It’s not exactly a hot take to say that academic standards in philosophy of religion are quite poor, at least by comparison with other areas of academia, and to other areas of philosophy more generally. Sometimes it is just bad arguments, or bad research practices, etc. But there is one type of issue I see quite a lot, which is just straight up bad writing. Even calling it ‘bad writing’ fails to quite capture what I mean. Indeed, one of the difficulties I want to bring out is how traditional methods of philosophical analysis are not really appropriate to police this, and I’m finding it hard to even describe the issue properly.
An example – Tim Stratton
So let’s look at an example. It’s not an example I’ve picked because it is particularly important, or that it shows some great philosophical mistake. In a sense it’s quite trivial. But that’s how these sorts of bad writing fall through the academic cracks. Academics are not trained to find and remedy this sort of thing, so me bringing it up will seem weird. But hear me out.
A few years ago, I debated Tim Stratton on the Unbelievable show. Following that, he wrote a blog post about the exchange. I’m not going to examine his arguments there in this post. Instead, I just want to highlight one example of bad writing on his part, because it’s the sort of thing I see a lot. His idea is that if determinism is true, then our beliefs are caused by external forces beyond our control, and hence we shouldn’t trust them. In explaining this point, he says the following:
…as Joshua Rasmussen would say, ‘mindless stuff’ that knows nothing about metaphysics.
All I want to point out is how strange it is to quote Rasmussen simply saying “mindless stuff”. Why is this strange? Well, it’s hard to provide a completely watertight explanation, but let’s have a go.
Firstly, it’s not a distinctive phrase that Rasmussen is known for. It’s just two words, so it hardly communicates a distinct idea that Rasmussen has introduced into the philosophical lexicon. It’s not a new term of art that is associated with Rasmussen, in the way that “language game” is associated with Wittgenstein, or “will to power” is with Nietzsche, etc. It’s just the sort of phrase I would imagine I could find in any book covering this sort of topic. Just as one example off the top of my head, on page 210 of God’s Undertaker (2009), John Lennox says:
“Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator.”
‘Mindless matter’ and ‘mindless stuff’ are basically the same exact idea, showing that Rasmussen isn’t introducing anything new here. You could probably find an example of me saying the two-word phrase “mindless stuff” or some synonym for it online if you looked for it. So the problem is that it is a quote, in the sense that Rasmussen did say that, but it is weird to use it as a quote because it’s not a distinctive phrase at all. It’s like saying “as Trump would say ‘the'”. Yes, I’m sure Trump has used the word ‘the’ on countless recorded occasions, so in a sense you could quote him saying it, but it would be a very strange thing to do. It’s not a fallacy, nor is it some other kind of philosophical mistake. It’s just bad writing.
Secondly, there is something oddly self referential about how this is all presented. If you look at the full context of the quote I presented above, you will see that in the blog post Stratton is actually quoting himself in the debate quoting Rasmussen:
As I pointed out in the debate, this means that all of a person’s metaphysical beliefs are determined by “consciousness-lacking, intelligence-lacking, wisdom-lacking, reason-lacking, morality-lacking, and, as Joshua Rasmussen would say, ‘mindless stuff’ that knows nothing about metaphysics.”
So I’m quoting Stratton, who is quoting Stratton, who is quoting Rasmussen. And at the end of this chain of Russian dolls, all we get to is a non-distinct two word phrase.
Though disappointing to get to, it may just about qualify as a quote in a technical sense; after all, Rasmussen did say those words. But it’s not really a citation as such. That’s because he doesn’t provide the location of the original where it comes from. He could have just said that it’s from Rasmussen’s 2023 book Who are you, really? and provided the page reference. Of course, this is just a blog post I guess. He could just give the quote without the ability for readers to see the source. But, Rasmussen’s name is a hyperlink in the sentence in which Stratton quotes him, so there is something like a citation there. But it isn’t a link to Rasmussen’s book on Amazon, or something like that. It’s link back to a video of Stratton reviewing the book.
So in the blog post he quotes himself talking in the debate, in which he quoted Rasmussen, and he provides a link which also references himself talking about Rasmussen. This isn’t normal.
Conclusion
My diagnosis of what Stratton is doing is that he peppers quotes from people like Rasmussen in his work not because he is using them to make wider points or connections to surrounding literature. It’s just there to make what he is saying sound more authoritative. Knowing that Rasmussen used the phrase ‘mindless stuff’ doesn’t shed any light onto anything Stratton was saying. He isn’t arguing for anything distinctive that Rasmussen says. It’s just a name-drop for the sake of it.
He doesn’t provide any real citation for the reference, and it is tempting to think that this is because there’s nothing to see if you were to go and look up the source. It would be like going to find the video of that Trump speech to check if he did say the word ‘the’ at some point. So instead of a proper citation, he uses the veneer of a citation to promote his own YouTube channel. Academics do cite their own work, but they should do so only when it is relevant. Otherwise it looks commercial.
Part of the problem is that this sort of writing violates norms of academic practice that are not written down, and not explicitly taught to academics. We are not trained to fight these sorts of battles. It’s like being trained to operate a telescope that’s used to focus on things very far away, and then someone making you use it to try to find their keys they dropped on the floor right in front of you. The tools of academic analysis are not well-suited to the job. And my worry is that this sort of bad writing hides multiple terrible research practices and poor reasoning, but that it is slipping in under the radar nonetheless. This is part of the problem with the philosophy of religion. Actual people produce stuff that’s the academic equivalent of AI slop. It sort of looks just like the genuine article when you first see it, but the more you look at it the weirder it starts to seem.
UseOfReason 