Whenever you see a breakdown of communication, this is likely the failure of both parties seeking to communicate with one another. If it is true that the religious and secular cannot speak […]
Can the Secular and Religious Converse?
Josiah Royce and the Possibilities of Conversation
This blog post is developed from a paper that I presented this month for the Josiah Royce Society at the Central American Philosophical Association conference. Richard Rorty captures well what he considers […]
What Difference Does God Make?
An atheist blogger asks a simple question “what difference does God make?”. The answer hinges on what you mean by God. If God is the name we give to what makes for […]
Not “Illegals,” but Brothers and Sisters
Yuriy and Van lived in a much nicer neighborhood than we were used to. Most of the investigators we taught in the Little Saigon region of Orange County, California were poor immigrants […]
John Rawls on Losing Faith During War.
While it is often said that there are “no atheists in foxholes,” the experience of war can be a destroyer of faith. The late philosopher John Rawls wrote that he was raised […]
How Much Must We Account for the Complexity of Religious Pluralism in Political Philosophy? #rawlsreligion
In the works of Rawls, religion, as a concept is largely conceptualized as mainstream Western religion. This includes both Protestant and Catholic strands of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In particular, I think […]
Your God is too Big
When I was in high school I was introduced to John Bertram Phillips’ book Your God is too Small. At the time it blew my mind because of the thesis that many of our […]
Is Mankind Really All That Bad?
My immediate answer to the question would be that most of us are pretty okay. To suggest that we are only either good or evil implies that the vast majority of the lived human experience is invalid. Not every man or woman who lived did great or terrible things.
78 Progressive Christian Answers to the 78 Questions
So the blogger Friendly Atheist has posted 78 tough questions for Christians. While they assume some evangelical if not fundamentalist beliefs, I thought it might be a helpful exercise to respond as […]
Just War Theory and the Reality of War
#Gaza and navel hazing: @ethicistforhire on false simplifications of Just War Theory, and the role of philosophers http://t.co/4BbLpOJkGW — ABC Religion&Ethics (@ABCReligion) August 11, 2014 At ABC Religion and Ethics, philosopher Nolen […]
The Power of Religious Descriptions
I’ve come across a number of essays that bear on the value of religious descriptions. I’m thinking of two in particular, one from an atheist and one from a progressive theist. The […]
Analytic Philosophy vs. Continental Philosophy
While this touches on some of the distinctions between the two styles of philosophy (analytic and continental), my guess is that is also over-simplifies and distorts those same distinctions. Continental/ Analytic philosophy. […]
