Platinga's view is fairly well aligned with the beliefs of my own faith even though our "God" may be different. We all develop our own models of reality, apparently the trick is to ensure that these models are robust enough accommodate everybody else's gremlins, devils, zombies, or maulvis and still continue to function.
I probably know more Muslim's personally then half the members on this list. My neighbour is a Muslim and I also employ Muslims. India is a secular country whose 13% Muslim population is free to migrate anywhere in the world which will take them in - not many do. India's Muslims when asked (by foreigners such as the BBC or the NYT) usually volunteer they consider themselves to be better off in India vis-a-vis their brethren in Muslim countries like Pakistan or Iran (notwithstanding the occasional bouts of communal frenzy which develop over pigs feet or beef entrails being thrown by the butchers of each community). India was ruled for over 200 years by Muslims as was China (Yuan dynasty). America probably needs to experience Muslim rule for some time to develop a sustainable and robust reality model. The "Dune" SF series was heavily influenced by Islamic models. OT: Interestingly, "Islamic science fiction" is an emergent discipline in the Arabic world to attract younger followers to the world of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Sarbajit On 9/17/12, Roger Critchlow <r...@elf.org> wrote: > Reading > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/philosopher-defends-religion/ > was > a rather odd experience this week, mixed in with Sam Bacile, the Salafists, > the zombies, and whatever. > > The review is by a non-believer (Thomas Nagel) who finds the book, written > by a believer (Alvin Plantinga), very interesting, even though he doesn't > believe it. Plantinga's day job is analytic philosophy, so he gets very > precisely into what he thinks it is that his faith and his beliefs do for > him. Finally, the main argument is sort a grand slam of creationism: we > wouldn't be able to correctly figure out how the world works if the deity, > more specifically the deity that Plantinga believes in, wasn't helping us > along the way. Why would natural selection by itself care anything about > the truth? > > As the reviewer says: "The interest of this book, especially for secular > readers, is its presentation from the inside of the point of view of a > philosophically subtle and scientifically informed theist—an outlook with > which many of them will not be familiar." > > -- rec -- > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
