The cliche is: ‘faith’ is the antithesis of knowledge … of wisdom.
And therefore “Christian philosophy” is an oxymoron, right?
Our guests today, though are professional philosophers and they reckon that, while Christians could do with a healthy dose of philosophy, so could sceptics. We all need to think deeply about what we believe, and why we believe it.
And if you think – as atheists like Sam Harris and many others do – that scepticism or atheism doesn’t involve any mere ‘beliefs’, well, you probably especially need to think this stuff through.
Meet our guests
Dolores G. Morris is a full-time instructor of philosophy at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2010. Her current research focuses on the mind-body problem, and the implications of Hempel’s Dilemma for contemporary physicalism—that is, the question of how one ought to define physicalism so that it is neither tautologically true nor obviously false. Other interests include Philosophy of Religion, Early Analytic Philosophy and Philosophy of Action. Her new book, Believing Philosophy: Becoming a Christian Philosopher, is published by Zondervan and available to order now.
Angus Brook is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He has taught across most areas of philosophy, including: history of philosophy, metaphysics, Aquinas, natural law, ethics, and political philosophy. His research interests are Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and metaphysics.
Links
Get the full transcript for this episode.
This episode is sponsored by Zondervan’s 10th Anniversary edition of Seven Days that Divide the World by John Lennox.
- Sam Harris on ‘How to build a rational belief system‘, which opens our episode. [Feb 2022 – this video is now unavailable]
- More on Boethius and his ‘Consolation of Philosophy from The School of Life.
- Learn more about St Jerome and his rejection of pagan writers, which he ultimately went back on.
- You might like to listen to our previous episode Paulos Apostolos, for more on the Apostle Paul.
- For more on Thomas Aquinas, check out the Oxford Very Short Introduction series book on him, written by University of Edinburgh’s Fergus Kerr.
- And watch this short video, also by The School of Life on philosophy and Augustine.
- Read Cicero’s On Duties.
- For more on proofs of God, you should definitely check out Ed Feser’s book Five Proofs of the Existence of God.
- Here’s a little more on the conundrum of consciousness, by Brianna McLean, a freelance writer currently studying philosophy and ancient history at the University of Sydney.
- Sam Harris’ TedTalk, in which he claims that science can answer moral questions is here.
- Here’s a (rather long) video where renowned philosopher and atheist Peter Singer describes why he changed his tune on the reality of objective moral facts.
- Read Jonathan Pennington’s 2020 book Jesus The Great Philosopher.
- Dolores Morris has a list of more resources you can seek out for great Christian philosophy work, here.
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