New Books in Philosophy, Theology, and Apologetics – January 2013

 

God & Morality: Four Views – Edited by R. Keith Loftin (InterVarsity, 2012) **

Is morality dependent upon belief in God? Is there more than one way for Christians to understand the nature of morality? Is there any agreement between Christians and atheists or agnostics on this heated issue?

In God and Morality: Four Views four distinguished voices in moral philosophy articulate and defend their place in the current debate between naturalism and theism. Christian philosophers Keith Yandell and Mark Linville and two self-identified atheist/agnostics, Evan Fales and Michael Ruse, clearly and honestly represent their differing views on the nature of morality.

Views represented are 1) naturalist moral non-realist, 2) naturalist moral realist, 3) moral essentialist, and 4) moral particularist.

 

Reason & Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (5th ed.) –  Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger (OUP, 2012)

Reason and Religious Belief, now in its fifth edition, explores perennial questions in the philosophy of religion. Drawing from the best in both classical and contemporary discussions, the authors examine religious experience, faith and reason, the divine attributes, arguments for and against the existence of God, divine action (in various forms of theism), Reformed epistemology, religious language, religious diversity, and religion and science.

Revised and updated to reflect current philosophical discourse, the fifth edition offers new material on neuro-theology, the “new Atheism,” the intelligent design movement, theistic evolution, and skeptical theism. It also provides more coverage of non-Western religions–particularly Buddhism–and updated discussions of evidentialism, free will, life after death, apophatic theology, and more. A sophisticated yet accessible introduction, Reason and Religious Belief, Fifth Edition, is ideally suited for use with the authors’ companion anthology, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, Fourth Edition (OUP, 2009).

 

God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain – Edited by Chad Meister and James K. Dew Jr. (InterVarsity, 2013)

The question of evil—its origins, its justification, its solution—has plagued humankind from the beginning. Every generation raises the question and struggles with the responses it is given. Questions about the nature of evil and how it is reconciled with the truth claims of Christianity are unavoidable; we need to be prepared to respond to such questions with great clarity and good faith.

God and Evil compiles the best thinking on all angles on the question of evil, from some of the finest scholars in religion, philosophy and apologetics, including

• Gregory E. Ganssle and Yena Lee
• Bruce Little
• Garry DeWeese
• R. Douglas Geivett
• James Spiegel
• Jill Graper Hernandez
• Win Corduan
• David Beck

 

 

From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments – Angus Ritchie (OUP, 2012)

From Morality to Metaphysics offers an argument for the existence of God, based on our most fundamental moral beliefs. Angus Ritchie engages with a range of the most significant secular moral philosophers of our time, and argues that they all face a common difficulty which only theism can overcome.

The book begins with a defense of the ‘deliberative indispensability’ of moral realism, arguing that the practical deliberation human beings engage in on a daily basis only makes sense if they take themselves to be aiming at an objective truth. Furthermore, when humans engage in practical deliberation, they necessarily take their processes of reasoning to have some ability to track the truth. Ritchie’s central argument builds on this claim, to assert that only theism can adequately explain our capacity for knowledge of objective moral truths. He demonstrates that we need an explanation as well as a justification of these cognitive capacities. Evolutionary biology is not able to generate the kind of explanation which is required–and, in consequence, all secular philosophical accounts are forced either to abandon moral objectivism or to render the human capacity for moral knowledge inexplicable.

 

Mappings the Origins Debate: Six Models of the Beginning of Everything – Gerald Rau (InterVarsity, 2012)

What are the main positions in the debate over creation and evolution? Why do they disagree? Can the debates about origins and evolution ever be resolved? Gerald Rau offers a fair-minded overview of the six predominant models used to explain the origins of the universe, of life, of species and of humans. He aims to show the contours of current debates both among Christians and between Christians and non-theists.  He accomplishes this by not only describing the options on origins, but by exploring the philosophical assumptions behind each and how evidence is counted corresponding with each model.  He also notes the limits of a scientifically gained knowledge. Readers will not only become better informed about the current debates on origins but better thinkers about the issues at stake.

 

** Descriptions provided by the publishers.

New Books in Theology, Philosophy, & Apologetics –November 2012

Christian Confidence: An Introduction to Defending the Faith – Chris Sinkinson (IVP, July 2012) **

Philosophy, archaeology and science are hot topics in Christian circles, perplexing many believers about how these issues relate to faith. Fortunately for us, Chris Sinkinson has investigated these areas and gathered historical Christian perspective. The result is this accessible introduction to apologetics, which enlightens minds and inspires confidence.

Christian Confidence is a one-stop shop for anyone desiring to engage thoughtfully and persuasively in the difficult conversations surrounding faith in the twenty-first century. This book will deepen your understanding of Christianity and empower you to present the case for faith convincingly, credibly and cleverly.Chris Sinkinson has achieved something rather remarkable here. In just a few hundred pages he looks at the craft of apologetics from almost every angle. He examines the history of apologetics, methodology, key figures in the discipline and the most important arguments. And he does all this with wit and terrific style. One of the best introductions to apologetics I have seen.” (Craig J. Hazen, founder and director of the graduate program in Christian apologetics, Biola University, and author of Five Sacred Crossings)

 

The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails – Randal Rauser (IVP, October 2012)

In the real world, we don’t usually sit in lecture halls debating worldview issues in systematic arguments. Chances are that we’re more likely to have haphazard, informal conversations over a latte in a coffee shop.

Meet Randal Rauser, a Christian, and Sheridan, an atheist. Over the course of one caffeinated afternoon, they explore a range of honest questions and real objections to Christian faith. Do people hold to a particular religion just because of an accident of geography? Is believing in Jesus as arbitrary as believing in Zeus? Why would God order the slaughter of infants or send people to hell? How do you know you’re really real, and not just a character in someone’s book?

Their extended conversation unfolds with all the rabbit trails, personal baggage and distractions that inevitably come in real-world encounters. Rauser provides substantive argument-based apologetics but also highlights the importance of apologetics as a narrative journey. As we get to know Sheridan, we better understand the personal history that drives his atheism and the issues that motivate his skepticism.

“Rauser’s dialogue brings the best tools of philosophical thinking within the reach of thoughtful believers and skeptics alike. His representative in the conversation knows when to stick to his guns, and when to admit to uncertainty and fallibility. His atheist counterpart is no straw man–he knows his Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens. Rauser has the philosophical chops to cut through a lot of rhetorical nonsense, but he also has the intellectual honesty to face up to the genuine difficulties confronting his faith. This enjoyable book is a model of candid, winsome, thought-provoking apologetics.” (Dean Zimmerman, professor of philosophy, Rutgers University)

God and Necessity – Brian Leftow (Oxford University Press, Nov. 2012)

Brian Leftow offers a theory of the possible and the necessary in which God plays the chief role, and a new sort of argument for God’s existence. It has become usual to say that a proposition is possible just in case it is true in some “possible world” (roughly, some complete history a universe might have) and necessary just if it is true in all. Thus much discussion of possibility and necessity since the 1960s has focused on the nature and existence (or not) of possible worlds. God and Necessity holds that there are no such things, nor any sort of abstract entity. It assigns the metaphysical ‘work’ such items usually do to God and events in God’s mind, and reduces “broadly logical” modalities to causal modalities, replacing possible worlds in the semantics of modal logic with God and His mental events. Leftow argues that theists are committed to theist modal theories, and that the merits of a theist modal theory provide an argument for God’s existence. Historically, almost all theist modal theories base all necessary truth on God’s nature. Leftow disagrees: he argues that necessary truths about possible creatures and kinds of creatures are due ultimately to God’s unconstrained imagination and choice. On his theory, it is in no sense part of the nature of God that normal zebras have stripes (if that is a necessary truth). Stripy zebras are simply things God thought up, and they have the nature they do simply because that is how God thought of them. Thus Leftow’s essay in metaphysics takes a half-step toward Descartes’ view of modal truth, and presents a compelling theist theory of necessity and possibility.

 

 

Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives – Mario Beauregard (HarperOne, April 2012)

“The brain can be weighed, measured, scanned, dissected, and studied. The mind that we conceive to be generated by the brain, however, remains a mystery. It has no mass, no volume, and no shape, and it cannot be measured in space and time. Yet it is as real as neurons, neurotransmitters, and synaptic junctions. It is also very powerful.”
—from Brain Wars

Is the brain “a computer made of meat,” and human consciousness a simple product of electrical impulses? The idea that matter is all that exists has dominated science since the late nineteenth century and led to the long-standing scientific and popular understanding of the brain as simply a collection of neurons and neural activity. But for acclaimed neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, Ph.D., along with a rising number of colleagues and others, this materialist-based view clashes with what we feel and experience every day.

In Brain Wars, Dr. Beauregard delivers a paradigm-shifting examination of the role of the brain and mind. Filled with engaging, surprising, and cutting-edge scientific accounts, this eye-opening book makes the increasingly indisputable case that our immaterial minds influence what happens in our brains, our bodies, and even beyond our bodies. Examining the hard science behind “unexplained” phenomena such as the placebo effect, self-healing, brain control, meditation, hypnosis, and near-death and mystical experiences, Dr. Beauregard reveals the mind’s capabilities and explores new answers to age-old mind-body questions.

Radically shifting our comprehension of the role of consciousness in the universe, Brain Wars forces us to consider the immense untapped power of the mind and explore the profound social, moral, and spiritual implications that this new understanding holds for our future.

“Mario Beauregard shows convincingly that the materialistic philosophy of the 19th century is an impoverished framework incompatible with contemporary science, from physics to psychology. The concepts he develops in Brain Wars are required reading for scientific literacy in today’s world.” (Bruce Greyson, M.D. Research psychiatrist, University of Virginia. Co-author of Irreducible Mind )

 

A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls – Stephen P. Schwartz (Wiley-Blackwell, June 2012)

A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: from Russell to Rawls provides a comprehensive overview of the historical development of all major aspects of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. Beginning with the seminal works of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, Stephen P. Schwartz covers the foremost figures and schools of analytic philosophy, including, in addition to those already mentioned, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Putnam, Rawls, and many others. As well as presenting arguments put forth by individual philosophers, Schwartz traces the various social and political influences that helped shape analytic philosophy as it evolved over the last century. Topics considered include the emergence of logical positivism and its critics, ordinary language philosophy, Wittgenstein’s self-critical philosophy, the American neo-pragmatists, analytic ethics, late-20th-century developments, and future directions.

A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy offers illuminating insights into the origins and 100-year evolution of the dominant force in Western philosophy.

“Stephen Schwartz’s A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy provides an engaging, non-technical historical introduction to central themes in analytical philosophy, the dominant approach to philosophical issues in the English-speaking world since the onset of the 20th century.  Schwartz illuminates topics for novices and specialists alike by tracing their sources to pressing disputes among mathematicians and scientists as well as philosophers. The book, captivating in its own right, will prove especially useful when read alongside targeted original sources. There is nothing else quite like it.” (John Heil, Washington University in Saint Louis)

 

** Descriptions and endorsements are provided by the publishers.

Bertrand Russell’s Search for God

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Bertrand Russell’s daughter, Katharine Tait, made the following poignant observations about her father and his lack of belief in God.  Although Russell’s own willful rebellion certainly played a role in his lack of belief, believers can learn an important lesson from his experience, and be reminded that our actions as those who represent Christ have a profound impact on those around us. 

“I could not even talk to him about religion. . . . I would have liked to convince my father that I had found what he had been looking for, the ineffable something he had longed for all his life.  I would have liked to persuade him that the search for God does not have to be in vain.  But it was hopeless.  He had known too many blind Christians, bleak moralists who sucked the joy from life and persecuted their opponents; he would never have been able to see the truth they were hiding. . . . I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God. . . . Somewhere at the back of my father’s mind, at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put in it. . . . Nevertheless, I picked up the yearning from him, together with his ghostlike feeling of not belonging, of having no home in this world.”

— Katharine Tait, My Father, Bertrand Russell (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 189.

The Missing Links – Nov. 21, 2011

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Max Andrews shares his Top Ten Philosophy, Science, and Theology Podcasts

J. P. Moreland talks about the argument from consciousness at last week’s ETS/EPS meeting in San Francisco (video).

Craig Blomberg discusses the historical Jesus and the reliability of the Bible (video).

Atheist philosopher Daniel Came criticizes Richard Dawkins’s decision not to debate William Lane Craig.

Chad Meister writes on “Atheists and the Quest for Objective Morality.”

Similarly, William Lane Craig lectures on the question “Is God Necessary for Morality” at Boston College Law School.

A distinguished group of evangelical scholars discuss the impact of the King James Version of the Bible (audio).

The Missing Links – Sept. 9, 2011

• The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Peter Adamson, Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at King’s College London, takes listeners through the history of Western philosophy, “without any gaps.” Beginning with the earliest ancient thinkers, the series will look at the ideas and lives of the major philosophers (eventually covering in detail such giants as Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition.

 

• University of Cambridge – Investigating Atheism

The purpose of this site is to set [the] contemporary ‘God Wars’ in their historical context, and to offer a range of perspectives (from all sides) on the chief issues raised by the ‘new atheists’. We hope this will encourage more informed opinion about the issues, discourage oversimplification of the debate, and deepen the interest in the subject.

 

• Could a Universe Create Itself?

Edgar Andrews answers this question in an article written for the Christian Apologetics Alliance.

 

• Bestsellers in the history of science

The Rage Against God

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“The difficulties of the anti-theists begin when they try to engage with anyone who does not agree with them, when their reaction is often a frustrated rage that the rest of us are so stupid.  But what if that is not the problem?  Their refusal to accept that others might be as intelligent as they, yet disagree, leads them into many snares.

“I tend to sympathize with them.  I too have been angry with opponents who required me to re-examine opinions I had embraced more through passion than through reason.  I too have felt the unsettling lurch beneath my feet as the solid ground of my belief has shifted.  I do not know whether they have also experienced what often follows—namely, a long self-deceiving attempt to ignore or belittle truths that would upset a position in which I had long been comfortable; in some ways even worse, it was a position held by almost everyone I knew, liked, or respected—people who would be shocked and perhaps hostile, mocking, or contemptuous if I gave in to my own reason.  But I suspect that they have experienced this form of doubt, and I suspect that the hot and stinging techniques of their argument, the occasional profanity and the persistent impatience and scorn, are useful to them as they once were to me in fending it off.

“And yet in the end, while it may have convinced others, my own use of such techniques did not convince me.”

— Peter Hitchens in The Rage Against God, 12, 13.

Atheism as Parasitic on Christianity

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“The secular myth continues with a page drawn from the eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon:  Christianity destroyed classical civilization and brought on a Dark Age.  Civilization escaped the Dark Ages only with the rise of the Renaissance man and science.  Secular thinking helped shake off the shackles of religion and created the modern world.  Today only the vestiges of organized religion prevent humankind from achieving its full potential.  Helping “sell” this story is the promise that secularism finally will allow total personal freedom, especially in the area of sexuality.  This is a point that [Christopher] Hitchens makes explicit at the end of his jeremiad God Is Not Great.

“. . . The good news for Christian theists is that Hitchens’s story is simple to the point of being simplistic, and they have a better story to tell.  The basic story is this: the combination of Greek philosophy and Christianity produced Christendom, which has produced most of the great goods of our world.  Christendom provides a home for both reason and meaning.  It balances law and liberty.  It makes love the central motive for human action and a reasonable God the end of that love.

“While Christians often fail, the basic ideas of Christendom keep pulling humanity back from the brink of utter tyranny or ruinous social chaos.  Christian failures create secularists, who often serve as useful in-house critics of Christian inconsistencies.  Moderate secularists often make useful and important subsidiary contributions to institutions created by Christians, such as hospitals and universities.

“At their worst, evangelistic secularists are destructive cynics parasitically living within Christian-built structures and undermining their philosophical and theological basis for existence.”

— John Mark Reynolds in Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong about the New Atheism, 102-103.

Top Posts of 2010

Below are some of the Cloud’s top posts of 2010.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by to read, comment, or critique. May you know and love God more and more in 2011!

• Gary Habermas on the Pre-Pauline Creed of 1 Cor. 15
• Philosophy Audio and Video on the Web – Updated
• Commentary on William Lane Craig vs. John Shelby Spong Debate
• William Lane Craig Debates Richard Dawkins
• Atheist Philosopher Michael Ruse Sizes up the New Atheists
• Book Review – The Making of an Atheist
• On Naturalism, Human Dignity Disappears
• On Doing Your Homework before Critiquing
• Bertrand Russell on the Meaning of Life
• Richard Dawkins’s Defective Understanding of Religion
• Review of John Stott’s “The Radical Disciple”
• Why Mental States Are Not Physical (Brain) States

Book Review – Generation Ex-Christian

Paperback: 208 pages

Publisher: Moody Publishers (October 1, 2010)

Amazon

Drew Dyck on Twitter

Recent statistics on the religious commitments of young people are alarming. Surveys show that 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claim no religion, and 70 percent of American youth drop out of church between the ages of 18 and 22. The church is losing its youth at a disturbing rate. But behind every statistic is an individual story, and Drew Dyck contends in Generation Ex-Christian that most of these “leavers” fall into one of six broad categories: Postmodernists, Recoilers, Modernists, Neo-Pagans, Rebels, and Drifters.

He devotes a chapter to each, which includes a description of the category, interviews with those who fit the category, and advice for how to reach out to each type of leaver. I found the interviews compelling and appreciated how they brought what could be merely abstract concepts to life. If you’ve spent much time sharing the gospel with different kinds of people, you will quickly recognize many of these “types” of non-believers (though Dyck acknowledges that every person has a unique story).

I was most interested in the Modernists leavers, who appear for the most part to be new atheists. As part of his research for this group, Dyck attended a meeting of the Wheaton Atheists Group and describes his interaction with the skeptics there. One of the members, a young man named Dan, admitted that he had grown up in the Assemblies of God and had just recently left the faith.

What had caused his crisis of faith?

“I always believed the earth was 6,000 years old,” Dan said bitterly. “But now I know it’s not.”

For years Dan tried desperately to maintain his belief in the young earth theory. He read material from Answers in Genesis, a Christian apologetics organization, consulted his pastor and people in his church. But ultimately he said he just couldn’t deny what he saw as the evidence that the world was much older than 6,000 years.

“That’s when I realized that Christianity just wasn’t true,” he said.

Inwardly I cringed at the false-alternatives scenario that Dan had set up in his mind. For him, one geological question (which the Bible doesn’t even address explicitly) was the deciding factor for faith.” (79-80)

I cringe as well when I hear those kinds of stories and lament the fact that peripheral matters like the age of the earth are taken to be reasons for rejecting the gospel. But I’m discovering that these kinds of stories are common.

Another atheist, Shane, had been drifting from his Christian faith for some time. What pushed him over the edge was the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

“I’ve heard this from people in the atheist community, over and over again. September 11 made us all realize that you can’t be a fence-sitter on this issue. We realized that religion is causing these problems. It’s holding belief in things which are not empirically verifiable. That’s what’s wrong.” (104)

Dyck ends the chapter with several pieces of good advice for reaching out to Modernist leavers. He encourages listening carefully and asking questions of skeptics, and not assuming common ground that doesn’t exist (e.g., the belief that the Bible is reliable or inspired). Relevant and suitable questions to ask include those that encourage a skeptic to follow the logical consequences of their worldview, including the loss of objective meaning and morality (some skeptics will deny this, but many don’t and readily admit it).  It will likely be necessary to point out the consequences of adopting a non-God worldview.

Dyck also wisely encourages Christians to confront atheists with the fact that they themselves have a worldview that requires defending and offering good reasons for. In my experience, the majority of atheists believe that their skeptical position is somehow neutral ground that requires no justification to hold. But as long as anyone is making a positive claim of any kind (e.g., God doesn’t exist, Christianity is false, etc.), he or she is under the same obligation as the Christian to provide reasons and evidence for their claim. If someone just doesn’t know, then they should adopt the agnostic, rather than the atheistic, viewpoint.

The other chapters of Generation Ex-Christian are as good as this one, so I heartily recommend this book, especially to those who need help understanding and reaching out to the leavers they know.

The first chapter can be downloaded here.

— Reviewed by Chris Reese.  In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Moody, the publisher of Generation Ex-Christian.

Further Critiques of the “God Delusion”

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I’ve made reference to several fine critiques of the new atheists and their books (for example, here, here, and here), but I am always happy to add more—especially from those who are outside the evangelical fold, which hopefully serves to show that our own (similar) critiques aren’t simply payback in kind.  The one below comes from H. Allen Orr, a biology professor at the University of Rochester, in the New York Review of Books.

“Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’s work, I’m afraid that I’m among those scientists who must part company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he’s actually more an amateur. I don’t pretend to know whether there’s more to the world than meets the eye and, for all I know, Dawkins’s general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case.

The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. This is, obviously, an odd thing to say about a book-length investigation into God. But the problem reflects Dawkins’s cavalier attitude about the quality of religious thinking. Dawkins tends to dismiss simple expressions of belief as base superstition. Having no patience with the faith of fundamentalists, he also tends to dismiss more sophisticated expressions of belief as sophistry (he cannot, for instance, tolerate the meticulous reasoning of theologians). But if simple religion is barbaric (and thus unworthy of serious thought) and sophisticated religion is logic-chopping (and thus equally unworthy of serious thought), the ineluctable conclusion is that all religion is unworthy of serious thought.

The result is The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins’s book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they’re terminally ill?).”