William Lane Craig has written up his thoughts on his debate with Ayala, and he also made a positive mention of my book. (If you register for free at his web site, you can get his thoughts here; otherwise the most important parts have been quoted here.)

Here’s what he had to say about my book:

Another interesting feature of this debate was the moderator, a young philosopher from the University of Colorado, Boulder, named Bradley Monton. Though a self-confessed atheist, Monton is convinced that the typical refutations of ID that pass muster today are in fact fallacious, and so he has written a book defending not only the scientific status of ID but even its being taught as an option in public schools! Having read his remarkable book in preparation for the debate, I was able to quote “our esteemed moderator” to good effect during the debate itself to counter Ayala’s assertion that ID was not science.

My review of Gregory Dawes’ Theism and Explanation is out in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. You can read it here.

Here’s the last paragraph of the review:

One interesting aspect to this book is that Dawes never tells us whether he is a theist or an atheist. I take it that he is a theist, but I did wonder whether that was really the case when I saw how high he was setting the bar: theistic explanations must fulfill the optimality condition to even be in the running, and they don’t fare well when measured up against some of the six explanatory virtues under consideration. It’s unfair of me to think this way though — I shouldn’t just assume that a theistic philosopher will assess the virtues of theistic explanations in a different way than an atheistic philosopher would. Instead, my default presumption should be that a good philosopher like Dawes will make fair-minded, intelligent assessments of how theistic explanations fare, regardless of his personal beliefs about whether or not there is a God. The intellectual climate around theistic explanations, especially as relating to theistic explanations for scientific phenomena, has been somewhat poisoned by all the rhetoric regarding intelligent design. While Dawes talks about intelligent design here and there in his book, he never does so in an emotive, unfair way. It’s a virtue of this book that one comes away thinking that Dawes is fair-minded and intelligent — and that this assessment will hold regardless of whether one thinks that Dawes believes in God.

I just read the strange yet insightful NDPR review of Paul Sheldon Davies’s book Subjects of the World: Darwin’s Rhetoric and the Study of Agency in Nature. I want to share a few passages that I liked.

(1) The review (by Paolo Costa) starts out as follows:

It is no news that naturalism is the dominant philosophical position in the English-speaking world. One of the clearest signs of this hegemony is the battle now raging around its purest and most consistent interpretation and the gradual spread of a “holier than thou” attitude that, at first sight, should be a distinctive feature of ideological battles rather than of intellectual discussions.

This strikes me as right, that there is battle regarding how to be a naturalist — from John Bickle’s “ruthless reductionism” to Andrew Melnyk’s “physicalist manifesto”. I think Bickle and Melnyk are doing good philosophy though, so I wonder if Costa have different works in mind.

(2) This part of the review is amusing:

Our conscious attributions of purpose are therefore a delusion, however deeply entrenched in our psychology. The end result is somewhat paradoxical, as the author himself points out in a side-remark concerning autism. As is well-known, “autistic children tend not to conceptualize objects in their environment in mental terms; they tend not to conceptualize persons as things with minds”. We nonautistics, on the contrary, are “naïve realists concerning the existence of other minds” (117). But naïve realism is the Ur-mistake for Davies. So it appears that autistics are right and normal people are wrong as far as our attitude towards the other beings is concerned (this seems to reveal something about people in the academy or in laboratories, but I cannot further investigate the matter now).

(3) I’m always on the lookout for people using rhetoric in place of solid argumentation, and the reviewer accuses Davies of doing just that:

Seen in this light, Davies’ book is a shining example of militant naturalistic rhetoric, rather than as providing a convincing case for a stricter and monopolistic (I would be tempted to say “imperialistic”) variety of naturalism. This may help explain the unexpected religious overtones of Davies’ prose and his continuous reference to the “weaknesses”, “frailties”, “biases”, “infirmities” of our (fallen?) nature and especially his relentless admonition not to be led “astray”…

Costa certainly makes it sound like Davies is one of those militant atheists who feels the need to latch on to a worldview in the same way that militant religious people do. I saw Davies give a talk recently at U. of Colorado, and he didn’t come across that way; I’ll have to take a look at the book.

Here is a guest post from my friend Nicole Hassoun, a philosophy professor at Carnegie-Mellon:

Below is, I hope, a potentially interesting ramble on God and love. Brad and I are thinking about working the basic argument up into something dry, boring, and publishable eventually. Since, however, some might find it entertaining as it is (my apologies to those who don’t), I figure it might be worth soliciting feedback on the basic idea at this point [so, unlike most posts on this blog, this post is open for comments]. Enjoy!

God and Love

Under the towering shadow of the Alps it is hard not to think of God. Does he exist? Could he? Every day on my way back to the cloister where I am staying I walk past a message scribbled irreverently on the medieval walls. “Neither of us can go to heaven unless the other gets in” and it reminds me of an argument against God’s existence or, barring that, his goodness, that captured my imagination when I was ten. It probably was not the reason I got kicked out of Hebrew school (because there’s no hell in Judaism), but I am not sure the monks would like it.

The argument applies to the kind of Christianity embraced by many of the nondenominational types that lived in the evangelical house at my Methodist university. As they told the story, you would be saved by accepting Jesus into your heart, anyone could be saved, and those who did not accept Jesus would go to hell. Being saved meant being in the presence of God in heaven and being perfectly happy. Going to hell meant eternal suffering. God, these nondenominational friends of mine proselytized, meant love. Or, at least, their version of Christianity embraced love as a virtue. There is certainly a lot in the bible that supports this interpretation of basic Christian doctrine (Luke 16:22-28; Matt. 13:42, 20:20, 10:32-34, 16:24; Isa. 33:20, 25:6, 65:16; Ps. 133:1; Eph. 2:4; 3:8; Rev. 21:1-4, 20:15)

Perhaps I have the story wrong, or maybe such Christians do not think of love the way I do, but it seems to me that several things are true of love. First, if I love someone, I cannot believe that that person deserves eternal suffering. Perhaps that means I do not love unconditionally. But, I am pretty liberal with my love. I love some pretty messed up people including someone with borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia. I even love one psychopath. Second, when someone I love is hurt, that hurts me. I could not be perfectly happy if someone I loved was suffering for eternity. I cannot even conceive of such a thing.

But then it seems there is a problem. For, I could be saved while someone I love is not saved. (Hey, it is a long shot, Okay, but I °could° accept God into my heart and be saved on the version of Christianity at issue). Then I could be perfectly happy in heaven while a person I love is burning in hell. But if I love someone, I cannot even think this is possible. So I should not, if I love, believe in this kind of Christianity. It could not be right unless my love would disappear at the gates of heaven (or some such) and why, I wonder, would that be? Wouldn´t it be better if heaven had my love in it? Wouldn’t I be happier in love?

This problem may explain why Camus said he would not go to heaven if even one other person went to hell. Perhaps he loved humanity, unlike Sartre who said hell is other people. But it is possible that Camus was just convinced that no one really deserves eternal suffering and did not want to associate with any creature who thought otherwise. (The writing on his wall might say: I *refuse* to go to heaven unless the others get in.)

Of course, God could let people who start out in hell into heaven if they do what he requires. Or God could give me someone else to love. But that misses the point. While my loved ones are in hell, I cannot be in heaven. No one I love is replaceable, no matter how many others I love.

Nor does free will solve the problem. We cannot say it is only because people have free will that God has to allow love into the world, as if love were a bad thing. We would no lack free will if we could only love good people but God would not be as good.

Maybe we cannot understand what God and heaven are like. Maybe love and God can coexist. Unfortunately, the problem with this kind of answer is that it can be given for any problem – whether about God or not.

If one cannot but continue to believe in the version of Christianity at issue and falls in love with an unbeliever, one might find even more truth in Thomas Dekker’s exclamation — ‘O what a heaven is love! O what a hell!’ — than even the unbelieving can comprehend.

So, what should the faithful do? They might follow C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce and complain that their loved one was holding their soul hostage. They might just stop loving people who do not believe. (My last boyfriend may have taken that option seriously when I told him about my reflections in Austria). Can we really blame our loved ones for not believing, though, if they do not intend to keep us from the pearly gates? Do those who would stop loving people because then they cannot go to heaven really know what love is?

A biblical response might be better. John (2: 4-11 15-16; 1-3, 10-24, 4: 7-5:3) tells us ‘we love the Children of God, when we love God.’ And the bible says our love of God, though it may seem incompatible with love of other humans, should not be thought so – or at least that might explain why Abraham’s decision inspired Kirkegard’s claim that love of God (if not God’s love) should give birth to faith. But unless one believes in the words of scripture, or has Abraham’s faith, it is hard to see why loving God should mean one’s beloved could not suffer in hell. Either faith or love must perish.

When I showed this to one of my friends, he suggested Christians take a Buddhist approach: Embrace suffering. If it is not bad, then neither is God. But, if suffering is not bad, what reason could we have to take care of ourselves or one another? Do I really love someone if I do not want to keep them from suffering? That was the friend I (perhaps unkindly) referred to as a psychopath – coincidence?

Most Christians I have talked to respond to this argument by putting a real twist on the ignorance response. They point out that we need not know our loved ones are suffering in hell. But when I ask them whether they would be just as well off in the matrix, they refuse the blue pill.

Perhaps I will ask the monks around here what they think…

I had an interesting lunch meeting with Tom Gilson of Thinking Christian yesterday. He wrote up a description of our lunch here.

I’m happy to announce that I’ve just been appointed to be a member of the editorial board for the journal Philosophy of Science. I look forward to helping to ensure that the journal continues to be one of the preeminent journals of philosophy of science.

I’ve written a review of Bas van Fraassen’s new book, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective. You can read my review here.

I come up in an interesting review of Bill Maher’s sometimes fascinating, sometimes unfair movie Religulous.

It’s unfortunate that Maher steers clear of more thoughtful religious people, because there is here an opportunity for common cause. In a recent interview with atheist philosopher Bradley Monton, Casey Luskin confesses that in many ways he feels more kinship with an atheist like Monton who inquires deeply into the big questions than he does with his Christian brethren who do not.

…

Secular and religious thinkers all can commend together intellectual humility, reason, open-mindedness, and dialogue in the interest of the truth; that is, we can find common cause if it is a quest, if naturalism is not the foregone conclusion to which we must all submit at the start.

And this is the problem. Maher’s supposed doubt does not go both ways. While Monton acknowledges that though he is an atheist, he is not certain about his atheism, Maher is all too certain that the totems of twenty-first century scientific materialism are beyond question. Essentially, Maher is commending doubt, disbelief actually, to religious people, and for the most part, giving a pass to himself and his fellow “rationalists”. Luskin asks Monton: “What do you think happens when a person tries to pretend that there is no reason or room for any doubt or self-introspection in their worldview?” Monton replies:

“I think that leads to dogmatism, in part, and this sort of emotional reaction to the people who are on the other side. Because, if you think that the other side has nothing going for it, you’re going to dismiss them and react badly to them… Unfortunately what I’ve been encountering lately are more atheists who seem to be completely, incredibly dogmatic about their view, and then, at least in my personal experience, I’m encountering Christians who are more sympathetic.”

Maher, regrettably, resembles Monton’s observation. The difference between Maher and Monton, I suspect, is that Monton is regularly brushing shoulders with Christian philosophers of the highest intellectual caliber, philosophers who do in fact acknowledge uncertainty and doubt about their own worldviews. For example, he cites William Lane Craig, a leading Christian apologist, who nonetheless acknowledges that “atheism is not an implausible worldview”. Let us hope that it is the likes of Monton and Craig, who do exemplify mutual respect and intellectual humility, that show us the way forward.

Here’s a fascinating new development from the world of quantum physics: physicists (based in Boulder) were able to set up a quantum system where the mechanical vibrational states of two separated systems were entangled.

Jost and colleagues entangled the vibrational motions of two separated mechanical oscillators, each consisting of one beryllium and one magnesium ion. Each pair behaves like two objects connected by a spring 4 micrometers (millionths of a meter) long, with the beryllium and magnesium moving back and forth in opposite directions, first toward each other, then away, then back again. The two pairs perform this motion in unison, even though they are 240 micrometers apart and are located in different zones of an ion trap.

…

To entangle the motion of the two oscillators, the NIST group first placed four ions together in one trap zone in a particular linear order (Be-Mg-Mg-Be), and entangled the internal energy states of the two beryllium ions. The team then separated the four ions into two pairs, with each pair containing one of the entangled ions. Finally, the scientists transferred the entanglement from the beryllium ions’ internal states to the oscillating motions of the separated ion pairs.

Here is a nice video of Timothy Williamson giving a basic yet interesting explanation of some of the problems with continental philosophy. The video was shot during his May 2009 visit to Lima, Peru.