This question has come up more than once with regard to the curious crew that posts at the far right "What's Wrong with the World" blog (sometime called "W4")--including Lydia McGrew,Edward Feser, and Francis Beckwith (who appears to have stopped posting, though showed up in the comment thread of the last post we linked to), not to mention their newest contributor,a lunatic misogynist--and I think the answer is pretty clearly 'no' (thankfully). The topic was discussed recently at another blog, so I'll take the liberty of quoting the comments there, which are consistent with my own exchanges with Christian philosophers. A commenter asked: "How much support do you think this What's Wrong With the World blog has among Christian philosophers? Are the opinions expressed there representative of, for example, the views of the more famous Christian metaphysicians? Or is it the kind of marginal freak-show it appears to be?" Herewith three answers:
(1) As a Christian faculty member who knows other Christian faculty at places like, say, Rutgers, MIT, Brown, and Yale, I have to say that I think it's really unrepresentative among what you might think of as the mainstream research departments.
(2) W4 is a marginal freakshow. Not all the opinions expressed at W4 are as marginal as they should be, though.
(3) I'm not a Christian faculty member. I'm an atheist and a philosopher who spends too much time reading W4. I can say that W4 is not representative of Christians in philosophy or outside of philosophy. In fact, I get emails from Christians in philosophy about W4 and we laugh and/or cry together.
ADDENDUM: A comment at the Philosophy Smoker blog makes a good point worth emphasizing:
W4 are a bunch of freaks. IRL, however, all it takes is ONE bigot on the faculty who quietly lies in wait until s/he has power, e.g. the power of an administrative office, to make life living hell. Maybe they are statistical exceptions among Christian philosophers or the SCP, maybe not. But (1) the percentages cease to matter at all when one is faced, as the target of discrimination, with even one such character; and (2) I suspect that LBGT philosophers are so often told that "Christians like *that*" are the exception (who knows?) because it makes the person uttering the claim feel better to think so, and feel less obligated to think and/or do anything about the real and very serious discrimination that is a part of daily life for some of us.
UPDATE 2/5: Professor Feser is not a rhetorically talented interlocutor. Two observations: (1) I last wrote about Feser & his lunatic colleagues eight months ago; (2) I have not defended my views on the grounds that they are the views of atheists. (I confess, though, I don't know all the answers to the questions posed by Profesor Feser's correspondent.)
ANOTHER: Ben Burgis provides sensible answers to the questions posed by Professor Feser's correspondent.
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