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Intelligent Design and the State University: Accepting the Challenge
Download a printer-friendly version in This paper argues that the emerging discipline of intelligent design (ID) is an academically justifiable subject for teaching and study at the state university, both in the hard sciences and in philosophy. If ID arguments are allowed to enter into academic debate at the university level, scientific categories will be rightly expanded and philosophical questions related to the rationality of Christianity will be rightly raised within the sphere of science. Continue reading "Intelligent Design and the State University: Accepting the Challenge" 
Doug Groothuis in MP3
Here is a downloadable MP3 of a recent presention, titled “What Philosophers Wish Theologians and Biblical Scholars Knew About Philosophy.”
Interview: On Pascal
Listen to an interview I did with Keith Plummer on Pensées about my book On Pascal. (RAM, requires Real Player). Go to the interview listing page.
Review of Ray Billington, Religion Without GodNew York: Routledge, 2002
Download a printer-friendly version in The thesis of this highly polemical book is that religion is better off without God and all its traditional Western accoutrements. To that end, the author—an External Examiner of Philosophy for the European baccalaureate and the author of two previous books—(1) explores the lineaments of non-theistic religion and (2) mounts a case against all forms of theism, but particularly against Christianity. This review will prove inadequate to detail the book’s plethora of contradictions, misstatements, and otherwise objectionable elements. Billington makes many uncharitable and unduly hostile remarks against theism and Christianity, such as speaking of evangelical enthusiasm as “religious masturbation” (138). One also finds many unsupported and even farcical statements such as, “The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:7) is, in fact, a magnificent description of the way of Zen” (129). However, Billington makes one insightful point worth noting. Much of the religious consciousness of the world lacks the concept of a personal God that is so taken for granted in the West. To make this case, Billington offers short treatments of nontheistic religion as found in nondualistic Hinduism, aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, and in “profane religion”—cases of mystical experiences sans God occurring outside of traditional religious piety. Continue reading "Review of Ray Billington, Religion Without God"
Nietzsche’s Evaluation of Christian Ethics
Download a printer-friendly version in Both inside and outside of academia, the multifaceted thought of Friedrich Nietzsche continues to stimulate interest and generate controversy. Nietzsche has become a kind of a posthumous prophet to the post-modernist movement with its suspicion of universal rationality and morality, objectivity, and Western Christian sensibilities in general. His searing criticisms of established religion and his apocalyptic but enthusiastic predictions of a world without God or gods make Nietzsche a fertile source of intellectual inquiry. His own vision for a post-Christian greatness of soul (found in the ubermensch or Overman/Superman) has roused the moral imaginations of many desiring to transcend all religious moorings without sacrificing human nobility. Yet Nietzsche’s ethical thought, though provocative in its boldness, is difficult to form into a coherent system. Despite the interpretative difficulties caused by his aphoristic style, scorn of systematizing,1 development as an author, radicality of conceptions, and use of purposely inflammatory language, his ethical posture is clearly critical of Christian ethics. Moreover, as we will see, it is imperative for Nietzsche to refute or at least discredit the Christian ethos for his own ethical project to succeed. Therefore, I will evaluates several key aspects of Nietzsche’s ethics—cosmic amoralism, personal immoralism, and moralism—in relation to his critique of Christian ethics in order to discern whether or not Nietzsche is successful in his deconstructive endeavors. Continue reading "Nietzsche’s Evaluation of Christian Ethics"
Bibliography: Apologetics, Religious Pluralism & New Religious Movements
Please download this annotated bibliography. (PDF, 740 KB).
The Jesus We Never Knew
Download a printer-friendly version in The October 2000 issue of The Atlantic Monthly featured a perceptive, and, to many, a surprising essay on the renewal of evangelical thought and scholarship. In “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,” Alan Wolfe interviewed important evangelical scholars and others and found that many evangelicals and significant institutions have stepped up to the intellectual plate. Stereotypes of backwoods, simplistic, and monosyllabic believers desperately trying to pretend it was still the 1950s, loudly crashed right and left. Many in my circle of evangelical academics and students were buzzing and beaming about this unexpected article. Wolfe found that some evangelicals are writing scholarly books that appeal to those outside the fold. And they are participating in learned associations and even forming new ones, such as the influential Society of Christian Philosophers. Continue reading "The Jesus We Never Knew"
Christian Scholarship and the Philosophical Analysis of Cyberspace Technologies
Download a printer-friendly version in The Challenge to the Christian ScholarThe recent explosion of cyberspace technologies in modern culture raises some salient questions for Christian scholars who endeavor to bring a Christian mind to bear on the analysis of these computer-mediated forms of communication. Responsible Christian scholars should serve both the church and the culture at large by bringing biblical tools of cultural analysis to the matters at hand. We should emulate the Hebrew tribe of Issachar “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). Christians are commanded to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), and to be “transformed through the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2) in order to know the will of God in our day. These imperatives are especially cogent for the Christian scholar, whose public role of articulating perspectives to students, peers, and the population at large constitutes an important teaching ministry. Although we may not teach in the local church in an official position, Christian scholars face the challenge of sober and careful thinking, writing, and public speaking, for “we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). Continue reading "Christian Scholarship and the Philosophical Analysis of Cyberspace Technologies"
Review of Armand Nicholi, The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of LifeFree Press, 2002
Download a printer-friendly version in In a society fraught with ideological conflict, it is rare to find a genuinely
Review of Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian BeliefNew York: Oxford University Press, 2000
Download a printer-friendly version in A strong case can be made that no other Christian philosopher has done more to defend the rationality of Christianity in the twentieth century than Alvin Plantinga. For over thirty-five years, he has written voluminously in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy religion. Plantinga was one of the first Christian philosophers to employ analytical philosophy instead of allowing it to be turned against Christian faith (as happened at the onset of the movement). Many Christian philosophers followed his wise lead. He has published in the most eminent academic journals, given the presidential address of the American Philosophical Association, and delivered the prestigious Gifford lectures in Scotland. He co-founded the Society of Christian Philosophers in the early 1980s, an organization contributing significantly to the resurgence of Christians in philosophy in the past two decades or so, and which publishes the respected journal Faith and Philosophy. Continue reading "Review of Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief"
Deposed Royalty: Pascal’s Anthropological Argument
Download a printer-friendly version in The Bible is God's anthropology rather than man’s theology—Abraham Heschel.1 Blaise Pascal’s antipathy toward classical natural theology—what he called the “metaphysical proofs”—did not hinder his apologetic endeavors.2 In Pensées and elsewhere, Pascal develops several apologetic strategies, including an argument from human nature in support of Christian revelation. He argues that the Christian doctrines of creation and the fall best explain the paradoxes of the human condition and render Christianity worthy of respect. Pascal does not restrict his apologetic endeavors to this argument, but employs it skillfully in order to attract the attention of skeptics and other unbelievers. Continue reading "Deposed Royalty: Pascal’s Anthropological Argument"
What Is Truth?
Download a printer-friendly version in The correspondence view of truth entails that propositional or declarative statements are subject to various kinds of verification and falsification. A statement can be proven false if it can be shown to disagree with objective reality. The photographs from outer space depicting the earth as a blue orb (along with other kinds of evidence) falsified any stubborn flat-earth claims. Certainly, not all falsification is as straightforward as this; but if statements are true or false by virtue of their relationship to what they attempt to describe, this makes possible the marshaling of evidence for their veracity or falsity.1 Therefore, Christians—who historically have affirmed (whether implicitly or explicitly) the correspondence view of truth—hold that there are good historical reasons to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in space-time history, thus vindicating his divine authority (see Romans 1:4; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11). The Apostle Paul was adamant about this: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15). Without the correspondence view of truth, these resounding affirmations can only ring hollow. Continue reading "What Is Truth?"
Questioning Hume’s Theory of Meaning
Download a printer-friendly version in Hume begins Book One of his Treatise on Human Nature with a simple but all-encompassing pronouncement: All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS.1 What is dramatic about Hume’s initial claim is that it divides the epistemic field without remainder. What is problematic about the claim is that the claim itself, when understood in light of what Hume goes on to say about the relationship of impressions and ideas, does not seem to obey its own orders. It may be seen to imperil itself by its own declaration. But before unpacking the problem, I need to explain Hume’s thesis in order to demonstrate how the radical dependence of ideas on impressions can be understood as a universal theory of meaning as well as a general psychological account of perception. Continue reading "Questioning Hume’s Theory of Meaning"
Minds, Bodies and Persons
Download a printer-friendly version in Interactionist dualism has certainly fallen out of philosophical fashion, despite some noteworthy exceptions.1 Even some theistic philosophers argue that the soul is neither biblically sanctioned nor philosophically required for an intelligible discussion of resurrection claims about personal identity. Rather than defending dualism against its many modern foes, I will discuss several of Richard Taylor’s salient criticisms of dualism which serve as roadblocks to an intelligible presentation. After discussing these, I will briefly turn my attention to a response which attempts to avoid the problems of both dualism and materialism by making the notion of a “person”—rather than mind or body—the primitive and primary reference. Continue reading "Minds, Bodies and Persons"
Nietzsche and Postmodernist Nihilism
Download a printer-friendly version in A study of recent publications addressing postmodernism yields a myriad of materials and a panoply of perspectives. When did we or will we “cross the postmodern divide”? Is modernity really dead or only wounded? What identifies, if anything, the postmodernist posture? Although postmodernist philosophy is too diverse to corral into a tidy definition, one way of understanding it and assessing some of its common themes is to look to the thought of a predecessor, Friedrich Nietzsche. Continue reading "Nietzsche and Postmodernist Nihilism"
Religion and Philosophy of Religion
Download a printer-friendly version in Toward a definition of religion.Religions involve social practices, institutions, and worldviews that lay claim to or presuppose certain objective truths concerning the existence of the sacred or holy, which is viewed as somehow transcendent (whether it be the Trinity, Yaweh, Allah, Brahman, the Tao, Nirvana, the Kami, etc.). Religions normatively articulate (or prescribe) how people ought to be oriented toward the sacred or holy spiritually, existentially and socially. This right orientation to the sacred or holy—meaning spiritual liberation or way of being—is viewed as necessarily connected to proper beliefs and practices. Toward a definition and brief discussion of the philosophy of religion.This is the philosophical analysis of the truth-claims made by various religions, which does not rely on religious authority or personal experience for its intellectual conclusions. The philosophy of religion should be distinguished from (although it may involve the discussion of) the psychology of religion, the sociology of religion, the anthropology of religion, and the history of religion. These disciplines of social science, while involving philosophical claims of various kinds regarding their methodology, make no judgment on the truth or falsity, rationality or irrationality, of particular religions. They are concerned with the phenomenology of religion rather than the ontology of religion. The philosophy of religion does make judgments about truth, rationality, and ontology. The philosophy of religion may be practiced by anyone holding any worldview, in defense of any conclusion arrived at on the basis of philosophical analysis and argumentation. If a Buddhist argues for the intellectual coherence of the concept of Nirvana, this does not mean the Buddhist is merely engaging in religious polemics or propaganda. The arguments must be assessed rationally on their own terms. If a Christian argues for the existence of God, this does not mean the effort is merely veiled evangelism with no rational support. The arguments must be assessed rationally on their own terms. When philosophical proponents of various religious worldviews defend their claims philosophically, this may be considered religious apologetics, with no negative association being necessarily attached to that term. For more on how the philosophy of religion relates to apologetics, see Paul J. Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue (MaryKnoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991).
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Philosophy Articles
Intelligent Design and the State University: Accepting the Challenge Review of Ray Billington, Religion Without God Nietzsche’s Evaluation of Christian Ethics Bibliography: Apologetics, Religious Pluralism & New Religious Movements Christian Scholarship and the Philosophical Analysis of Cyberspace Technologies Review of Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief Deposed Royalty: Pascal’s Anthropological Argument Questioning Hume’s Theory of Meaning Nietzsche and Postmodernist Nihilism Religion and Philosophy of Religion Favorite Articles
My Story and the Gospel of Jesus Three Books That Influenced Me Most Outthinking the World for Christ (The Mission of Denver Seminary's Philosophy of Religion Program) Christian Apologetics Manifesto Articles by Subject
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