An honest atheistic assessment

Consider what one atheistic philosopher has to say about a fellow philosopher who is also an atheist:

Advice to Christian Philosophers + Advice to Christian Apologists

There are times when I am studying and I wonder: Why am I doing this? What is a minister doing in a graduate program in philosophy?

I am much more interested in discipleship than in philosophical logic, yet I spend a lot more time thinking about the latter. I am much more interested in justification in terms of atonement before God than notions of epistemic justification, yet I spend a lot more time thinking about the latter. It’s not that I don’t love philosophy, I do. I just love ministry more.

Blogosophy, Dennett, and the Heretic

Blogosophy is philosophy done via blogs or over the internet. Hence, the blogosopher takes a very difficult and slow moving subject and tries to do it over a very fast medium. The biggest difference in my opinion between blogosophy and philosophy is that in the former the focus is primarily on the conclusion of an argument with very little (or quick pieces of) justification for the premises whereas in the latter the focus is primarily on the premises of an argument and what conclusions follow from such. This is precisely why philosophy is slow, long, and arduous while blogosophy tends to be quick, sometimes informative, and of course much easier to pull off. There are plenty of professional philosophers who blogosophize quite well, but most blogosophers are those with no training in philosophy. Hence what counts as blogosophy varies greatly in terms of philosophical quality. Anyways, what follows is a little bit of blogosophy based on an interview with Daniel Dennett.

For the neophyte Christian student of philosophy

A few have asked me for some recommendations of Christian philosophy books.

First, let me say something on the difference between Christian philosophy and apologetics . While all apologetic books have some Christian philosophy, it’s not the case that all Christian philosophy books have to be apologetic in nature. The point of apologetics is to explicitly defend the Christian faith. So things like arguments for the existence of God, or why the resurrection of Christ is historical, etc. Christian philosophy generally, as I see it, is philosophical analysis of Christian issues by Christians.

So God is really in the details?

This article was published about a year ago in the New York Times, at least the Times gives both views. One of the philosophers mentioned below, Alvin Plantinga, is my philosophical hero so to speak. The reason I got into philosophy was because of what I learned from him. I’m also a big fan of Swinburne, though as you can probably guess if you know me I’m not an evidentialist. Enjoy,