Greetings and Farewell

Editorial by Keith M. Parsons

With this issue I say farewell to the editorship of Philo.  I hand the reins to Professor Quentin Smith, who is eminently qualified for the position.  Though young, he has achieved considerable distinction and has published extensively in some of the most technical areas of metaphysics and cosmology.  He has debated leading theistic philosophers, both in print and before live audiences.  His knowledge, intelligence, judgment, and affability will make him a superb editor.  Also, Basil Smith will remain as Associate Editor.  In fact, Basil is responsible for the entire editing of the present issue.  Basil’s knowledge, perspicacity, and astonishing energy and enthusiasm serve Philo well.  The “Smith and Smith” team will make an excellent tandem. Executive Editor Austin Dacey and the rest of the staff will continue to do their excellent work. With so much talent on the editorial staff, I think Philo will now fulfill its potential and become one of the leading philosophical journals.  

My experience editing Philo was bittersweet.  Philo was born out of discussions between myself and Timothy J. Madigan, Executive Director of the Society of Humanist Philosophers.  I was concerned that recent work in the philosophy of religion had been dominated by theists, with few replies and critiques by atheist or humanist philosophers.  Worse, a very conservative strain of apologetic, heretofore relegated to the periphery of academic discussion, had begun to enter the mainstream.  I was, and am, convinced that the vast majority of professional philosophers are nontheists who endorse secular aims and values, yet, while theist philosophers energetically pursued their agenda, the secular voice was mute.  

Philo was founded to provide the forum for the best and most sophisticated expression of atheist and humanist philosophy, while still being open to the publication of articles by theists.  With much trepidation, I agreed to edit Philo, a job for which I had no experience.  While I have been proud to serve as the founding editor, I have been disappointed by the response of the philosophical community.  For any journal to thrive, it must have a generous number of high-quality submissions from top scholars.  While I feel that the pieces we did publish were generally very good, we often had to make issues slimmer than I would have liked because we had too few top-notch submissions.  I do sincerely hope that humanist philosophers will support Philo by submitting some of their best work and not leave the field to an increasingly strident and aggressive religious apologetic.

My hopes for strong submissions have been met in this issue; the authors of these essays have set a fine example. Wes Morriston argues that we can, without inconsistency, conceive of a being more powerful than the Anselmian God. He contends that the Anselmian doctrine results from a conflation of two logically distinct questions about power, perfection, and omnipotence. Brian Zamulinski offers a number of criticisms of Aquinas’s concept of natural law.  In particular, he claims that it is inappropriate for a world where the natural ends of things evolve constantly. William A. Rottschaefer  criticizes the claim of Holmes Rolston that natural selection cannot account for the origin of information or of value, pinpointing and challenging a questionable ontological assumption made by Rolston. Niall Shanks and Karl Joplin, a philosopher and a biologist respectively, challenge Michael Behe’s attempt to use biochemical data to support an argument to design.  They offer various criticisms, including an attack on Behe’s principle of “irreducible complexity.” Brian McLeod addresses the claim, made by philosopher D.Z. Phillips and scientist S.J. Gould, that religion and science are, in principle, non-overlapping fields which therefore cannot conflict.  McLeod argues that this view rests upon the erroneous claim that science deals with fact while religion is the realm of values.  He rejects this simplistic demarcation and contends that facts and values overlap in interesting ways. Aaron Holland addresses a claim of Thomas Morris that those not in a good epistemic position relative to a putative metaphysical object (e.g. God) should not be atheist, but merely agnostic.  Holland argues that this demand is far too stringent and that it is psychologically unrealistic to expect persons to be equally agnostic about all such alleged metaphysical entities.

Keith M. Parsons is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.