Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith

Paul Herrick

Description

This clear, readable introduction to philosophy presents a traditional theistic view of the existence of God.

There are many fine introductions to philosophy, but few are written for students of faith by a teacher who is sensitive to the intellectual challenges they face studying in an environment that is often hostile to religious belief. Many introductory texts present short, easy-to-refute synopses of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, the soul, free will, and objective moral value rooted in God’s nature, usually followed by strong objections stated as if they are the last word. This formula may make philosophy easier to digest, but it gives many students the impression that there are no longer any good reasons to accept the beliefs just mentioned.

Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith is written for philosophy instructors who want their students to take a deeper look at the classic theistic arguments and who believe that many traditional views can be rigorously defended against the strongest objections. The book is divided into four sections, focusing on philosophy of religion, an introduction to epistemology, philosophy of the human person, and philosophical ethics. The text challenges naturalism, the predominant outlook in the academic world today, while postmodernist relativism and skepticism are also examined and rejected. Students of faith—and students without faith—will deepen their worldviews by thoughtfully examining the philosophical arguments that are presented in this book. Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith will appeal to Christian teachers, analytic theists, home educators, and general readers interested in the classic arguments supporting a theistic worldview.

As far back as historical records go, human beings have asked fundamental questions about life, the universe, and the human situation. I am speaking of questions like these: Why does the universe exist? Does God or a supreme being exist? Why are we here? What is truth? How do we distinguish knowledge from opinion, right from wrong? Questions like these are fundamental in the sense that the answers we give to many other questions depend on the answers we have already given to these. The “big questions,” as they are sometimes called, are important because the way we answer them forms the foundation of our worldview—our general understanding of the universe and our outlook on life. Each of us has a worldview. And whether we realize it or not, the choices we make in life all reflect, to one degree or another, the worldview we hold.

The ancient myths record humanity’s first attempts to answer the big questions. Usually presented in the form of colorful stories passed down orally from generation to generation, myths can be found in the earliest documents of every ancient civilization. Here are four, from ancient Egypt, China, Africa, and Greece, respectively.

• A god named Khnemu, depicted as a man with a ram’s head, built an egg. When the egg hatched, the sun popped out. Khnemu then “sculpted the first man on a potter’s wheel.” This is the origin of man.
• In the beginning “there was darkness everywhere, and Chaos ruled. Within the darkness there formed an egg, and inside the egg the giant Pangu came into being. For aeons, safely inside the egg, Pangu slept and grew. When he had grown to a gigantic size he stretched out his huge limbs and broke the egg. The lighter parts of the egg floated upwards to form the heavens and the denser parts sank downwards, to become the earth. And so was formed earth and sky, Yin and Yang.”
• In the beginning there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba, in pain from a stomach ache, vomited up the sun. The sun dried up some of the water, leaving land. Still in pain, Bumba vomited up the moon, the stars, and then some animals: the leopard, the crocodile, the turtle, and, finally, some men. This is the origin of man.
• In the beginning Chaos, the nothingness out of which the first objects of existence appeared, arose spontaneously. The children of Chaos were Gaia (the Earth), Eros (desire or sexual love), Tartarus (the Underworld), Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night).

A new way to answer the fundamental questions of life made its first appearance in history in the land of the Greeks during the sixth century BC when a group of scholars there rejected the customary myths of their society and began seeking answers to the big questions on the basis of independent reasoning and observation alone. We know a great deal about these scholars because they put their hypotheses and supporting reasons into written form and circulated their thoughts for the sake of rational debate and discussion.

Their motivation sounds surprisingly modern. Myths, they argued, suffer from a fatal defect. Although they offer answers to the most fundamental questions of all, those answers are not backed by reasoning and observation. But if there is no reason at all to believe the stories they tell, then why believe them?

This insistence on reason and observation may sound commonplace today, it was a radical innovation in the early sixth century BC. Historians call the shift from mythical to reason-based explanations of the world a “revolution in human thought.”

The ancient Greeks named these independent thinkers “philosophers” (from the Greek words philo for “love” and sophia for “wisdom,” literally “lovers of wisdom”) and a new subject was born: philosophy—“the love of wisdom.” As the Greeks originally understood the word, philosophy is the search for answers to the most fundamental questions of all using unaided reason and careful observation alone.

To The Instructor
To The Student
Acknowledgements
Dedication

Unit One. Three Things to Know before You Dive into Philosophy
1. How Philosophy Began
2. The Socratic Method
3. And a Little Bit of Logic

Unit Two. Philosophy of Religion
4. The Design Argument
5. Design and Evolution
6. The Cosmological Argument
Interlude 1: A Survey of Modern Cosmology
7. The Problem of Evil

Unit Three. Epistemology
8. What Can We Know?
9. C. S. Lewis and the Argument from Reason

Unit Four. Philosophy of the Human Person
10. The Mind-Body Problem
11. Do We Have Free Will?

Unit Five. Philosophical Ethics
12. Is It Reasonable to be Moral?
Interlude 2: Or Should We All Become Moral Relativists?
13. Moral Reasoning Applied to the State
14. God and Morality

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Colegio Mayor Universitario Santo Tomás de Aquino
• Tales de Mileto
• Thomas Aquinas
• General officer
• Epistemology
• Darwin
• General
• Charles Darwin
• Socrates
• Thales

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268202675
• Langue: English

Extrait

Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith
PHILOSOPHY, REASONED BELIEF, AND FAITH
..........
AN INTRODUCTION
PAUL HERRICK
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2022 by the University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949121
ISBN: 978-0-268-20268-2 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20269-9 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20270-5 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20267-5 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
To Art DiQuattro and Steve Duncan.
I’ve learned so much from our conversations over forty plus years that words alone cannot express my gratitude. Our back-and-forth debates, weekly discussions, trips to conferences and symposia, the books we’ve read together—you have helped me sort things out and clarify my thinking on just about every issue discussed in this book. Although neither of you agrees with every position I defend here, you have influenced every chapter.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
To the Instructor
To the Student
UNIT I. Three Things to Know before You Dive into Philosophy
ONE. How Philosophy Began
TWO. The Socratic Method
THREE. And a Few Principles of Logic
UNIT II. Philosophy of Religion
FOUR. The Design Argument
FIVE. Design and Evolution
SIX. The Cosmological Argument
Interlude One. A Survey of Modern Cosmology
SEVEN. The Problem of Evil

UNIT III. Epistemology
EIGHT. What Can We Know?
NINE. C. S. Lewis and the Argument from Reason
UNIT IV. Philosophy of the Human Person
TEN. The Mind-Body Problem
ELEVEN. Do We Have Free Will?
UNIT V. Philosophical Ethics
TWELVE. Can We Reason about Morality?
Interlude Two. Or Should We All Become Moral Relativists?
THIRTEEN. Moral Reasoning Applied to the State
FOURTEEN. God and Morality
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Socrates was right. We learn best when we learn with others, giving and receiving helpful feedback. Many colleagues have given me wise counsel and valuable feedback as I wrote this book. Steve Duncan and Jim Slagle read an early draft and the entire penultimate draft and made many helpful suggestions. Art DiQuattro, Andrew Jeffery, Mark Storey, and Larry Fike read earlier drafts of the manuscript and also made helpful comments.
I thank Stephen Little, former acquisition editor at the University of Notre Dame Press, for his encouragement and good advice as the manuscript was reviewed. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for UNDP for their constructive suggestions.
This book in various places benefited from memorable conversations I’ve had with my Shoreline Community College colleagues: Larry Clarke, Terry Taylor, Robert Francis, Tim Payne, Tim Wright, Steve Goetz, William Lindenmuth, Larry Fuel, Lou Tarrant, and Robert Thompson. This text has also benefited in many places from discussions I’ve had with two former students who became philosophy professors, Brian Glenney and Robert Bolger. Long walks with my former teacher Bob Richman and many talks with colleagues Mark Storey, Russ Payne, Tom Kerns, Catharine and Greg Roth, Larry Stern, Steve Layman, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Bill Talbott, Jim Slagle, Michael Matriotti, Andrew Tadie, Richard McClelland, Michael Adeney, Claire Bright, Andrew Jeffery, David Sanders, and Paul Pardi led to insights that I included in this book.
I thank most sincerely my fellow members of Philosophers on Holiday. Our weekly meetings since 1981 have helped me clarify many of the issues that I treat in this book. The members of this informal group, formed by graduate students in philosophy at the University of Washington, have collectively been the Socrates in my life: Steve Duncan, Richard Kopczynski, Art DiQuattro, Liz Ungar, Shawn Mintek, George Goodall, Brad Rind, Mitch Erickson, Nancy Jecker, Bob Kirk, John Burke, Carol Weibel, Terry Mazurak, Todd Currier, Rich Kang, Mike Schmitt, Richard Curtis, Jeff Clausen, and Kristian Kofoed.
I thank the Department of Philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, for inviting me to address the Gonzaga University Socratic Club. The discussion after my talk helped me clarify my thinking on C. S. Lewis’s argument from reason (chapter 9). I thank Howard Segermark for inviting me to present my treatment of the cosmological argument (chapter 6) to the colloquium on big ideas that he hosts and for the wonderful discussion that followed. I also thank the Bellevue College Department of Philosophy for inviting me to give two public lectures on political philosophy. Chapter 13 benefited from those valuable discussions.
Numerous parts of this book were improved thanks to papers I read and feedback I received at annual meetings of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the Northwest Philosophy Conference.
I thank the students who have taken my classes. Every quarter they amaze me with brilliant responses to the class readings, often causing me to think to myself, “I wasn’t that sharp when I was in college.” I have learned from students as they have learned from me.
I thank Karen Olson and Scott Barker for their superb copyediting skills.
Finally, I thank my wife, Joan, our daughter, Lauren, and her husband, Aaron, for their love and support during the years I spent writing this book. And I thank our sweet little grandsons, Lucca and Ben. The time spent taking them to the park and doing other little-kid things with them was not time away from writing, it was inspiration.
TO THE INSTRUCTOR
Philosophers are as affected by fashion as anyone else. It seems to be the fashion today, at least among many who write introductory textbooks in our subject, to present short, easy-to-refute synopses of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, the soul, free will, objective truth, and objective moral value rooted in God’s nature. These arguments are usually followed by strong objections stated as if they are the last word. This formula may make philosophy easier to digest, but it gives many students the impression that there are no longer any good reasons to accept the traditional beliefs just mentioned.
I wrote this book for philosophy instructors who want their students to take a deeper and more respectful look at the traditional arguments and who believe, as I do, that many traditional views can be rigorously defended against the strongest objections. Many textbooks cover scores and scores of arguments, each presented in a couple of paragraphs or so; this book focuses on fewer arguments so that each can be examined with greater logical rigor and care. My experience in the classroom is that students can handle the rigor and will think more deeply as a result.
I call this book a “Socratic introduction” for several reasons. First, Socrates argued for the existence of God, the soul, objective truth, and objective moral truth. Furthermore, his method of self-examination and individual reform presupposed the existence of free will and moral responsibility. These Socratic issues form the core of this text.
Second, Socrates asked people questions designed to cause them to look inward and examine their fundamental beliefs and values on the basis of their best reasoning. As students examine the classic philosophical arguments and the main objections to those arguments, I ask Socratic questions without giving answers.
Third, Socrates challenged some of the popular outlooks of his day, including the relativism and skepticism taught by the Sophists, such as Protagoras and Gorgias. This text challenges the dominant outlook in the academic world today. I am speaking of naturalism , which Alvin Plantinga defines as the “belief that there aren’t any supernatural beings—no such person as God, for example—but also no other supernatural entities, and nothing at all like God.” 1
I make no apology for the theistic orientation of this textbook. Theism has been the mainstream in philosophy from the beginning. It is true that two of the most famous philosophers of the nineteenth century were atheists—Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche—but neither gave a philosophical argument for atheism and neither critiqued a philosophical argument for God’s existence. It is also true that during the first half of the twentieth century many philosophers rejected the traditional arguments for God’s existence on the grounds of either scientism or verificationism, but both research programs proved to be failures in the end. Since the birth of analytic theism during the 1960s, many of the leading philosophers in such fields as modal logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of religion have been theists. I am speaking of Kurt Gödel, Alvin Plantinga, Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe, Robert Audi, Eleanor Stump, Linda Zagzebski, Richard Swinburne, Robert Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, William Alston, Alasdair MacIntyre, Bas van Fraassen, and Nicholas Rescher, to name only a few. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of theism in philosophy have been greatly exaggerated.
Like most textbooks, this one contains more than can be covered in a single term. Although a Socratic theme runs from the first through the last chapter, each chapter is an independent discussion. I plan to assign eleven or twelve chapters each term, with one reserved for extra credit. Every major section of each chapter ends with class-tested “Questions for Reflection and Discussion,” exercises that stimulate good discussions online and in the classroom.
I welcome feedback. My email address is available on the website of Shoreline Community College.
TO THE STUDENT
You are about to study a subject that has been considered a core part of a higher education since the beginning of the Western educational system. The study of philosophy can