Re: David Friedman "Duck Dynasty, Medieval Islam, and Moral Philosophy"

April 2, 2015 • John Vandivier

This article contains my response to <a href="http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2015/04/duck-dynasty-medieval-islam-and-moral.html">David Friedman's recent blog article, Duck Dynasty, Medieval Islam, and Moral Philosophy.

Update, Later the Same Day, 4/2/15:

I reached out to leading thinker and apologist Greg Koukl by Facebook. I was glad to hear a quick response. He agreed that the problem is that David's question confuses issues of moral ontology and moral epistemology.

Screenshot of Greg's comment: http://imgur.com/TacoUfL

Original Article Below:

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David,

I believe the droids your are looking for are principally William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantiga, and perhaps Greg Koukl.

I particularly recommend Craig. Here are five related resources from him:

1) Article: \"Keeping Moral Epistemology and Moral Ontology Distinct\"

Important quote 2: "One of the most significant developments in contemporary Religious Epistemology has been so-called Reformed Epistemology, spearheaded and developed by Alvin Plantinga, which directly assaults the evidentialist construal of rationality. Plantinga’s epistemology developed gradually over the course of three decades, but he has articulated it fully in a monumental three volume series, Warrant: The Current Debate (1993), Warrant and Proper Function (1993), and Warranted Christian Belief (2000). Here we can limn only the broad outlines of his theory. Plantinga distinguishes between what he calls de facto and de jure objections to Christian belief. A de facto objection is one aimed at the truth of the Christian faith; it attempts to show that Christian truth claims are false. By contrast a de jure objection attempts to undermine Christian belief even if Christianity is, in fact, true. Plantinga identifies three versions of the de jure objection: that Christian belief is unjustified, that it is irrational, and that it is unwarranted. Plantinga’s aim is to show that all such de jure objections to Christian belief are unsuccessful, or, in other words, that Christian belief can be shown to be unjustified, irrational, or unwarranted only if it is shown that Christian beliefs are false. There is thus no de jure objection to Christian belief independent of a de facto objection." 3) Video Debate: "Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? William Lane Craig vs Sam Harris"

Other Remarks

Perhaps a bit remote from your particular example, we could also take a more pragmatic approach utilizing Bayesian Inference which would be something along the lines of, \"No amount of additional evidence can convince me to believe that P(A)' > P(A) simply because I have overwhelming prior evidence of P(A).\"

There has been some discussion in the peer reviewed academic literature, Craig is published and Plantiga is even further published, but this talk is more the purview of the public forum and non-peer reviewed literature including books and the web as a strong stance in favor of Christianity, particularly evangelical, orthodox, and literalist Christianity, is heavily discriminated against in journals of philosophy and religion, as well as academia, peer reviewed literature, and even culture in general. I encourage you to look through YouTube where Craig has a number of interesting public debates with well known atheists such as Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and many others. Sam Harris in particular has debated Craig on issues of moral epistemology and ontology. One of their debates was the third recommended resource. You also might want to explore presuppositional apologetics vis a vis <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSMVFVK3bDI">Sye Ten Bruggencate.