This episode of ReligionWise features a conversation with Thaddeus “Tad” Robinson, Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College.
In this conversation, we discuss the field philosophy of religion. Among other topics, Dr. Robinson details some of the classic questions addressed in philosophy of religion and the place of this sub-field in the larger field of philosophy. Finally, we explore how considering the philosophy of religion might lead to a more nuanced, sophisticated conversation about religion in our world.
This episode of ReligionWise features a conversation with Thaddeus “Tad” Robinson, Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College.
In this conversation, we discuss the field philosophy of religion. Among other topics, Dr. Robinson details some of the classic questions addressed in philosophy of religion and the place of this sub-field in the larger field of philosophy. Finally, we explore how considering the philosophy of religion might lead to a more nuanced, sophisticated conversation about religion in our world.
Welcome to ReligionWise the podcast where we feature educators, researchers and other professionals discussing topics on religion and their relevance to the public conversation. My name is Chip Gruen. I'm the Director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding at Muhlenberg College, and I will be the host for this podcast. Today's conversation features Tad Robinson, Associate Professor of philosophy at Muhlenberg College. And I reached out to Tad to talk about philosophy of religion. Now, I and lots of people I know and respect and love have been philosophy majors, even though they've gone on to other, other pursuits, other academic fields, but it's interesting to notice how many people whether they go on and as I did in, in religious studies, or history, or what have you, start off in philosophy. And in any event in my undergraduate career, I remember having a philosophy of religion course. And what I found is that the conversations within religious studies don't always include philosophy of religion. And so I wanted to reach out to him and talk about this field, what's in it? What questions does it ask? What does it use as evidence in its conversations and in its arguments, and how it might be relevant to again, that more nuanced, sophisticated conversation about religion in our world. So without further ado, here's Tad Robinson. Well, welcome, Tad, thanks for being here today.
Tad Robinson:Hi, thanks for having me on. ReligionWise. I'm excited to be here.
Chip Gruen:So the reason I wanted to talk to you is among the the large repertoire of classes that you do one is Philosophy of Religion. And I know that your research is also interested in this and that you're just generally an active scholar in this field. And it seems to me that not everybody who is interested in religion necessarily knows what philosophy of religion is, and know sort of the classic questions that philosophy of religion poses and how that might be different from other ways of thinking about religion. So, so just to start off, sort of at the beginning, what is philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson:Yeah, thanks. Um, you know, it's, it's a complicated question. So I apologize that this will probably be a little bit of a longer answer, then, you know, had you asked what is biology or something, right. And I think part of the problem is that philosophy itself is not a particularly well understood field. So let me just say a little bit about that before saying, you know, talking about what philosophy religion is. So in, you know, general terms, right philosophy is, unlike other fields, like geology or biology in the sense that it doesn't study a single, you know, single element of nature, right? A single thing in the world, right? You know, instead, what philosophy is, is kind of an effort to, to think about the kind of fundamental presuppositions or concepts that are at work in our inquiry, right. And that can be, you know, across a whole bunch of different, you know, domains or areas of study, right? So, there are, you know, there's the philosophy of biology as a field, there's philosophy of science, philosophy of art, you know, political philosophy, right. And so, and each one of these cases, you know, what, what philosophers working in those fields are trying to do is sort of look at some of the fundamental, you know, assumptions about kind of what's going on and how we know about it, and what's important and what we value, right in those enquiries. Right. And so, I guess the other thing to say about philosophy is that, you know, philosophy is sort of unusual in the sense that it doesn't really have a specific tool, right? So a biologist, to come back to biology, has a microscope to help them learn about the world, right? Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the philosophical microscope. Right. So one of the things that's sort of distinctive about philosophy is its, its reliance on argumentation and reasoning, right as its sole tool. And, of course, that doesn't differ from lots of other fields, but the reliance on reason, right. The focus on reason and not on other tools for thinking about fundamental concepts and presuppositions is something distinctive about philosophy as well. So that kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of what philosophy is, right? But so what is philosophy of religion? Well, it's just the effort to kind of look at some of the fundamental presuppositions at work in in people's thinking about religion, right? So that's kind of a super general kind of characterization, right? But to get a little more detailed, you might think well, what what unites religion right? What what, what could we say about religion in general, what are the fundamental presuppositions at work? And of course, that's a really hard hard thing to say right people in religious studies Well, I will tell you, for example, right, hey, what religion is is a super difficult question. Right? And so I don't want to, you know, claim to have some answer to that. But I think, you know, if we sort of take cases, uncontroversial cases that we would characterize as religion, right, you know, one of the things we'll find is some sort of belief, or set of beliefs about ultimate reality, you know, some set of beliefs about kind of our relation to it, and some set of beliefs about, you know, what we should be doing in light of those two pieces of information, right. And so, philosophers will focus there. So this brings us to kind of the classical arguments for God's existence, for example, right? The, you know, God is one way of thinking about ultimate reality, the way the world might be at its deepest level. And so there, you know, a question you might ask as well, do we have any good reasons for thinking that ultimate reality is this way, right? And so you get kind of standard arguments about, you know, design, right and order moral arguments, for example, that, hey, there is such a being right. And of course, there are arguments against that. One of the other things I'll just say, here, and we can talk a little bit more about it later, if you want. It's just to say that I think of, you know, atheism as perfectly within the realm of a religion in the context of philosophy, religion, right. So, as I was just talking about philosophy of religion, I said, take, looks at ultimate views of ultimate reality. And I see an atheist, right, who's say, a naturalist, somebody who comes to the world and sees it to be studied solely by, by scientific means, for example, as somebody who holds that, hey, ultimate reality is the world in front of us, right? The world of empirical reality. So it to my mind, right? You know, atheism is perfectly within the realm of thinking, for philosophy of religion, that is to say, long story short, you don't need to be religious to be interested in philosophy of religion.
Chip Gruen:Yeah. Well, I would, I would posit, I guess, that there might be two separate claims there. One is that atheism is in fact, sort of a theological concept, right? Because it claims knowledge about the world, right? He claims that there is not a God, right, which is a theological claim. But I want to hit on the other thing that you that you just said that you don't have to be religious in order to be interested, you know, in philosophy of religion, and I would posit as well, you don't have to be atheistic to be, you know, you know, interested in the in the philosophy of religion as well, in a lot of academic work ends up starting from a position I think of agnosticism right?
Tad Robinson:Right. Right.
Chip Gruen:So what is the relationship then of sort of personal belief and commitment? If it's not necessary, but it's possible, you know, how do you see that active in the field?
Tad Robinson:Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a complicated it's a complicated answer to that question, because I think it plays into the field in lots of ways, right? So in positive ways, right? I mean, I think that one of the things I would want to emphasize to students is to say, hey, people have big questions. And, you know, it makes sense to think about these big questions using the our rational abilities, right? And it makes sense to look and see what other people who are, like us, or different from us have thought about these issues. So from a personal point of view, I think, you know, everybody has these big questions, and maybe comes to them from different angles. And I would want to encourage, you know, somebody who has big questions to say, look, look to the philosophy of religion, as a way of kind of engaging in a conversation with other people who are interested in those. So that those are that's a sort of positive element, I guess another, you know, I guess, positive element is that the character, character of the field, right, that is to say, the questions that philosophers of religion are interested in, you know, tend to be focused on the concepts and presuppositions of the religions in their culture of their time or what they know about, right. So in the United States, you know, in other parts of the English speaking world, for example, I mean, it's undeniable that the philosophy religion has a distinctly you know, Christian bent, right, that is to say, questions that are say at the fore, for people who come from a Christian background, are sort of also prominent questions in the philosophy of religion. That's just a sort of sociological fact. So that's another another way that it influences the field. And I think there's something sort of subtle there, right. I think we don't always realize that the questions that we're interested in, are influenced by not just our individual beliefs, but the, the world that we live in. So I mean, there's a couple of ways that it plays in that there are others but...
Chip Gruen:So I want to I want to push that a little bit more because you know, we live in a in a diverse world and at the academy has gotten more diverse over time. And I'm just wondering if the field of philosophy of religion has also diversified. So, you know, you mentioned sort of Christian underpinning underpinnings to a lot of these questions that people ask. But are there prominent South Asian or Hindu, you know, philosophers of religion? It you know, as Judaism, you know, prominent or Jewish philosophers of religion prominent? How do you see the diversity of, of different types of people active in the academy affecting the field?
Tad Robinson:Yeah, I mean, it's certainly growing. You know, I think, you know, although, philosophical questions and inquiries that they sort of come at things from a Christian or Jewish point of view have been have been dominant, right. It's certainly something that the the field is moving towards, right, in the United States and other places to try and to be, you know, more all encompassing, right, you know, to take into account, you know, South Asian views, in particular have been on the rise in philosophy of religion. So, I think, um, you know, there's also sort of a little bit of a, some self conscious reflection within the field too, to, you know, I think we don't always realize the, the perspective, our questions come from, right. And so I think that, you know, that's a sort of second element that, you know, people within the field have come to sort of think about this as potentially a problem in the last 15 or 20 years to sort of say, hey, you know, the questions that we've been asking, and the prospective perspectives from which we've been pursuing them actually are sort of limited, all things considered, right. And I think, as philosophers, we try to, we try to think of ourselves as transcending, you know, the parochialisms of our place in time. And I think we don't always succeed, in fact, probably rarely. Right. But I do think that that's part of our identity in a sense, in philosophy of religion. So, you know, I think this is a move that I think is great, and I think will only increase, you know, in the future.
Chip Gruen:Yeah, it makes me think, you know, again, going back to the South, South Asian example, because it's an interesting one, you know, thinking about sort of underlying reality, you know, and ideas even about space and time, that are so different, you know, the idea of cyclical time versus linear time, for example, and things like that. And, you know, sort of coming to the, you know, the realization or understanding, or at least posing the question of whether our perceptions of linear time, are deeply connected to sort of philosophical or even theological presuppositions that we might make.
Tad Robinson:Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the, the differences, right, you also are able to identify the similarities, right. And so, you know, just to give an example, from the South Asian, you know, context, right, I mean, one of the things that is a traditional hot topic in the philosophy, religion is the problem of evil, you know, where this is understood is, you know, how could this sort of great and perfect God allow for, you know, the existence of childhood cancer, and earthquakes and all this, all this stuff, right? You know, that's a pretty Judeo Christian sort of centered way of framing the problem, though, right? You know, and I think the South Asian context sort of brings that out, right, to some extent. And I think if you try to kind of account for something like the doctrine of karma, right, in the context of the philosophy, religion, I think it opens a lot of kind of intellectual doors for people because it allows people to see like, hey, you know, what we're really doing here is actually trying to find a way to explain misfortune or suffering, right, on a sort of cosmic level, right? That is to say, what is the deep level explanation for suffering? Right? On the one hand, you know, the, the sort of theistic answer might be, well, it's part of God's plan, right? Or this is gonna, you know, toughen you up, or this is gonna contribute to your overcoming problems or something like this, or, or maybe the answer is, hey, God's too, is too powerful you, and you are too small to know, right? Those are ways of accounting for suffering and trying to deal with it, you know, if not only on it, or if you know, not only on an intellectual, but maybe also an emotional kind of level. When you sort of think about karma in that context, right? You can see, hey, here's an alternative way of thinking about the events that occur to us why they happen, right? Oh, they're our fault on the doctrine of karma. Right? So, you know, you know, what happens to me is because of the choices I made, say, in a previous life, right, you know, and they're sort of coming home to roost, right. And so I think there's some interesting comparisons that you can make when you open up that door to thinking about the South Asian context. One in particular, of course, is this idea that, hey, somehow, for for people, it makes sense to us on both an intellectual and emotional level, to say like, Hey, people get what they deserve. Like, that's a good way of explaining misfortune, right? You know, and you see this, for example, in the book of Job where Job's friends, right, come to Job and say, Hey, Job, you've suffered all of this misfortune. You must have done something wrong, right? It must be your fault, right? God must be punishing you Job, right, and they say this over and over and over again in the book of Job, we sort of see something very similar, right? You know, the doctrine of karma. So, in any case, I think that's an interesting observation about human nature that I think is unlocked, right, by by sort of thinking more broadly, you know, about about religious traditions and the way that the ways that they're dealing with with the problems of everyday life.
Chip Gruen:And presumably the same could be said, for thinking about Islam or indigenous traditions or, or what have you.
Tad Robinson:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, unfortunately, I mean, indigenous traditions are something that I think philosophers have paid almost no attention to. And I think that's really unfortunate, though, understandable, it's understandable. Philosophers work with text texts, right. And a lot of times, indigenous traditions, you know, don't have texts. But I think that that's a really fascinating area, because, of course, I think, you know, philosophical assumptions are present in everything we do. And so certainly present in indigenous ways of ways of acting. So I think that's a great growth area for philosophy. And in Islam, too, I think Islam is too often categorized as a, you know, a Western religion, along with Christianity and Judaism, you know, kind of thereby adopting everything, that's the same about it, but leaving aside anything that is different, right. So I think that that's also an area that that philosophers of religion in the future will look to, in terms of sort of looking for, you know, interesting elements that that, that compare cross culturally.
Chip Gruen:So you've mentioned a couple of the classic questions, the problem of evil, the existence of God. But I know that there's sort of a broader array of the types issues that philosophers of religion are interested in so could you go through a few of those sort of the classic questions that one might encounter when considering the philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson:Yeah, absolutely. So one question, right, has to do with say, miracles, right. So, you know, what is a miracle? Right? And what would it show if there were one, right? So lots of people say, hey, you know, if you look to, you know, religious texts, right, what grounds their authority, right, is the existence of miracles. Well, what reason do we have to believe that those miracles occurred? Right? And what would that involve? So that's one one question. Another question has to do with religious experience. So, you know, people have, you know, experiences that they take to reveal a deeper level of reality. And so, you know, one of the things that philosophers have done is sort of, you know, sort of look at some of those cases, right, and sort of think, well, okay, well, what was this experience like, right? What does it reveal? Right? What could it reveal? That is to say, what would a religious experience maybe have to be like, in order for us to know that it's veridical or something like that? Right? What does the fact that people have different kinds of religious experiences in different places in different times mean, if anything? That sort of touches on questions of religious diversity, right, which is sort of broader question about well, what does the fact that there are many religions mean, if anything, right, does it show that say my particular beliefs are unjustified because not everybody agrees with me? Or or not? Right? There's lots of questions about afterlives, right, whether there are any what what kind of arguments there are for thinking that there might be one, if there was one, what would it be like? Right? So you know, how this is related to morality. So most of us have the afterlife our moral views, that is to say what you do in the in this life is relevant to what happens you in the afterlife. But on the other hand, there's a lot of traditions that are less less well recognized, I think, according to which there are non moral afterlives, that is the everybody goes to the same place. What you do in life is not relevant. You know, questions about petitionary prayer are kind of a big topic, right? That is to say, like, you know, in a theistic context of thinking about, you know, God in a Christian or Jewish or Muslim sort of perspective, right, you might think, well, you know, God knows everything. So what's the point in my asking for it if God know knew before I was born, then I would ask for it right? And so what what it means to ask something of God is a question. There's lots of questions about religion in science, you know, whether they are really in conflict or not. And in recent literature, there's been kind of a question about, say, what are called evolutionary debunking arguments which say, hey, you know, human beings are natural believers in invisible beings, because of the way their brains work, for example, right? What does that mean? Does that mean that people's belief is thereby false or unjustified? in certain contexts? So they're, you know, finally, just one other example. I mean, there's questions about like, do you really need evidence to believe in religious claims, right, or what kind of evidence would you need right? You know, particularly famous example comes from William James, who says, hey, yeah, in normal life, you need lots of evidence to explain things, and to justify your beliefs, right, but in certain cases where it's unfalsifiable, and it's important, and it meets these situations meet these other circumstances, hey, you can believe whatever you want. So there's lots of interesting questions there about like, well, what what are the sort of norms of belief? Like, is it okay for me to believe whatever I want? Most people will say no, right? But under what circumstances? Does it make sense? Or is it ethical or whatever to, to believe something? Right, so that's just a kind of smattering of questions that are at work in the philosophy religion.
Chip Gruen:So one of the great things about philosophy is that you always have these classic problems, right? They get introduced and, and get talked about, you know, over generations, and talking about sort of religion and science, the idea of creation and so forth reminds me one of these classic problems, and maybe you could tell us a little bit about it, that you are walking along, and you're in a forest, and then as you suddenly sort of stumble upon a perfectly manicured garden, you know, how does one understand the perfectly manicured garden?
Tad Robinson:Right? Yeah, that's a that's a good one. And so yeah, normally, that kind of thought experiment, you know, is intended to show, hey, you would assume, if that happened to you that there was a designer, that is to say that the garden was created on purpose intentionally with a design by, you know, somebody, right? And so, you know, we're supposed to look at the world and see similar kinds of kinds of design, right? So the sort of other famous example of this, this other version of this argument comes from William, William Paley, right, who gives a design argument on this basis, he points in particular to the eye, right, and he says, Hey, look at the eye, isn't this an amazing machine, right? Just like, if you found a watch on the heath, you would know that it had been designed so too you should look at the eye, right, as designed. And so, you know, those kinds of arguments have sort of that particular kind of arguments kind of fallen out of favor, because there are alternative explanations for why the eye is the way that the eye is right, namely, evolutionary ones. But the sort of contemporary version of that argument is called the fine tuning argument. And goes kind of roughly like this, Hey, the conditions for life in the universe are exceedingly improbable. Right? So, you know, there's various ways of developing the argument, but you know, roughly, it kind of goes like, hey, you know, life could not develop if there were not planets, right, there could not be planets, if matter didn't stick together in just this way, matter couldn't stick together in just this way, you know, if you know that the value of the neutron was off by 5%, or something like this. So there are various mathematical physicists who have sort of put together some of these numbers, and you get these sort of ridiculous numbers to understand. So you know, Roger Penrose says something like, the odds of life existing in the universe, given that so many things could have been different, is something like one in 10 to the 123rd power. And so the idea is like, you know, that's, so that's like winning the lottery every day for your whole life, right? And so the idea is like, Hey, isn't this amazing? Right? Shouldn't you see this as a case of design? Right? And of course, there are, there are responses to this argument to say, those ways of calculating are off, or, yeah, that's true. But there are 10 to the 123rd universes. And so it's not surprising at all, that there's one just like this. So in any case, yeah, it's a, that's an argument that has a long history, one that you know, comes up to contemporary, contemporary philosophers.
Chip Gruen:So, in the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding, we have two sort of main parts of the mission. One is about religion, religious literacy, right. And the other is about sort of encouraging and modeling a more sophisticated conversation about religion in the public sphere. And so I guess my question is, you know, how does a knowledge of philosophy of religion, aid that goal, like, what is it about philosophy of religion, that allows me to confront the world in a better way, or to read the headlines in a better way, or to be able to recognize religious diversity in my community in a way that is that is more sophisticated and richer and fuller?
Tad Robinson:Yeah. You know, in some ways, I I sort of think of, you know, what philosophy of religion does for you is sort of, you know, emanating from the inside out, right. So, you know, when we engage in the philosophy of religion, we tend to do so, from, you know, our antecedent position, right, where are we what do we think, right? And as we kind of look at our assumptions, and we think about, well, do I have really reasons for that? Does that make sense, given the other things I think, we start to realize kind of the, the contingency of a lot of the things that we think right? That's not to say that they're wrong, right? It's just to say, Hey, I ended up with a whole bunch of things that I think about the world that I ended up with, really, through no work of my own right through no effort of my own. And I think when we when we start to think that we put ourselves in a position to kind of be a little more autonomous in our beliefs, but I think at the same time, it also allows us to understand other people because they are like us, presumably, right, that is to say presumably a lot of what they think they kind of ended up with, as a result of, you know, their, who their parents were, and where they were born and all of these things, and maybe they haven't really thought about it very much either, right. And so there's a sense in which I think we sort of start to realize how much we're not maybe pawns right, in this sort of larger cultural game, right. But the extent to which really were a lot less autonomous than maybe we think, and I think that allows us to kind of see other people in a new light. Right. And I think it also, you know, opens the door for thinking about, you know, what other people think and why they think it right. I guess the other element that I would say just a little more broadly, you know, is I think you know certain issues in the philosophy religion, and I think the problem of evil, broadly construed as one, you know, really put us in a position to kind of see other people as, you know, navigating the world in the same way we are right, that is to say, kind of looking for some sort of, you know, cognitive and emotionally satisfying, you know, way of understanding what's happening to them, and the world. Right. And I think, you know, when we see other people as an as engaged in that task, like us, right, I think, you know, we're in a position to kind of, I think, see them in a positive light, see them as you know, as companions, right, in that in that goal, right. So I think that's a couple of ways at least.
Chip Gruen:Yeah. So I was actually doing my homework a little bit and I went and looked up the catalog copy for the Philosophy of Religion here at Muhlenberg.
Tad Robinson:Yeah.
Chip Gruen:And one sentence sort of stuck out to me and, and I want to read it to you, it says, "One of the goals of the course is to explore the possibilities of intellectually responsible religious commitment in the contemporary world." And I want to kind of play devil's advocate for a minute...
Tad Robinson:Sure.
Chip Gruen:...and, and ask if the presupposition is that sort of religion should be intellectually responsible, I mean, of course, right now in the world, we see all kinds of very emotive and almost not even almost anti intellectual, religious positions out there. How do you deal with that? And proudly anti intellectual, at that, right? That God's wisdom is not the same as human knowledge? Right, that there's a disconnect there. And to be upside down to this world is to be right side up with the other world, we, we see that that strand. So how do we, how does the philosophy of religion deal with that sort of anti intellectualism and, you know, the idea that religious commitments may not be responsible to same set of assumptions or presuppositions about what the what the good is in the world?
Tad Robinson:Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. And I guess I sort of two things occur to me one is sort of a bigger picture answer. And I think, and the second is more specifically, will more specifically address your your question, but sort of broadly speaking, I mean, one of the things that I think the philosophy of religion gets tied up with in people's minds sometimes, are these sort of wider kind of culture war issues, you know, as if, you know, what we should be doing in philosophy of religion is sort of taking a position in these culture wars. Right. So, you know, atheism versus Christian fundamentalism. Right. And I, you know, I guess, I think that those questions are not particularly philosophical, right. And so I think it's a sort of a shame that sometimes false religion gets gets tied up, you know, in those, you know, wider questions that, you know, at least here in the United States, so I don't sort of see philosophy of religion as doing that. And in fact, I would want to actively distance philosophy of religion from from those sort of culture wars. More specifically, to your question, though, about, you know, how do you deal with somebody who's, you know, really approaches anti intellectual, you know, and I think, you know, on the one hand, you know, if somebody if a, if a student or somebody else is just utterly unwilling to consider reason in any way, right, you know, obviously, you know, philosophy is not the place for them, but maybe college right, or inquiry is not the place for them. So, I mean, I want to start from a place where, like, hey, people are sort of interested in having reasons for at least some of what they think, right? And if that's our starting position, I think you can kind of walk somebody in to thinking hey, you know, we can we can talk about philosophical questions in the philosophy of religion. So, for example, right, somebody says, like, hey, you know, God has totally ineffable right, that is to say, there's just nothing that we can know about. God right? You know, that's a knowledge claim, right? How do you know that? Right? You know, I think that's a place to start, right? So this person is making a claim about how they can know about God, right. So we can ask about how they know that. And even though they may not be willing to sort of be, or they may not be interested in exploring detailed questions about the nature of, of the God that they believe in, right, there's at least questions around the periphery, right? Moreover, to the extent that you can get them to answer questions about, you know, how they know God is ineffable, right, you can extract some standards of knowledge, some epistemic standards, and sort of apply them more broadly and see if they're consistent. So, I mean, that's, that's that's one way. I mean, the the second similar kind of way is right, somebody who says like, Hey, this is all a matter of faith. Right? Right? No reason is involved. Right? Again, you can play a similar sort of game where you say, well, you think reason is involved sometimes in some things you do, right, if you're a juror in a case, right, you think that it would, you know, it's your job, for example, to to sort of look at the evidence and judge accordingly. Right? And of course, they'll say yes, but that's a sort of starting point to say, Okay, well, so reason is really important in that case, but it's not important in this case. Why, right? And I think, you know, to the extent that they have or don't have an answer to that, right, that's a that's a doorway into thinking about, well, how does reason apply? When does it apply? When doesn't it, apply it? And as far as I'm concerned, those are great philosophical questions. So so that that those are a couple strategies.
Chip Gruen:So one of the fun things about our job, you know, teaching 18 to 22 year olds, right is exposing them to things they hadn't thought about before, or at least helping them to think about things in maybe a different way. And I'm sure that in your in your time, you know, you could you could come up with with a million stories of the ways that students have surprised you, or things have come have come up that were unexpected. And I'm just wondering, you know, for this student in the, you know, early 21st century, you know, what are some of the things that that sort of come up now that you, you know, you think are particularly interesting or particularly telling, you know, in teaching the the philosophy of religion?
Tad Robinson:Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that, you know, I've been a little surprised about, and I think, in a good way, you know, in recent versions of the course, is sort of students' openness to thinking about, you know, different perspectives. I mean, that's not something that, I think is always the case. You know, I think, in teaching this course, in particular, which is maybe a little surprising. But to give you a little more detail. I mean, I think the last couple of, last couple times I've taught this class, there were students who kind of came into the course, sort of coming at it from a pretty naturalist, maybe atheistic, maybe agnostic kind of perspective. And, and I think, who ended up being really interested in the course in a way that they weren't expecting, because, you know, the course does sort of attempt to capture that perspective, right? Because I think, just to give a couple of examples. I mean, I think, you know, asking, Hey, well, what gives life meaning if this is your perspective, right? Where do values come from if this is your perspective? How do we understand the misfortunes that occur from this perspective? And do the answers to those questions from a naturalist perspective, you know, fit with other things that we value or think, and how do they compare with say, traditional, certain kinds of traditional religious answers? I think students ended up being very interested in in those kinds of questions in a way that they didn't expect. And to be frank, I didn't expect to sort of follow along. So that was really encouraging, and really, really fun. And we had a lot of a lot of fun conversations last couple versions of this class.
Chip Gruen:Alright, so one of the things that we try to do on ReligionWise is ask the sort of so what question right, that we have a constituency, you know, generally educated, interested in religion, interested in understanding, you know, religious belief and practice that's around them in the world. And so we'll just end up on this question. How does this matter to them? Right, so what? If I'm listening to this podcast how does a knowledge of philosophy of religion or how does sort of a, an understanding of the way the field works helped me to navigate my world, sort of civically engaged way?
Tad Robinson:The first thing I would say in terms of, you know, so what, why would you care? What what does this do for you kind of, kind of question is to say, you know, I think it enriches your life. I mean, you know I think that you know, when we engage in philosophy and when we engage in these kinds of inquiries, and we we read about, you know, people who disagree with us, right, it sort of broadens our, our minds. And I think it allows us to see the world, you know, from a new perspective, right? I mean, just to give a sort of silly example, I mean, learning the names of trees, so the kinds of trees, allows you when you're walking through, you know, down the sidewalk, to say, Oh, look at there's an oak, right, there's a maple, there's a sycamore, right. And in some ways, you're having the exact same experience, you would have of walking down the sidewalk looking at trees, but there's sort of a component like, now you can appreciate what you see on a level that you couldn't. And again, I don't want to suggest that knowing it's a sycamore tree somehow fundamentally changes your life or something. But I do think that that's a sort of example of a tiny way in which your sort of intellectual life can be enriched by just learning a few facts about the world. I think philosophy of religion is sort of no different, right? To the extent that you're able, in your conversations with other people, or in your reading, right, to identify the assumptions that they're kind of making and see that oh, that's, you know, that's part of this tradition of responding to the problem of evil that kind of goes back to Job. Oh, that's really interesting. I think that that enriches your experience, and I think puts you in a position to kind of, you know, think about your own experience in ways that may be intellectually and emotionally satisfying for you, right? So that's, that's sort of the the big takeaway, and I kind of, you know, I might stop there and say, Hey, is that is that not good enough? You know, for you, right. But I guess the other thing that I think is that, you know, philosophy, and philosophy of religion, in particular, is sort of best done with other people, I think, you know, you know, some people are sort of really good at sitting down and thinking about things by themselves, and they find that really enriching. But I think, for a lot of people, it's sort of being able to sit down and kind of have a conversation and ask, Hey, why do you think that right? You know, I wouldn't have thought that this is the way I would have thought, and they can ask you what, why would you have thought that right? Sitting down and just sort of being in a position to have that kind of conversation at a deep level with other people being comfortable with talking at that deep level, I think, you know, creates an opportunity, not for just for sort of interesting conversations with people, but also for really productive ones. Right. And I mean, I want to, you know, you can't have those conversations with everybody all the time right. But I think having a capacity to have them with the right person at the right time. You know, again, it can be really transformative kind of experience for certain people in certain kinds of cases. So, you know, I think that's the those are a couple of sort of takeaways.
Chip Gruen:Ted, I again, want to thank you for taking the time to sit down and have this conversation. As we said, going in my philosophy of religion days are a long time ago back in undergrad, my undergraduate career. So it's really great to think about these, these issues again with you today and see how they can enhance our understanding of religion and religious diversity in the contemporary world. So thanks again.
Tad Robinson:Yeah, thanks for having me on Chip.
Chip Gruen:This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. For more information and additional programming, please visit our website at religionandculture.com. There, you'll find our contact information, links to other programming, and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. ReligionWise is produced by the staff of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College, including Christine Flicker, and Carrie Duncan. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.