Thinking Straight About . . .

Thinking straight about learning and using philosophy, thinking straight about using research, and thinking straight about thinking "straight."

1. Doug Groothuis tips us off to an excellent, brief article on why philosophy matters in the Church. This is good stuff. My hope here is that I can play a small role in helping Christians be Thinking Christians.

I once heard J. P. Moreland in a lecture give similar advice about learning philosophy. I asked him how those of us who are not going back to college to major in it can do that. He suggested reading the originals (Plato, for example) along with a guide, a more recent explanation of the material. As far as I'm concerned, you could even read Cliff's Notes on The Republic, as long as you're not using it as a substitute for the real thing or for your own real thinking.

But now Moreland and his colleague William Lane Craig have come out with Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. a great overall compendium of philosophy, readable for anyone who is willing to take on a moderate challenge. It provides an introduction to most of the major themes in philosophy. If used along with a good history of philosophy, it would be enough to get anyone started on a good path. (I emphasize "started.") Both authors are notable for the clarity with which they write. The book is surprisingly inexpensive for its size and scope. I recommend it strongly.

2. A current Townhall.com opinion piece discusses errors in reporting on the supposed link between harassment of gays and suicidal tendencies. Virtually all of the research that purports to find this link is funded by gay activists, and most of it has no means of detecting causation among the correlations. The possibility of significant third variables is extremely high in view of that. The one study that does attempt to discover causative effects found no significant relationships.

I'm going to dwell on that one for a moment, since it's illustrative of all kinds of special interest "science," and because it's in my field, social research. To be blunt, the way this is being used--to support legislation in California and to advance an agenda in the press--is just irresponsible. Research Methods 101, in any school in the country, hammers on "correlation is not causation!", and warns students to be very wary of research funded by partisans. (Remember the tobacco companies saying cigarettes don't hurt you?)

The responsible way to handle research like this is to take it as suggestive of a possible relationship, do the right kind of follow-up studies, and hold all conclusions (and especially legislation!) in abeyance until there are trustworthy answers. The same goes for all special-interest research, by the way; this is not the only group that's guilty of this.

3. Finally, I thought I'd mention how I had to pause after writing the title to this entry, "Thinking Straight . . ." There's content in here about gays, and after typing the word "straight," I thought, "Oh, boy, this is bound to be taken as intentionally set up against 'gay.'" Well, I certainly support straight (in that sense), for Biblical reasons, but my real intent was along the lines of thinking correctly and clearly. Isn't it strange how careful we have to be about these things these days?

Posted: Tue - May 30, 2006 at 09:59 AM |

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Thinking Straight About . . .

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson