A question has plagued me since the latest cluster of scandals emerged from the Catholic church. The scandals are both about clergy who sexually abused young people and about the church hierarchy’s cover-ups. The question is this: do the priests who commit such abuses believe in God?
May the Fourth Be With You
04
May 2018
In honor of 5/4, Star Wars Day, we're taking a deeper look at the paradox of Force in Star Wars. Eduardo Perez, an Assistant Professor of English, examines the paradox of the Force in George Lucas' Star Wars universe.
What props up morality?
25
Jan 2018
Is morality like a leaning tower, with virtue increasing as the floors increase? If so, how would the tower be supported, especially considering self-sacrficing altruistic behavior, a type of behavior at the very top?
The Divine Shape Shifter
14
Jan 2016
I just listened to the Philosophy Talk episode with Father Andrew Pinsent, Good, Evil, and the Divine Plan. In that show, John and Ken push Father Andrew on the Problem of Evil. What are the implications of the existence of evil for the question of God’s existence?
Spinoza
05
Nov 2015
Baruch Spinoza is sometimes called “the father of modernity.” Spinoza, along with Descartes and Leibniz, is considered on of the great rationalists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Of the three of them, Spinoza was philosophically the most radical. Both Descartes and Leibniz found a place in their systems for something like the traditional Judeo-Christian God, a personal God, who created the rest of us. Spinoza denied the authority of the Bible, the Judeo-Christian idea of a transcendent God, and opened the door to the secular philosophy of the modern age.