TOKENS PODCAST: S6E2
Are we really as good as we think we are?
Even in a culture as divided and atomized as ours, things like compassion, honesty, and courage remain the attributes we nearly unanimously assign to “good people.” And we often like to think of ourselves as bearers of such traits, perhaps especially when those around us are not. But Christian Miller brings to light a troubling reality: though we all may want to be good, it turns out that it doesn’t take much to get us to forsake our values. From the big things like fear of authority, to the small things like the smell of the room… well, we’re not nearly as self-controlled and virtuous as we like to believe.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Christian B. Miller is an American philosopher specializing in ethics and philosophy of religion. He is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University.
Miller earned his B.A. at Princeton University and his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught at Wake Forest University since 2004. Miller has written five books, edited five books, and published over 95 articles, introductions and commentaries.
From 2010 to 2015 he was the director of the Character Project, funded by $5.6 million in grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The project examined character from the disciplines of philosophy, theology, and psychology, and supported the work of dozens of scholars around the world.
From 2015 to 2018, he was the philosophy director of the Beacon Project, funded by a $3.9 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. The project examined the morally exceptional from the disciples of philosophy, theology, and psychology.
From 2018 to 2023, he is the director of the Honesty Project, funded by grants totaling $4.6 million from the John Templeton Foundation. The project examines the virtue of honesty from the perspectives of philosophy and the empirical study of honesty.
Miller is a regular contributor to Forbes. He has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, Aeon, Christianity Today, and many other places.
Miller has been awarded the 2014 Kulynych Family Omicron Delta Kappa Award for Student Engagement, the 2009 Wake Forest University Reid-Doyle Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the 2009 Wake Forest University Award for Excellence in Research.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
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