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 Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy W ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, earning his

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

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. in

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 Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

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 , mottoeng = "to learn the reasons of realities" , established = May 8, 1964 ()As constituents: OAC: (1874) Macdonald Institute: (1903) OVC: (1922) , type = Public university , chancellor ...

, in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, 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 Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are us ...

of fifty expert

marksmen A marksman is a person who is skilled in precision shooting using projectile weapons (in modern days most commonly an accurized scoped long gun such as designated marksman rifle or a sniper rifle) to shoot at high-value targets at longer-than-u ...

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 Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is the former director of the National Institutes of Health ( ...

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 Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ex ...

. His philosophical work takes influence from David Lewis,

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

and

Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...

. 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 The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorize ...

which are usually used to support theism such as a version of the

cosmological argument A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe o ...

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'' (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 Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast on ...

{{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