Search Results for: Michael Rea

Conference on Human and Christian Agency

Posted on August 24, 2010 by - Uncategorized

It’s not too late to register for next month’s meeting (Sept. 17-18) of the Society for Christian Psychology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The theme of the conference is “Human and Christian Agency” and will feature presentations by both Christian psychologists and philosophers.

Presenters, including Stephen Evans and Michael Pakaluk, will discuss such things as freedom, responsibility, moral weakness, and what it means to be a human agent, all of which issues lie at the interface of the fields of psychology and philosophy.

President of the Society for Christian Psychology, Eric Johnson, is committed to creating constructive dialogue between psychologists and philosophers. The vision for the society is to inspire scholarly inquiry that approaches all issues pertaining to the human soul and behavior from a Christian perspective. Johnson is author of the landmark text Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal (InterVarsity, 2007).

Next month’s SCP conference promises a rich and informative scholarly interaction. EPS members are encouraged not only to attend this conference but to get involved in other SCP activities to promote a genuinely Christian psychology.

Future of Evangelicalism

Posted on August 19, 2010 by - patheos, paul copan, robert velarde, william lane craig

Patheos.com is becoming an indispensable resource for people who want quality information on religion. A few months ago, they began a summer series of articles centered on “The Future of Religion,” where experts from various religious groups talked about what they saw as trends in their group.

The Evangelical Portal at Patheos also featured its own series, including contributions from EPS members like Paul Copan, Bill Craig and Robert Velarde.

Copan and Craig write about “Trajectories in Philosophy and Apologetics,” in which they note how the “renaissance” of Christians in philosophy has not merely been of academic consequence alone:

The effects of this remarkable renaissance of Christian philosophy are now making themselves felt on the non-academic level, as popularizers and apologists distill the academic work of professional Christian philosophers and make it accessible to a laity hungering for answers to the tide of secularism they feel rising around them. Academic apologetics work has served as an important bridge between high-level philosophical discussions and the translational work of local apologetics organizations and training centers … If this transfer of goods from the ivory tower to the pew continues (and it shows every sign of gathering momentum rather than abating), then the next major revival of evangelical Christianity, as strange as it may sound, may well come through the intellectual re-engagement of the church, as her people discover sound arguments for Christian faith and answers to the objections lodged against it — and so, strengthened by the conviction that Christianity is not just “true for them” but objectively true for all, become emboldened, winsome, and intelligent witnesses for Christ in a decaying culture.

Not surprisingly, Craig and Copan are themselves noted for more than just their own academic contributions to philosophy; Copan the author of When God Goes to Starbucks and Craig the author of On Guard.

Robert Velarde further models the sort of non-academic yet serious engagement with ideas in his piece, “Film is the New Literature”

Films tell stories, as does the Bible. Christ knew the power of story and, as a result, incorporated engaging storytelling elements in his many parables. On some level we typically respond better to stories than we do to textbooks or preachy lectures. Learning to intelligently engage the storytelling medium of film, carefully exegeting the form, is a far better response than entrenching ourselves in our subculture defiantly or else embracing films uncritically … As Christians living in the Age of Entertainment, our cultural and kingdom relevance is at stake if we fail to adapt to the rise and influence of media such as film and television. To neglect these media or minimize their influence is to cast aside important cultural touch points where faith and culture intersect.

Velarde has a great record of writing for a broad audience, whether his Conversations with C.S. Lewis (interviewed here) or his latest, The Wisdom of Pixar.

Also of interest at the Patheos Evangelical portal are some fabulous interviews with historian Mark Noll (“The Future of Evangelicals in Academia”), sociologist D. Michael Lindsay (“New Ways of Shaping Society”), sociologist Rodney Stark (“Are Evangelicals the New Mainline?”), and Michael Cromartie (“The Dead Are Not Raised by Politics”), and Andy Crouch (On Culture and Power) — all of which tend to center around the meaning and significance of evangelicalism in the public, and not surprisingly, the recent work of James Davison Hunter also surfaces significantly in these discussions.

We are very grateful for the skillful mind and generous heart of Timothy Dalrymple, the Manager and Editor of the Evangelical Portal, for coordinating the wonderful series on evangelicalism, which should also be read in light of the resourceful series on the future of Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism.

EPS members engaged in comparative religion work, must also review the excellent Patheos series on the future of Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Paganism, and Humanism.

The Virtues of Capitalism: Interview with Scott Rae (part two)

Posted on May 30, 2010 by - interview, scott rae, Virtues of capitalism (book)

Below is part two of our interview with Scott Rae about his latest book (with co-author Austin Hill), The Virtues of Capitalism: A Moral Case for Free Markets (Northfield Publishing, 2010).

Noted sociologist Daniel Bell wrote in his influential 1976 book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, about how capitalist systems are constituted by distinct yet related social systems: the moral/cultural, the economic, and the political. How are these systems and their institutions interrelated?

I agree that these three systems function to provide checks and balances for the others. Typically, when the moral/cultural system fails to provide moral limits to the economic system, then the law steps in. And the frequency with which the law is involved testifies to the relative weakness of the moral/cultural system. I think the financial meltdown is a good example of the failure of both the law and morality to rein in excesses on Wall Street—but both are reacting, mostly appropriately.

What are the “virtues of capitalism”?

The virtues that are both required and nurtured by participation in the market system are things like service, trust, promise-keeping, truthtelling, diligence, thrift, and what might be called “entrepreneurial traits,” such as innovation, creativity, etc.

As you know, University of Southern California philosopher, Dallas Willard, has been working on a book length project concerning “the disappearance of moral knowledge.” In the absence of moral knowledge, in what sense, if any, can the virtues of capitalism expect to thrive, let alone survive?

I would suggest that even though moral knowledge is on the wane, there is still a reservoir of some shared values, sufficient to make the economic system function. Think for example of how many transactions are completed that are based on trust—most credit transaction fit that description. In the absence of moral values, capitalism becomes Darwinian, and then it becomes essentially state-sponsored, as the law steps in to regulate more and more, analogous to what exists in China.

What do you take to be the most substantial criticism of capitalism? How might it be considered and answered?

That capitalism does not distribute the goods of society in an entirely equitable way. Capitalism is very good at creating wealth, but distribution is another matter. I don’t have a problem with merit being a primary basis for distribution. And I believe that the economy is not a zero-sum game—that the rich can get richer without it being at the expense of the poor. But I am troubled by the increasing gap between rich and poor and worry about what that might do to social stability if that’s a long-term trend.

What do you take to be the most prevailing misunderstanding of what capitalism is and what it does?


That it is based on greed. Michael Moore called capitalism a system of “legalized greed.” Adam Smith said nothing of the sort in The Wealth of Nations. He distinguished between greed and self-interest (which the Scripture does too) and maintained that the social virtues of compassion and justice moderated the pursuit of self-interest. Scripture commends self-interest (Phil. 2:4—look out not only for your interests, but also for the interests of others).

Could capitalism, as an economic system, fail to adequately work, in some sense and in some way, if a culture is driven by the satisfaction of desire as an end?

You get people in business without ever thinking about what they are in business for, other than making money and advancing their careers. This is why people can’t wait to retire, because their work has become divorced from any meaningful purpose. Capitalism will not cease to work—it’s just that the market will reflect those values, as it is already beginning to do.

You can learn more about The Virtues of Capitalism by visiting the book’s Facebook page. Part three of our interview with Scott Rae continues here.

The Virtues of Capitalism: Interview with Scott Rae (part one)

Posted on May 5, 2010 by - austin hill, capitalism, economics, ethics, interview, scott rae, Virtues of capitalism (book)

The morality of capitalism is one of the most pressing moral issues that Christian philosophers and theologians need to address today. Toward that end, we interviewed Scott Rae about his just released book (with co-author Austin Hill), The Virtues of Capitalism: A Moral Case for Free Markets (Northfield Publishing, 2010). Scott is professor of Christian ethics and the chairperson of the philosophy of religion and ethics department at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. Below is part one of our multi-part interview with Rae.

How did this book come about?

The book came out of a long journey that my writing partner, Austin Hill, had experienced that began with his studies here at Talbot in the Philosophy program—a course he took with me on “Faith and Economics” and an Acton Institute seminar that he attended while a student here. More recently, in his job as a radio host he had been reading about the broadsides that capitalism had been taking as a result of the meltdown of the financial system—particularly an article in a UK newspaper entitled, “G20 Nations Must Make Moral Case for Capitalism.” Shortly after reading that article, he called me and insisted that we needed to write this book—and now!

Are you trying to recover a particular moral, philosophical and economic tradition?

We are advocating the kind of capitalism that we believe was originally intended by Adam Smith and has been more recently very ably articulated by the Catholic theologian Michael Novak. We hold that Smith intended that the market be regulated by both political and moral restraints. Specifically, Smith argued that the pursuit of self-interest was moderated by what he called the “social virtues” of compassion, justice, benevolence, etc. Smith was neither a libertarian nor an ethical egoist—he held that there was a place for government and for morality in providing restraints on self-interest.

In chapter one, the book tries to address the attitude, “I only care about the moral issues,” which, arguably, tends to persist among so-called American “faith-based” groups and individuals, especially evangelicals. Why is there often a disconnect between morality and economics, whether among the so-called “Religious Left” or the “Religious Right”?

There is less of a disconnect among the religious left than the right, in our view. What’s assumed is that the most pressing and clearest moral issues are the ones related to life—abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, etc. Those have been at the top of the agenda for some time, and justifiably so. Economics by contrast, is often viewed as morally neutral—that the market is simply a system that reflects the values of the culture, but doesn’t shape values.

The other reason for the disconnect is that issues of economics are so often overlapping with contentious and divisive political issues—immigration, for example, that we tend to shy away from addressing them.

A further reason for the disconnect is that applying the Bible to matters of economics is hermeneutically tricky because of the major differences in economic life and structure between the ancient world and today. It’s not enough to say that since materialism is a matter of the heart and the heart hasn’t changed, the Bible’s message can be applied easily. Those premises are true, but the conclusion is not—applying the Bible to economic life is very tricky, especially the Old Testament. Many of the laws that gave people a fresh start economically (Jubilee, redemption of land, etc.) would be very difficult to apply today—or at least it’s not clear how to apply such laws today.

What is an economic system and what should it try to accomplish in light of one’s view about what it means to be a human being?

An economic system is the way in which exchanges are structured among individuals and institutions—it has moral implications because it’s about how we order our lives together in community. An economic system should provide adequate opportunity for self-support and a safety net for those who cannot support themselves. The Bible is clear that those incapable of self-support are entitled to a share of the community’s goods.

Chapter two attempts to show how the Bible offers consistencies with “capitalist principles” (20) What are those principles?

The fundamentals of the market system include freedom, initiative, creativity and provision for the poor. We hold that that the entrepreneurial traits necessary for success in economic life are actually important Christian virtues. Further, we hold that the responsible wealth creation of the market system is how an economist would capture the biblical notion of human dominion over creation from Genesis 1.

What do you think are the most compelling biblical evidences for your claim about capitalism, as an economic system, to be the “preferred choice” among its competitors because it “best honors the human person, and is the way in which we can most productively order our lives together” (20).

I’m not sure there’s a chapter and verse for this—but more broadly speaking the biblical principles that uphold human dignity, creativity, and initiative. The Bible upholds the pursuit of self-interest (“look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others,” Phil. 2:4) and even mandates it in places (where Paul cautions the Thessalonians that “if you don’t work you don’t eat,” and that if you don’t take care of your family, you’re worse off than most people. There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of self-interest, moderated by concern for others, and nothing wrong with being successful, moderated by generosity. We also hold that the mandate to care for the poor suggests that capitalism, properly functioning, is the best hope for the poor around the world. Since 1970 roughly 1.2 billion people have been elevated out of poverty into the middle-lower middle class. Granted, there’s a long way to go, but it is widely attributed to be the case that most of the intractable poverty is in sub-Sahara Africa, where we would suggest that the market as Adam Smith envisioned has yet to be implemented.

How you hold the authority of the Bible in this book, especially in chapter two, is suggestive of an important methodological consideration relevant to how scripture integrates with other areas of knowledge. The book seems to bank on the fact that scripture is not just a source of one’s religious beliefs, perhaps one’s doctrinal beliefs, but the Bible is actually a source of knowledge about reality. Is that correct? If so, can you possibly elaborate on that point and how it might be relevant to how various publics (religious and non-religious) interact with scripture and economics?

You’re right about our view of the Bible—we see it as a source of knowledge, not just opinions about our beliefs. This is a broader philosophical question of epistemology—we reject the contemporary notion that the only stuff that counts for knowledge is that which we can verify with our senses or by science—that’s the hubris of empiricism that has worked its way into our culture and educational system. We hold that the integration of the bible with economics is a critical task for scholars today, but it must take into account some of the hermeneutical difficulties mentioned above given how different economic life was in the ancient world.

How might scholars working in philosophy, biblical studies and theology, or at any of their intersections, do further integrative work that would contribute thinking about economics and capitalism?

This is a great question—most of the most contentious issues concern not the ends of economics, but the best means to accomplish those ends. The Bible is clear on the ends and most people agree on the ends—it’s the means that constitute the differences. And the means involves a variety of disciplines—economics, political philosophy, social sciences, theology, etc. One example that could really use some work is the issue of immigration—that has all the above disciplines, and then some, that have a bearing on that issue. The Bible has a lot to say about immigration—but applying that takes skill and discernment since the political landscape in biblical times was so different from today.

You can learn more about The Virtues of Capitalism by visiting the book’s Facebook page. You may also be interested in Michael Novak’s 2004 speech, “Wealth and Virtue: The Moral Case for Capitalism.”

Education for Human Flourishing: Interview with Paul Spears and Steve Loomis (part three)

Posted on April 1, 2010 by - christian worldview integration series, education for human flourishing (book), interview, paul spears, steve loomis

We continue and complete our multi-part interview with Biola’s Paul Spears and Wheaton’s Steve Loomis about their book, Education for Human Flourishing. Part one is available here and part two is available here.

In the book, you help readers think of education as a “social institution”? First, what does it mean to “think institutionally”? What is a “social institution”? What does it mean to think of education as a “social institution”?

Loomis: To think institutionally is to think integratively and interdisciplinarily
(philosophically, economically, theologically) about the nature of social structures and the formal and informal rules that enable and disable human development, performance, and flourishing.  It is a methodological approach that carefully examines the large and small conditions of information and knowledge across human exchange and social environments.  For example, the moral law is the overarching or supreme, observer-independent institution that sets rough, imprecise limits on the activities of social institutions as well as on individual human beings.  The moral law is both a constraining institution that seeks to prevent abuse as well as an enabling one that promotes conditions for justice and flourishing.

Basically – and this is the best I can do in a short space – a social institution is a powerful nonspatial, nonphysical mediating social entity that possesses distinct existence and has attributes that impact and are impacted by complex human reality.  A social institution can have an observer-independent status, such as the moral law or Nature, or it can be entirely a social (human) construction such as money, sport, education, or government.  Individual human beings and individual organizations work within the context of a wider set of institutions, which are connected to culture(s) and society.  Stewardship of institutions is one of the foremost responsibilities of Christ-followers in any field.  It is surprising that so few Christian philosophers and educational theorists have done work in this area of thought.

To think of education as a social institution is to at once understand that the productive activities of education, its ends and means, are influenced significantly by the information environment, that is, by the rules governing the decision-making and choices of participants.  These rules can sanction or bias one line of thinking, lowering costs associated with that line of thinking, and forego an alternative line of thinking, thus raising costs in that direction of thinking.  The information economy of education has to do with the price of information in agenda setting.  And this has to do with the individual-collective questions of social choice, such as the important work of Kenneth Arrow and Amartya Sen.  It also has to do with questions of justice.  Some things, some areas of knowledge are viewed as too costly to retain in productive or allocative activities.  This is where a lot of compartmentalization occurs; some faculty members fold their faith commitments like weak lawn chairs on a sultry summer day.  We can see, for example, how in post-Civil War American society the philosophy of pragmatism did a lot of work to lower the costs of secularization in public spheres of American life, including in education.  Or take the recent standardization of the teacher since the mid-1980s, or the higher education faculty member today, where only twenty-five percent of the faculty in the U.S. is tenured or tenure-track.  These are cost-lowering consequences and effects of changes in the information economy of the institution of education.  So, for new teachers to understand education as an institution, including the performance of schooling, they will need to be able to see and sense and reason more deeply than others about what is going on and how they individually or we as a community might help to resolve real and important problems in education.

How and why should pastors view their local church as a Christian knowledge institution?

Spears: One aspect of the church is the dissemination of knowledge. It is our knowledge that comes through our wrestling with the text of scripture through the illumination of the Holy Spirit that enables us to properly pursue life within the body of Christ.

What do you sense are already present and looming threats to education as an effectual social institution? How can Christian educators address these threats?

Loomis: It is interesting that, since the A Nation at Risk report in 1983, a gap has been widening between educational attainment and commensurate levels of knowledge and skills.  One colleague of ours has called the education system a ‘machinery of inequality.’  There is more than a little truth to this assertion, particularly for Latinos in the U.S.  Adding to this line of thought, we have shown elsewhere that there has been something like a public–private convergence in teacher education that prevents independent schools of education and teacher education faculties (and the teachers they prepare) from resolving persistent socio-economic problems, such as:

  • Expanding economic and social inequalities between quintiles.
  • Institutional scale and its information base stripping out particular forms of information(e.g., local values, preferences, ideals, aims, and modes of production) which is correlating with a growing asymmetry between educational attainment (more schooling) but an incommensurate level of knowledge and skill. This direction of information transmits a distorted signal to markets about the distribution of skill and talent in the workforce.
  • Transaction costs being raised in the procurement and delivery of education goods.
  • Competition intensifying in such a manner as to worsen inequalities of educational opportunity.
  • An undersupply of the complex education good to an evolving and politically and economically stressed society.

Let me put something to you straight: too much of educational research today is either taking the pulse of a dying patient or working to prop up it’s collectivist (growth) vision.  This needs to stop.  This is one reason why our book was written: to inspire a new generation of education scholars to think differently and integratively about the field, to learn how to call into question the rules and the rule making functions of the institution of education.  We are suggesting that a new epistemology be used, a new unit of analysis be integrated into a teacher’s development as a scholar.  We need more educators to disconnect from the Matrix and see reality as it is.

Let me also make clear what is at stake here.  The analysis of institutions, and the organizations that work within them, will reliably fall into incoherence – and much harm may be done – if scholars continue to insist on seeing them as merely instrumental rather than as instrumental and teleological entities.  Indeed, it is the proper teleological rendering of social institutions, including education, that brings coherence to their existence and relations, not its absence.  It is the purely instrumental or pragmatic view of institutions and social fields that distorts the human situation, as in the relationships between Nature and Reason, between the one and the many, between means and ends, between institutional growth and the social welfare, between information and knowledge, between schooling and learning.  If we want to make any genuine progress toward understanding the nature and role of social institutions in culture and society, if we endeavor to understand the relation of institutions to the individual, his or her development and flourishing, we must come to understand, first, the purposes that different individuals and collectives ascribe to particular institutional arrangements and how these affect social choice and, second, realize that institutions are in fact non-natural entities bound to an inescapable relation with the transcendent moral law (the supreme institution).

How and why is character education integral to education as a social institution? What are the main challenges and prospects that must be faced in this area?

Loomis: The institution of education today tends to emphasize the development of mere rationality, that is, the inexpensive alignment of one’s beliefs and means to a lower-cost, institutionally-provided end, usually an end that is inferior in nature.  This prevents us from calling into question the rules of the game.  So, if we are to avoid Lewis’s Abolition of Man, castrating and bidding the geldings ‘be fruitful,’ if we are to develop the capacity to ask MacIntyre’s important question, ‘Always ask about your social and cultural order what it needs you and others not to know,’ we will need at the same time to develop the mind and heart, reason and the sentiments, in new and old ways.  The solution already exists.  The problem is that the technical model of education will not allow that solution to reach agenda.  It’s seen by many elites and social choice theorists, and even many Christian academics, as too costly, too controversial, too irrational, too preserving of the individual’s free will; it is a solution that excites too much of the transcendent which is seen as lying outside of man’s control and power.  What do we do in light of this?  We teach to the transcendent anyway – exposing to the conscience the noteworthy fallacies and absurdities buried within the claims of the merely non-transcendent.  This level of certainty will make some people nervous.  You’ll have to forgive me; I haven’t spent my entire adult life in the Academy overworking a commitment to methodological skepticism.  When I am in an alternative school teaching a young man who is on probation for having committed an aggravated assault or an attempted murder, I find moral skepticism a poor ally when my teary-eyed student asks me what he can do to turn his life around and to think, feel, and be a moral agent.”
  
How should a Christian philosophy of education think about “online learning”?

Loomis: We are not instantly opposed to the intelligent use of technology for learning.  But there is a larger point within your question that I need to address.  It is one concerned with leadership in higher education.  The Christian university and other concerned market sectors can move in the opposite direction from the technical model of production in order to reach the goals that we have described in the book.  For example, it can allocate scarce resources in the direction of quality not quantity.  Consider some ways of doing this.

First, it can retain in its profile the identity of the good as the development and flourishing of the individual person, not a mean-or-aggregated FTE abstraction of a student.  Leadership with Christian higher education is too enamored with the accounting framework of thinking.  They too readily envision the faculty and students as centers of cost, not as centers of investment.  Strategic leadership calls on developing the ability to figure out a world that doesn’t yet exist.

Second, it can emphasize recruiting and retaining the best possible faculty for its Carnegie category (we refer to the Carnegie classification system in the U.S.).  The faculty is the most important component of production and the chief scarcity in higher education because there are so few exceptional people available.  While provost at Stanford University Fred Terman understood this reality and launched Stanford into the top 5 in nearly every academic program it offered in a matter of 10 years, 1955-1965.  He did it principally through securing the best available faculty and then supporting them with internal and external resources.  While the market environment then was different than it is now, Terman today would likely invest in the direction of quality not quantity, knowing full well that quality inoculates a university from the ebb and flow of market recessions and risk in uncertain times.  The lesson here is that pursuing quality in higher education is a way to hedge against market changes and fluctuations.

Third, quality higher education needs to be about something, it needs to pursue important questions and lead in the production or preservation of ideas and knowledge.  That takes an information base and modes of inquiry that do not track a technical model of production.

Fourth, higher quality universities attract students who are more interested in the acquisition of knowledge and skills than they are about educational attainment.  These are the students whose loyalties over time (and future giving) lie with that university because of the endearing development occurring during the college years and during graduate school.

Fifth, higher quality education offers loose, diversified, and independent internal structures that facilitate the natural complexities of knowledge work while at the same time operating consistent with mission specific commitments and activities.

Finally, it is of great consequence to recognize that no higher quality university makes a profit on tuition; no quality university is tuition-driven. For franchising or scaling on-line operations in order to secure organizational sustainability, the information economy of an organization usually must narrow and shift toward factors that line up with mere attainment.  Often, this is a move away from the individual student, not toward him or her.  Alternatively, a plausible strategy and an endowment over time with money put under faculty and students helps to add sustainability during market transitions.”

Spears: First, I wholeheartedly agree with Steve’s thoughts about online learning. It is easy to be an “academic snob” about this, but in reality, we need to figure out ways in which we can incorporate aspects of this new academic trend in a manner that best educates our students—which is our primary mandate. We should see online education as an opportunity to expose a broader community to excellent Christian scholarship and teaching.

What role and stewardship should funders – and philanthropy in general – have toward education as a social institution? How should they invest?

Spears: Education is more than producing individuals who contribute effectively to the economic viability of a nation. Universities have an important place in societal discourse. Christian universities should commit themselves to academic excellence, not for its own sake, but so that we can have a voice in both our churches and society at large. We draw from a reservoir of truth that we want the whole world to have access to, and it behooves us to engage with society in a manner that bespeaks of our commitment to, not only our faith, but society at large. 

Loomis: Fund an interdisciplinary Center for Social Thought at a good Christian university so we can build and refine theory.  Theory is the rails upon which a practice occurs.  If theory is in error, then practice is likely to be suboptimal.  Over the long run, human performance depends upon good theory.

How can Christian integration, educators, and educational leaders help to bring about meaningful educational reform in the U.S.?

Loomis: Two moves are necessary here.  First, when someone is willing to fund an interdisciplinary Center for Social Thought at one or more good Christian colleges or universities we’ll demonstrate how to do meaningful and sustainable educational reform.  Second, concerning the performance of Christian higher education, boards of trustees have got to stop hiring pastors, missionaries, and the equivalent of Friedrich Hayek’s ‘quantity adjusters’ as presidents of colleges and universities.  It is holding us back from leading in the area of ideas and stewarding social and cultural institutions.  We need more Nathan Hatch’s as presidents.  Further, boards of trustees and academic administrators would do well to acknowledge that a faculty should be regarded as a center of profit, not as a center of cost.  We don’t mean just in the economic sense, but in the advance of church and society. Come times of recession, the salary and benefits of a faculty are to be off limits.  The competitive performance and reputation of a college or university pivots on an organization’s ability to attract, recruit, and retain the highest performing, Christ-honoring faculty available in the world (e.g., the inestimable profit, in terms of idea-work, Mark Noll and Art Holmes brought to Wheaton College are but two clear examples).  In the fields of mental labor and creativity (e.g., higher education, institutes, and think tanks) there is simply a very real scarcity of talent in the labor market.  Recognition of this scarcity not only prevents people from holding the technical model’s view that a faculty is composed of interchangeable units of production, it will bring appreciation for theological understandings of biblically just labor and wages (cf. Gen. 29:15, 31:7, 41; Leviticus 19:13; Deut. 24:14-15; Jeremiah 22:13; 1 Tim. 5:18; James 5:1-6).  If the Church wants to be relevant in the marketplace of ideas, if the Church wants to bring about meaningful educational reform around the world, then it will need to unshackle and more fully compensate its scholars so we have the time, energy, and freedom to do the necessary intellectual work to get it done.

Spears: Steve outlines this beautifully, but let me add that large systemic changes in a monolithic system are almost impossible. As Christians, we need to pursue excellence, and opportunities to influence the existing educational institutions and society structures will emerge as we do so. For example, Michael Long, Biola alum (94) was named California teacher of the year in 2008, and John Thune is a U.S. Senator for the state of South Dakota. It is because of their pursuit of excellence that they have the opportunity to influence educational policy and the laws of our nation.

You can learn more about the Christian Worldview Integration series from IVP Academic by going here. Paul Spears is a philosopher of education with the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. Steve Loomis is a professor of education at Wheaton College.

Atheism as a Psychological Crutch: A Review of James Spiegel’s The Making of an Atheist

Posted on March 15, 2010 by - book reviews, jim spiegel, making of an atheist (book)

I’ve always believed that the best defense is a good offense. Culturally speaking, however, the New Atheists have been the ones on the offensive in their attacks on religious belief in general and Christianity in particular. Christian apologists have made some very good replies to most of their attacks on Christian belief (which are really nothing more than the same old tired arguments that we’ve had to put to rest before). Yet, the New Atheists are getting a lot of rhetorical mileage in the popular culture with their incessant charge that religious belief is inherently irrational, without evidence, motivated by psychological needs.

How refreshing, then, to read Jim Spiegel’s new book, The Making of an Atheist, in which he makes an end run around all the lame anti-theistic arguments and baseless psycho-analyses of believers, and goes on the offensive by exposing the nonrational, psychological and (im)moral foundations of atheism. In this work, Spiegel shows that, contrary to the pretensions of contemporary atheists, their unbelief is not based on evidence (or a lack of evidence for theism), but is ultimately the result of sin and rebellion as indicated by the apostle Paul in Romans 1.

In chapter one, Spiegel briefly reviews two of the major lines of argument utilized by the New Atheists in their critique of theism: “the problem of evil and the scientific irrelevancy of God” (p. 24). Concerning the former, Spiegel mentions the major theodicies employed by theists in response, but notes that the evidence of evil can never really count for atheism because (1) it doesn’t nullify all of the abundant positive evidence for the existence of God, and (2) the whole idea of evil is incoherent unless God exists (since values like good and evil presupppose God). As for the scientific irrelevancy of God, Spiegel rehearses the well-known problems with positivism and scientism, and points out that naturalism can account neither for the existence and design of the cosmos nor for the value and meaning of human life.

Interestingly, Spiegel ends chapter one with a discussion of the positive insights of atheism. For instance, atheists are right to point out that numerous evils have been done in the name of religion. Also, the moral complacency often displayed by professing believers as well as their tendency to engage in God-of-the-gaps reasoning in science are places where unbelievers are correct to raise concerns. These and other problems Spiegel call “theistic malpractice,” and he notes that while they do call Christians to greater consistency in Christian living, they actually confirm the Christian doctrine of sin, being what we would expect to be the case if Christianity were true.

Chapter two demonstrates the irrationality of atheism in two ways. First, by outlining the abundant evidence for the existence of God found in the laws of nature, the incredible fine-tuning of the universe for life, and the origin of life. Second, by describing Alvin Plantinga’s argument to the affect that naturalism, coupled with Darwinism, proves to be self-defeating by undermining the very possibility of knowledge. But if atheism is so clearly false, why are there atheists at all? Spiegel offers a biblical diagnosis, namely, that atheists are morally deficient (Ps. 14:1; Prov. 18:2; Eph. 4:17-19; Rom 1:18-23, etc.). The problem is not a lack of intelligence or of evidence, but “the ‘wickedness’ of the unbeliever works to ‘suppress’ what is manifest in nature. Consequently, the unbelievers’s capacity for rational thought is compromised” (p. 53). This diagnosis finds some anecdotal confirmation in the bitterness and rage displayed toward God by some of the New Atheists as well as in Spiegel’s personal observation of atheists who fell into unbelief after some episode of personal rebellion. These observations seem symptomatic of nonrational factors at work in producing atheism.

The heart of the book is chapter three. Here Spiegel provides empirical evidence to support the biblical diagnosis of atheism that he offered in chapter two. First, he sketches the research of Paul Vitz who has shown that atheists typically suffer from what he calls “the defective father syndrome.” Surveying the lives of many renowed atheists, Vitz revealed that in each case they had either a father who died when they were very young, a father who deserted the family wheny they were young, or a father who was abusive or ineffectual, or otherwise unworthy of respect. Spiegel extends Vitz’s research to show that those New Atheists who we have enough information about (Dennett and Hitchens) also suffer from the defective father syndrome. Apparently, having a defective father provides a necessary condition for atheism. A person with a poor relationship with his earthly father is disposed to project the bitterness and resentment he has toward him onto his “heavenly Father” as well.

Of course, a necessary condition is not a sufficient condition. Combined with the defective father syndrome, Spiegel points out, there is also “a persistent immoral response of some sort, such as resentment, hatred, vanity, unforgiveness, or abject pride. And when that rebellion is deep or protracted enough, atheism results (p. 81). The most egregious of these moral defects that lead to atheism is “chronic sexual misbehavior.” To prove his point, Spiegel surveys the works of Paul Johnson and E. Michael Jones who demontrate that prominate atheist and agnostic intellectuals lived egotistical, callous (ignoring or abandoning children), sexually promiscuous lifestyles. And it seems evident not only to Speigel, but to many of these intellectuals themselves, that there was a direct connection between their lifestyles and their unbelief. For example, P.B. Shelley remarked that “the philosophy of meaninglessness was esentially an instrument of liberation,” and Aldous Huxley admits, “Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless.”

Spiegel closes chapter three by discussing the role of the will in the production of atheism. Appealing to William James’s concept of the “will to believe,” Spiegel argues that atheists, though traumatized by defective fathers and motivated by perverse sinful desires, ultimately choose to disbelieve in God. The arguments and “evidences” offered by atheists for unbelief are simply smokescreens and facades. The real reason for atheism is rebellion.

In chapter four, Spiegel deals with the “obstinacy of atheism,” the fact that atheists can be deeply and dogmatically entrenched in their unbelief (in the same way that believers can be entrenched in religious belief). He helpfully explains this entrenchment in terms of worldviews and Thomas Kuhn’s scientific “paradigms.” Appealing to Kuhn’s notions of the incommensurability of paradigms, the near-impossibility of falsifying them, and the nonrational factors that play a role in paradigm shifts, Spiegel shows why believers and unbelievers seem to live in different “worlds,” and why atheists cannot seem to see what appears so obvious to believers, namely, the overwhelming evidence for God. Atheist can’t see that evidence because the worldview paradigms in which they have entrenched themselves (materialistic naturalism and relativism) prevent them from seeing it–Spiegel calls this “paradigm-induced blindness.”

Spiegel takes the reader at this point to Calvin’s notion of the sensus divinitatis. All human beings are born with an innate capacity for direct and personal awareness of God. This “sense of the divine” is primarily what explains the pervasiveness of theistic belief. What is it, then, that leads to the paradigm-induced blindness that the atheist suffers from? Following Plantinga, Spiegel answers that it is the congnitive malfunction of the sensus divinitatis. With this, Spiegel’s analysis if the psychology of atheism is complete. He summarizes it thus: “The descent into atheism is caused by a complex of moral-psychological factors. . . . The atheist willfully rejects rejects God, though this is precipitated by immoral indulgences and typically a broken relationship with his or her father. . . . The hardening of the atheistic mind-set occurs through congitive malfunction due to two principle causes. First, atheists suffer from paradigm-induced blindness. . . . Second, atheists suffer from damage to the sensus divinitatis, so their natural awareness of God is severly impeded” (pp. 113-14).

In the fifth and final chapter, Spiegel calls “The Blessings of Theism.” Perhaps a better title would be “The Blessings of Virtue.” He begins by pointing out that the life of virtue lived by Christian theists is a powerful apologetic tool, especially for atheists who, because of their paradigm-induced blindness, may be incapable of appreciating the merit of our apologetic arguments. Movever, living the virtuous life helps to maintain faith and theistic belief because it helps avoid those vices that can give one a motive for unbelief. Also, given the truth of theism and the connection between virtue and truth acquisition, “the more viruously one lives, the more truths one is able to access, including truths about God and how to obey him” (p. 117). Spiegel goes on to show that theistic belief has some special emotional benefits unavailable to the atheist, such as the right to complain in the face of injustice and the privilege of thanksgiving. He concludes with an admonition to Christians to live virtuously for the sake of reaching atheists with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Making of an Atheist is a welcome addition to the growing literature responding to the New Atheism. Its unique contribution lies in its head-on attack on the root causes of atheism, turning the tables by showing that it is not the theist who suffers from an irrational psychological wish-fulfillment, but the atheist who is in fact in the grip of a powerful, self-induced delusion. The book is written in a popular style and at a level for the lay reader. It will no doubt be criticized for its lack of philosophical rigor in places (places where Spiegel summarizes the more detailed work of others), but Spiegel effectively throws down the gauntlet before the atheist and challenges him to respond to the charge that his unbelief is unjustified and motivated by sin. It will not do for him to simply reply that Spiegel’s attack is just an ad hominem one. Spiegel has provided ample evidence that not only are atheists guilty of sinful, rebellious behavior, but that this sinfulness affects their arguments. Christians need to read this book for the encouragement it gives them and the insight it provides into the psychology of unbelief. Atheists need to read it because of the serious challenge that it makes to their unbelief, a challenge that confirms Paul’s assertion that unbelievers “are without excuse” (Rom 1:20).

Reviewed by Steven B. Cowan

The Making of An Atheist: Interview with Jim Spiegel

Posted on February 10, 2010 by - arguments for the existence of God, interview, jim spiegel, making of an atheist (book)

Taylor University Philosopher, Jim Spiegel, just released his book, The Making of An Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Moody Publishers, 2010). Below is our interview with Spiegel about his book and the implications of his thesis for the debate between atheism and theism.

How did this book come about for you?

Like any philosopher of religion, I’ve followed the new atheist movement with interest.  But after reading numerous responses from Christian apologists, I noticed a conspicuous lack of attention to the moral-psychological roots of atheism.  Given that the biblical writers emphasize this dimension of unbelief, I thought someone needed to address it.

How does this book uniquely contribute to critiques of atheism and the “new atheism”?

Most Christian apologists’ responses to the new atheists challenge their arguments and reveal the many fallacies in their objections to religious faith.  This is helpful, of course, and I applaud the work of Ravi Zacharias, Alister McGrath, Dinesh D’Souza, Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, Tim Keller, and others for their superb contributions to the debate.  What they so well demonstrate is that atheism is not the consequence of any lack of evidence for God.  So the question naturally arises, What is the cause of atheism?  That is the question I address in my book.

The “noetic effects of sin” (as it’s sometimes called) plays an important conceptual and explanatory role in your book. In general, can you briefly explain your view on this matter?

I take my cue from Scripture, specifically such passages as Romans 1:18-32, where the Apostle Paul asserts that no one has any excuse not to believe in God. Rather, he says, some “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18).  In my book I develop a model for how this happens, tracing the suppression of truth to a willful rejection of God, prompted by immorality and self-deception.  Thus, I argue, sinful behaviors cloud and distort cognition.  The notion that volitional factors impact belief-formation has been forcefully argued by thinkers as various as John Calvin, Soren Kierkegaard, William James, Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn, and Alvin Plantinga.  In terms of a specifically Christian application of this dynamic, I’ve been especially inspired by Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.

Given the realism of human finitude and fallenness, how should we view the effectuality, if not fruitfulness, of the role that arguments can have for God’s existence or of the role for arguments against objections to God’s existence?

I believe in the usefulness of apologetics to encourage those who struggle with doubts and to persuade those who have sincere objections to aspects of the faith.  Even in the case of some former atheists, such as Antony Flew, the role of evidence seems to have been critical in his change of perspective.  But I don’t think such persuasion happens in a moral-spiritual vacuum.  The Spirit is always at work on people’s hearts, and in many instances He uses arguments and evidences as He prompts belief and acceptance of spiritual truth.

Why might there be a tendency among some Christian philosophical critiques of atheism (or any other worldview for that matter) to under-represent or downright avoid how the sinful tendencies of the human heart figure into the formation of a worldview?

One reason for avoidance of this issue might be a concern for decorum.  I suppose it could appear unseemly or offensive even to suggest, much less to present as a thesis of a book, that a person’s lack of belief in God is, at bottom, a form of rebellion.  And I must admit that at times I felt uncomfortable writing the book for this reason.  However, the fact that it is a clear biblical truth compelled me to write it anyway.  But I was careful to be as generous and winsome as I could manage, given the subject matter.

Given your view of how atheists are formed with regard to their worldview, how does the “problem of evil” figure into an atheist’s desires and motivations to know what is true?

In the book I discuss the principal objections of the new atheists, and the problem of evil is perhaps the most significant of these.  But, as some philosophers have rightly argued, the very notion of “evil” presupposes a standard for goodness which atheism cannot provide.  Any notion of evil or, for that matter, how things ought to be, whether morally or in terms of natural events, must rely on some standard or ideal that transcends the physical world.  Only some form of supernaturalism, such as theism, can supply this.  So to the extent that atheists acknowledge the reality of evil, they depart from their own commitment to naturalism.

Besides a theology of the heart and its sinful tendencies, another non-philosophical source of your critique of atheism is drawn from an examination of the psychology of atheism. How does the evidence for the “faith of the fatherless” figure into a theology of the heart and reasons that might be offered for atheism?

In his provocative little book, The Faith of the Fatherless, psychologist Paul Vitz surveys the major, and many of the minor, atheist scholars of the modern period.  He finds that the one thing these thinkers—e.g., Hobbes, Voltaire, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Freud, Sartre, etc.—have in common is a severely broken relationship with their father.  In accounting for atheism, Vitz turns the tables on Freudians who aim to explain away theistic belief as a cosmic projection of one’s father image.  In fact, the opposite seems to be the case:  atheists’ broken father relationships prompt their refusal to recognize the reality of God.

How does one become “entrenched” in an atheist’s mindset?

In my book I expound on two aspects of this process, which explains something of the obstinacy of atheists.  There is a phenomenon that I call “paradigm-induced blindness,” where a person’s false worldview prevents them from seeing truths which would otherwise be obvious.  Additionally, a person’s sinful indulgences have a way of deadening their natural awareness of God or, as John Calvin calls it, the sensus divinitatis.  And the more this innate sense of the divine is squelched, the more resistant a person will be to evidence for God.

You say that right living contributes to the perseverance of faith. How is that perseverance related to Christian virtue and the “cognitive health” that it brings?

Just as sinful thoughts and behavior corrupt us cognitively and warp our perspective on the world, obedience and virtue benefit us cognitively in a number of ways.  Not only do we avoid the intellectual warping and deadening of the sensus divinitatis that sin causes, but Scripture also makes clear that God grants special insight and wisdom to those who obey him (cf. Ps. 19:7, Ps. 25:9; Pr. 1:4, Pr. 11:2).  So you might say that the life of Christian virtue enhances our ability to think and reason, especially about moral and spiritual matters.

Given your approach to atheism in this book, how would you like to see this area further explored and developed by Christian philosophers?

I would like to see Christian philosophers do more to explore the relationship between personal ethics and the psychology of belief-formation. And, generally, I’d like to see more work done on various aspects of the negative side of the moral life—the phenomena of sin and vice. This have been underexplored by Christian philosophers.

More about Jim Spiegel can be learned at www.jimspiegel.com. The website for The Making of an Atheist, also has discussion questions and other important info.

Pope Benedict on God and Beauty

Posted on December 22, 2009 by - aesthetics, beauty, Pope Benedict

Recently Pope Benedict met with hundreds of contemporary artists (poets, painters, architects, film directors, etc.) in an effort to “renew the Church’s friendship with the world of art.” The meeting took place, appropriately enough, in the Sistine Chapel, which features one of the finest artistic achievements in human history.

In his remarks, the Pope made both positive and negative observations regarding the moral-spiritual potency of art. He noted, on the one hand, that “Beauty…can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God.” On the other hand, he declared, “Too often … the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful…it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy.” These are philosophically pregnant comments. First, note the Pope’s apparent conviction that beauty is a real quality in things. Beauty is not, as the popular slogan goes, merely in the eye of the beholder. Rather, it is an objective fact about the world (though, of course, people’s opinions about beauty vary widely). As such, beauty demands an explanation. And this, it seems, cannot be provided merely in terms of natural facts about the world, whether one aims to do so in terms of human psychology or the properties of the objects themselves. This is why beauty does point toward something transcendent, mysterious, even the Divine.

Second, the Pope does not limit considerations of real beauty to nature. While the physical world is replete with beautiful objects, scenes, sounds, and even flavors, from peacocks to Pleiades to whippoorwill songs to the taste of cinnamon, human productions, such as Michaelangelo’s paintings, Bach’s concertos, and Shakespeare’s sonnets, likewise reflect the Creator who endows people with artistic talent. Indeed, our creativity is one of the more stunning aspects of the imago Dei in us. The human artistic impulse and the capacity for aesthetic appreciation are both pointers to God, particularly in light of the fact that these abilities cannot be explained in Darwinian terms (despite recent efforts on the part of some scholars to do so—e.g., Denis Dutton’s The Art Instinct and Ellen Dissanayake’s Homo Aestheticus).

Third, in noting that beauty can be deceitful and even undermine human hope and joy, the Pope affirms that artworks embody worldviews and communicate values and ideals—for better or worse. While I would quibble with his use of the term “beauty” here instead of the more general term “artworks” (I suspect the latter is his actual intention), he is right to note the persuasive power of aesthetically pleasing objects, even when their messages are downright diabolical. As Christians living in a culture which is increasingly opposed to our worldview, but no less committed to artistic endeavor, we must be both worldview savvy and aesthetically alert. More than this, people of faith must be willing to infuse their artwork with spiritual themes and values. The Pope’s exhortation on this point should be embraced by Christian artists everywhere–whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.

For some helpful resources on Christian aesthetics see Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Art in Action, Frank Burch Brown’s Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste, and chapter nine of Cowan and Spiegel’s The Love of Wisdom.

Thomas Nagel On Intelligent Design Again

Posted on December 2, 2009 by - intelligent design, peter williams, stephen meyer, thomas nagel, william lane craig

Having previously reviewed Thomas Nagel’s sympathetic treatment of Michael J. Behe’s argument for Intelligent Design Theory in The Edge of Evolution (Free Press, 2007), it’s interesting to note Nagel’s continuing interest in ID. In the recent edition of the Times Literary Supplement he names Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design as one of his books of the year. The TLS website posted a preview of Nagel’s endorsement:

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

As I argue in my paper ‘Atheists Against Darwinism’ (hosted on the EPS website), Nagel’s reason for being instructed but unconvinced concerning ID is actually self-contradictory!

Signature in the Cell was previously named one of the top ten best-selling science books of the year by Amazon.com.

Also in the TLS

I’d encourage Matthew Cobb, reviewing two recent books with a Darwinian perspective, also in the TLS – cf. ‘Evolution, RNA and the power of natural selection’ (December 2nd 2009) – to read Nagel on ID. Doing so might at least temper his re-cycling of stereotypes:

‘although the United States is the source of some of the most rabid and well-organized forms of anti-evolutionism, it is by no means alone. In the UK, creationists and their sneaky cousins, the “intelligent design” crew, are growing in influence; Intelligent Design was given public backing in the Spectator earlier this year by Melanie Phillips, who absurdly claimed that it “comes out of science” not religion.’

You can read Phillip’s article in full here, and while her description of ID isn’t entirely accurate, I welcome her recognition, in agreement with Nagel, of the scientific status of ID.

Craig Debates ID

Whilst on the subject of ID, it’s worth noting that William Lane Craig recently participated in his first ever public debate on the topic (cf. the official debate website here). Craig’s noted debating partner was theistic evolutionist Francisco J. Ayala. The topic of debate was: Is Intelligent Design Viable?

You can watch Craig’s opening speech on video; listen to the full Ayala/Craig debate and Q&A time on MP3 Audio here.

Craig stated that he is agnostic about the truth of a design inference from biology, but that he thinks such an inference is at least a viable hypothesis that should be given a place at the table, and that the attacks being made on the theory aren’t sound.

Craig offers his view of how the debate went here and discusses evolution in a new podcast on Evolutionism and Skepticism. See also William Lane Craig, ‘Skepticism about the Neo-Darwinian Paradigm’; ‘Skepticism about the Neo-Darwinian Paradigm Re-Visited’.

Interestingly, the debate and Q&A time was moderated by Bradley Monton, an atheist philosopher of science and the author of Seeking God in Science: Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. In essence, Craig was arguing the same general thesis as Monton (although he is more positive than Monton about biology-based ID arguments), whilst being a theist rather than an atheist.

Monton has blogged on the debate here.

It’s well worth reading Monton’s book, and listening to his lecture defending ID: Bradley Monton, ‘An Atheist Philosopher Defends Intelligent Design – Lecture’.