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21. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Chad Bogosian Rowe’s Friendly Atheism and the Epistemology of Religious Disagreement
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In this paper, I engage William Rowe’s “Friendly Atheism” to illuminate the discussion of religious disagreement. I argue that his view gives way to an epistemic principle about how two “intellectual peers” might remain steadfast in what they believe their total available evidence supports and thereby reasonably disagree about their religious beliefs (or lack thereof ). I consider a key objection from Uniqueness thesis proponents and show how there are additional epistemic considerations to help fix the proposed problem.
22. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Jon Matheson Orcid-ID Religious Disagreement and Divine Hiddenness
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In this paper, I develop and respond to a novel objection to conciliatory views of disagreement. Having first explained conciliationism and the problem of divine hiddenness, I develop an objection that conciliationism exacerbates the problem of divine hiddenness. According to this objection, conciliationism increases God’s hiddenness in both its scope and severity, and is thus incompatible with God’s existence (or at least make God’s existence quite improbable). I respond to this objection by showing that the problem of divine hiddenness is not made any worse by conciliationism.
23. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
John M. DePoe Hold on Loosely, But Don’t Let Go: Evaluating the Evidential Impact of Religious Disagreement
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The problem of peer disagreement represents a growing challenge to justified religious belief. After surveying the state of the dialectic of the problem, I explore three ways for religious believers to remain steadfast in light of religious disagreement. The first two ways focus on the believer’s basing his religious beliefs on a direct awareness of the truth or evidence of his beliefs. The third way considers the virtue of faith as a means for resisting peer disagreement.
24. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Thomas D. Senor The Uniqueness Argument and Religious Rationality Pluralism
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In this paper, I offer a defense of what I dub “religious rationality pluralism”—that is, that people of various religions can be rational in holding a variety of religious perspectives. I distinguish two arguments against this position: the Uniqueness argument and the Disagreement argument. The aims of this essay are to argue (i) that the Uniqueness thesis is ambiguous between two readings, (ii) that while one version of the thesis is quite plausible, it cannot be successfully used to argue against rationality pluralism, and (iii) the version of the thesis that would support the argument is false.
25. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Helen De Cruz Religious Conversion, Transformative Experience, and Disagreement
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Religious conversion gives rise to disagreement with one’s former self and with family and friends. Because religious conversion is personally and epistemically transformative, it is difficult to judge whether a former epistemic peer is still one’s epistemic peer post-conversion, just like it is hard for the convert to assess whether she is now in a better epistemic position than prior to her conversion. Through Augustine’s De Utilitate Credendi (The Usefulness of Belief) I show that reasoned argument should play a crucial role in assessing the evidential value of religious conversions, both for the person who converts and for her (former) peers.
26. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Robert Audi Religious Disagreement: Structure, Content, and Prospects for Resolution
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Religious disagreement is pervasive in contemporary life, both internationally and inside pluralistic societies. Understanding it requires understanding both what constitutes a religion and what constitutes genuine disagreement. To resolve religious disagreements, we need principles for rationally approaching them and standards for law-making that are fair to all citizens. This paper considers what sorts of evidences parties to a religious disagreement should present if they hope for resolution or at least mutual tolerance. The paper suggests some common ground as a basis for communication and partial agreement on issues likely to divide the religious. It concludes with some ethical principles intended to help those who seek peaceful resolution of religious disagreements in the framework of pluralistic democracy.
27. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Bryan Frances The Epistemology of Real-World Religious Disagreement without Peers
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When you learn that a large body of highly intelligent, fair-minded, reasonable, and relatively unbiased thinkers disagree with you, does that give you good reason to think you’re wrong? Should you think, “Wait a minute. Maybe I’ve missed something here”? Should you at least drastically reduce your confidence? There is a general epistemological problem here regarding controversial beliefs, one that has nothing especially to do with religious belief. I argue that applying this discussion to religion transforms the problem in unexpected and interesting ways, and that the religious believer is often epistemically reasonable in sticking with her controversial belief.
28. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Kirk Lougheed The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement
29. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Derek McAllister The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays
30. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Winfried Löffler Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution
31. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
Paul Copan The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus
32. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 1
News and Announcements
33. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Craig J. Hazen Editor’s Introduction
34. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Adam Lloyd Johnson Introduction to the American Academy of Religion Panel Forum on Erik Wielenberg’s Robust Ethics
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Erik Wielenberg is the most important contemporary critic of theistic metaethics. Wielenberg maintains that God is unnecessary for objective morality because moral truths exist as brute facts of the universe that have no, and need no, foundation. At times his description of these brute facts make them sound like abstract objects or Platonic forms. At the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting in Boston in November of 2017, we organized an Evangelical Philosophical Society panel to discuss Erik Wielenberg’s book Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. All five papers presented there are included in this journal.
35. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
William Lane Craig Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals
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Focusing on Erik Wielenberg’s metaphysic of morals, I argue that his moral Platonism is, given the presumption against the existence of abstract objects, unmotivated. Moreover, Godless Normative Realism is implausible in light of the mysterious causal relations said to obtain between concrete objects and moral abstracta. His appeals to theism in order to motivate such causal connections is nugatory. If Wielenberg walks back his moral Platonism, then his metaphysics of morals collapses and Godless Normative Realism becomes explanatorily vacuous.
36. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Tyler Dalton McNabb Orcid-ID Wile E. Coyote and the Craggy Rocks Below: The Perils of Godless Ethics
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William Lane Craig has defended the following two contentions: (1) If theism is true, we have a sound foundation for morality, and, (2) If theism is false, we do not have a sound foundation for morality. Erik Wielenberg rejects (2). Specifically, Wielenberg argues that naturalists have resources to make sense of objective moral values, moral duties, and moral knowledge. In response to Wielenberg, I defend Craig’s second contention by arguing that Wielenberg’s theory fails to robustly capture our moral phenomenology as well as make intelligible robust moral knowledge.
37. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Erik J. Wielenberg Reply to Craig, Murphy, McNabb, and Johnson
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In Robust Ethics, I defend a nontheistic version of moral realism according to which moral properties are sui generis, not reducible to other kinds of properties (e.g., natural properties or supernatural properties) and objective morality requires no foundation external to itself. I seek to provide a plausible account of the metaphysics and epistemology of the robust brand of moral realism I favor that draws on both analytic philosophy and contemporary empirical moral psychology. In this paper, I respond to some objections to my view advanced by William Craig, Mark Murphy, Tyler McNabb, and Adam Johnson.
38. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Jonathan Mark Threlfall The Imago Dei and Blaise Pascal’s Abductive Anthropological Argument
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Blaise Pascal argued abductively for Christianity by presenting Christian anthropology as the best explanation for the existential paradoxes of human greatness and wretchedness. Surprisingly, however, the doctrine of the imago Dei never surfaces in his Pensées. I argue that considerations arising from the doctrine of the imago Dei strengthen Pascal’s abductive argument by providing more details for and encompassing more instances of humans’ paradoxical duality. Specifically, the imago Dei helps explain the existential paradoxes of happiness and misery, certainty and uncertainty, and human greatness and smallness within the cosmos. Further, its explanatory scope encompasses perplexing behavior and beliefs, including Freud’s Todestriebe, false altruism, conflicting beliefs about the divine, and our search for self-knowledge.
39. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Adam Lloyd Johnson Fortifying the Petard: A Response to One of Erik Wielenberg’s Criticisms of the Divine Command Theory
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Erik Wielenberg argued that William Lane Craig’s attack against nontheistic ethical models is detrimental to Craig’s Divine Command Theory (DCT) as follows: Craig claims it is unacceptable for ethical models to include logically necessary connections without providing an explanation of why such connections hold. Yet Craig posits certain logically necessary connections without providing an explanation of them. Wielenberg concluded that “Craig is hoisted by his own petard.” In this paper I respond to Wielenberg’s criticism by clarifying, and elaborating on, the DCT. I will attempt to provide a preliminary explanation for the logically necessary connections included in the DCT.
40. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Robert Larmer Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Charge of Deism
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Christians who are theistic evolutionists and Christians who are proponents of intelligent design very frequently criticize one another on the basis that the other’s position is theologically suspect. Ironically, both camps have accused the other of being deistic and thus sub-Christian in their understanding of God’s relation to creation. In this paper, I consider the merit of these charges. I conclude that, although each position has both deistic and nondeistic forms, theistic evolution in its treatment of life’s history is typically deistic, whereas intelligent design typically is not.