Great question! It may seem quite odd to equate religion and science because the former involves so much more than science. In religious communities and traditions one finds a whole way of life, a set of values and rites that seem to go well beyond the kind of inquiry that make up the natural and social sciences. Still, historically and today, religions do offer descriptions, explanations, and predictions about the cosmos and our place in it. Theistic traditions, for example, understand the cosmos itself to be created and conserved in being by an awesome, omnipresent, good, purposive reality. In today's terminology, however, I think it would be misleading and perhaps wrong to think of such a claim as a scientific one, but it would not be unscientific because there is (obviously) no evidence for such a worldview. The cosmological argument, for example, has some very able defenders today (see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for a good version) and that argument would seek to establish...

The status of morality does have an important role in some arguments for and against theistic belief and it has an important place in developing almost any comprehensive account of human nature, other animals and the cosmos. If indeed there are objective moral rights and wrongs, goods and ills, virtues and vices, we need (at some point in our inquiry) to explore the origin of such values and their implications. From a theistic point of view (common to classical Judaism, Christianity, Islam and theistic forms of Hinduism), such values do not emerge from value-less, non-purposive causes. Utlimately, values (like the cosmos itself) are grounded in a teleological, purposive, good Creator. Naturalism (in most forms today) conceives of the cosmos in fundamentally non-teleological forces and needs to account for how such values emerge. For a constructive theistic moral argument, you might consider the work of Mark Linville, Paul Copan, C. Stephen Evans or see the entry on naturalism on the recent Cambridge...

I hope so! Lots of people have been saying quite a bit to what they believe is divine (God or god or gods) and talking about the divine for many centuries, not all of which can be correct. In the Greco-Roman world the gods were very much like us (given over to vice as well as virtue) though immortal, whereas for Jews, Christians, and Muslims there are not many gods but one, and this God (Allah) is thought of (or spoken of being) good, and the source of goodness. Most philosophers of religion today hold that religious believers are realists in the sense that when they pray or praise God or seek to be in a relationship with God, these believers are seeking a relationship with what they believe is a transcendent, real being. What sense would it make to pray that God show loving care for the creation or praise God for God's great goodness, unless one actually believed that God is loving or is great and good. I actually do adopt such a stand (as both a philosopher as well as religious believer) but there...

Good question. I suspect that the term "faith" is used in many different senses today! There is a great book called The Concept of Faith in which Lad Sessions distinguishes at least five models of faith in different religious contexts. For theists, "faith" might stand for the body of beliefs (and maybe practices like prayer) that comprise the religion, or it may refer to fidelity (trust) or it may refer to reasonable belief or, finally, it may refer to belief that is at odds with evidence (the meaning you suggest). Philosophers have taken many sides on faith and its different meanings. Chritian philosophers today who are considered "evidentialists" (Richard Swinburne) holds that religious belief must have evidence to be warranted. Some others who are in the tradition of reformed epistemology hold that many of our beliefs (including our beliefs in secular contexts about the world and each other) do not require evidence to be justified. On their view, beliefs that are reliable and properly caused may...

I agree that dismissiveness of such rules (without carefully considering their grounds and implications) does seem unthoughtful, though I am 100% certain that Peter Smith has indeed been careful to reflect on such matters and shares your concern about the spread of AID s, STD s... Be that as it may, you asked whether your reasoning is valid, and I will respond to that question. I suggest that religions like Judaism, Chritianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism (the list could go on and on...) give attention to sexuality because each of these traditions has a vision (and practices built on that vision) of human fulfilment, and it is not implausable to think that sexuality has a vital role in human fulfilment. These world religions and others may differ in terms of their view of sexual desire, the mind-body relationship, family, sexual orientation and practice, and so on, but I do not think it bizarre (and here, I suppose, I do differ from Peter) that world religions should take seriously the important...

The matter is more complicated than looking at Wikipedia. There are plenty of good reasons for being an atheist, but as I have sought to make evident in replying to other questions in the category of 'religion' there is a vast philosophical literature supporting religious beliefs without what might be called Wikipedia fallacies. You might check out the free online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries Philosophy of Religion and, as an example, the entry for the Cosmological Argument, which contains a pretty plausable (non-fallacious) version of the cosmological argument. Check out, too, the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Religion. I might also suggest that no philosopher today (or almost none) thinks that they can prove God's existence or non-existence or prove utilitarianism is correct or physicalism or realism in philosophy of science. Today, most of us deal with arguments we take to be plausable or persuasive, but these fall short of proofs.

Just a minor addition to Mitch Green's astute observations: Some defenders of the coherence of omniscience (Richard Swinburne, for example), hold that omniscience does not include the knowledge of future free acts. Swinburne and R.M. Adams and others do so on the grounds that there is no truth or falsehood now about what a future free agent will do. Aristotle held this as well (or at least most commentators think so!). If this viewpoint is correct, "omniscience" would mean something like all that it is possible to know or all that can be known. If future free action is not knowable in principle then any being, even an omniscient being, would not know something and thus would know what it is like to be ignorant. For an excellent book on omniscience and other divine attributes, check out Richard Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism. Professor Green rightly notes that some philosophers have worried about the limits of knowledge that might be in play if a being is incorporeal. And I must agree...

Thank you for these questions. Beginning with the last point, the meaning of "secular" has shifted over the years. Today, it is probably mostly used to indicate that someone or something is non-religious, but it used to mean worldly or being in the world as opposed to being in a monastery. Thus, a person might be a Roman Catholic priest serving a church and, so long as he is not part of a monastic order (e.g. a Benedicting) he would have been called a secular priest. The consitution in the USA forbid the establishment of religion and the freedom to practice one's religion, but when you refer to someone's "premises" and schools I take it you are referring to property and institutions that may be private or public. As for property say a person's home or land presumably the owner can control who is permitted on the property and can set up rules freely, e.g. only allow practicing Muslims access. In the case of schools, matters are more complex. If a school is private (not at least directly...

Thank you to replies by Peter and Eric. I do agree with Eric and take note that more and more theists are in play, certainly more than when I started grad school in 1975. In typing in the names of current well known theists, I mangled a few names: Lynne Adams should be Lynne Baker. She is a PERFECT example of a philosopher who does highly respectable work in secular topics in metapysics and also does amazingly good work as a theist in philosophy of relgion. R. Crel should be: Richard Creel and J. Kvanvid should be Jonathan Kvanvig Other prominant theists (again this is pretty random, but here are some more who work in the English-speaking world and have great reputations in other areas) include: Michael Dummet, Peter Forrest, D. Howard-Snyder, H. Meynell, J. O'L eary Hawthorne, Peter van Inwagen, S. Wykstra, Timothy O'C onnor, Ed Wieringa, William Mann, Nelson Pike, R.C. Koons, A. Pruss, Bruce Reichenbach........all these and the others mentioned (as well as some philosophers...

There are many atheists, but there are also many theists and agnostics. Here is an off the top of my head list of theists working in philosophy today who have made excellent contributions to philosophy: R.M. Adams, Marilyn Adams, Avlin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Lynda Zagzepski, Eleonore Stump. Lynne Adams, John Cottingham, Timothy Chappell, T. Mawson, Chad Meister, John Lucas, Brian Leftow, John Haldane, Scott MacDonald, M. Peterson, W. Hasker, Steve Evans, Brian Davies, William Wainwright, W. Craig, S.T. Davis, Victoria Harrison, Stewart Goetz, Paul Griffiths, Paul Helm, C. Hughes, Robert Audi, Michael Rea, Thomas Flint, Sarah Coakley, R. Crell, W. Abraham, Jerome Gellman, Laura Garcia, Patty Sayre, John Hare, J. Kvanvid, G. Mavrodes, Jeff Jordan, Robert Roberts, Keith Yandell..... This is a purely random list. There are also well known atheists and agnostics, but the field is not without prominent alternatives. For a good overview, I recommend the second edition of the Blackwell...

I disagree with Smith's (as usual) and George's reply because they fail to take into account the context of debate and argument. This is easy to do, I suppose, especially for those who think the framework of debate is so skewed against theism. If you adopt what Smith elsewhere describes as "cheerful atheism" then of course he will laugh and laugh at thinking the Kreeft argument can have any credence, but that is because he gives no credence to theism. An assessment of Christ's claims (or the claims by Christians about Christ) has to take place in the context of a broad inquiry that takes theism (and atheism) seriously. I happen to think there are good philosophical grounds to think theism is more reasonable than its most promising alternative (naturalism) and given that broader position reasoning like Kreeft's has credibility. I recommend Richard Swinburne four books, beginning with The Coherence of Theism and The Existence of God (which seem to me to overturn J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism)...