Philosophy in Higher Education

Dr. Craig discusses the battle of philosophical ideas going on in academia!

JOHN ANDERSON: My impression is now that there is a new openness to faith in philosophical circles, but probably to the average person on the street there's a perception that universities in particular, their philosophical schools and academics, are fiercely opposed to religion. Is that a false misunderstanding? I mean there would be those who are.

DR. CRAIG: Yes it is, and I appreciate your perceptiveness in seeing the revolution that has been going on in the field of Anglo-American philosophy since the late 1960s. Since that time Christian philosophers have been coming out of the closet and defending their beliefs with sophisticated philosophical arguments in the finest philosophical journals, in the professional societies, and in the top academic presses so that today Christian philosophy has a respected minority status, a place at the table in contemporary discussions. I think unfortunately this has yet to filter down to the man in the street from the ivory tower, and so he still has that misimpression of philosophy that was accurate, say, from 1900 to about 1970 in which philosophy was dominated by atheistic and scientistic viewpoints. But that's quite out of fashion today.

JOHN ANDERSON: That's interesting because when you listen to the hubbub on the streets a lot of it centers on just how anti our culture, religion, the enlightenment, even science and reason, and all of the great ideologies, things like critical theory, are in our university. So you've got this contrast. You've got a discipline where there's some very clear thinking, very honest thinking going on. And you've got (I'm going to be really blunt here) the intellectually very flimsy concepts that are coming out of a lot of left-wing campuses.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, I think you're right in saying that what we're seeing is an increasing polarization. I would not at all want to deny the presence of these anti-Christian and secular movements within philosophy, but I am saying that at the same time there is a resurgence, a renaissance, of theistic and particularly Christian philosophy in our day. And these viewpoints find themselves locked in a titanic intellectual struggle that is going on in our Western culture.