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319Beauty as Evidence of Intelligent DesignIn God's Grandeur, Sophia Institute Press. pp. 199-216. 2023.
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300Newman and Quasi‐Fideism : A Reply to Duncan PritchardHeythrop Journal 64 (5): 695-706. 2023.In recent years, Duncan Pritchard has developed a position in religious epistemology called quasi‐fideism that he claims traces back to John Henry Newman's treatment of the rationality of religious belief. In this paper, we give three reasons to think that Pritchard's reading of Newman as a quasi‐fideist is mistaken. First, Newman's parity argument does not claim that religious and non‐religious beliefs are on a par because both are groundless; instead, for Newman, they are on a par because both…Read more
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208Newman the FallibilistAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 97 (1): 29-47. 2023.The role of certitude in our mental lives is, to put it mildly, controversial. Many current epistemologists (including epistemologists of religion) eschew certitude altogether. Given his emphasis on certitude, some have maintained that John Henry Newman was an infallibilist about knowledge. In this paper, we argue that a careful examination of his thought (especially as seen in the Grammar of Assent) reveals that he was an epistemic fallibilist. We first clarify what we mean by fallibilism and i…Read more
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90PC: Response to CriticsIn John M. DePoe & Tyler Dalton McNabb (eds.), Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 98-106. 2020.In this chapter, Gage and McAllister respond to various objections to the phenomenal conservative position in religious epistemology. In particular, they respond to the objections that seemings are the ultimate source of justification, that PC makes epistemic justification too easy, that PC involves conceptual circularity, and that PC lacks an objective connection to truth.
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81A Phenomenal Conservatist Response to Tradition-Based PerspectivalismIn John M. DePoe & Tyler Dalton McNabb (eds.), Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 213-216. 2020.We critique MacIntyre's traditions-based perspectivalist approach to religious epistemology as articulated by Erik Baldwin from the perspective of phenomenal conservatism.
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116A Phenomenal Conservatist Response to Covenantal EpistemologyIn John M. DePoe & Tyler Dalton McNabb (eds.), Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 170-174. 2020.We criticize the approach of covenantal epistemology to religious epistemology as articulated by Scott Oliphint from the perspective of phenomenal conservatism.
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77A Phenomenal Conservatist Response to Proper FunctionalismIn John M. DePoe & Tyler Dalton McNabb (eds.), Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 128-132. 2020.We criticize the proper functionalist approach to religious epistemology as articulated by Tyler McNabb from the perspective of phenomenal conservatism.
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66A Phenomenal Conservative Response to Classical EvidentialismIn John M. DePoe & Tyler Dalton McNabb (eds.), Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 34-38. 2020.We criticize the classical evidentialist approach to religious epistemology as articulated by John DePoe from the perspective of phenomenal conservatism.
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166On the Epistemic Role of Our Passional NatureNewman Studies Journal 17 (2): 41-58. 2020.In this article, we argue that John Henry Newman was right to think that our passional nature can play a legitimate epistemic role. First, we unpack the standard objection to Newman’s understanding of the relationship between our passional nature and the evidential basis of faith. Second, we argue that the standard objection to Newman operates with a narrow definition of evidence. After challenging this notion, we then offer a broader and more humane understanding of evidence. Third, we survey r…Read more
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130Phenomenal Conservatism and the Subject’s Perspective ObjectionActa Analytica 31 (1): 43-58. 2016.For some years now, Michael Bergmann has urged a dilemma against internalist theories of epistemic justification. For reasons I explain below, some epistemologists have thought that Michael Huemer’s principle of Phenomenal Conservatism can split the horns of Bergmann’s dilemma. Bergmann has recently argued, however, that PC must inevitably, like all other internalist views, fall prey to his dilemma. In this paper, I explain the nature of Bergmann’s dilemma and his reasons for thinking that PC ca…Read more
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59Robert B. Stewart: Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue (review)Journal of Lutheran Ethics 8 (10). 2008.A review of Robert. B. Stewart's edited volume concerning a discussion between William Dembski and Michael Ruse. Further contributions are included from William Lane Craig and others.
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70John Polkinghorne: Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (review)Religious Studies Review 40 (3): 137. 2014.A brief review of John Polkinghorne's 2011 book Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (Yale University Press).
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241A Saint for Our Times: Newman on Faith, Fallibility, and CertitudeLogos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 23 (2): 60-76. 2020.This essay shows how John Henry Newman reconciled the certitude of faith with a fallibilist epistemology. While Newman holds that many of our beliefs are held with certitude, he does not conceive of all certitude as Cartesian, apodictic certitude. In this way, he walks a middle road between rationalism and fideism.
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249The Phenomenal Conservative Approach to Religious EpistemologyIn John M. DePoe & Tyler Dalton McNabb (eds.), Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 61-81. 2020.In this chapter, we argue for a phenomenal conservative perspective on religious epistemology and attempt to answer some common criticisms of this perspective.
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567Newman’s Argument from Conscience: Why He Needs Paley and Natural Theology After AllAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 94 (1): 141-157. 2020.Recent authors, emphasizing Newman’s distaste for natural theology—especially William Paley’s design argument—have urged us to follow Newman’s lead and reject design arguments. But I argue that Newman’s own argument for God’s existence (his argument from conscience) fails without a supplementary design argument or similar reason to think our faculties are truth-oriented. In other words, Newman appears to need the kind of argument he explicitly rejects. Finding Newman’s rejection of natural th…Read more
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733Is the God Hypothesis Improbable? A Response to DawkinsIn Kevin Vallier & Joshua Rasmussen (eds.), A New Theist Response to the New Atheists, Routledge. pp. 59-76. 2020.In this chapter, Logan Paul Gage examines the only real attempt to disprove God’s existence by a New Atheist: Richard Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit.” Central to Dawkins’s argument is the claim that God is more complex than what he is invoked to explain. Gage evaluates this claim using the main extant notions of simplicity in the literature. Gage concludes that on no reading does this claim survive scrutiny. Along the way, Dawkins claims that there are no good positive arguments for God’s existe…Read more
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182Edward Feser: Five Proofs of the Existence of God (review)Philosophia Christi 21 (1): 228-232. 2019.A review of Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God.
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134Kenneth J. Collins and Jerry L. Walls. Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation (review)Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 732-736. 2019.ㅤ.
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193A Pastor’s Kid Finds the Catholic ChurchIn Brian Besong & Jonathan Fuqua (eds.), Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism, Ignatius Press. pp. 151-174. 2019.In this essay, I describe my journey to Catholicism and explain one of the many reasons I became Catholic--namely, an argument from the canon of Scripture.
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134Can Experience Fulfill the Many Roles of Evidence?Quaestiones Disputatae 8 (2): 87-111. 2018.It is still a live question in epistemology and philosophy of science as to what exactly evidence is. In my view, evidence consists in experiences called “seemings.” This view is a version of the phenomenal conception of evidence, the position that evidence consists in nonfactive mental states with propositional content. This conception is opposed by sense-data theorists, disjunctivists, and those who think evidence consists in physical objects or publicly observable states of affairs—call it…Read more
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51Editor’s IntroductionQuaestiones Disputatae 8 (2): 3-4. 2018.A brief introduction to a diverse and interesting group of papers in contemporary epistemology.
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104Rudolf CarnapIn Copan Paul, Tremper Longman I. I. I., Reese Christopher L. & Strauss Michael G. (eds.), Dictionary of Christianity and Science: The Definitive Reference for the Intersection of Christian Faith and Contemporary Science, Zondervan Academic. pp. 79-80. 2017.A brief introduction to the life and key work of Rudolf Carnap with special attention to his work on inductive logic.
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117William PaleyIn Copan Paul, Tremper Longman I. I. I., Reese Christopher L. & Strauss Michael G. (eds.), Dictionary of Christianity and Science: The Definitive Reference for the Intersection of Christian Faith and Contemporary Science, Zondervan Academic. pp. 500. 2017.A brief introduction to the life and work of William Paley, including a discussion of the structure of his famous design argument.
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92Michael Augros: Who Designed the Designer? A Rediscovered Path to God’s Existence (review)Philosophia Christi 19 (1): 238-241. 2017.
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552St. Thomas Aquinas on Intelligent DesignProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 85 79-97. 2011.Recently, the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has challenged the claim of many in the scientific establishment that nature gives no empirical signs of having been deliberately designed. In particular, ID arguments in biology dispute the notion that neo-Darwinian evolution is the only viable scientific explanation of the origin of biological novelty, arguing that there are telltale signs of the activity of intelligence which can be recognized and studied empirically. In recent years, a number of…Read more
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148Against Contextualism: Belief, Evidence, & the Bank CasesPrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 17 (1): 57-70. 2013.Contextualism (the view that ‘knowledge’ and its variants are context-sensitive) has been supported in large part through appeal to intuitions about Keith DeRose’s Bank Cases. Recently, however, the contextualist construal of these cases has come under fire from Kent Bach and Jennifer Nagel who question whether the Bank Case subject’s confidence can remain constant in both low- and high-stakes cases. Having explained the Bank Cases and this challenge to them, I argue that DeRose has given a reas…Read more
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134Alvin Plantinga: Where the conflict really lies: science, religion, and naturalism: Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2011, 359 pp. $27.95 (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 72 (1): 53-57. 2012.
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59Jerry Root: C.S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil (review)Theological Book Review 23 (2): 80-81. 2011.A review of Jerry Root's book C.S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil.
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90Darwin Knows Best: Can Evolution Support the Classical Liberal Vision of the Family?In Stephen Dilley (ed.), Darwinian Evolution and Classical Liberalism: Theories in Tension, Lexington Books. pp. 135-156. 2013.In a time when conservatives believe that the traditional family is under increasing fire, some think an appeal to Darwinian science may be the answer. I argue that these conservatives are wrong to maintain that Darwinian theory can serve as the intellectual foundation for the traditional conception of the family. Contra Larry Arnhart and James Q. Wilson, a Darwinian philosophy of nature simply lacks the stability the traditional family requires; it cannot support the traditional conception of h…Read more
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