The safest general characterization of the European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will soon offer a philosophy degree.
Regarding why a theological seminary would teach philosophy, Southwestern President Paige Patterson explained, “Everybody is a philosopher. The question is: Are you a good one or a bad one? We’ve already seen what bad ones can do; they’re a dime a dozen.
“And so we are committed to having good philosophers and to making good thinkers and philosophers out of our people.”
Patterson added that Southwestern has multiple faculty who specialize in the field and are making “monumental contributions” to discussions on such matters as the problem of evil, the existence of God and evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.
The problem of evil and the existence of god are topics within a subdivision of philosophy known as Philosophy of Religion. Many schools are closing down their Philosophy of Religion groups outright, and we are less than one month away from publication of John Loftus’ new book urging just that in all secular schools.
The difficulty is that Philosophy of Religion isn’t intellectually serious. All of the philosophical arguments for the existence of god were debunked by David Hume at about the time of the American Revolution, and the so-called Problem of Evil never rises to the level of a bona fide problem because it is setup by premises for which there is no entitlement. The result is that most Philosophy of Religion has devolved into de facto Christian apologetics; that is doubtless what SWBTS’ program will be.