What is scientism?
According to Duke University Philosophy Professor Alex Rosenberg, scientism is the worldview that all atheists share. It “is the conviction that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything, that . . . science provides all the significant truths about reality. . . . Being scientific just means treating…
What are the dangers of postmodernism?
Simply put, postmodernism is a philosophy that affirms no objective or absolute truth, especially in matters of religion and spirituality. When confronted with a truth claim regarding the reality of God and religious practice, postmodernism’s viewpoint is exemplified in the statement “that may be true for you, but not for me.” While such a response…
What are coherentism, contextualism, and foundationalism?
Coherentism (or contextualism) and foundationalism are opposing approaches to determining if a certain belief is warranted. In general philosophy, this analysis is referred to as justification, which is entirely separate from the biblical concept of justification as related to salvation. Philosophical justification deals with whether a person has an acceptable confidence in some belief. Foundationalism…
What is Romanticism?
Romanticism was a cultural movement of the late-18th to mid-19th centuries, with influences in music lasting until the early 20th century. Romanticism emphasized the concepts of emotion, originality, and nature against reason and technological advancement. This anti-intellectual trend was a reaction to the Enlightenment and ultra-rationalist attitudes of the prior century. The terms Romanticism and…
What is positivism?
Positivism is a term for a specific philosophical claim: that we can only be sure of those things directly perceived by the senses. Under this restriction, only purely empirical categories such as science can be considered to offer truth. According to the positivist, all other categories, such as religion, are by definition impossible to actually…
What impact did John Locke have on the Christian faith?
John Locke (1632—1704) was a British philosopher, academic, and medical researcher. His best-known and most influential philosophical works include An Essay Concerning Toleration (1667), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), and The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695). In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke examines the limits of reason, how we…
What is a freethinker?
A freethinker is a person who claims to form opinions on the basis of reason, apart from tradition, authority, or established beliefs. Usually, freethinking is associated with those who are skeptical of religion. Freethinkers are naturalistic and do not base morality on a standard set by a higher being. Free thought rejects traditional social or…
What is the No True Scotsman fallacy?
No True Scotsman (NTS) is a logical error committed when someone tries to change the definition of a word in order to ignore a valid counter-example. The name of this fallacy comes from the cliché most often used to illustrate the mistake. In this story, a man says, “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”…
How should a Christian respond to the ship of Theseus?
The 2012 film Ship of Theseus, written and directed by Anand Gandhi, presents the ancient thought experiment of whether an object with all of its parts replaced is still the object. The philosophical conundrum was also brought up in Episode 9 of WandaVision in 2021. The ship of Theseus paradox was first posed by two…
What is epistemology?
Epistemology deals with the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. It addresses the questions, “What is knowledge?” “How is knowledge acquired?” “What do people know?” “How do we know what we know?” “Why do we know what we know?” Epistemology is typically divided into two categories. The first, propositional knowledge,…