McGinn
This is a nice interview Colin McGinn did with Bill Moyers:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_mcginn.html
McGinn, a philosopher and academic, is a nice alternative to the pop atheists (like Dawkins, etc.). I especially like that in this interview he makes clear that he doesn’t endorse scientism. That the pop atheists often seem to be scientistic is something I find unfortunate about them. McGinn also emphasizes that moral questions can be addressed using reason and rational argument without assuming that morality can only be “accounted for” either through religion or empirical science (a horrible view that is so common nowadays).
As Hilary Putnam once wrote:
“…while there is such a thing as correctness in ethics, in interpretation, in mathematics, the way to understand that is not by trying to model it on the ways in which we get things right in physics….”
- “Was Wittgenstein Really an Anti-Realist about Mathematics?” (2001), pp. 185-6.
25/02/2010 at 5:30 pm Permalink
In many classes, I find myself insulted by people who claim there is no God.
Not because that is their claim (every opinion must be treated with respect) so much as they usually take the next step to say that all people who believe in God are simply reenacting what their parents told them to do and all their structures of belief revolve around neglecting science and reason.
Examples of people unable to articulate why it is they believe what they believe and historical references (say the Spanish Inquisition) are always brought up. While they are related, they do not necessarily represent every individual who has similar, but not exactly the same belief system.
That being said, I naturally would hope that every person on Earth finds truth (that truth I’ve found at this point in my life being God), but if someone was to disagree with that opinion, I hope they would have the character McGinn has. He sounds like a man who has made his opinion with the knowledge that he could be proven wrong at any moment, but his current opinion is the product of years of research and logical reasoning.
We all need to be ready to be wrong, that’s what will drive the human race forward.
So, for what it’s worth, God bless