Last week I had the privilege of giving the 2018 Tarwater Lecture at Queens University of Charlotte. The title of the lecture: “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God: The Theological Foundations of Modern Science.” Here’s the video:
Bonus points if you catch the numerical lapsus linguae in the first section!
The Theological Foundations of Modern Science Read More »
“There is nothing outside the text” is arguably the most famous (and most debated) pronouncement of Jacques Derrida.
Suitably reinterpreted, I suggest it would serve as a good motto for aspiring preachers — and perhaps for some seasoned preachers too!
Who knows: maybe the French provocateur would have approved of this gratuitous reconstruction of his maxim. Vive la différance!
Nothing Outside the Text Read More »
This is a follow-up of sorts to my earlier post.
After the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last week, I encountered many comments to the effect that either Ford or Kavanaugh gave a “credible testimony.” (Some claimed that both did.) Consider these two statements:
(1) It’s credible that S is telling the truth.
(2) It’s credible that S is not lying.
It seems to me that many commentators on this depressing debacle are failing to properly distinguish (1) and (2). When they say that so-and-so’s testimony was credible, it’s hard to tell whether they mean (1) or (2). Perhaps they think (1) and (2) are equivalent. But as I pointed out earlier, that’s not the case. It’s possible to speak falsely without lying. What (2) is really equivalent to is:
(1′) It’s credible that S believes he/she is telling the truth.
But of course, (1′) doesn’t entail (1). Furthermore, the evidential burden of (1) can be considerably higher than that of (1′). It doesn’t take much to justifiably conclude that someone believes what they’re saying is true; it often takes a lot more to justifiably conclude that what they’re saying is actually true.
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Credible Testimony Read More »
I’d never heard of Ginny Owens before this summer. That probably tells you more about me than her, because she’s been performing for two decades, she’s sold over a million records, she’s won three Dove awards, her music has been featured on television, and she’s notable enough to have a Wikipedia page.
If you’re not already familiar with her work, check it out. It’s really good, both musically and lyrically. I’m no critic, but I’d put her up there with any artist in the Billboard Hot 100. Her most recent album, Love Be the Loudest, is superb. Finding talented Christian artists with cross-generational appeal is rare, but for the last two weeks my daughters have been demanding I play that album every time we drive somewhere! (Even my 5-year-old son digs it, despite the fact it doesn’t feature Ninjago or dinosaurs.) Give it a listen and you’ll soon be hooked.
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A Singer-Songwriter You Should Know About Read More »
“Either he’s lying or she is.”
I’ve come across some version of this statement in several online articles this past week. It seems to be a common point of view among those who withhold judgment (for now) on whose story is correct. But it’s a false dichotomy as it stands.
If two people are making conflicting claims, it doesn’t follow that one of them is lying. It follows only that (at least) one of them is making a false claim. It’s entirely possible to make a false claim without lying. In fact, most of us do it unwittingly on a daily basis. For example, a person can be sincerely mistaken: they claim p because they believe p, even though it turns out that p is false. (There’s also the separate question of whether their mistake is a morally culpable one; a person can be sincerely mistaken yet still guilty of some kind of intellectual negligence.)
Unfortunately it has become commonplace today in public discourse to conflate lying and speaking falsely, especially in politics. Politician A makes a claim which turns out to be false; A is then immediately branded a ‘liar’ by Politician B and all his followers. Well, perhaps A did lie, but the fact that he spoke falsely doesn’t prove it. You have to show that A knowingly spoke falsely or intended to deceive.
I remember during the Iraq War the chant of the “Stop the War” protesters: “Blair lied, people died!” Catchy, but fallacious. It does appear now that the Blair government published and acted on the basis of intelligence claims that turned out to be erroneous, but of course it doesn’t follow for a moment that the Prime Minister lied. That’s a much harder charge to establish.
Either Kavanaugh or his accuser is making some false claims. That’s a logical truism. But it’s a leap to conclude that one of them has to be lying. That’s a far trickier claim to establish. There’s a burden of proof to discharge. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that whoever is making the false claims is more likely to be sincerely mistaken than lying — I don’t know nearly enough about the situation to draw that conclusion — but I do think a principle of charity needs to be applied, all else being equal. If you can explain the facts without having to impute evil intentions to someone, you should do so. That’s simply an application of the Golden Rule. (Of course, if you have positive evidence that someone is lying that’s another matter. I’d say that remains to be seen in this case.)
A Quick Note on the Kavanaugh Accusation Read More »
My students know that I have very mixed feelings about Wikipedia. On the one hand, it can be invaluable for quickly obtaining or checking uncontested facts about names, dates, locations, and sequences of events. It can also be a useful starting point for research; it often provides a serviceable orientation to a topic and can point you to some useful sources. Even so, Wikipedia can be desperately unreliable and biased when it comes to controversial issues and even some matters that shouldn’t be controversial. (I have a folder on my computer named ‘Wikidpedia’ where I collect particularly egregious examples.) It’s well known that the ‘community’ of Wikipedia editors is ideologically skewed compared to the general population, such that some topics simply cannot be represented in a balanced and responsible fashion (see here for one embarrassing example).
Anyway, I recently came across an almost laughable case of Bad Wikipedia. For reasons I don’t remember now, I found myself consulting the entry on ‘Reality’ (insert your own punchline here). Here’s how the article began:
Reality is all of physical existence, as opposed to that which is merely imaginary. It is the name for all of physical existence, but the word is also used in a declension to speak of parts of reality that include the cognitive idea of an individual “reality” (i.e. psychology), to a “situational reality,” or a “fictional reality.”
The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence, but this is simply the idea of giving names to smaller “realities,” and seems vague and academic without the idea of physical existence as the first “reality,” and the others being smaller parts.
…
Here’s a remarkable paragraph from Graham Oppy’s Atheism and Agnosticism, which appears in a discussion of whether theism or naturalism better explains our mental faculties:
Some – e.g. Plantinga (2012) and Reppert (2009) – argue that our reasoning capacities could not be a socially moulded mix of evolutionary adaptations and exaptations. But those arguments assume the reliability of our reasoning capacities in domains in which it is obvious that our reasoning capacities are highly unreliable: philosophy, religion, politics, and the like. When we make a more accurate assessment of the reliability of our reasoning capacities, we see that that assessment supports the claim that our reasoning capacities are a socially moulded mix of evolutionary adaptations and exaptations. (p. 42)
I had to read these sentences several times to confirm that Oppy really was saying what he seemed to be saying. Note two claims being made here:
In fact, Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) does not make that assumption, except in the trivial sense that EAAN is a philosophical argument and thus we have to assume that our capacity for philosophical reasoning is generally reliable if we’re to understand and evaluate the argument (in the same way that we have to assume the general reliability of our sense faculties when reading Plantinga’s books and articles). Plantinga’s argument is this: if naturalism is true, there’s no reason to think that our reasoning capacities are reliably truth-directed in any domain. (Actually, that’s a crude summary of a much more subtle argument, but it will do for now.)
The same goes for Reppert’s various versions of the Argument from Reason. In none of Plantinga and Reppert’s arguments does this unavoidable assumption — that our capacity for philosophical reasoning is generally reliable — feature as an assumption distinctive to the arguments themselves (i.e., in a way that doesn’t apply to philosophical arguments in general).
But the real surprise is that Oppy apparently rejects the assumption. He says it’s obvious (!) that our reasoning capacities are “highly unreliable” in the domain of philosophy. Yet he makes this claim as part of a philosophical rebuttal of Plantinga and Reppert, in the course of a philosophical case for naturalism, in a philosophical book written by a professional philosopher. If our reasoning capacities are highly unreliable in the domain of philosophy, what on earth does Oppy think he’s doing? This isn’t so much cutting the branch you’re sitting on as felling the tree and grinding the stump.
It’s so odd that I feel I must be missing something important.
Still, Oppy’s right about one thing: if our cognitive faculties are the product of undirected naturalistic evolution — which is to say, if evolutionary naturalism is true — then it’s highly unlikely that those faculties are reliable when it comes to philosophical matters. That’s a big problem for philosophical naturalists like Oppy.
All that said, Atheism and Agnosticism is still a useful primer on the subject.
Adventures in Branch-Cutting Read More »
“Great Doctrines of the Reformed Faith” is the title of the 2018 Thornwell Lectures hosted by First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC.
I was honored to be invited to contribute to this year’s lecture series and I spoke on the topic of Scripture’s Self-Attestation.
The entire series is available on sermonaudio.com. Previous speakers include my RTS colleagues Ligon Duncan, Guy Waters, and Kevin DeYoung. Lectures from earlier years, going back to 2012, are also available.
Scripture’s Self-Attestation Read More »
Last year Ligonier Ministries invited me to work with them to produce a new teaching series on Islam. The final product, Exploring Islam, is now available.
Here’s the description from the DVD cover:
Speaking the Truth in Love
What do Muslims believe? With so much diversity in the Muslim world, it is common for people to hold uninformed opinions about Islam. In Exploring Islam, Dr. James Anderson prepares Christians to better witness to their Muslim neighbors with gentleness and respect, as he surveys the central tenets, history, and practices of the Islamic religion. This is a series to stir confidence in the gospel and equip you to speak the truth in love to the Muslims in your community.
The series consists of ten 23-minute presentations:
The first in the series (“Why Study Islam?”) can be viewed for free on the product page.
Apparently the DVDs include Spanish dubbing and closed captioning.
The series should be useful for adult Sunday schools, small groups, campus ministries, church youth groups, and high-school classes. I’m convinced it’s more important than ever before that Christians understand the challenge of Islam and are equipped to engage with Muslims in a well-informed, gospel-centered way. I hope this series will be a helpful resource to that end.
On a personal note, it was a real pleasure to work with Ligonier on this series and to spend time with their team. Their hospitality and professionalism is second to none.
Exploring Islam Teaching Series Read More »
I’m delighted to report that the third volume in the Christian Focus series, The Big Ten: Critical Questions Answered, is now available: Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It)? by series co-editor Greg Welty.
Having been closely involved in the editing process, I’m thrilled to see this book finally in print. The title reflects what may be the most common reason people give for rejecting the Christian faith and doubting the existence of God. It is indeed a critical question that demands an answer.
But isn’t it one Christians have been answering for centuries? Yes, of course. There are many fine works already available on this issue, both ancient and modern, and Welty acknowledges his debt to them. But I think this book fills a particular niche at this time. So many contemporary books on the problem of evil fall down in one or more of the following areas:
Why Is There Evil In The World? avoids all these pitfalls. Moreover, Greg is ideally qualified to have written this book. He wasn’t raised in a Christian home, so he knows what it’s like to be a skeptical unbeliever. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, an MDiv degree from Westminster Seminary California, and MPhil and DPhil degrees in philosophical theology from the University of Oxford, and he has taught seminary courses in Christian apologetics and philosophy of religion for 15 years. He also serves as one of the pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Wake Forest, so he doesn’t live up in the ivory tower!
Here’s the table of contents for the book, which should give you a good idea of how Welty tackles the issue:
The book has received endorsements from John Frame, Paul Helm, Scott Oliphint, David Robertson, and Mike Kruger, among others. So you don’t have to take it from me — it comes highly recommended! I really hope it will become the go-to book for ‘ordinary’ folk, both believers and skeptics, who are looking for a well-informed and well-argued response to this age-old question.
Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It)? Read More »