Evidence for God from Science

So, this is something that for some reason hit me today and I thought I'd post about it here.

I took a philosophy class at my university two years ago now (it was the Winter of 09). Overall, what I felt like I got out of it was some reading of Plato, Socrates, and a little modern philosophy and in general a whole lot of really long-winded arguments over very unimportant things in the class itself. To the class' credit, I did miss three weeks from being gone for family reasons. Still, my grade ended up okay and I did most if not all of the reading and all of the assignments.

And yet...

It wasn't until I started researching the history of Christianity, Christian perspectives on philosophy, and that sort of thing before I ever learned that Philosophy is broken up into three branches: Epistimology, Ethics, and Metaphysics. We never covered that! This is coming from the same university that has some extremely atheistic professors in the communications department trying to make things like theism and atheism equate to each other (they say things like spiritualism is atheistic and atheism is spiritual, and stuff that is definitively contradictory. As a CS Major who lives and breathes logic on a daily basis, it makes my head spin with its nonsensicalness). One of the guys is named Corey Anton (youtube/google him to find more), who some of my atheist friends seem to worship in practice and who I can't stand.

But I guess my main point is: with the stuff that people say (the guy above as an example), I think its really sad that we have a generation of people going through the university system in the US (and probably Europe as well) who know a lot of big words and can say a lot of fluff but who don't know the first thing about philosophy in any practical, meaningful, or truthful sense. Does anyone else have similar experiences? Or perhaps better ones?

I've done all my studies on logic and philosophy independently through my own reading. The exception is some general humanities courses. One of the most gruelling reads I've ever done is all 11 volumes of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. That a somewhat dated series by today's standards but it's still recognized as a pretty foundational work and referred to quite a bit by modern series even into the 21st century that we're in now. It's an integrative approach to history that ties several themes together including Art, Architecture, Philosophy, Religion, Politics, International relations etc.

Christianity has a strong history of interacting with Greek Philosophy, both in the early church through the patristic fathers and then particularly in the Renaissance was the Church was a primary vehicle through which the classics were "rediscovered" and reapplied. Augustine and Aquinas are foundational intersects between the Christianity of their day and the synthesis or at least the impact of their tying in themes from Plato, Aristotle and Socretes in particular.

Theology was once referred to as the "Queen of Sciences" and often the pre-eminent program within medieval universities, where all the other disciplines were considered components of either Natural or Revealed Theology. In that context most students of theology understood the components and different disciplines of logic, and philosophy.

My oldest son, has done a lot of philosophy courses at University of Toronto and he's taken positions on things that he says put him more in the camp of Deism and he has a lot of respect for John Stuart Mills. Rather than preaching at him, I've engaged him where I can, and pointed out the underlying assumptions in the systems he's looking at while explaining traditional Christian views (most of which, despite changes in my views in several areas over the past few years, still hold.)

Philosophy in most curriculums is either just an introductory course or part of humanities courses. Those students who minor or major in it, (often Pre-Law) do indeed study the components and disciplines, but they are no longer at the center of our educational system. We teach specialization in narrow fields rather than broad themes. It used to be that schools equipped students to be life-long students and how to read, think and reason through things and continue to expand their knowledge in life. I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, but we don't do that anymore. Most people I know who are well read and interested in these sort of things follow their own reading to expand and grow. It's not an institutional task anymore for the most part.

Bart, this is very interesting to me as a teacher, since we always seem to be complaining about how they aren't life-long learners. If you had to develop an introductory course like the ones you are describing (more general, philosophy)...things like that....what kid of curriculum would you develop (obviously I'm not looking at t a hugely detailed curriculum, but a general scope and sequence. Would there be a textbook that you like? Keep in mind this is high school type of stuff.

Any ideas woul dbe helpful....we are just bouncing around ideas inthe science department as to how to really bring back critical thinking and innovation. This seems like it would be helpful.

zoegirl wrote:Bart, this is very interesting to me as a teacher, since we always seem to be complaining about how they aren't life-long learners. If you had to develop an introductory course like the ones you are describing (more general, philosophy)...things like that....what kid of curriculum would you develop (obviously I'm not looking at t a hugely detailed curriculum, but a general scope and sequence. Would there be a textbook that you like? Keep in mind this is high school type of stuff.

Any ideas woul dbe helpful....we are just bouncing around ideas inthe science department as to how to really bring back critical thinking and innovation. This seems like it would be helpful.

Hey Zoe, that's a tough call in some ways. The evangelical school I went to the last two years of my high school tied philosophy to the Bible and had a Senior Bible Course which used material from Udo Middelman's Pro-existance. Udo was Francis Schaeffer's son-in-law and a teacher at L'abri. I remember being impressed with some of the material and I still think back on some of those lessons and discussions.

It's tough for me to think of anything that would be a good primer. When I was 12 I read Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy, which is an excellent primer on western thought and civilization. It's dated and probably would be seen as too hard to read for most High-Schoolers (although I read it in 8th grade).

A good basic primer at a high school level might be:

Outside of that, as I'm not much of an education person, I don't know that I have much more to offer.

Thanks for the thoughtful (and thought-provoking response)! Would you recommend Will Durant then for just general knowledge on some of this stuff? When I graduate (this spring) I'm looking forward to having some time to read things that don't involve network protocols, data structures, or systems analysis... its getting old

It's interesting that schools in general seem to not teach that sort of thing. I'm presented (on Facebook typically) with articles from Cracked.com or other humor sites where people tend to get all of their (often mis)-information, and then can't tell me basic things about history or philosophy. I've heard recently that intelligence is higher today than 100 years ago (at least IQ), and though I don't have statistics, I can say from personal experience it has only been recently that I feel I have had even a basic understanding of very important things that I feel should have been taught in high school. We never once learned about Augustine, Rome (at least in any meaningful way), ancient Greece, Descartes, Pascal, medieval Europe... the list goes on. Its awful... because there's such a rich and terribly important history there that's just missed. I hope its not a common thing but I fear it might be.

Durant is excellent, but I warn you, it is 11 volumes of close to 1000 pages per volume. Not for the faint of heart!