HU Philosophy of Religion

Dear Students, A friend and I are at the beginning stages of a book that attempts to explain the differences between truth, facts, opinions, beliefs, knowledge, rationality, etc. Our plan is for the book to be pretty short and accessible to non-philosophers. Our reason for writing it has to do with our experiences with students, friends, fellow church members, family members, etc who seem to have no problem granting that there are truths and facts about some things but then seem reluctant or unwilling or awkward when it comes to truths and facts about other things. One issue that seems to me to be worth exploring is disagreement. I think that a lot of people have the intuition that persistent disagreement over a topic is good evidence that there is no truth and are no facts about that topic (i.e. that the topic is not really about something objective). Another issue worth exploring is the relation between sensory based beliefs/knowledge and beliefs/knowledge that is not sensory b...

I think love requires hate—to love something requires being opposed to anything that interrupts or is an obstacle to that love. To the degree that someone loves something, to that same degree they will be disposed to hate threats to that love.  If I love you, then I must be opposed to whatever threatens that love; whatever threatens you, my love for you, and me. If something can destroy my love for you, then I must be disposed to remove it. If my hand is a genuine threat to my love for you, then I must be willing to remove it. If my eye is a genuine threat to my love for you, then I must be willing to remove it. I must, in those ways, hate whatever threatens my love for you. So, hate is not intrinsically bad or evil. It is required by love. If I failed to hate—to be opposed to, seek to remove, destroy, eliminate—genuine threats to love, then you would rightly question my love.  In the gospels, Jesus commands hate. Here’s Luke 14: 25  Large crowds were traveling wit...

I am pretty sure I mentioned a post about rationality. Here it is. It seems that the following is possible: S at t rationally believes p and S* at t rationally believes ~p.  What is going on?  First, we have to distinguish between rationality and knowledge. Knowledge is one of the highest intellectual achievements (I think understanding and wisdom are higher). Knowledge is higher than mere belief. I can believe that there are 20 humans are mars. I do not know that there are 20 humans are mars. Belief is easy to get. Knowledge is not easy to get. To believe something is just to think it is true. To know something is more than that—not less though. Knowledge is higher than mere true belief. I can believe that there are aliens, and it be true that there are aliens, but not know that there are aliens. Maybe I made a lucky guess. Maybe I believe everything I read on internet. That ain’t knowledge. True belief is harder to get than just belief, but easier to get...

We are in the midst of a pandemic. As nations around the world respond to it, models of varying kinds are being generated to give policy-makers, practitioners, and others some kind of insight into the implications of all sorts of responses to the pandemic. Each model involves a bunch of assumptions—many of which are hidden in the mathematics—ranging from estimates about the number of actual infections, rate of infection, prevalence of co-morbidities, demographics of regions, infection death-rates, confirmed infection death-rates, duration of virus, etc. etc. etc.  Each model is representing a possible world! Did you notice that? Every model—and these are being relied upon by each and every country’s leaders in the world right now—is a prediction of what the world will look if x is true and we do y (to simplify quite a bit). Change x a bit and leave y alone and we get a new future; leave x alone and change y a bit and we get a new future; change both x and y a bit and we get ...

The Author/Story Analogy I am not sure who first explicitly used the author/story analogy to describe God’s relationship to the creation, but the first person to do so that I am aware of is Dorothy Sayers (if you do not know her work, you should). Regardless, the analogy has been used quite a bit since then and it is worth exploring here (see the link at the end to a super cool video that narrates a piece by CS Lewis that appeals to the analogy a bunch). The idea is that in some important respects the creation is to God as a fictional story is to its human author. So, one implication of the idea is that the character and events in a story have their being, their reality because of the author of the story. They depend for their existence, all of their attributes, etc. on the mind of the author. Every item in the story reveals the author in different ways. But there are other elements to the analogy that are worth exploring. Below are a few of them. Time : The au...