Folks,
Apologies to acb-l and acg-l members on ASA list who receive this
twice. IngeFrette responded with a message that she intended to post to
ASA so with her permission I am forwarding it to the list. I think she
is right that Plantinga and few others are part of the story why ACP has
a solid academic reputation but I there are some others that would make
it harder for the empirical sciences to follow in their steps.
1. Philosophy as a discipline has deity as part of its academic study so
a Christian can talk about God as academician. It may help that
Plantinga and other thin their Christianity must affect all disciplines
(Reformed background too).
2. Even folks like Plantinga would likely not have had an impact if it
were not that a Post modern area opens itself to listening to other than
the accepted view points. Perhaps because of the nature humanities can
be more open to even wacky ideas (?postmodern literature at Duke?). On
the other hand eperical scientists tend to be the least postmodern of
the academia because in a sense their science requires a more ordered
world and perhaps they are less open to now radical paradigms.
3. And then it is not clear in my mind that Christian organizations have
to mirror the secular established ones in their goals. A large function
of many of the academic societies is to publish (papers) and share
academic papers. For a number of reasons it will be hard for acb or acg
to take over that function.
4. Related maybe a function of fellowship is not bad. I know it easy
really good to see that there were so many christian geologists and to
identify with them. If many of us are in smaller colleges or in
industry (in the case or acg) maybe we can facilitate professional
development targeted differently than the big University.
If you have any specific ideas on how we can have more of an impact as
christian geologists or biologist or even ASA member feel free to share
them back with the group. Both ACB and ACG have been a bit quiet lately
and maybe we could get some ideas for our own groups. ASA is as usual
rather active, but maybe we can focus on the smaller groups - but of
course a change in topics never hurt the ASA list either.
-- James and Florence Mahaffy 712 722-0381 (Home) 227 S. Main St. 712 722-6279 (Office) Sioux Center, IA 51250 --------------F6163A8F19B75A652BF5FEB4 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inlineReceived: from mail.rogaland.eltele.no by mtc1.mtcnet.net id aa00780; 31 May 1999 8:58 CST X-Internal-ID: 374B0CCE00001889 Received: from gpc-21 (195.70.160.94) by mail.rogaland.eltele.no (NPlex 2.0.123) for mahaffy@mtcnet.net; Mon, 31 May 1999 15:57:12 +0200 Message-ID: <374B0CCE00001889@mail.rogaland.eltele.no> (added by postmaster@mail.rogaland.eltele.no) X-Sender: inge.frette%geologica.no@195.70.161.65 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 15:58:24 +0200 To: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@mtcnet.net> From: Inge Frette <inge.frette@geologica.no> Subject: Re: Feedback on what makes SCP good. In-Reply-To: <3751A9F4.E024E66E@mtcnet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hello James,
some points on why SCP (society of christian philosophers) is having an impact in the philosphical world. I am an ASA member with strong interest in contemporary analytic philosphy - thinking about joining SCP.
1) SCP (founded in 1978) started a journal in 1984 called Faith and philosphy. This has turned out to be one of the best academic journals in philosophy of religion.
2) Several of the members - including some of the past presidents of SCP (can't remember who is president now) are some of the most respected philosophers in their fields. Alvin Plantinga and William Alston are just two names to be mentioned here. Very well known christian philosophers have made important contributions to many of the important diciplines in philosophy. Metaphysics - Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen Philosophy of science - Ernan McMullin, Bas van Fraasen Epistemology - Alvin Plantinga, Robert Audi, William Alston Philosophy of religion - Richard Swinburne, Keith Yandell, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Plantinga to mention a few (I am not sure whether all of those mentioned are members of SCP ) Thus because of the credentials of the members of SCP, SCP can't be ignored.
3) I think it is more easy to have an impact in a traditional academic dicipline - like philosophy - than in an interdiciplinary field like science/theology-dialouge- which as an academic study is rather new - at least compared to philosophy. The community of scientists and/or theologians who work in this field are already interested in it. It may be hard to reach out to either scientists as scientist and theologians as theologians to get them interested. We have got some centers - like the one in Berkeley. And there is published a lot of books nowadays, so things may change in the future.
4) I would guess that most christian philosphers in USA are members of SCP and that they have studied the paper from Alvin Plantinga's inaugural lecture at the Univertisy of Notre Dame in 1983 called "Some advice to christian philosophers". I have read it myself and would find it hard if someone could read this without being strongly encouraged to work as a philosopher from a distinctively christian point of view.
5) It is probably more easy to work with "christian" philosophy and get papers published in good journals, than it is to do "christian" physics or biology and publish results in good journals in physics or biology. I am not sure what "christian" physics or biology would actually be.
I think christian philosophers are very concious about their beliefs in their work, and that they want to work out implications of these in their work. Philosophy is also a dicipline where this is more easy than in others. At my department - Department of physics at the University of Oslo - there are many christian professors. Surprisingly many, and this department is also very big. But the science/theology issues where dead issues at that department.
Regards from Inge
At 16:13 30.05.99 -0500, you wrote: >Folks, > >I am not a philosopher but a biologists (with an interest in >perspectives), who teaches at Dordt College, a college with a strong >emphasis in philosophy. > >The reason for my posting is to ask for feedback on how either the ASA >or Christian biologist organizations (and or lists) could have more of >an impact on the academic world. > >I have an impression that SCP has a real impact on academia. I am not >sure why. It may be in part because of some individuals active in it, >but I suspect there is more to it. Is there anything that the Christian >biologists or ASA could learn from you. Do any of you have an idea of >why the impact of this Christian discipline group is greater than some >others. I know the ASA is concerned about this and it is on the agenda >of their annual meetings. I also sponsor the list of the Affiliation of >Christian Biologists so will cc this on to the lists of both groups. In >looking at your archives at calvin, even your list seems to be a bit >more like the good professional lists (paleonet or mammal-l are two in >my area that come to mind - but I am sure there are lots more). I do >not want to cause digression in the list so you are welcome to reply >privately to me and I will summarize it to the lists if you have some >good suggestions. I probably will not join scp but will read the >archives if you respond to the list. > >While an important focus of Christian affiliations is to support members >it would be nice if they had an impact similiar to that of "secular" >oranizations. > >I do have a bunch of ideas ranging from the empiricism of the sciences >to stuck on origins debates that might be part of it but I don't want to >prejudice your responses. >-- >James and Florence Mahaffy 712 722-0381 (Home) >227 S. Main St. 712 722-6279 (Office) >Sioux Center, IA 51250 > ************************************************************************ Inge Frette GEOLOGICA AS Phone : +47 51 87 54 50 P.O.Box 8034 Fax : +47 51 87 52 87 N-4003 STAVANGER E-mail: inge.frette@geologica.no NORWAY Web : http://www.geologica.no ************************************************************************
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