In my last post, Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part I, I set out the doctrine of religious restraint and touched on some criticisms of it. In this post, I begin looking at and critiquing some of the key arguments in support of the doctrine of religious restraint. II Arguments for the Doctrine of Religious [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Philosophy of Religion'
Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part II
November 24th, 2009 2 Comments
Tags: Christopher Eberle · Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Freedom of Religion · John Rawls · Jurisprudence · Law Studies · Lydia McGrew · Matthew Flannagan · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Philosophy of Religion · Political Philosophy · Public Policy · Religion in Public Life · Robert Audi
Religious Restraint and Public Policy: Part I
November 23rd, 2009 31 Comments
In this series I set out the doctrine of religious restraint, the idea that in a pluralistic, liberal, society religious beliefs should not be utilised in the formation of public policy. I note that this doctrine entails an asymmetrical treatment of religious and secular beliefs, which appears to conflict with the central notion of liberal [...]
Tags: Christopher Eberle · Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Freedom of Religion · Jurisprudence · Law Studies · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Philip Quinn · Philosophy of Religion · Political Philosophy · Public Policy · Religion in Public Life · Stephen Carter · Terence Cuneo
“My Ways are Not Your Ways” Notre Dame Conference
November 10th, 2009 2 Comments
In September this year, the centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame hosted a conference entitled “My Ways Are Not Your Ways”; the proceedings of the conference can be seen at the previous link and is a good resource. The theme of the conference, as outlined on Notre Dame’s webpage, is [...]
Tags: Faith and Reason · God and Morality · Notre Dame · Philosophy of Religion · Theology
Audi and the Infallibility of Religious Reasons
November 7th, 2009 6 Comments
In “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics”,[1] Robert Audi defends the liberal thesis that religious reasons should not be utilised in debate on issues of public policy. Instead he contends that “one should not advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct unless one has, and is willing [...]
Tags: Ethics · Philosophy of Religion · Religion in Public Life · Robert Audi
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Infantile Religious Morality
September 24th, 2009 71 Comments
In “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” Walter Sinnott Armstrong criticises William Lane Craig’s contention that theism, if true, provides an adequate foundation for morality. Armstrong contends that Craig’s position is “incredible”[1] and subject to a “cavalcade of devastating objections.”[2] He goes on to conclude that his criticisms do not just [...]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · God and Morality · Patrick Nowell Smith · Philosophy of Religion · Richard Mouw · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Darwinian Evolution, God and Ockham’s Razor
September 11th, 2009 31 Comments
In a previous post, Darwinian Evolution, Chance and Design, I argued that the contention that Darwinian evolution occurs by chance does not entail that it shows the world was not designed. Once one sees how the concept of chance is defined in evolutionary theory one can see that it does not rule out design. It [...]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Charles Darwin · Evolution · Faith and Reason · Ockham’s Razor · Philosophy of Religion · Science and Religion
Recyling: Rawls on Religion and Public Life
September 9th, 2009 No Comments
A common theme appeared in the comments section of my Investigate Magazine article, Contra Mundum: What’s Wrong with Imposing your Beliefs onto Others? Commenters suggested I had not addressed the standard liberal conception of the role of religion and public life, the view that no law should be based on premises that not all reasonable [...]
Tags: John Rawls · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Philosophy of Religion · Recycling · Religion in Public Life · Selection
Darwinian Evolution, Chance and Design
August 28th, 2009 39 Comments
In a previous post, God, Darwinian Evolution and The Teleological Argument, I argued that evolution does not refute the teleological argument. Also, even if it did, a lot more significant philosophical work over and above any appeal to natural selection would be needed to infer from this that theism is rationally untenable. There is, however, [...]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Charles Darwin · Del Ratzch · Faith and Reason · Philosophy of Religion · Science and Religion
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness
July 17th, 2009 21 Comments
Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the [...]
Tags: Atheist · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Wainwright
Living Philosophers of Religion
July 13th, 2009 2 Comments
Over at Common Sense Atheism, Lukeprog has compiled an impressively comprehensive list of 100+ Living Philosophers of Religion and Their Best Work. Lukeprog identifies his list of philosophers of religion as those who have “published at least one influential work in the field” offering “analytic arguments over the truth of theism vs. atheism.” What I [...]
Tags: Philosophy of Religion
