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The acknowledgments of J. P. Moreland’s Scientism and Secularism include a nod to colleague Garry DeWeese, followed by a parenthetical comment about how Moreland has never understood the second ‘R’. It’s a throwaway line, possibly tossed in for some private levity to break up the intense, thoughtful process of writing. Yet it helped crystallize for me how I think differently than Moreland and thus why some parts of his book clicked for me while others did not. To me, the answer is obvious: because name spelling drifts over time as parents express personal taste, conflate multiple related names (it’s Larry and Barry so why not Garry?), or simply make mistakes. Granted, I don’t know the exact details of Ma & Pa DeWeese’s thought process, but understanding some general mechanisms is adequate for me. I’m similarly not certain what kind of explanation Moreland would prefer, but based on his writing I’d guess it would involve reasoning from commonsense principles rather than starting with the brute data.
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