Peter Boghossian's Famous Tweet Merits a Place Along With Other Important Satires

Taylor Carr just won't let up. Now he's trying to show the inconsistency of using the philosophy of religion in order to argue that it's an illegitimate discipline:
I'll just put this out there... is it not itself a philosophy of religion to claim that because religious language has no actual referents, therefore philosophy of religion is illegitimate?

My response:

It is, and ironically Boghossian's tweet does just that. One way to show this without being inconsistent is to ridicule the discipline like Boghossian's tweet does. Other than that, good philosophy must exist because bad philosophy must be answered. It's a necessary evil so long as we take the discipline seriously.

I know you and a few others don't like what Peter tweeted. I do. The more I think about it the more I like it. It was genius. Even as a philosopher of religion myself, who takes that discipline seriously, I think he has raised an important issue via ridicule. He has raised awareness about the claims of religious faith. These claims either have no evidence for them or they lack sufficient evidence. While Pete's tweet was only a few words long, I think it merits an honorable mention along with some very famous historical satires, as I wrote about here.

0 comments: