Here’s an interview with Ed Feser, author of Five Proofs of the Existence of God: Feser’s presentation of the ‘Aristotelian’ proof is well done.
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God-of-the-Gaps: No Such Thing
Mathematician, Pierre-Simon LaPlace was once asked by the emperor of France where God was to feature in LaPlace’s mathematical system. LaPlace replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis.” The idea behind the quip is that if you can find a good explanations for something without God, then you don’t need him. And if you don’t need him, then this is good reason to suppose that he’s not there. The kind of God supposed in such thought is the “God-of-the-gaps” kind of God, a God who is necessary only in so far that he explains some feature of the world – existence, the movement of the planets, the habits of…
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Design?
At school I was taught to anneal copper. This process entailed heating the copper to an exact temperature before working on it. There were no temperature gauges involved – one could tell what temperature the copper had reached by its color – cherry red. The color of the copper changed as the temperature changed. I remember thinking that God was both an artist and an engineer. He designed copper to include its own temperature gauge and made it beautiful at the same time. To a Christian, or any theist for that matter, the world appears to be designed by someone. It is not usually the whole world that appears designed,…
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Bertrand’s Blunderbuss
Bertrand Russell and his pipe “As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles. Whose authority? The Old Testament? The New Testament? The Koran? In practice, people choose the book considered sacred by the community in which they are born, and out of that book they choose the parts they like, ignoring the others” (Bertrand Russell). Russell liked to have a go at religion with the argumentative equivalent of a blunderbuss: He shoots out many different arguments that go all over place and hopes that something will hit the target. There are at least three arguments in…
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Conrad’s Consciousness
“[W]hatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part… I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which… is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds.” (Joseph Conrad). There are a number of reasons to hold such a view. First, there is the argument from awesomeness: God is neither necessary nor sufficient in order to find nature awesome. Nature is awesome enough without God. Or perhaps the argument from sense:…
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Exchanging Truth for a Lie
Atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of any gods, the claim that any gods do not exist or the absence of belief in the existence of any gods. But atheism is not merely the removal of gods from the equation; it is the exchange of God for something else. And it is the exchange of truth for a lie. Paul writes: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the…
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Baxter vs Hume
As I read Paul Russell’s, The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise, I continue to find excellent summaries of arguments for theism and Hume’s responses. Russell, it should be noted, is an avid atheist from Scottish Calvinist stock. Consequently, his analysis of Hume’s irreligious intentions reflect his own intentions. Nevertheless, anyone interested in the history of Apologetics would find Russell’s book to be an excellent survey of Hume’s contribution to the history of the discipline. The following is a summary of Hume’s engagement with apologist, Andrew Baxter. Andrew Baxter, in a defense of theism and in response to the atheism of Hobbes and Spinoza, argues that all powers found in nature must, of necessity, be caused by the power…
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Too Focused on Atheism #2
It strikes me as problematic that so much effort goes into defeating something that most people don’t hold to (approximately 4% of Americans are self-describes atheists). William Lane Craig, for example, concerns himself with a strong defense of theism followed by trying to support claims of the divinity of Jesus Christ. What troubles me is that most of his work goes into the former project. In his popular apologetics book, On Guard, Craig devotes a chapter to religious pluralism (actually it is only really about soteriology) during which he recounts a telling story: I often speak at major Canadian universities on the existence of God. I typically present a cumulative case climaxing in Jesus’ resurrection After one of my talks,…