In 2009, Western Washington University began the annual Bellingham Lectures in Philosophy of Religion. Alvin Plantinga is the guest lecturer for 2011. Plantinga gave the first of his two lectures yesterday, which appears to cover the core argument of his new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies. Here is a link to a video of the lecture, as well as downloadable lecture notes. He'll give the second and final lecture tomorrow night. The notes for tomorrow's lecture are already up (here).
P.S., If you don't know already, Western Washington University is home to a number of people who do excellent work in philosophy of religion: Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Hud Hudson, and Dennis Whitcomb. In addition, while neither appear to have publications in philosophy of religion, Ryan Wasserman and Ned Markosian are excellent philosophers who dabble in philosophy of religion. Lots of Christians aspiring to become professional philosophers go through the undergraduate program there.
Scott Aikin on the Problem of Worship
In "The Problem of Worship" (Think 25:9 (2010)), Scott Aikin argues that no being could be a proper object of worship, and that therefore theism is false. The paper can be found here.
P.S., Scott Aikin is a co-author of the new book, Reasonable Atheism, as well as the co-author of the blog of the same name. (We noted the book and the blog on another occasion).
P.P.S., Over at Philosophical Disquisitions, John Danaher has an excellent expository post on Aikin's article, as well as this exegetical note on it.
P.S., Scott Aikin is a co-author of the new book, Reasonable Atheism, as well as the co-author of the blog of the same name. (We noted the book and the blog on another occasion).
P.P.S., Over at Philosophical Disquisitions, John Danaher has an excellent expository post on Aikin's article, as well as this exegetical note on it.
Hume's Birthday (and Mine)
Today is the 300th anniversary of Hume's birthday. Incidentally, it's my birthday as well. I find it fascinating that our general philosophical outlook and aims largely overlap: we're both mitigated skeptics of sorts (although I go further in extending mitigated skepticism to our knowledge of modality), and we both have large-scale projects aimed at the criticism of traditional theism.
Happy Birthday, Hume!
Happy Birthday, Hume!
Another Excellent Recent Paper on the Problem of Evil
Dougherty, Trent. "Epistemological Considerations Concerning Skeptical Theism", Faith and Philosophy 25:2 (2008), 172-176.
Graham's New Critique of Plantinga's Argument from Proper Function
Peter Graham recently offered an excellent critique of Plantinga's argument from proper function in his "Intelligent Design and Selective History: Two Sources of Purpose and Plan" (in Jonathan Kvanvig, ed. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Volume 3, 2011).
(On previous occasions, we've noted critiques of the argument from Adrian Bardon and Tyler Wunder).
Update: Graham is a naturalistic proper functionalist about epistemic warrant, and his work on the nature of functions is ongoing. Cf. his PhilPapers page for more of his work on naturalistic proper functionalism generally, and on the nature of functions. Here's an important recent paper on the latter..
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