December 15, 2021 • 38 mins
This episode of ReligionWise features a conversation with Thaddeus “Tad” Robinson, Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College.
In this conversation, we discuss the field philosophy of religion. Among other topics, Dr. Robinson details some of the classic questions addressed in philosophy of religion and the place of this sub-field in the larger field of philosophy. Finally, we explore how considering the philosophy of religion might lead to a more nuanced, sophisticated conversation about religion in our world.
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Episode Transcript
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Chip Gruen (00:09):
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen. I'm the
Director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege, and I will be the host
for this podcast.
(00:33):
Today's conversation featuresTad Robinson, Associate
Professor of philosophy atMuhlenberg College. And I
reached out to Tad to talk aboutphilosophy of religion. Now, I
and lots of people I know andrespect and love have been
philosophy majors, even thoughthey've gone on to other, other
pursuits, other academic fields,but it's interesting to notice
(00:56):
how many people whether they goon and as I did in, in religious
studies, or history, or whathave you, start off in
philosophy. And in any event inmy undergraduate career, I
remember having a philosophy ofreligion course. And what I
found is that the conversationswithin religious studies don't
always include philosophy ofreligion. And so I wanted to
(01:19):
reach out to him and talk aboutthis field, what's in it? What
questions does it ask? What doesit use as evidence in its
conversations and in itsarguments, and how it might be
relevant to again, that morenuanced, sophisticated
conversation about religion inour world. So without further
ado, here's Tad Robinson.
(01:42):
Well, welcome, Tad, thanks forbeing here today.
Tad Robinson (01:45):
Hi, thanks for having me on. ReligionWise. I'm
excited to be here.
Chip Gruen (01:48):
So the reason I wanted to talk to you is among
the the large repertoire ofclasses that you do one is
Philosophy of Religion. And Iknow that your research is also
interested in this and thatyou're just generally an active
scholar in this field. And itseems to me that not everybody
who is interested in religionnecessarily knows what
(02:09):
philosophy of religion is, andknow sort of the classic
questions that philosophy ofreligion poses and how that
might be different from otherways of thinking about religion.
So, so just to start off, sortof at the beginning, what is
philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson (02:25):
Yeah, thanks. Um, you know, it's, it's a
complicated question. So Iapologize that this will
probably be a little bit of alonger answer, then, you know,
had you asked what is biology orsomething, right. And I think
part of the problem is thatphilosophy itself is not a
particularly well understoodfield. So let me just say a
little bit about that beforesaying, you know, talking about
(02:46):
what philosophy religion is. Soin, you know, general terms,
right philosophy is, unlikeother fields, like geology or
biology in the sense that itdoesn't study a single, you
know, single element of nature,right? A single thing in the
world, right? You know, instead,what philosophy is, is kind of
an effort to, to think about thekind of fundamental
(03:08):
presuppositions or concepts thatare at work in our inquiry,
right. And that can be, youknow, across a whole bunch of
different, you know, domains orareas of study, right? So, there
are, you know, there's thephilosophy of biology as a
field, there's philosophy ofscience, philosophy of art, you
know, political philosophy,right. And so, and each one of
(03:28):
these cases, you know, what,what philosophers working in
those fields are trying to do issort of look at some of the
fundamental, you know,assumptions about kind of what's
going on and how we know aboutit, and what's important and
what we value, right in thoseenquiries. Right. And so, I
guess the other thing to sayabout philosophy is that, you
know, philosophy is sort ofunusual in the sense that it
(03:51):
doesn't really have a specifictool, right? So a biologist, to
come back to biology, has amicroscope to help them learn
about the world, right?
Unfortunately, there is no suchthing as the philosophical
microscope. Right. So one of thethings that's sort of
distinctive about philosophy isits, its reliance on
argumentation and reasoning,right as its sole tool. And, of
(04:12):
course, that doesn't differ fromlots of other fields, but the
reliance on reason, right. Thefocus on reason and not on other
tools for thinking aboutfundamental concepts and
presuppositions is somethingdistinctive about philosophy as
well. So that kind of gives youa little bit of a sense of what
philosophy is, right? But sowhat is philosophy of religion?
Well, it's just the effort tokind of look at some of the
(04:35):
fundamental presuppositions atwork in in people's thinking
about religion, right? So that'skind of a super general kind of
characterization, right? But toget a little more detailed, you
might think well, what whatunites religion right? What
what, what could we say aboutreligion in general, what are
the fundamental presuppositionsat work? And of course, that's a
(04:55):
really hard hard thing to sayright people in religious
studies Well, I will tell you,for example, right, hey, what
religion is is a super difficultquestion. Right? And so I don't
want to, you know, claim to havesome answer to that. But I
think, you know, if we sort oftake cases, uncontroversial
cases that we would characterizeas religion, right, you know,
one of the things we'll find issome sort of belief, or set of
(05:18):
beliefs about ultimate reality,you know, some set of beliefs
about kind of our relation toit, and some set of beliefs
about, you know, what we shouldbe doing in light of those two
pieces of information, right.
And so, philosophers will focusthere. So this brings us to kind
(05:40):
of the classical arguments forGod's existence, for example,
right? The, you know, God is oneway of thinking about ultimate
reality, the way the world mightbe at its deepest level. And so
there, you know, a question youmight ask as well, do we have
any good reasons for thinkingthat ultimate reality is this
way, right? And so you get kindof standard arguments about, you
(06:01):
know, design, right and ordermoral arguments, for example,
that, hey, there is such a beingright. And of course, there are
arguments against that. One ofthe other things I'll just say,
here, and we can talk a littlebit more about it later, if you
want. It's just to say that Ithink of, you know, atheism as
perfectly within the realm of areligion in the context of
(06:22):
philosophy, religion, right. So,as I was just talking about
philosophy of religion, I said,take, looks at ultimate views of
ultimate reality. And I see anatheist, right, who's say, a
naturalist, somebody who comesto the world and sees it to be
studied solely by, by scientificmeans, for example, as somebody
who holds that, hey, ultimatereality is the world in front of
(06:43):
us, right? The world ofempirical reality. So it to my
mind, right? You know, atheismis perfectly within the realm of
thinking, for philosophy ofreligion, that is to say, long
story short, you don't need tobe religious to be interested in
philosophy of religion.
Chip Gruen (06:57):
Yeah. Well, I would, I would posit, I guess, that
there might be two separateclaims there. One is that
atheism is in fact, sort of atheological concept, right?
Because it claims knowledgeabout the world, right? He
claims that there is not a God,right, which is a theological
claim. But I want to hit on theother thing that you that you
just said that you don't have tobe religious in order to be
interested, you know, inphilosophy of religion, and I
(07:21):
would posit as well, you don'thave to be atheistic to be, you
know, you know, interested inthe in the philosophy of
religion as well, in a lot ofacademic work ends up starting
from a position I think ofagnosticism right?
Tad Robinson (07:33):
Right. Right.
Chip Gruen (07:34):
So what is the relationship then of sort of
personal belief and commitment?
If it's not necessary, but it'spossible, you know, how do you
see that active in the field?
Tad Robinson (07:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a complicated it's a
complicated answer to thatquestion, because I think it
plays into the field in lots ofways, right? So in positive
ways, right? I mean, I thinkthat one of the things I would
want to emphasize to students isto say, hey, people have big
questions. And, you know, itmakes sense to think about these
(08:08):
big questions using the ourrational abilities, right? And
it makes sense to look and seewhat other people who are, like
us, or different from us havethought about these issues. So
from a personal point of view, Ithink, you know, everybody has
these big questions, and maybecomes to them from different
angles. And I would want toencourage, you know, somebody
(08:29):
who has big questions to say,look, look to the philosophy of
religion, as a way of kind ofengaging in a conversation with
other people who are interestedin those. So that those are
that's a sort of positiveelement, I guess another, you
know, I guess, positive elementis that the character, character
of the field, right, that is tosay, the questions that
philosophers of religion areinterested in, you know, tend to
(08:51):
be focused on the concepts andpresuppositions of the religions
in their culture of their timeor what they know about, right.
So in the United States, youknow, in other parts of the
English speaking world, forexample, I mean, it's undeniable
that the philosophy religion hasa distinctly you know, Christian
bent, right, that is to say,questions that are say at the
(09:13):
fore, for people who come from aChristian background, are sort
of also prominent questions inthe philosophy of religion.
That's just a sort ofsociological fact. So that's
another another way that itinfluences the field. And I
think there's something sort ofsubtle there, right. I think we
don't always realize that thequestions that we're interested
(09:35):
in, are influenced by not justour individual beliefs, but the,
the world that we live in. So Imean, there's a couple of ways
that it plays in that there areothers but...
Chip Gruen (09:46):
So I want to I want to push that a little bit more
because you know, we live in ain a diverse world and at the
academy has gotten more diverseover time. And I'm just
wondering if the field ofphilosophy of religion has also
diversified. So, you know, youmentioned sort of Christian
underpinning underpinnings to alot of these questions that
(10:07):
people ask. But are thereprominent South Asian or Hindu,
you know, philosophers ofreligion? It you know, as
Judaism, you know, prominent orJewish philosophers of religion
prominent? How do you see thediversity of, of different types
of people active in the academyaffecting the field?
Tad Robinson (10:31):
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly growing. You know, I
think, you know, although,philosophical questions and
inquiries that they sort of comeat things from a Christian or
Jewish point of view have beenhave been dominant, right. It's
certainly something that the thefield is moving towards, right,
in the United States and otherplaces to try and to be, you
(10:53):
know, more all encompassing,right, you know, to take into
account, you know, South Asianviews, in particular have been
on the rise in philosophy ofreligion. So, I think, um, you
know, there's also sort of alittle bit of a, some self
conscious reflection within thefield too, to, you know, I think
we don't always realize the, theperspective, our questions come
(11:16):
from, right. And so I thinkthat, you know, that's a sort of
second element that, you know,people within the field have
come to sort of think about thisas potentially a problem in the
last 15 or 20 years to sort ofsay, hey, you know, the
questions that we've beenasking, and the prospective
perspectives from which we'vebeen pursuing them actually are
sort of limited, all thingsconsidered, right. And I think,
(11:37):
as philosophers, we try to, wetry to think of ourselves as
transcending, you know, theparochialisms of our place in
time. And I think we don'talways succeed, in fact,
probably rarely. Right. But I dothink that that's part of our
identity in a sense, inphilosophy of religion. So, you
know, I think this is a movethat I think is great, and I
think will only increase, youknow, in the future.
Chip Gruen (11:59):
Yeah, it makes me think, you know, again, going
back to the South, South Asianexample, because it's an
interesting one, you know,thinking about sort of
underlying reality, you know,and ideas even about space and
time, that are so different, youknow, the idea of cyclical time
versus linear time, for example,and things like that. And, you
(12:20):
know, sort of coming to the, youknow, the realization or
understanding, or at leastposing the question of whether
our perceptions of linear time,are deeply connected to sort of
philosophical or eventheological presuppositions that
we might make.
Tad Robinson (12:35):
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the, the
differences, right, you also areable to identify the
similarities, right. And so, youknow, just to give an example,
from the South Asian, you know,context, right, I mean, one of
the things that is a traditionalhot topic in the philosophy,
religion is the problem of evil,you know, where this is
understood is, you know, howcould this sort of great and
(12:56):
perfect God allow for, you know,the existence of childhood
cancer, and earthquakes and allthis, all this stuff, right? You
know, that's a pretty JudeoChristian sort of centered way
of framing the problem, though,right? You know, and I think the
South Asian context sort ofbrings that out, right, to some
extent. And I think if you tryto kind of account for something
(13:17):
like the doctrine of karma,right, in the context of the
philosophy, religion, I think itopens a lot of kind of
intellectual doors for peoplebecause it allows people to see
like, hey, you know, what we'rereally doing here is actually
trying to find a way to explainmisfortune or suffering, right,
on a sort of cosmic level,right? That is to say, what is
the deep level explanation forsuffering? Right? On the one
(13:38):
hand, you know, the, the sort oftheistic answer might be, well,
it's part of God's plan, right?
Or this is gonna, you know,toughen you up, or this is gonna
contribute to your overcomingproblems or something like this,
or, or maybe the answer is, hey,God's too, is too powerful you,
and you are too small to know,right? Those are ways of
accounting for suffering andtrying to deal with it, you
know, if not only on it, or ifyou know, not only on an
(14:00):
intellectual, but maybe also anemotional kind of level. When
you sort of think about karma inthat context, right? You can
see, hey, here's an alternativeway of thinking about the events
that occur to us why theyhappen, right? Oh, they're our
fault on the doctrine of karma.
Right? So, you know, you know,what happens to me is because of
the choices I made, say, in aprevious life, right, you know,
(14:23):
and they're sort of coming hometo roost, right. And so I think
there's some interestingcomparisons that you can make
when you open up that door tothinking about the South Asian
context. One in particular, ofcourse, is this idea that, hey,
somehow, for for people, itmakes sense to us on both an
intellectual and emotionallevel, to say like, Hey, people
get what they deserve. Like,that's a good way of explaining
(14:44):
misfortune, right? You know, andyou see this, for example, in
the book of Job where Job'sfriends, right, come to Job and
say, Hey, Job, you've sufferedall of this misfortune. You must
have done something wrong,right? It must be your fault,
right? God must be punishing youJob, right, and they say this
over and over and over again inthe book of Job, we sort of see
something very similar, right?
You know, the doctrine of karma.
(15:07):
So, in any case, I think that'san interesting observation about
human nature that I think isunlocked, right, by by sort of
thinking more broadly, you know,about about religious traditions
and the way that the ways thatthey're dealing with with the
problems of everyday life.
Chip Gruen (15:22):
And presumably the same could be said, for thinking
about Islam or indigenoustraditions or, or what have you.
Tad Robinson (15:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you know, unfortunately,I mean, indigenous traditions
are something that I thinkphilosophers have paid almost no
attention to. And I think that'sreally unfortunate, though,
understandable, it'sunderstandable. Philosophers
work with text texts, right. Anda lot of times, indigenous
traditions, you know, don't havetexts. But I think that that's a
really fascinating area,because, of course, I think, you
(15:49):
know, philosophical assumptionsare present in everything we do.
And so certainly present inindigenous ways of ways of
acting. So I think that's agreat growth area for
philosophy. And in Islam, too, Ithink Islam is too often
categorized as a, you know, aWestern religion, along with
Christianity and Judaism, youknow, kind of thereby adopting
everything, that's the sameabout it, but leaving aside
(16:12):
anything that is different,right. So I think that that's
also an area that thatphilosophers of religion in the
future will look to, in terms ofsort of looking for, you know,
interesting elements that that,that compare cross culturally.
Chip Gruen (16:27):
So you've mentioned a couple of the classic
questions, the problem of evil,the existence of God. But I know
that there's sort of a broaderarray of the types issues that
philosophers of religion areinterested in so could you go
through a few of those sort ofthe classic questions that one
might encounter when consideringthe philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson (16:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
So one question, right, has todo with say, miracles, right.
So, you know, what is a miracle?
Right? And what would it show ifthere were one, right? So lots
of people say, hey, you know, ifyou look to, you know, religious
texts, right, what grounds theirauthority, right, is the
(17:09):
existence of miracles. Well,what reason do we have to
believe that those miraclesoccurred? Right? And what would
that involve? So that's one onequestion. Another question has
to do with religious experience.
So, you know, people have, youknow, experiences that they take
to reveal a deeper level ofreality. And so, you know, one
of the things that philosophershave done is sort of, you know,
(17:31):
sort of look at some of thosecases, right, and sort of think,
well, okay, well, what was thisexperience like, right? What
does it reveal? Right? Whatcould it reveal? That is to say,
what would a religiousexperience maybe have to be
like, in order for us to knowthat it's veridical or something
like that? Right? What does thefact that people have different
kinds of religious experiencesin different places in different
(17:52):
times mean, if anything? Thatsort of touches on questions of
religious diversity, right,which is sort of broader
question about well, what doesthe fact that there are many
religions mean, if anything,right, does it show that say my
particular beliefs areunjustified because not
everybody agrees with me? Or ornot? Right? There's lots of
questions about afterlives,right, whether there are any
(18:14):
what what kind of argumentsthere are for thinking that
there might be one, if there wasone, what would it be like?
Right? So you know, how this isrelated to morality. So most of
us have the afterlife our moralviews, that is to say what you
do in the in this life isrelevant to what happens you in
the afterlife. But on the otherhand, there's a lot of
(18:36):
traditions that are less lesswell recognized, I think,
according to which there are nonmoral afterlives, that is the
everybody goes to the sameplace. What you do in life is
not relevant. You know,questions about petitionary
prayer are kind of a big topic,right? That is to say, like, you
know, in a theistic context ofthinking about, you know, God in
(18:56):
a Christian or Jewish or Muslimsort of perspective, right, you
might think, well, you know, Godknows everything. So what's the
point in my asking for it if Godknow knew before I was born,
then I would ask for it right?
And so what what it means to asksomething of God is a question.
There's lots of questions aboutreligion in science, you know,
(19:17):
whether they are really inconflict or not. And in recent
literature, there's been kind ofa question about, say, what are
called evolutionary debunkingarguments which say, hey, you
know, human beings are naturalbelievers in invisible beings,
because of the way their brainswork, for example, right? What
does that mean? Does that meanthat people's belief is thereby
(19:38):
false or unjustified? in certaincontexts? So they're, you know,
finally, just one other example.
I mean, there's questions aboutlike, do you really need
evidence to believe in religiousclaims, right, or what kind of
evidence would you need right?
You know, particularly famousexample comes from William
James, who says, hey, yeah, innormal life, you need lots of
(19:59):
evidence to explain things, andto justify your beliefs, right,
but in certain cases where it'sunfalsifiable, and it's
important, and it meets thesesituations meet these other
circumstances, hey, you canbelieve whatever you want. So
there's lots of interestingquestions there about like,
well, what what are the sort ofnorms of belief? Like, is it
okay for me to believe whateverI want? Most people will say no,
(20:22):
right? But under whatcircumstances? Does it make
sense? Or is it ethical orwhatever to, to believe
something? Right, so that's justa kind of smattering of
questions that are at work inthe philosophy religion.
Chip Gruen (20:35):
So one of the great things about philosophy is that
you always have these classicproblems, right? They get
introduced and, and get talkedabout, you know, over
generations, and talking aboutsort of religion and science,
the idea of creation and soforth reminds me one of these
classic problems, and maybe youcould tell us a little bit about
it, that you are walking along,and you're in a forest, and then
(20:59):
as you suddenly sort of stumbleupon a perfectly manicured
garden, you know, how does oneunderstand the perfectly
manicured garden?
Tad Robinson (21:07):
Right? Yeah, that's a that's a good one. And
so yeah, normally, that kind ofthought experiment, you know, is
intended to show, hey, you wouldassume, if that happened to you
that there was a designer, thatis to say that the garden was
created on purpose intentionallywith a design by, you know,
(21:30):
somebody, right? And so, youknow, we're supposed to look at
the world and see similar kindsof kinds of design, right? So
the sort of other famous exampleof this, this other version of
this argument comes fromWilliam, William Paley, right,
who gives a design argument onthis basis, he points in
particular to the eye, right,and he says, Hey, look at the
eye, isn't this an amazingmachine, right? Just like, if
(21:53):
you found a watch on the heath,you would know that it had been
designed so too you should lookat the eye, right, as designed.
And so, you know, those kinds ofarguments have sort of that
particular kind of argumentskind of fallen out of favor,
because there are alternativeexplanations for why the eye is
the way that the eye is right,namely, evolutionary ones. But
(22:13):
the sort of contemporary versionof that argument is called the
fine tuning argument. And goeskind of roughly like this, Hey,
the conditions for life in theuniverse are exceedingly
improbable. Right? So, you know,there's various ways of
developing the argument, but youknow, roughly, it kind of goes
like, hey, you know, life couldnot develop if there were not
(22:35):
planets, right, there could notbe planets, if matter didn't
stick together in just this way,matter couldn't stick together
in just this way, you know, ifyou know that the value of the
neutron was off by 5%, orsomething like this. So there
are various mathematicalphysicists who have sort of put
together some of these numbers,and you get these sort of
ridiculous numbers tounderstand. So you know, Roger
(22:57):
Penrose says something like, theodds of life existing in the
universe, given that so manythings could have been
different, is something like onein 10 to the 123rd power. And so
the idea is like, you know,that's, so that's like winning
the lottery every day for yourwhole life, right? And so the
idea is like, Hey, isn't thisamazing? Right? Shouldn't you
(23:19):
see this as a case of design?
Right? And of course, there are,there are responses to this
argument to say, those ways ofcalculating are off, or, yeah,
that's true. But there are 10 tothe 123rd universes. And so it's
not surprising at all, thatthere's one just like this. So
in any case, yeah, it's a,that's an argument that has a
long history, one that you know,comes up to contemporary,
(23:41):
contemporary philosophers.
Chip Gruen (23:43):
So, in the Institute for Religious and Cultural
Understanding, we have two sortof main parts of the mission.
One is about religion, religiousliteracy, right. And the other
is about sort of encouraging andmodeling a more sophisticated
conversation about religion inthe public sphere. And so I
(24:04):
guess my question is, you know,how does a knowledge of
philosophy of religion, aid thatgoal, like, what is it about
philosophy of religion, thatallows me to confront the world
in a better way, or to read theheadlines in a better way, or to
be able to recognize religiousdiversity in my community in a
way that is that is moresophisticated and richer and
(24:24):
fuller?
Tad Robinson (24:26):
Yeah. You know, in some ways, I I sort of think of,
you know, what philosophy ofreligion does for you is sort
of, you know, emanating from theinside out, right. So, you know,
when we engage in the philosophyof religion, we tend to do so,
from, you know, our antecedentposition, right, where are we
what do we think, right? And aswe kind of look at our
(24:49):
assumptions, and we think about,well, do I have really reasons
for that? Does that make sense,given the other things I think,
we start to realize kind of the,the contingency of a lot of the
things that we think right?
That's not to say that they'rewrong, right? It's just to say,
Hey, I ended up with a wholebunch of things that I think
about the world that I ended upwith, really, through no work of
my own right through no effortof my own. And I think when we
(25:11):
when we start to think that weput ourselves in a position to
kind of be a little moreautonomous in our beliefs, but I
think at the same time, it alsoallows us to understand other
people because they are like us,presumably, right, that is to
say presumably a lot of whatthey think they kind of ended up
with, as a result of, you know,their, who their parents were,
and where they were born and allof these things, and maybe they
(25:32):
haven't really thought about itvery much either, right. And so
there's a sense in which I thinkwe sort of start to realize how
much we're not maybe pawnsright, in this sort of larger
cultural game, right. But theextent to which really were a
lot less autonomous than maybewe think, and I think that
allows us to kind of see otherpeople in a new light. Right.
And I think it also, you know,opens the door for thinking
(25:57):
about, you know, what otherpeople think and why they think
it right. I guess the otherelement that I would say just a
little more broadly, you know,is I think you know certain
issues in the philosophyreligion, and I think the
problem of evil, broadlyconstrued as one, you know,
really put us in a position tokind of see other people as, you
(26:18):
know, navigating the world inthe same way we are right, that
is to say, kind of looking forsome sort of, you know,
cognitive and emotionallysatisfying, you know, way of
understanding what's happeningto them, and the world. Right.
And I think, you know, when wesee other people as an as
(26:40):
engaged in that task, like us,right, I think, you know, we're
in a position to kind of, Ithink, see them in a positive
light, see them as you know, ascompanions, right, in that in
that goal, right. So I thinkthat's a couple of ways at
least.
Chip Gruen (26:55):
Yeah. So I was actually doing my homework a
little bit and I went and lookedup the catalog copy for the
Philosophy of Religion here atMuhlenberg.
Tad Robinson (27:03):
Yeah.
Chip Gruen (27:03):
And one sentence sort of stuck out to me and, and
I want to read it to you, itsays, "One of the goals of the
course is to explore thepossibilities of intellectually
responsible religious commitmentin the contemporary world." And
I want to kind of play devil'sadvocate for a minute...
Tad Robinson (27:20):
Sure.
Chip Gruen (27:21):
...and, and ask if the presupposition is that sort
of religion should beintellectually responsible, I
mean, of course, right now inthe world, we see all kinds of
very emotive and almost not evenalmost anti intellectual,
religious positions out there.
How do you deal with that? Andproudly anti intellectual, at
that, right? That God's wisdomis not the same as human
(27:45):
knowledge? Right, that there's adisconnect there. And to be
upside down to this world is tobe right side up with the other
world, we, we see that thatstrand. So how do we, how does
the philosophy of religion dealwith that sort of anti
intellectualism and, you know,the idea that religious
commitments may not beresponsible to same set of
assumptions or presuppositionsabout what the what the good is
(28:07):
in the world?
Tad Robinson (28:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question.
And I guess I sort of two thingsoccur to me one is sort of a
bigger picture answer. And Ithink, and the second is more
specifically, will morespecifically address your your
question, but sort of broadlyspeaking, I mean, one of the
things that I think thephilosophy of religion gets tied
up with in people's mindssometimes, are these sort of
(28:30):
wider kind of culture warissues, you know, as if, you
know, what we should be doing inphilosophy of religion is sort
of taking a position in theseculture wars. Right. So, you
know, atheism versus Christianfundamentalism. Right. And I,
you know, I guess, I think thatthose questions are not
particularly philosophical,right. And so I think it's a
(28:52):
sort of a shame that sometimesfalse religion gets gets tied
up, you know, in those, youknow, wider questions that, you
know, at least here in theUnited States, so I don't sort
of see philosophy of religion asdoing that. And in fact, I would
want to actively distancephilosophy of religion from from
those sort of culture wars. Morespecifically, to your question,
(29:12):
though, about, you know, how doyou deal with somebody who's,
you know, really approaches antiintellectual, you know, and I
think, you know, on the onehand, you know, if somebody if
a, if a student or somebody elseis just utterly unwilling to
consider reason in any way,right, you know, obviously, you
know, philosophy is not theplace for them, but maybe
(29:34):
college right, or inquiry is notthe place for them. So, I mean,
I want to start from a placewhere, like, hey, people are
sort of interested in havingreasons for at least some of
what they think, right? And ifthat's our starting position, I
think you can kind of walksomebody in to thinking hey, you
know, we can we can talk aboutphilosophical questions in the
philosophy of religion. So, forexample, right, somebody says,
like, hey, you know, God hastotally ineffable right, that is
(29:57):
to say, there's just nothingthat we can know about. God
right? You know, that's aknowledge claim, right? How do
you know that? Right? You know,I think that's a place to start,
right? So this person is makinga claim about how they can know
about God, right. So we can askabout how they know that. And
even though they may not bewilling to sort of be, or they
(30:17):
may not be interested inexploring detailed questions
about the nature of, of the Godthat they believe in, right,
there's at least questionsaround the periphery, right?
Moreover, to the extent that youcan get them to answer questions
about, you know, how they knowGod is ineffable, right, you can
extract some standards ofknowledge, some epistemic
standards, and sort of applythem more broadly and see if
(30:38):
they're consistent. So, I mean,that's, that's that's one way. I
mean, the the second similarkind of way is right, somebody
who says like, Hey, this is alla matter of faith. Right? Right?
No reason is involved. Right?
Again, you can play a similarsort of game where you say,
well, you think reason isinvolved sometimes in some
things you do, right, if you'rea juror in a case, right, you
think that it would, you know,it's your job, for example, to
(31:01):
to sort of look at the evidenceand judge accordingly. Right?
And of course, they'll say yes,but that's a sort of starting
point to say, Okay, well, soreason is really important in
that case, but it's notimportant in this case. Why,
right? And I think, you know, tothe extent that they have or
don't have an answer to that,right, that's a that's a doorway
into thinking about, well, howdoes reason apply? When does it
(31:23):
apply? When doesn't it, applyit? And as far as I'm concerned,
those are great philosophicalquestions. So so that that those
are a couple strategies.
Chip Gruen (31:32):
So one of the fun things about our job, you know,
teaching 18 to 22 year olds,right is exposing them to things
they hadn't thought aboutbefore, or at least helping them
to think about things in maybe adifferent way. And I'm sure that
in your in your time, you know,you could you could come up with
(31:52):
with a million stories of theways that students have
surprised you, or things havecome have come up that were
unexpected. And I'm justwondering, you know, for this
student in the, you know, early21st century, you know, what are
some of the things that thatsort of come up now that you,
you know, you think areparticularly interesting or
particularly telling, you know,in teaching the the philosophy
(32:15):
of religion?
Tad Robinson (32:15):
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that,
you know, I've been a littlesurprised about, and I think, in
a good way, you know, in recentversions of the course, is sort
of students' openness tothinking about, you know,
different perspectives. I mean,that's not something that, I
(32:37):
think is always the case. Youknow, I think, in teaching this
course, in particular, which ismaybe a little surprising. But
to give you a little moredetail. I mean, I think the last
couple of, last couple timesI've taught this class, there
were students who kind of cameinto the course, sort of coming
at it from a pretty naturalist,maybe atheistic, maybe agnostic
(32:59):
kind of perspective. And, and Ithink, who ended up being really
interested in the course in away that they weren't expecting,
because, you know, the coursedoes sort of attempt to capture
that perspective, right? BecauseI think, just to give a couple
of examples. I mean, I think,you know, asking, Hey, well,
(33:20):
what gives life meaning if thisis your perspective, right?
Where do values come from ifthis is your perspective? How do
we understand the misfortunesthat occur from this
perspective? And do the answersto those questions from a
naturalist perspective, youknow, fit with other things that
we value or think, and how dothey compare with say,
(33:43):
traditional, certain kinds oftraditional religious answers? I
think students ended up beingvery interested in in those
kinds of questions in a way thatthey didn't expect. And to be
frank, I didn't expect to sortof follow along. So that was
really encouraging, and really,really fun. And we had a lot of
a lot of fun conversations lastcouple versions of this class.
Chip Gruen (34:02):
Alright, so one of the things that we try to do on
ReligionWise is ask the sort ofso what question right, that we
have a constituency, you know,generally educated, interested
in religion, interested inunderstanding, you know,
religious belief and practicethat's around them in the world.
And so we'll just end up on thisquestion. How does this matter
(34:23):
to them? Right, so what? If I'mlistening to this podcast how
does a knowledge of philosophyof religion or how does sort of
a, an understanding of the waythe field works helped me to
navigate my world, sort ofcivically engaged way?
Tad Robinson (34:40):
The first thing I would say in terms of, you know,
so what, why would you care?
What what does this do for youkind of, kind of question is to
say, you know, I think itenriches your life. I mean, you
know I think that you know, whenwe engage in philosophy and when
we engage in these kinds ofinquiries, and we we read about,
you know, people who disagreewith us, right, it sort of
(35:03):
broadens our, our minds. And Ithink it allows us to see the
world, you know, from a newperspective, right? I mean, just
to give a sort of silly example,I mean, learning the names of
trees, so the kinds of trees,allows you when you're walking
through, you know, down thesidewalk, to say, Oh, look at
there's an oak, right, there's amaple, there's a sycamore,
(35:25):
right. And in some ways, you'rehaving the exact same
experience, you would have ofwalking down the sidewalk
looking at trees, but there'ssort of a component like, now
you can appreciate what you seeon a level that you couldn't.
And again, I don't want tosuggest that knowing it's a
sycamore tree somehowfundamentally changes your life
or something. But I do thinkthat that's a sort of example of
a tiny way in which your sort ofintellectual life can be
(35:47):
enriched by just learning a fewfacts about the world. I think
philosophy of religion is sortof no different, right? To the
extent that you're able, in yourconversations with other people,
or in your reading, right, toidentify the assumptions that
they're kind of making and seethat oh, that's, you know,
that's part of this tradition ofresponding to the problem of
evil that kind of goes back toJob. Oh, that's really
(36:08):
interesting. I think that thatenriches your experience, and I
think puts you in a position tokind of, you know, think about
your own experience in ways thatmay be intellectually and
emotionally satisfying for you,right? So that's, that's sort of
the the big takeaway, and I kindof, you know, I might stop there
and say, Hey, is that is thatnot good enough? You know, for
you, right. But I guess theother thing that I think is
(36:31):
that, you know, philosophy, andphilosophy of religion, in
particular, is sort of best donewith other people, I think, you
know, you know, some people aresort of really good at sitting
down and thinking about thingsby themselves, and they find
that really enriching. But Ithink, for a lot of people, it's
sort of being able to sit downand kind of have a conversation
and ask, Hey, why do you thinkthat right? You know, I wouldn't
(36:51):
have thought that this is theway I would have thought, and
they can ask you what, why wouldyou have thought that right?
Sitting down and just sort ofbeing in a position to have that
kind of conversation at a deeplevel with other people being
comfortable with talking at thatdeep level, I think, you know,
creates an opportunity, not forjust for sort of interesting
conversations with people, butalso for really productive ones.
(37:12):
Right. And I mean, I want to,you know, you can't have those
conversations with everybody allthe time right. But I think
having a capacity to have themwith the right person at the
right time. You know, again, itcan be really transformative
kind of experience for certainpeople in certain kinds of
cases. So, you know, I thinkthat's the those are a couple of
sort of takeaways.
Chip Gruen (37:32):
Ted, I again, want to thank you for taking the time
to sit down and have thisconversation. As we said, going
in my philosophy of religiondays are a long time ago back in
undergrad, my undergraduatecareer. So it's really great to
think about these, these issuesagain with you today and see how
they can enhance ourunderstanding of religion and
(37:55):
religious diversity in thecontemporary world. So thanks
again.
Tad Robinson (37:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me on Chip.
Chip Gruen (38:02):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. For moreinformation and additional
programming, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com. There,you'll find our contact
information, links to otherprogramming, and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. ReligionWise
(38:25):
is produced by the staff of theInstitute for Religious and
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ReligionWise wherever you getyour podcasts. We look forward
to seeing you next time.
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen. I'm the
Director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege, and I will be the host
for this podcast.
(00:33):
Today's conversation featuresTad Robinson, Associate
Professor of philosophy atMuhlenberg College. And I
reached out to Tad to talk aboutphilosophy of religion. Now, I
and lots of people I know andrespect and love have been
philosophy majors, even thoughthey've gone on to other, other
pursuits, other academic fields,but it's interesting to notice
(00:56):
how many people whether they goon and as I did in, in religious
studies, or history, or whathave you, start off in
philosophy. And in any event inmy undergraduate career, I
remember having a philosophy ofreligion course. And what I
found is that the conversationswithin religious studies don't
always include philosophy ofreligion. And so I wanted to
(01:19):
reach out to him and talk aboutthis field, what's in it? What
questions does it ask? What doesit use as evidence in its
conversations and in itsarguments, and how it might be
relevant to again, that morenuanced, sophisticated
conversation about religion inour world. So without further
ado, here's Tad Robinson.
(01:42):
Well, welcome, Tad, thanks forbeing here today.
Tad Robinson (01:45):
Hi, thanks for having me on. ReligionWise. I'm
excited to be here.
Chip Gruen (01:48):
So the reason I wanted to talk to you is among
the the large repertoire ofclasses that you do one is
Philosophy of Religion. And Iknow that your research is also
interested in this and thatyou're just generally an active
scholar in this field. And itseems to me that not everybody
who is interested in religionnecessarily knows what
(02:09):
philosophy of religion is, andknow sort of the classic
questions that philosophy ofreligion poses and how that
might be different from otherways of thinking about religion.
So, so just to start off, sortof at the beginning, what is
philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson (02:25):
Yeah, thanks. Um, you know, it's, it's a
complicated question. So Iapologize that this will
probably be a little bit of alonger answer, then, you know,
had you asked what is biology orsomething, right. And I think
part of the problem is thatphilosophy itself is not a
particularly well understoodfield. So let me just say a
little bit about that beforesaying, you know, talking about
(02:46):
what philosophy religion is. Soin, you know, general terms,
right philosophy is, unlikeother fields, like geology or
biology in the sense that itdoesn't study a single, you
know, single element of nature,right? A single thing in the
world, right? You know, instead,what philosophy is, is kind of
an effort to, to think about thekind of fundamental
(03:08):
presuppositions or concepts thatare at work in our inquiry,
right. And that can be, youknow, across a whole bunch of
different, you know, domains orareas of study, right? So, there
are, you know, there's thephilosophy of biology as a
field, there's philosophy ofscience, philosophy of art, you
know, political philosophy,right. And so, and each one of
(03:28):
these cases, you know, what,what philosophers working in
those fields are trying to do issort of look at some of the
fundamental, you know,assumptions about kind of what's
going on and how we know aboutit, and what's important and
what we value, right in thoseenquiries. Right. And so, I
guess the other thing to sayabout philosophy is that, you
know, philosophy is sort ofunusual in the sense that it
(03:51):
doesn't really have a specifictool, right? So a biologist, to
come back to biology, has amicroscope to help them learn
about the world, right?
Unfortunately, there is no suchthing as the philosophical
microscope. Right. So one of thethings that's sort of
distinctive about philosophy isits, its reliance on
argumentation and reasoning,right as its sole tool. And, of
(04:12):
course, that doesn't differ fromlots of other fields, but the
reliance on reason, right. Thefocus on reason and not on other
tools for thinking aboutfundamental concepts and
presuppositions is somethingdistinctive about philosophy as
well. So that kind of gives youa little bit of a sense of what
philosophy is, right? But sowhat is philosophy of religion?
Well, it's just the effort tokind of look at some of the
(04:35):
fundamental presuppositions atwork in in people's thinking
about religion, right? So that'skind of a super general kind of
characterization, right? But toget a little more detailed, you
might think well, what whatunites religion right? What
what, what could we say aboutreligion in general, what are
the fundamental presuppositionsat work? And of course, that's a
(04:55):
really hard hard thing to sayright people in religious
studies Well, I will tell you,for example, right, hey, what
religion is is a super difficultquestion. Right? And so I don't
want to, you know, claim to havesome answer to that. But I
think, you know, if we sort oftake cases, uncontroversial
cases that we would characterizeas religion, right, you know,
one of the things we'll find issome sort of belief, or set of
(05:18):
beliefs about ultimate reality,you know, some set of beliefs
about kind of our relation toit, and some set of beliefs
about, you know, what we shouldbe doing in light of those two
pieces of information, right.
And so, philosophers will focusthere. So this brings us to kind
(05:40):
of the classical arguments forGod's existence, for example,
right? The, you know, God is oneway of thinking about ultimate
reality, the way the world mightbe at its deepest level. And so
there, you know, a question youmight ask as well, do we have
any good reasons for thinkingthat ultimate reality is this
way, right? And so you get kindof standard arguments about, you
(06:01):
know, design, right and ordermoral arguments, for example,
that, hey, there is such a beingright. And of course, there are
arguments against that. One ofthe other things I'll just say,
here, and we can talk a littlebit more about it later, if you
want. It's just to say that Ithink of, you know, atheism as
perfectly within the realm of areligion in the context of
(06:22):
philosophy, religion, right. So,as I was just talking about
philosophy of religion, I said,take, looks at ultimate views of
ultimate reality. And I see anatheist, right, who's say, a
naturalist, somebody who comesto the world and sees it to be
studied solely by, by scientificmeans, for example, as somebody
who holds that, hey, ultimatereality is the world in front of
(06:43):
us, right? The world ofempirical reality. So it to my
mind, right? You know, atheismis perfectly within the realm of
thinking, for philosophy ofreligion, that is to say, long
story short, you don't need tobe religious to be interested in
philosophy of religion.
Chip Gruen (06:57):
Yeah. Well, I would, I would posit, I guess, that
there might be two separateclaims there. One is that
atheism is in fact, sort of atheological concept, right?
Because it claims knowledgeabout the world, right? He
claims that there is not a God,right, which is a theological
claim. But I want to hit on theother thing that you that you
just said that you don't have tobe religious in order to be
interested, you know, inphilosophy of religion, and I
(07:21):
would posit as well, you don'thave to be atheistic to be, you
know, you know, interested inthe in the philosophy of
religion as well, in a lot ofacademic work ends up starting
from a position I think ofagnosticism right?
Tad Robinson (07:33):
Right. Right.
Chip Gruen (07:34):
So what is the relationship then of sort of
personal belief and commitment?
If it's not necessary, but it'spossible, you know, how do you
see that active in the field?
Tad Robinson (07:45):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a complicated it's a
complicated answer to thatquestion, because I think it
plays into the field in lots ofways, right? So in positive
ways, right? I mean, I thinkthat one of the things I would
want to emphasize to students isto say, hey, people have big
questions. And, you know, itmakes sense to think about these
(08:08):
big questions using the ourrational abilities, right? And
it makes sense to look and seewhat other people who are, like
us, or different from us havethought about these issues. So
from a personal point of view, Ithink, you know, everybody has
these big questions, and maybecomes to them from different
angles. And I would want toencourage, you know, somebody
(08:29):
who has big questions to say,look, look to the philosophy of
religion, as a way of kind ofengaging in a conversation with
other people who are interestedin those. So that those are
that's a sort of positiveelement, I guess another, you
know, I guess, positive elementis that the character, character
of the field, right, that is tosay, the questions that
philosophers of religion areinterested in, you know, tend to
(08:51):
be focused on the concepts andpresuppositions of the religions
in their culture of their timeor what they know about, right.
So in the United States, youknow, in other parts of the
English speaking world, forexample, I mean, it's undeniable
that the philosophy religion hasa distinctly you know, Christian
bent, right, that is to say,questions that are say at the
(09:13):
fore, for people who come from aChristian background, are sort
of also prominent questions inthe philosophy of religion.
That's just a sort ofsociological fact. So that's
another another way that itinfluences the field. And I
think there's something sort ofsubtle there, right. I think we
don't always realize that thequestions that we're interested
(09:35):
in, are influenced by not justour individual beliefs, but the,
the world that we live in. So Imean, there's a couple of ways
that it plays in that there areothers but...
Chip Gruen (09:46):
So I want to I want to push that a little bit more
because you know, we live in ain a diverse world and at the
academy has gotten more diverseover time. And I'm just
wondering if the field ofphilosophy of religion has also
diversified. So, you know, youmentioned sort of Christian
underpinning underpinnings to alot of these questions that
(10:07):
people ask. But are thereprominent South Asian or Hindu,
you know, philosophers ofreligion? It you know, as
Judaism, you know, prominent orJewish philosophers of religion
prominent? How do you see thediversity of, of different types
of people active in the academyaffecting the field?
Tad Robinson (10:31):
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly growing. You know, I
think, you know, although,philosophical questions and
inquiries that they sort of comeat things from a Christian or
Jewish point of view have beenhave been dominant, right. It's
certainly something that the thefield is moving towards, right,
in the United States and otherplaces to try and to be, you
(10:53):
know, more all encompassing,right, you know, to take into
account, you know, South Asianviews, in particular have been
on the rise in philosophy ofreligion. So, I think, um, you
know, there's also sort of alittle bit of a, some self
conscious reflection within thefield too, to, you know, I think
we don't always realize the, theperspective, our questions come
(11:16):
from, right. And so I thinkthat, you know, that's a sort of
second element that, you know,people within the field have
come to sort of think about thisas potentially a problem in the
last 15 or 20 years to sort ofsay, hey, you know, the
questions that we've beenasking, and the prospective
perspectives from which we'vebeen pursuing them actually are
sort of limited, all thingsconsidered, right. And I think,
(11:37):
as philosophers, we try to, wetry to think of ourselves as
transcending, you know, theparochialisms of our place in
time. And I think we don'talways succeed, in fact,
probably rarely. Right. But I dothink that that's part of our
identity in a sense, inphilosophy of religion. So, you
know, I think this is a movethat I think is great, and I
think will only increase, youknow, in the future.
Chip Gruen (11:59):
Yeah, it makes me think, you know, again, going
back to the South, South Asianexample, because it's an
interesting one, you know,thinking about sort of
underlying reality, you know,and ideas even about space and
time, that are so different, youknow, the idea of cyclical time
versus linear time, for example,and things like that. And, you
(12:20):
know, sort of coming to the, youknow, the realization or
understanding, or at leastposing the question of whether
our perceptions of linear time,are deeply connected to sort of
philosophical or eventheological presuppositions that
we might make.
Tad Robinson (12:35):
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the, the
differences, right, you also areable to identify the
similarities, right. And so, youknow, just to give an example,
from the South Asian, you know,context, right, I mean, one of
the things that is a traditionalhot topic in the philosophy,
religion is the problem of evil,you know, where this is
understood is, you know, howcould this sort of great and
(12:56):
perfect God allow for, you know,the existence of childhood
cancer, and earthquakes and allthis, all this stuff, right? You
know, that's a pretty JudeoChristian sort of centered way
of framing the problem, though,right? You know, and I think the
South Asian context sort ofbrings that out, right, to some
extent. And I think if you tryto kind of account for something
(13:17):
like the doctrine of karma,right, in the context of the
philosophy, religion, I think itopens a lot of kind of
intellectual doors for peoplebecause it allows people to see
like, hey, you know, what we'rereally doing here is actually
trying to find a way to explainmisfortune or suffering, right,
on a sort of cosmic level,right? That is to say, what is
the deep level explanation forsuffering? Right? On the one
(13:38):
hand, you know, the, the sort oftheistic answer might be, well,
it's part of God's plan, right?
Or this is gonna, you know,toughen you up, or this is gonna
contribute to your overcomingproblems or something like this,
or, or maybe the answer is, hey,God's too, is too powerful you,
and you are too small to know,right? Those are ways of
accounting for suffering andtrying to deal with it, you
know, if not only on it, or ifyou know, not only on an
(14:00):
intellectual, but maybe also anemotional kind of level. When
you sort of think about karma inthat context, right? You can
see, hey, here's an alternativeway of thinking about the events
that occur to us why theyhappen, right? Oh, they're our
fault on the doctrine of karma.
Right? So, you know, you know,what happens to me is because of
the choices I made, say, in aprevious life, right, you know,
(14:23):
and they're sort of coming hometo roost, right. And so I think
there's some interestingcomparisons that you can make
when you open up that door tothinking about the South Asian
context. One in particular, ofcourse, is this idea that, hey,
somehow, for for people, itmakes sense to us on both an
intellectual and emotionallevel, to say like, Hey, people
get what they deserve. Like,that's a good way of explaining
(14:44):
misfortune, right? You know, andyou see this, for example, in
the book of Job where Job'sfriends, right, come to Job and
say, Hey, Job, you've sufferedall of this misfortune. You must
have done something wrong,right? It must be your fault,
right? God must be punishing youJob, right, and they say this
over and over and over again inthe book of Job, we sort of see
something very similar, right?
You know, the doctrine of karma.
(15:07):
So, in any case, I think that'san interesting observation about
human nature that I think isunlocked, right, by by sort of
thinking more broadly, you know,about about religious traditions
and the way that the ways thatthey're dealing with with the
problems of everyday life.
Chip Gruen (15:22):
And presumably the same could be said, for thinking
about Islam or indigenoustraditions or, or what have you.
Tad Robinson (15:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you know, unfortunately,I mean, indigenous traditions
are something that I thinkphilosophers have paid almost no
attention to. And I think that'sreally unfortunate, though,
understandable, it'sunderstandable. Philosophers
work with text texts, right. Anda lot of times, indigenous
traditions, you know, don't havetexts. But I think that that's a
really fascinating area,because, of course, I think, you
(15:49):
know, philosophical assumptionsare present in everything we do.
And so certainly present inindigenous ways of ways of
acting. So I think that's agreat growth area for
philosophy. And in Islam, too, Ithink Islam is too often
categorized as a, you know, aWestern religion, along with
Christianity and Judaism, youknow, kind of thereby adopting
everything, that's the sameabout it, but leaving aside
(16:12):
anything that is different,right. So I think that that's
also an area that thatphilosophers of religion in the
future will look to, in terms ofsort of looking for, you know,
interesting elements that that,that compare cross culturally.
Chip Gruen (16:27):
So you've mentioned a couple of the classic
questions, the problem of evil,the existence of God. But I know
that there's sort of a broaderarray of the types issues that
philosophers of religion areinterested in so could you go
through a few of those sort ofthe classic questions that one
might encounter when consideringthe philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson (16:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
So one question, right, has todo with say, miracles, right.
So, you know, what is a miracle?
Right? And what would it show ifthere were one, right? So lots
of people say, hey, you know, ifyou look to, you know, religious
texts, right, what grounds theirauthority, right, is the
(17:09):
existence of miracles. Well,what reason do we have to
believe that those miraclesoccurred? Right? And what would
that involve? So that's one onequestion. Another question has
to do with religious experience.
So, you know, people have, youknow, experiences that they take
to reveal a deeper level ofreality. And so, you know, one
of the things that philosophershave done is sort of, you know,
(17:31):
sort of look at some of thosecases, right, and sort of think,
well, okay, well, what was thisexperience like, right? What
does it reveal? Right? Whatcould it reveal? That is to say,
what would a religiousexperience maybe have to be
like, in order for us to knowthat it's veridical or something
like that? Right? What does thefact that people have different
kinds of religious experiencesin different places in different
(17:52):
times mean, if anything? Thatsort of touches on questions of
religious diversity, right,which is sort of broader
question about well, what doesthe fact that there are many
religions mean, if anything,right, does it show that say my
particular beliefs areunjustified because not
everybody agrees with me? Or ornot? Right? There's lots of
questions about afterlives,right, whether there are any
(18:14):
what what kind of argumentsthere are for thinking that
there might be one, if there wasone, what would it be like?
Right? So you know, how this isrelated to morality. So most of
us have the afterlife our moralviews, that is to say what you
do in the in this life isrelevant to what happens you in
the afterlife. But on the otherhand, there's a lot of
(18:36):
traditions that are less lesswell recognized, I think,
according to which there are nonmoral afterlives, that is the
everybody goes to the sameplace. What you do in life is
not relevant. You know,questions about petitionary
prayer are kind of a big topic,right? That is to say, like, you
know, in a theistic context ofthinking about, you know, God in
(18:56):
a Christian or Jewish or Muslimsort of perspective, right, you
might think, well, you know, Godknows everything. So what's the
point in my asking for it if Godknow knew before I was born,
then I would ask for it right?
And so what what it means to asksomething of God is a question.
There's lots of questions aboutreligion in science, you know,
(19:17):
whether they are really inconflict or not. And in recent
literature, there's been kind ofa question about, say, what are
called evolutionary debunkingarguments which say, hey, you
know, human beings are naturalbelievers in invisible beings,
because of the way their brainswork, for example, right? What
does that mean? Does that meanthat people's belief is thereby
(19:38):
false or unjustified? in certaincontexts? So they're, you know,
finally, just one other example.
I mean, there's questions aboutlike, do you really need
evidence to believe in religiousclaims, right, or what kind of
evidence would you need right?
You know, particularly famousexample comes from William
James, who says, hey, yeah, innormal life, you need lots of
(19:59):
evidence to explain things, andto justify your beliefs, right,
but in certain cases where it'sunfalsifiable, and it's
important, and it meets thesesituations meet these other
circumstances, hey, you canbelieve whatever you want. So
there's lots of interestingquestions there about like,
well, what what are the sort ofnorms of belief? Like, is it
okay for me to believe whateverI want? Most people will say no,
(20:22):
right? But under whatcircumstances? Does it make
sense? Or is it ethical orwhatever to, to believe
something? Right, so that's justa kind of smattering of
questions that are at work inthe philosophy religion.
Chip Gruen (20:35):
So one of the great things about philosophy is that
you always have these classicproblems, right? They get
introduced and, and get talkedabout, you know, over
generations, and talking aboutsort of religion and science,
the idea of creation and soforth reminds me one of these
classic problems, and maybe youcould tell us a little bit about
it, that you are walking along,and you're in a forest, and then
(20:59):
as you suddenly sort of stumbleupon a perfectly manicured
garden, you know, how does oneunderstand the perfectly
manicured garden?
Tad Robinson (21:07):
Right? Yeah, that's a that's a good one. And
so yeah, normally, that kind ofthought experiment, you know, is
intended to show, hey, you wouldassume, if that happened to you
that there was a designer, thatis to say that the garden was
created on purpose intentionallywith a design by, you know,
(21:30):
somebody, right? And so, youknow, we're supposed to look at
the world and see similar kindsof kinds of design, right? So
the sort of other famous exampleof this, this other version of
this argument comes fromWilliam, William Paley, right,
who gives a design argument onthis basis, he points in
particular to the eye, right,and he says, Hey, look at the
eye, isn't this an amazingmachine, right? Just like, if
(21:53):
you found a watch on the heath,you would know that it had been
designed so too you should lookat the eye, right, as designed.
And so, you know, those kinds ofarguments have sort of that
particular kind of argumentskind of fallen out of favor,
because there are alternativeexplanations for why the eye is
the way that the eye is right,namely, evolutionary ones. But
(22:13):
the sort of contemporary versionof that argument is called the
fine tuning argument. And goeskind of roughly like this, Hey,
the conditions for life in theuniverse are exceedingly
improbable. Right? So, you know,there's various ways of
developing the argument, but youknow, roughly, it kind of goes
like, hey, you know, life couldnot develop if there were not
(22:35):
planets, right, there could notbe planets, if matter didn't
stick together in just this way,matter couldn't stick together
in just this way, you know, ifyou know that the value of the
neutron was off by 5%, orsomething like this. So there
are various mathematicalphysicists who have sort of put
together some of these numbers,and you get these sort of
ridiculous numbers tounderstand. So you know, Roger
(22:57):
Penrose says something like, theodds of life existing in the
universe, given that so manythings could have been
different, is something like onein 10 to the 123rd power. And so
the idea is like, you know,that's, so that's like winning
the lottery every day for yourwhole life, right? And so the
idea is like, Hey, isn't thisamazing? Right? Shouldn't you
(23:19):
see this as a case of design?
Right? And of course, there are,there are responses to this
argument to say, those ways ofcalculating are off, or, yeah,
that's true. But there are 10 tothe 123rd universes. And so it's
not surprising at all, thatthere's one just like this. So
in any case, yeah, it's a,that's an argument that has a
long history, one that you know,comes up to contemporary,
(23:41):
contemporary philosophers.
Chip Gruen (23:43):
So, in the Institute for Religious and Cultural
Understanding, we have two sortof main parts of the mission.
One is about religion, religiousliteracy, right. And the other
is about sort of encouraging andmodeling a more sophisticated
conversation about religion inthe public sphere. And so I
(24:04):
guess my question is, you know,how does a knowledge of
philosophy of religion, aid thatgoal, like, what is it about
philosophy of religion, thatallows me to confront the world
in a better way, or to read theheadlines in a better way, or to
be able to recognize religiousdiversity in my community in a
way that is that is moresophisticated and richer and
(24:24):
fuller?
Tad Robinson (24:26):
Yeah. You know, in some ways, I I sort of think of,
you know, what philosophy ofreligion does for you is sort
of, you know, emanating from theinside out, right. So, you know,
when we engage in the philosophyof religion, we tend to do so,
from, you know, our antecedentposition, right, where are we
what do we think, right? And aswe kind of look at our
(24:49):
assumptions, and we think about,well, do I have really reasons
for that? Does that make sense,given the other things I think,
we start to realize kind of the,the contingency of a lot of the
things that we think right?
That's not to say that they'rewrong, right? It's just to say,
Hey, I ended up with a wholebunch of things that I think
about the world that I ended upwith, really, through no work of
my own right through no effortof my own. And I think when we
(25:11):
when we start to think that weput ourselves in a position to
kind of be a little moreautonomous in our beliefs, but I
think at the same time, it alsoallows us to understand other
people because they are like us,presumably, right, that is to
say presumably a lot of whatthey think they kind of ended up
with, as a result of, you know,their, who their parents were,
and where they were born and allof these things, and maybe they
(25:32):
haven't really thought about itvery much either, right. And so
there's a sense in which I thinkwe sort of start to realize how
much we're not maybe pawnsright, in this sort of larger
cultural game, right. But theextent to which really were a
lot less autonomous than maybewe think, and I think that
allows us to kind of see otherpeople in a new light. Right.
And I think it also, you know,opens the door for thinking
(25:57):
about, you know, what otherpeople think and why they think
it right. I guess the otherelement that I would say just a
little more broadly, you know,is I think you know certain
issues in the philosophyreligion, and I think the
problem of evil, broadlyconstrued as one, you know,
really put us in a position tokind of see other people as, you
(26:18):
know, navigating the world inthe same way we are right, that
is to say, kind of looking forsome sort of, you know,
cognitive and emotionallysatisfying, you know, way of
understanding what's happeningto them, and the world. Right.
And I think, you know, when wesee other people as an as
(26:40):
engaged in that task, like us,right, I think, you know, we're
in a position to kind of, Ithink, see them in a positive
light, see them as you know, ascompanions, right, in that in
that goal, right. So I thinkthat's a couple of ways at
least.
Chip Gruen (26:55):
Yeah. So I was actually doing my homework a
little bit and I went and lookedup the catalog copy for the
Philosophy of Religion here atMuhlenberg.
Tad Robinson (27:03):
Yeah.
Chip Gruen (27:03):
And one sentence sort of stuck out to me and, and
I want to read it to you, itsays, "One of the goals of the
course is to explore thepossibilities of intellectually
responsible religious commitmentin the contemporary world." And
I want to kind of play devil'sadvocate for a minute...
Tad Robinson (27:20):
Sure.
Chip Gruen (27:21):
...and, and ask if the presupposition is that sort
of religion should beintellectually responsible, I
mean, of course, right now inthe world, we see all kinds of
very emotive and almost not evenalmost anti intellectual,
religious positions out there.
How do you deal with that? Andproudly anti intellectual, at
that, right? That God's wisdomis not the same as human
(27:45):
knowledge? Right, that there's adisconnect there. And to be
upside down to this world is tobe right side up with the other
world, we, we see that thatstrand. So how do we, how does
the philosophy of religion dealwith that sort of anti
intellectualism and, you know,the idea that religious
commitments may not beresponsible to same set of
assumptions or presuppositionsabout what the what the good is
(28:07):
in the world?
Tad Robinson (28:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question.
And I guess I sort of two thingsoccur to me one is sort of a
bigger picture answer. And Ithink, and the second is more
specifically, will morespecifically address your your
question, but sort of broadlyspeaking, I mean, one of the
things that I think thephilosophy of religion gets tied
up with in people's mindssometimes, are these sort of
(28:30):
wider kind of culture warissues, you know, as if, you
know, what we should be doing inphilosophy of religion is sort
of taking a position in theseculture wars. Right. So, you
know, atheism versus Christianfundamentalism. Right. And I,
you know, I guess, I think thatthose questions are not
particularly philosophical,right. And so I think it's a
(28:52):
sort of a shame that sometimesfalse religion gets gets tied
up, you know, in those, youknow, wider questions that, you
know, at least here in theUnited States, so I don't sort
of see philosophy of religion asdoing that. And in fact, I would
want to actively distancephilosophy of religion from from
those sort of culture wars. Morespecifically, to your question,
(29:12):
though, about, you know, how doyou deal with somebody who's,
you know, really approaches antiintellectual, you know, and I
think, you know, on the onehand, you know, if somebody if
a, if a student or somebody elseis just utterly unwilling to
consider reason in any way,right, you know, obviously, you
know, philosophy is not theplace for them, but maybe
(29:34):
college right, or inquiry is notthe place for them. So, I mean,
I want to start from a placewhere, like, hey, people are
sort of interested in havingreasons for at least some of
what they think, right? And ifthat's our starting position, I
think you can kind of walksomebody in to thinking hey, you
know, we can we can talk aboutphilosophical questions in the
philosophy of religion. So, forexample, right, somebody says,
like, hey, you know, God hastotally ineffable right, that is
(29:57):
to say, there's just nothingthat we can know about. God
right? You know, that's aknowledge claim, right? How do
you know that? Right? You know,I think that's a place to start,
right? So this person is makinga claim about how they can know
about God, right. So we can askabout how they know that. And
even though they may not bewilling to sort of be, or they
(30:17):
may not be interested inexploring detailed questions
about the nature of, of the Godthat they believe in, right,
there's at least questionsaround the periphery, right?
Moreover, to the extent that youcan get them to answer questions
about, you know, how they knowGod is ineffable, right, you can
extract some standards ofknowledge, some epistemic
standards, and sort of applythem more broadly and see if
(30:38):
they're consistent. So, I mean,that's, that's that's one way. I
mean, the the second similarkind of way is right, somebody
who says like, Hey, this is alla matter of faith. Right? Right?
No reason is involved. Right?
Again, you can play a similarsort of game where you say,
well, you think reason isinvolved sometimes in some
things you do, right, if you'rea juror in a case, right, you
think that it would, you know,it's your job, for example, to
(31:01):
to sort of look at the evidenceand judge accordingly. Right?
And of course, they'll say yes,but that's a sort of starting
point to say, Okay, well, soreason is really important in
that case, but it's notimportant in this case. Why,
right? And I think, you know, tothe extent that they have or
don't have an answer to that,right, that's a that's a doorway
into thinking about, well, howdoes reason apply? When does it
(31:23):
apply? When doesn't it, applyit? And as far as I'm concerned,
those are great philosophicalquestions. So so that that those
are a couple strategies.
Chip Gruen (31:32):
So one of the fun things about our job, you know,
teaching 18 to 22 year olds,right is exposing them to things
they hadn't thought aboutbefore, or at least helping them
to think about things in maybe adifferent way. And I'm sure that
in your in your time, you know,you could you could come up with
(31:52):
with a million stories of theways that students have
surprised you, or things havecome have come up that were
unexpected. And I'm justwondering, you know, for this
student in the, you know, early21st century, you know, what are
some of the things that thatsort of come up now that you,
you know, you think areparticularly interesting or
particularly telling, you know,in teaching the the philosophy
(32:15):
of religion?
Tad Robinson (32:15):
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that,
you know, I've been a littlesurprised about, and I think, in
a good way, you know, in recentversions of the course, is sort
of students' openness tothinking about, you know,
different perspectives. I mean,that's not something that, I
(32:37):
think is always the case. Youknow, I think, in teaching this
course, in particular, which ismaybe a little surprising. But
to give you a little moredetail. I mean, I think the last
couple of, last couple timesI've taught this class, there
were students who kind of cameinto the course, sort of coming
at it from a pretty naturalist,maybe atheistic, maybe agnostic
(32:59):
kind of perspective. And, and Ithink, who ended up being really
interested in the course in away that they weren't expecting,
because, you know, the coursedoes sort of attempt to capture
that perspective, right? BecauseI think, just to give a couple
of examples. I mean, I think,you know, asking, Hey, well,
(33:20):
what gives life meaning if thisis your perspective, right?
Where do values come from ifthis is your perspective? How do
we understand the misfortunesthat occur from this
perspective? And do the answersto those questions from a
naturalist perspective, youknow, fit with other things that
we value or think, and how dothey compare with say,
(33:43):
traditional, certain kinds oftraditional religious answers? I
think students ended up beingvery interested in in those
kinds of questions in a way thatthey didn't expect. And to be
frank, I didn't expect to sortof follow along. So that was
really encouraging, and really,really fun. And we had a lot of
a lot of fun conversations lastcouple versions of this class.
Chip Gruen (34:02):
Alright, so one of the things that we try to do on
ReligionWise is ask the sort ofso what question right, that we
have a constituency, you know,generally educated, interested
in religion, interested inunderstanding, you know,
religious belief and practicethat's around them in the world.
And so we'll just end up on thisquestion. How does this matter
(34:23):
to them? Right, so what? If I'mlistening to this podcast how
does a knowledge of philosophyof religion or how does sort of
a, an understanding of the waythe field works helped me to
navigate my world, sort ofcivically engaged way?
Tad Robinson (34:40):
The first thing I would say in terms of, you know,
so what, why would you care?
What what does this do for youkind of, kind of question is to
say, you know, I think itenriches your life. I mean, you
know I think that you know, whenwe engage in philosophy and when
we engage in these kinds ofinquiries, and we we read about,
you know, people who disagreewith us, right, it sort of
(35:03):
broadens our, our minds. And Ithink it allows us to see the
world, you know, from a newperspective, right? I mean, just
to give a sort of silly example,I mean, learning the names of
trees, so the kinds of trees,allows you when you're walking
through, you know, down thesidewalk, to say, Oh, look at
there's an oak, right, there's amaple, there's a sycamore,
(35:25):
right. And in some ways, you'rehaving the exact same
experience, you would have ofwalking down the sidewalk
looking at trees, but there'ssort of a component like, now
you can appreciate what you seeon a level that you couldn't.
And again, I don't want tosuggest that knowing it's a
sycamore tree somehowfundamentally changes your life
or something. But I do thinkthat that's a sort of example of
a tiny way in which your sort ofintellectual life can be
(35:47):
enriched by just learning a fewfacts about the world. I think
philosophy of religion is sortof no different, right? To the
extent that you're able, in yourconversations with other people,
or in your reading, right, toidentify the assumptions that
they're kind of making and seethat oh, that's, you know,
that's part of this tradition ofresponding to the problem of
evil that kind of goes back toJob. Oh, that's really
(36:08):
interesting. I think that thatenriches your experience, and I
think puts you in a position tokind of, you know, think about
your own experience in ways thatmay be intellectually and
emotionally satisfying for you,right? So that's, that's sort of
the the big takeaway, and I kindof, you know, I might stop there
and say, Hey, is that is thatnot good enough? You know, for
you, right. But I guess theother thing that I think is
(36:31):
that, you know, philosophy, andphilosophy of religion, in
particular, is sort of best donewith other people, I think, you
know, you know, some people aresort of really good at sitting
down and thinking about thingsby themselves, and they find
that really enriching. But Ithink, for a lot of people, it's
sort of being able to sit downand kind of have a conversation
and ask, Hey, why do you thinkthat right? You know, I wouldn't
(36:51):
have thought that this is theway I would have thought, and
they can ask you what, why wouldyou have thought that right?
Sitting down and just sort ofbeing in a position to have that
kind of conversation at a deeplevel with other people being
comfortable with talking at thatdeep level, I think, you know,
creates an opportunity, not forjust for sort of interesting
conversations with people, butalso for really productive ones.
(37:12):
Right. And I mean, I want to,you know, you can't have those
conversations with everybody allthe time right. But I think
having a capacity to have themwith the right person at the
right time. You know, again, itcan be really transformative
kind of experience for certainpeople in certain kinds of
cases. So, you know, I thinkthat's the those are a couple of
sort of takeaways.
Chip Gruen (37:32):
Ted, I again, want to thank you for taking the time
to sit down and have thisconversation. As we said, going
in my philosophy of religiondays are a long time ago back in
undergrad, my undergraduatecareer. So it's really great to
think about these, these issuesagain with you today and see how
they can enhance ourunderstanding of religion and
(37:55):
religious diversity in thecontemporary world. So thanks
again.
Tad Robinson (37:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me on Chip.
Chip Gruen (38:02):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. For moreinformation and additional
programming, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com. There,you'll find our contact
information, links to otherprogramming, and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. ReligionWise
(38:25):
is produced by the staff of theInstitute for Religious and
Cultural Understanding ofMuhlenberg College, including
Christine Flicker, and CarrieDuncan. Please subscribe to
ReligionWise wherever you getyour podcasts. We look forward
to seeing you next time.
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