John Andrew Leslie (born 2 August 1940) is a Canadian

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and writer.

Biography

Leslie was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, earning his B.A. in

English Literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

in 1962 and his

M.Litt. The Master of Letters degree (MLitt or LittM; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. Ireland Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University offer MLitt degrees. Trinity has offered them the longest, owing largely to its tradition as Ireland ...

Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

in 1968. He is currently Professor

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada. In his book ''Universes'', Leslie describes a philosophical

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, w ...

in which an individual survives a firing squad of fifty expert marksmen unscathed. He offers two explanations for this remarkable event: either it is a fortuitous outcome, to be expected occasionally by pure chance among many thousands of attempted executions by firing squad; or it is intentional. Francis Collins references this parable in his book ''The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief'' as part of his argument that the

Anthropic Principle The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that there is a restrictive lower bound on how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, beca ...

strongly suggests a Creator with intent. Leslie has spoken as follows about his life's work:

What I have to contribute is some technical defense of the idea that if you had an infinitely rich niverse it could be explained by reference to its value. Its goodness could be the creative force which had produced it. I think if I would like to be remembered as a philosopher for any one thing, that would be the thing I'd most like to be remembered for.

Pantheism

Leslie is a pantheist. His philosophical work takes influence from David Lewis, Plato and Spinoza. In his book ''Infinite Minds: A Philosophical Cosmology'' (2001), Leslie argues for a pantheistic universe in which everything exists in a divine mind. Philosopher

Brendan Sweetman Brendan Sweetman (born 1962 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish philosopher whose research interests are in philosophy of religion, contemporary European philosophy, and political philosophy. He is a specialist on the work of French philosopher, Ga ...

commented that the book promotes a "highly speculative, pantheistic theory that is fascinating in its own way, but that will probably convince very few." Leslie's book is unique because he accepts and uses arguments for the existence of God which are usually used to support theism such as a version of the cosmological argument and the design argument based on fine-tuning but he explains these in a pantheistic way.

Selected publications

* ''Value and Existence'' (1979) * ''Universes'' (1989) * ''Physical Cosmology and Philosophy'' (1990) * ''The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction''. (1996) * ''Modern Cosmology and Philosophy'' (1998) * ''Infinite Minds: A

Philosophical Cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

'' (2001) * ''Immortality Defended'' (2007) * ''The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All?'' (2013)
''What God Might Be''
(2018)

References

External links

Personal homepage at University of Guelph

Bio page at the Lifeboat Foundation

Video of debate/discussion with John Leslie and Jim Holt
on Bloggingheads.tv {{DEFAULTSORT:Leslie, John A. Living people 1940 births 20th-century Canadian philosophers 21st-century Canadian philosophers Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford Analytic philosophers Canadian ethicists Metaphysicians Pantheists Philosophical cosmologists Philosophers of mind Philosophers of religion Philosophers of science Place of birth missing (living people) University of Guelph faculty

Biography

Pantheism

Selected publications

See also

References

External links