These musings have been prompted by an intriguing discussion on feminist philosophers on what to do when you are handed a religious tract. Participants in this discussion asked, amongst other things, if it is the case that religious believers face prejudice from the overwhelmingly secular philosophical community [Note: I'm restricting my discussion to Christian religious beliefs because I'm not sufficiently familiar with attitudes on other religious beliefs in philosophy].
The PhilPaper survey indicates that the majority of philosophers are either atheists (72.8%) or agnostic/undecided (12.5%). It is a particularly interesting result, because on most other philosophical topics there is less agreement (the exceptions are that philosophers seem to be overwhelmingly non-skeptical realists and scientific realists). There is also discussion on whether philosophy of religion, especially from a theistic perspective would be worthy of academic attention. However, at the same time, Plantinga remarked in a recent interview with the New York times "There are vastly more Christian philosophers and vastly more visible or assertive Christian philosophy now than when I left graduate school". In the most recent issue of Faith & Philosophy he even cautions young Christian philosophers that "a danger we now face, perhaps, is triumphalism...it is now possible for Christian philosophers to work together and publish on topics that would have been beyond the pale forty years ago; there are an increasing number of Christian philosophers at American universities" (p. 268).
The PhilPaper survey also indicates that there are more theists among postdocs and graduate students than there are among tenured faculty, and even more among undergraduate students (20.2% responded theism versus only 14.6% of faculty), indicating a possible rising trend. The SCP is an international organization of respectable size that hosts several conferences each year. Papers in Christian philosophy are published in good, general philosophy journals like Noûs and Phil Review. Over the past three years, new takes on old topics like the ontological and the cosmological arguments have been published in general philosophy journals. There are new directions and research questions, e.g., the divine hiddenness problem, animal suffering, and the implications of cognitive science of religion for theism. In Oxford, I gave a talk last month at the Joseph Butler Society, a society engaged in Christian philosophy. It has members in faculty, postdocs as well as graduate students. The older and recently retired professors reminiscence about the time when they were students, when doing philosophy of religion was considered a waste of time. So I think that Plantinga is correct in saying that philosophy of religion is in a better shape now than it was say, in the mid 20th century. Views in epistemology as well as philosophy of science seem to leave more room for theist-friendly interpretations (e.g., basic knowledge views versus evidentialism; the decline of positivism). Nevertheless, skepticism towards philosophy of religion, and religious believers who are philosophers, remains. Again Plantinga, in the same paper in Faith & Philosophy goes on in a more sobering tone, "But of course the truth is the contemporary philosophical world, like that of western academia generally, is for the most part hostile or indifferent to the concerns of Christian and theistic philosophers".
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