Perhaps one of the most influential philosophers of of time is Alvin Plantinga. He’s just been awarded the prestigious Rescher Prize for his work. Here’s a piece describing his work with plenty of links to essays and videos in case you want to learn more. In case you are not familiar with Plantinga, here’s a brief description:

Plantinga is widely known for his work in the philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics and Christian apologetics, and he has revolutionized scholarly interest in Christian theism, shown naturalism/atheism to be self-refuting and incoherent, and set the new standards for the defense of free will, individual agency, consciousness, rational inference, science, objective truth and morality, and more. As a result, Plantinga has both directly influenced the entire field of philosophy and has mentored and inspired new generations of top scholars who are critiquing the reductionism, relativism, materialism, collectivism, scientism, positivism, determinism, and de-humanization of the modern era. In short, Plantinga has devastated the prevailing view in Western elites that human beings are merely “matter in motion” (i.e., purposeless, accidental, robotic products of a closed, natural world ruled solely by physical laws and that truth, reason, morality, and God are illusions).

h/t David J. Theroux

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Mark T. Mitchell
Mark T. Mitchell is the co-founder of Front Porch Republic. He is the Dean of Academic Affairs at Patrick Henry College and the author of several books including Plutocratic Socialism, Power and Purity, The Limits of Liberalism, The Politics of Gratitude, and Localism in Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto (co-editor).

1 COMMENT

  1. In my recollection, Time magazine once hailed Alvin Plantinga as the nations top philosopher of God. I appreciate his argument that the presumption of atheism is always rational, placing the burden of proof on the theists, as “a piece of arbitrary intellectual theism.”

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