Timothy Chambers, "Reasonable Atheism a Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief" by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

Timothy Chambers, "Reasonable Atheism a Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief" by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

 https://www.scribd.com/doc/212590443/Timothy-Chambers-Reasonable-Atheism-a-Moral-Case-for-Respectful-Disbelief-by-Scott-F-Aikin-and-Robert-B-Talisse

Review of God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer 
by 

Bart D. Ehrman

Aug 04, 2013

it was amazing

How does the Judeo-Christian Bible explain God's permission of innocent human suffering? Bart Ehrman devotes this book to two main tasks: (1) Locate and canvass answers to the question of God and human suffering and (2) Explain why Professor Ehrman finds (most of) these answers unsatisfying.

1) One interesting thing about the Judeo-Christian Bible is that, rather than give one answer to the reason for human suffering, it gives many answers. Perhaps the suffering is because the sufferer (or his community) was disobedient to God (Deuteronomy 28, Job's "friends"). Or maybe the sufferer is morally innocent, but God intends to make use of their season of suffering to clinch some Greater Good (Joseph's remark to his brothers: "Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive" (Genesis 50:20)). Or maybe the suffering isn't (contrary to what the Scriptures say elsewhere) dispensed by God, but by supernatural evildoers--Satan and the demons. And God intends, at some later Judgment Day, to intervene and banish these evildoers from the world (Daniel 12, Revelation). Or maybe it's sinful to even ask the question (Job), or at least it's impossible for us to understand what the answer would be (Ecclesiastes). (Ehrman, by the way, approves of Ecclesiastes' honest agnositicism.)

Ehrman points out a very intriguing thing: Many Christians, when asked about the problem of innocent suffering, answer with some version of, "Well, God can't prevent all evildoing if he wants to respect human Free Will." And yet, this is one answer we do not find in the Scriptures. But that's a bit puzzling: If, as conservative Christians maintain, the Bible is Divinely authored and the source of all truth, and the Free Will Response is the true explanation of innocent suffering, then why didn't God place the "Free Will"-answer more prominently in the Scriptures?)

2) As can be guessed, Ehrman is dissatisfied with all of the Biblical explanations of God's permission of innocent suffering. Ehrman's arguments aren't entirely novel. Antony Flew once argued:

"[We're told that] God loves us as a father loves his children....But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of concern."

Ehrman's arguments are similar in spirit: judged by ordinary moral standards, God comes off as lackadaisical at best, and monstrous at worst. A religious person might reply that Ehrman's mistake is trying to judge God by ordinary moral standards. Okay; though, if we reject this premise, we're then left to wonder, "If God isn't to be judged harshly by ordinary moral standards, then how can we praise Him as 'good' in any ordinary sense of the word?" (We can't very well have it both ways: if we don't know enough to condemn God as an accomplice to evil, how can we know enough to know that God is an accomplice of goodness?)

Ehrman's book is an informative and thought-provoking one. As always happens with philosophical perplexity, Ehrman's book won't provide the Last Word for some people--but I think it's beyond dispute that his book is a worthwhile First Word on the issue.

Escape from Loneliness by Paul Tournier

Escape from Loneliness
by 

Paul Tournier

Tim's review

Mar 15, 2013

A really rewarding book to read...it outlines various
flawed ways peeps try to escape loneliness ('losing
oneself' in a job, trying to 'possess' pleasure-sources,
getting all legalistic about what "I got a *right* to
have", etc.)...Tournier claims that only in a "fellowship"
of some sort is there any hope of escaping the loneliness
that so many try to escape. Thought-provoking...

Timothy Chambers, Review Of "Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction," by Michael B. Wilkinson and Hugh N. Campbell

"Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction," by Michael B. Wilkinson and Hugn N. Campbell [Book Review]

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy 35 (3):305-308 (2012)

https://www.scribd.com/document/109614303/Timothy-Chambers-Review-Of-Philosophy-of-Religion-An-Introduction-by-Michael-B-Wilkinson-and-Hugh-N-Campbell

Timothy Chambers, Review of "The Little Philosophy Book," by Robert Solomon

Review of "The Little Philosophy Book," by Robert Solomon

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy 32 (3):315-321 (2009)

 https://www.scribd.com/document/19683125/Timothy-Chambers-Review-of-The-Little-Philosophy-Book-by-Robert-Solomon

Review of Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race by George Yancy (Goodreads Author)

Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race 
by 

George Yancy (Goodreads Author)

We average Americans’, observed Eric Holder in February 2009, ‘simply do not talk enough with each other about race.’ The Attorney General’s diagnosis of this deficit was a national failure of nerve: ‘We always have been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.’ Seeking to overcome such cowardice in his new book Black Bodies, White 
Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race, George Yancy’s tools are as varied as his subject: phenomenology and existentialism, literature and current events, calm analysis and charged classroom illustrations. The result is a blueprint of racism’s mechanisms that 
Cornel West has pronounced ‘the most philosophically sophisticated treatment we have of the most visceral issue in America and modernity.’ Bringing together the insights of numerous thinkers – Douglass and DuBois, Husserl and Sartre, Toni Morrison and Frantz Fanon 
– Yancy attempts to unpack, in turn, the white gaze and how it denigrates the black body; how this denigration threatens to violate its victims’ subjectivities, and how such violations can be resisted; and, finally, how whites evade responsibility for the wreckage their 
gaze still wreaks, but can yet recognize, and resist, its ‘ambushes’.

This is part of a review which was published in "Radical Philosophy" vol 156 (July/August 2009): pages 56-59. pdf files can be found at 
https://www.scribd.com/doc/93514995/Timothy-Chambers-The-Elevator-Effect-Review-of-Black-Bodies-White-Gazes-The-Continuing-Significance-of-Race-by-George-Yancy

and
  https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/reviews/156-reviews