis and skepticism. <BR/><BR/>My husband made what I think it a great point that really articulated my beef with the scientific ID formulation. They are the first people to take the apparent exceptions to nature's laws as proof of a creator. Throughout history, the fact that the universe has underlying order at all was seen as proof that there was an intellegence behind it.Jennyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17838676594500396265noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1136826207966532712006-01-09T12:03:00.000-05:002006-01-09T12:03:00.000-05:00I think at least half of the major analytic philos...I think at least half of the major analytic philosophers of religion working these days are Protestants, but I doubt that it really changes the point much, because they usually aren't fundamentalists. Plantinga, for instance, has no interest whatsoever in reading Genesis as a literal account of creation, nor as a literal-except-for-the-number-of-days account; he certainly believes that God created the world, indeed he believes that God has acted directly in at least some instances to guide the evolutionary process of life. But he doesn't believe that simply because the book of Genesis says that God created the world, nor does he think that the text is our only or even our primary source for the knowledge that God created the world. I think you'd find the same rejection of literalist hermeneutics in most of the major Protestant analytic philosophers of religion writing today -- not just Plantinga, but Adams, Alston, van Inwagen, and others. Certainly few if any of them are scriptural literalists, and none (?) of them would regard it as <I>scientifically</I> viable to prove the existence of God or even of 'design' in biology. <BR/><BR/>So, if the point is supposed to be, "look, Christians who do philosophy become Catholic or Orthodox," then it's plainly false. If it's supposed to be, "Look, Christians who do philosophy tend not to be fundamentalists," then I think it's generally true.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1136816835903147662006-01-09T09:27:00.000-05:002006-01-09T09:27:00.000-05:00Dang it if getting too far into philosophy didn't ...<I>Dang it if getting too far into philosophy didn't tend to lead bible Christians to become Catholics or Orthodox...</I><BR/><BR/>I suppose Alvin Plantinga (Calvinist philosopher, perhaps the foremost living philosopher of religion, and incidentally a supporter of ID) is the exception that proves the rule?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1136680301263670992006-01-07T19:31:00.000-05:002006-01-07T19:31:00.000-05:00Excellent post. What I'd like to see is...somethin...Excellent post. What I'd like to see is...something that Peter Kreeft is quite good at...a return to classic style "dialogues". Perhaps it's time for that "genre" to have a comeback....John Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18280296574996987228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-1136610040349254132006-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:002006-01-07T00:00:00.000-05:00Excellent point. I recently discovered something s...Excellent point. I recently discovered something similar in a quote by E.F. Schumacher: "Education cannot help us as long as it accords no place to metaphysics. Whether the subjects taught are subjects of science or the humanities, if the teaching does not lead to clarification of metaphysics, that is to say, of our fundamental convictions, it cannot educate a man and, consequently, cannot be of real value to society" (Small is Beautiful).Fredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01262662173303042998noreply@blogger.com