Timothy McGrew

Timothy McGrew is Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University, where he has taught for over thirty years. His research interests include formal epistemology, the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and Artificial Intelligence. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University.

Professor McGrew is the author of The Foundations of Knowledge (Littlefield Adams, 1995), co-author with Lydia McGrew of Internalism and Epistemology: The Architecture of Reason (Routledge, 2007), and co-editor of Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology (Blackwell, 2009). He is also the author and continuing maintainer of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article “Miracles.”

His work has appeared in numerous edited volumes, including God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science (Routledge, 2003), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy (Zondervan, 2016), Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God (Oxford University Press, 2018). His articles have been published in journals including Mind, The Monist, Analysis, Acta Analytica, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Journal of Philosophical Research, and Philosophia Christi.

When he is not doing philosophy, he enjoys coaching at his local chess club, running trails, and making high-quality paper airplanes.

Archives

Using the Logic of Surprise to Infer Cosmic Design

_{Timothy McGrew
April 29, 2026}

On a hike, you stumble upon a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods. When you walk in, you notice a steaming cup of tea sitting on the table. On the hypothesis that the cabin is deserted, the tea would be shockingly surprising. But on the hypothesis that the cabin is inhabited, not so much. How does this little story illuminate the case for intelligent design? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Timothy McGrew, one of the experts featured in the new movie The Story of Everything. The movie is a cinematic exploration of the scientific evidence for a mind behind the universe. Based on Dr. Stephen Meyer’s 2021 book Return of the God Hypothesis, The Story of Everything brings the evidence for intelligent design to life through stunning footage, cutting-edge animation, and engaging interviews with over 20 scientists and scholars.

How to Make a Bayesian Inference to the Best Explanation

_{Timothy McGrew
December 9, 2024}

When we gain new information about beliefs we hold, it’s good practice to update our viewpoints accordingly to avoid incoherence in our thinking. On today’s ID The Future, host Jonathan McLatchie invites professor and author Dr. Tim McGrew to the show to discuss how Bayesian reasoning can help us maintain coherence across our set of beliefs. The pair also apply Bayesian logic to the debate over Darwinian evolution to show that a confidence in design arguments can be mathematically rigorous and logically sound. Bayesian logic provides a mathematical way to update prior probabilities with new information to produce a more realistic likelihood ratio. And when it comes to evaluating different hypotheses, small pieces of evidence can add up. “Even evidence that simply …