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Josh,
Thanks for your question. Since I’m not a Calvinist my answer will probably be a little different from what you were anticipating. First, I’ll respond to you question from within the Calvinist system (as best as I can). Then I’ll give you my response and thoughts on the issue as a Molinist.
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Eleonore Stump recently delivered lectures for BLPR on pain and suffering.
Eleonore Stump is The Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, where she has taught since 1992. In 2012, Dr. Stump was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among other honors, she is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. She delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 2003, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University in 2006, the Thomas Merton Lecture at Columbia University in 2008, and the Stewart Lectures at Princeton University in 2009. She is the author of numerous articles and books, includingWandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford 2010).
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The bulk of my graduate research is focused on the work and thought of Max Tegmark, an MIT astrophysicist/cosmologist, who’s responsible for a tremendous contribution to multiverse models. In honor of Charles Darwin’s 204th birthday he did an article for the Huffington Post, “Celebrating Darwin: Religion and Science are Closer Than You Think.” There are some very interesting survey results regarding faith and conflict between evolution and big bang cosmology.
So is there a conflict between science and religion? The religious organizations representing most Americans clearly don’t think so. Interestingly, the science organizations representing most American scientists don’t think so either: For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science states that science and religion “live together quite comfortably, including in the minds of many scientists.” This shows that the main divide in the U.S. origins debate isn’t between science and religion, but between a small fundamentalist minority and mainstream religious communities who embrace science.
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Question:
Hello there Max Andrews, my name is Brian Urias. I’m 19 years old, live in Virginia, and am planning on transferring to Liberty University, or to whatever school the Lord leads me to go. I have a heart and passion for Gods kingdom and seeing lives change for Jesus Christ. I’ve been particularly interested in theology and apologetics since my junior year of high school. I literally have a whole library of books on theology and apologetics in my house haha. My long term goal is to be a professor and publish my own work and continue to spread the gospel throughout the academia as you are. I know this is all random so let me get to the point. One day I decided to look up local Christian apologists on google and your website came up. I watched a portion of your debate and read some of your other material and I must say that God has given you a gift! It honestly inspired so much. I know this is all very random, but I have a question. I saw that you got your bachelors in Biblical studies, and I want to know what exactly you did from that point? I love Gods word and I feel that he might be calling me to major in Biblical studies as well. I don’t necessarily fear what people would think, I just fear what people say about “Bible majors.”
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Kiplinger recently did a study on the ten worst college majors. Amongst the list included were anthropology, fine arts, film, studio arts, and sociology. Concerning philosophy and religious studies Kiplinger writes,
via Kiplinger
Unemployment rate: 7.2%
Unemployment rate for recent grads: 10.8%
Median salary: $42,000
Median salary for recent grads: $30,000
Projected job growth for this field, 2010-2020: not available
Likelihood of working retail: 2.0 times average
Philosophy might improve your mind, but it won’t do much for your pocketbook. In fact, the salary prospects for a philosophy major could be called ascetic. Recent grads make 19% less than young grads from the top 100 majors, and the gap narrows only slightly for experienced workers with degrees in philosophy and religious studies.
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By Hugh Ross
No one approaches the Bible completely free of bias. Mine was a secularist’s assumption that this book, like other texts considered “sacred,” would be easy to dismiss as a culturally important yet humanly crafted document. I did not disbelieve in a Being beyond the universe. I had studied enough to see growing evidence for the universe’s transcendent beginning and, thus, the reality of a transcendent Beginner. I felt no compelling need, however, to find the Bible either true or false.
Some may consider my early attraction to astronomy as a bias, but I see no basis for discounting a researcher’s truth filters — such as the rules of logic and evidence — as if they are inappropriate study tools. So this is where I started. I could not have imagined where my inquiry would lead.
From where I stand today, with full confidence in the truth of Scripture and high regard for the prolific scientific enterprise that sprang from widespread access to the Bible, I cannot help but wonder if something other than exegetical difficulties is fueling the creation controversy. The push to choose either a high view of the Bible or a high view of nature’s record seems to come from a sense of vulnerability — an apprehension that discoverable facts might somehow, someday clash irreconcilably with biblical theology. And then what? I simply do not see that danger as real. God’s constancy and consistency of character, observed in both Scripture and nature, takes it away.
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A reader of the blog recently contacted me about the Magis Center for Reason and Faith. I’ve since added it to the Resources page. A few years ago I was able to listen to Fr. Robert Spitzer give a presentation on the fine-tuning of physics. (I don’t remember if you can see me in the video but I’m in the house right.) There’s a wonderful resource, the Physics FAQ, which I’ve linked below.
The Magis Center of Reason and Faith is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to explaining the consistency between science and spirituality in contemporary physics. In the past ten years, implications of transcendence in physics, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics have become more pronounced. Indeed, no other decade in history has revealed more or better evidence for God. So what is this evidence?
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For a greater context and understanding of the current discussion please be sure to read Alvin Plantinga’s most recent book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism. It was published in December of 2009 but I qualified for an early release, I don’t know how, and received my copy November 1st of that year. I finished reading it within a week.
Within the last week or so there has been a lot of discussion between Plantinga, Jay Richards, and William Lane Craig. I recently did a post sharing Plantinga’s response to Jay Richards. The heart of the conflict is defining the terms, primarily ‘Darwinism.’ I don’t really disagree with what everyone is saying on their own terms but I would agree with Jay, that Plantinga and Craig are not using Darwinism in the correct sense. Plantinga uses the randomness in Darwinism, in a theistic context, to me compatible with guidance.
Jay also sent a Question of the Week to Craig concerning the same thing. Be sure to read Jay’s full question but here’s Craig’s response:
Thanks for these trenchant comments, Jay! Lest distressed readers miss the forest for the trees, we agree on the central point: that insofar as a person claims that the evidence of evolutionary biology has shown that the evolutionary process, based as it is on genetic mutations and natural selection, is undirected, purposeless, or non-teleological, he is making a claim that hopelessly outstrips the scientific evidence and so is unjustified.
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Original story by Julian Friedland.
The intellectual culture of scientism clouds alternative ways of knowing that can actually yield greater certainty than science.
For roughly 98 percent of the last 2,500 years of Western intellectual history, philosophy was considered the mother of all knowledge. It generated most of the fields of research still with us today. This is why we continue to call our highest degrees Ph.D.’s, namely, philosophy doctorates. At the same time, we live an age in which many seem no longer sure what philosophy is or is good for anymore. Most seem to see it as a highly abstracted discipline with little if any bearing on objective reality — something more akin to art, literature or religion. All have plenty to say about reality. But the overarching assumption is that none of it actually qualifies as knowledge until proven scientifically.
Yet philosophy differs in a fundamental way from art, literature or religion, as its etymological meaning is “the love of wisdom,” which implies a significant degree of objective knowledge. And this knowledge must be attained on its own terms. Or else it would be but another branch of science.
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Most of my blog followers are from North America but I do have several followers in the UK. I want to promote this conference coming up hosted by Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? hosted by Justin Brierly and partnering with Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe.
We live in a sceptical world. Atheism has taken on an evangelistic tone in the UK. Secularists claim to have a monopoly on reason. So how should the Church respond?
Premier Christian Radio presents an apologetics day conference aimed at equipping everyday Christians with reasons for the truth of their faith. The conference will also focus on how to share these truths in a fruitful and engaging way.
This year’s Conference partner is Reasons To Believe – a Christian apologetics teaching and research organisation with the mission to spread the Christian Gospel by demonstrating that sound reason and scientific research consistently uphold, rather than erode, confidence in the truth of the Bible.
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