ex-apologist

A Quick Note on Hume, Miracles, and the Apologists

A small point: It seems to me that the apologists tacitly concede more to Hume than is often noted. Narrowly construed, Hume's point was that one couldn't rationally believe that a miracle had occurred merely on the basis of the testimony of others[1]. And in practice, it appears that sophisticated apologists of the likes of Swinburne, Craig, Habermas, et al. agree with this much. For they base their case for the resurrection not on mere testimony, but rather on an inference to the best explanation of a set of data, such as, e.g., the crucifixion, the empty tomb, experiences of the disciples that seemed to be of Jesus after his death[2], and the origin of the Christian faith.[3]

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[1] although I think Hume's claim is probably too strong on that head, at least on the "in principle" (as opposed to the "in fact") interpretation of it. Earman's work has persuaded me that one could pump up the probability of a miracle claim high enough for rational acceptance if the number of (sane, rational) testifiers was sufficiently large. I'm not so sure of Earman's larger critique of Hume on miracles, though. See, e.g., MIllican's reply to Earman's critique of Hume's argument.

[2] And even here, the basis for believing they had such experiences is not merely their saying so, but rather because the hypothesis that they had such experiences is, in turn, the best explanation of a range of data, such as their transformed lives, their willingness to live lives of hardship for their faith, their willingness to die a martyr's death, etc.

[3] Here is a sketch of the main reason why I'm not convinced of this argument, and here is a related criticism.

Review of Moser's The Evidence for God

Thomas Senor reviews the book for NDPR.

Josh Rasmussen's New Argument for a Necessary Being

We've noted some of Rasmussen's work in philosophy of religion on another occasion. Here I'd like to call attention to his new paper, "A New Argument for a Necessary Being" (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88:3 (Sept. 2010)), which can be found here.

Also worth noting is his helpful overview of recent work on the Leibnizian cosmological argument in the most recent issue of Philosophy Compass (“Cosmological Arguments from Contingency”).

Announcement: 2011 Midwest Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers

The conference will take place at Hope College in Holland, MI. Details here.

Call for Papers: The British Society for Philosophy of Religion 2011 Conference

The British Society for the Philosophy of Religion
2011 Conference "God, Mind and Knowledge"

Call for Papers

The next conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of
Religion will be at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from Wednesday 14th –
Friday 16th September 2011. The theme for the conference will be God,
Mind and Knowledge. The plenary speakers will be John Cottingham,
Anthony Kenny, Robin Le Poidevin, and Charles Taliaferro.

If you would like to present a paper, please send an abstract of a
maximum of 300 words to me (andrew.moore@theology.ox.ac.uk) by the end
of March.

Papers need not be on the theme of the conference, although a
preference may be displayed towards selecting those that are, other
things being equal. Obviously time and space at the Conference will
be limited, so we shall have to be selective, even allowing for the
fact that we plan to run parallel sessions and encourage people
presenting papers to keep to half-hour slots.

In order to keep to the tight timetabling required to permit
participants to hear (the whole of) as many papers as possible,
papers should take ideally fifteen minutes and an absolute maximum
twenty minutes to deliver, leaving ten minutes or so for discussion.

Andrew Moore
Hon. Sec. BSPR