Matt and I have been listening to podcasts in the evening lately. These two, featuring two of our friends, who are both philosophers and bloggers, are really worth a listen.
Glenn on Physicalism
Glenn Peoples, of Say Hello to my Little Friend: The Beretta Blog and Podcast, recently spoke at the University of Oxford at the annual conference of the European Society for the Philosophy of Religion on the topic “Raising the Justificatory Hurdle: How to Make Sure Religion Stays Out of Politics No Matter What” and while he was there he appeared on the UK’s Unbelievable? radio show to debate the issue of physicalism with John Haldane.
Listen to: Christian Physicalism: Do we have a soul? – Unbelievable? 04 Sep 2010
Christians have traditionally held that humans comprise two things – a body and a soul. Christian Philosophers have written in defence of the soul against a reductive atheism that claims we are material beings alone.
But a new movement in Christian philosophy claims that the atheists are correct, at least when it comes to humans.
Dr Glenn Peoples is a Christian philosopher who subscribes to physicalism – that humans are only physical and they have no immaterial soul. He explains how he arrived at that view from Scripture and how he defends it philosophically, without giving up an evangelical Christian view.
Prof John Haldane is a Christian philosopher at St Andrews University in Scotland. He believes that Christian faith and Philosophy bear witness to an immaterial soul – though his “Thomistic” view defends it differently to the prevailing trend.
Lydia on The Probability of Christianity
Dr Lydia McGrew, of What’s Wrong With the World and Extra Thoughts, has recently co-authored a Bayesian defence of the historicity of the resurrection in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, and so Luke Muehlhauser, of Common Sense Atheism, interviewed her for his podcast, Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot.
Lydia describes herself as ‘a homemaker and home schooling mum who does analytic philosophy in some of her spare time.’ She is very good at it, as you will quickly pick up in her discussion with Luke. They talk about, among other things:
- The probability of the Resurrection v the probability of witchcraft at Salem and the Hindu milk miracle
- The practice of Christian philosophy
- The fine-tuning argument
- God as an explanation
Listen carefully to work out which blogger from this blog gets cited in an example 😉
Tags: Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot · Fine-Tuning · Glenn Peoples · John Haldane · Luke Muehlhauser · Lydia McGrew · Physicalism · Probability of the Resurrection · Unbelievable?9 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Great speakers!
Thanks 🙂 More recently I spoke on this same subject when I was interviewed at Chris Date’s podcast, Theopologetics.
We are aware of that one but we have not listened to it yet. Have you heard Lydia’s interview Glenn? Luke and Lydia’s exchange was really good – Lydia is very good and Luke was a good interviewer. How is it that Americans who disagree can debate and discuss things so respectfully yet so forthrightly? You see it in their political debates too – they leave kiwis for dust in that regard.
that McGrew one was a good tip, thanks for that!
Glen I just wanna say that you brohter are the man aye. Like barney says, ‘great speaker!
Physicalism is making inroads even among Evangelical Christians who are philosophers of science. J.D. Walters of the Christian Cadre blog also supports it I think. And a graduate of philosophy at BIOLA named Andrew Bailey.
In similar fashion, ancient Near Eastern cosmological studies are making inroads even among Evangelical Christians who are professors of Old Testament, John Walton for instance at Wheaton. See his book, The Lost World of Genesis 1, and see my paper, “The Cosmology of the Bible,” published as a chapter in The Christian Delusion. And see the BIOLOGOS website. It looks like creationism and even I.D. is going to be challenged by fellow Christians now.
But what’s interesting about physicalism is that its rise seems to parallel increasing knowledge concerning all the ways our thinking is affected by physical lesions and chemicals, and new cognitive research on how we naturally delude ourselves, as well as how cutting the brain into two separate hemispheres (as has been done to prevent seizures) leads to both halves of the brain being able to answer different questions simultaneously–look up “split brain” on the web, Fascinating stuff. Not to mention increasingly speedier computers, even quantum computers and light-based computers instead of electronic ones, perhaps in the future leading to computers with some speed and “smarts” that we’ll finally be challenged by them. Not that we aren’t already to some degree.
This is from Stuart Hackett’s The Resurrection of Theism (pages 222-223):
“If thought is identified with motion in the brain (or anywhere else in the organism), how is it ever possible to remember a previous experience? For when a motion has once become past it is never repeated as the same motion. But it may be insisted that while all the given motions are numerically distinct, they may be generically the same: yet how could we know this or be aware of it? To classify two entities as in the same genus, it is necessary to observe a similarity between them. But on a materialistic basis, the thought of similarity would have to be a motion also: and before it occurs, the motion of the original experience and the motion of the alleged memory experience would be past. And the question arises: how could any motion connect two motions that no longer exist? Thus the very possibility of thinking generically similar thoughts—a possibility essential to the process we call memory—exists only on the supposition that materialism is false.”
Edward, Near Eastern cosmological studies have nothing to say that any proponent of intelligent design would be worried about.
Notable physicalist (or monist, as he might prefer to call himiself) Dr. Joel B. Green from Fuller Theological Seminary joined me recently for episide 47 of my podcast to discuss physicalism and his answer to a dillemma I faced as someone on the fence.