Download or read book Atheism written by George H. Smith and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Does a god exist? This question has undoubtedly been asked, in one form or another, since man has had the ability to communicate. . . Thousands of volumes have been written on the subject of a god, and the vast majority have answered the questions with a resounding 'Yes!' " "You are about to read a minority viewpoint." With this intriguing introduction, George H. Smith sets out to demolish what he considers the most widespread and destructive of all the myths devised by man - the concept of a supreme being. With painstaking scholarship and rigorous arguments, Mr. Smith examines, dissects, and refutes the myriad "proofs" offered by theists - the defenses of sophisticated, professional theologians, as well as the average religious layman. He explores the historical and psychological havoc wrought by religion in general - and concludes that religious belief cannot have any place in the life of modern, rational man. "It is not my purpose to convert people to atheism . . . (but to) demonstrate that the belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity. If a person wishes to continue believing in a god, that is his prerogative, but he can no longer excuse his belief in the name of reason and moral necessity."

Download or read book The God Argument written by A. C. Grayling and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a bad-tempered quarrel between defenders and critics of religion in recent years. Both sides have expressed themselves acerbically because there is a very great deal at stake in the debate. This book thoroughly and calmly examines all the arguments and associated considerations offered in support of religious belief, and does so in full consciousness of the reasons people have for subscribing to religion, and the needs they seek to satisfy by doing so. And because it takes account of all the issues, its solutions carry great weight. The God Argument is the definitive examination of the issue, and a statement of the humanist outlook that recommends itself as the ethics of the genuinely reflective person.

Download or read book Critiques of God written by Peter Adam Angeles and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on atheism by Kurt Baier, John Dewey, Paul Edwards, Antony Flew, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Sidney Hook, Walter Kaufmann, Corliss Lamont, Wallace I. Matson, H.J. McCloskey, Ernest Nagel, Kai Nielsen, Richard Robinson, Bertrand Russell, and Michael Scriven.

Download or read book The Case Against Christianity written by Michael Martin and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this systematic philosophical critique of the major tenets of Christianity, Michael Martin examines the semantic and epistemological bases of religious claims and beliefs. Beginning with a comparison and evaluation of the Apostles' Creed, the Niceno-Chalcedonian Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, Martin discusses the principal theological, historical, and eschatological assumptions of Christianity. These include the historicity of Jesus, the Incarnation, the Second Coming, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Salvation through faith in Jesus, and Jesus as a model of ethical behavior. Until now, an adequately convincing criticism of Christianity did not exist. Martin's use of historical evidence, textual analysis, and interpretations by philosophers and theologians provides the strongest case made to date against the rational justification of Christian doctrines.

Download or read book The Case Against Theism written by Raphael Lataster and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph offers a critique of arguments for the existence of a specifically Christian God advanced by prominent scholar William Lane Crane. The discussion incorporates philosophical, mathematical, scientific, historical, and sociological approaches. The author does not seek to criticize religion in general, or Christianity specifically. Rather, he examines the modern and relatively sophisticated evidential case for Christian theism. Scholars have been arguing for theism or naturalism for centuries, and there seems little to add to the discussion, especially from the theistic side. However, to assume that either theism or naturalism obtains is a false dichotomy. There are alternatives to both that merit consideration. Employing a probabilistic approach, the author advances this discussion. His work uniquely utilizes not only naturalistic hypotheses to argue against theism. It also presents supernaturalistic hypotheses. This leaves no question that theism is almost certainly false, even if some form of divine reality exists. This project seeks not to argue that Christianity or any other faith or religion is undesirable, but only to critically examine evidentialist claims posited by Christianity's learned apologists. In fact, a major secondary aim is to consider alternative god-conceptions, such as polytheism and pantheism. This work aims to highlight that Christian theism is often granted special privileges by theistic philosophers of religion, which seems doubly inappropriate when certain alternative god-conceptions may even prove to be more plausible.

Download or read book The Best Argument against God written by G. Oppy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: .... compares two theories—Naturalism and Theism—on a wide range of relevant data. It concludes that Naturalism should be preferred to Theism on that data. The central idea behind the argument is that, while Naturalism is simpler than Theism, there is no relevant data that Naturalism fails to explain at least as well as Theism does.

Download or read book The Case for God written by Karen Armstrong and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times. Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the lengths to which humankind has gone to experience a sacred reality that it called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. With her trademark depth of knowledge and profound insight, Armstrong elucidates how the changing world has necessarily altered the importance of religion at both societal and individual levels. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for structuring a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.

Download or read book The Case Against Theism written by Raphael Lataster and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph offers a critique of arguments for the existence of a specifically Christian God advanced by prominent scholar William Lane Craig. The discussion incorporates philosophical, mathematical, scientific, historical, and sociological approaches. The author does not seek to criticize religion in general, or Christianity specifically. Rather, he examines the modern and relatively sophisticated evidential case for Christian theism. Scholars have been arguing for theism or naturalism for centuries, and there seems little to add to the discussion, especially from the theistic side. However, to assume that either theism or naturalism obtains is a false dichotomy. There are alternatives to both that merit consideration. Employing a probabilistic approach, the author advances this discussion. His work uniquely utilizes not only naturalistic hypotheses to argue against theism. It also presents supernaturalistic hypotheses. This leaves no question that theism is almost certainly false, even if some form of divine reality exists. This project seeks not to argue that Christianity or any other faith or religion is undesirable, but only to critically examine evidentialist claims posited by Christianity’s learned apologists. In fact, a major secondary aim is to consider alternative god-conceptions, such as polytheism and pantheism. This work aims to highlight that Christian theism is often granted special privileges by theistic philosophers of religion, which seems doubly inappropriate when certain alternative god-conceptions may even prove to be more plausible.

Download or read book A Case for the Existence of God written by Dean L. Overman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines questions in regards to the world's origin, how it functions, and why; and features logical arguments that are supported by physics and theology; and also discusses the relationship between science and religion.

Download or read book Answering the New Atheism written by Scott Hahn and published by Emmaus Road Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential book for dismantling Richard Dawkins' atheistic agenda. Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker collaborate to debunk Dawkins' theories and show how inconsistent and illogical his conclusions truly are. This is the definitive book for college students or faithful Christians hoping to answer Dawkins' claims and assert the logic and beauty of their faith.

Download or read book Theism and Ultimate Explanation written by Timothy O'Connor and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expansive, yet succinct, analysis of the Philosophy of Religion – from metaphysics through theology. Organized into two sections, the text first examines truths concerning what is possible and what is necessary. These chapters lay the foundation for the book’s second part – the search for a metaphysical framework that permits the possibility of an ultimate explanation that is correct and complete. A cutting-edge scholarly work which engages with the traditional metaphysician’s quest for a true ultimate explanation of the most general features of the world we inhabit Develops an original view concerning the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, or truths concerning what is possible or necessary Applies this framework to a re-examination of the cosmological argument for theism Defends a novel version of the Leibnizian cosmological argument

Download or read book The Religious Case Against Belief written by James P. Carse and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that inappropriate beliefs, rather than organized religion, are responsible for conflicts in today's world, explaining that belief systems that perpetuate discrimination and thought restriction are not supported by core religions.

Download or read book The Book Against God written by James Wood and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Passionate, Profoundly Funny First Novel from "the Best Literary Critic of His Generation" (Adam Begley, Financial Times) Thomas Bunting, the charming, chaotic, and deeply untruthful narrator of James Wood's wonderful first novel, is in despair. His marriage is disintegrating and his academic career is in ruins: instead of completing his philosophy Ph.D. (still unfinished after seven years), he is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork, a vast atheistic project he has privately entitled "The Book Against God." But when his father suddenly falls ill, Thomas returns to the tiny village in the north of England where he grew up and where his father still works as a parish priest. There, Thomas hopes, he may finally be able to communicate honestly with his father, a brilliant and formidable Christian example, and sort out his own wayward life. But Thomas is a chronic liar as well as an atheist, and he finds, instead, that once at home he soon reverts to the evasive patterns of his childhood years—with disastrous results. The story of a husband and wife, a father and son, faith and disbelief, and a hero who couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it, The Book Against God is at once hilarious and poignant; it introduces an original comic voice—edgy, elegiac, lyrical, and indignant—and, in the irrepressible Thomas Bunting, one of the strangest philosophers in contemporary fiction.

Download or read book The Coherence of Theism written by Richard Swinburne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Coherence of Theism investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent, to say that there is a God. Richard Swinburne concludes that despite philosophical objections, most traditional claims about God are coherent (that is, do not involve contradictions); and although some of the most important claims are coherent only if the words by which they are expressed are being used in analogical senses, this is the way in which theologians have usually claimed that they are being used. When the first edition of this book was published in 1977, it was the first book in the new 'analytic' tradition of philosophy of religion to discuss these issues. Since that time there have been very many books and discussions devoted to them, and this new, substantially rewritten, second edition takes account of these discussions and of new developments in philosophy generally over the past 40 years. These discussions have concerned how to analyse the claim that God is 'omnipotent', whether God can foreknow human free actions, whether God is everlasting or timeless, and what it is for God to be a 'necessary being'. On all these issues this new edition has new things to say.

Download or read book Natural Signs and Knowledge of God written by C. Stephen Evans and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-27 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there such a thing as natural knowledge of God? C. Stephen Evans presents the case for understanding theistic arguments as expressions of natural signs in order to gain a new perspective both on their strengths and weaknesses. Three classical, much-discussed theistic arguments - cosmological, teleological, and moral - are examined for the natural signs they embody. At the heart of this book lie several relatively simple ideas. One is that if there is a God of the kind accepted by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, then it is likely that a 'natural' knowledge of God is possible. Another is that this knowledge will have two characteristics: it will be both widely available to humans and yet easy to resist. If these principles are right, a new perspective on many of the classical arguments for God's existence becomes possible. We understand why these arguments have for many people a continued appeal but also why they do not constitute conclusive 'proofs' that settle the debate once and for all. Touching on the interplay between these ideas and contemporary scientific theories about the origins of religious belief, particularly the role of natural selection in predisposing humans to form beliefs in God or gods, Evans concludes that these scientific accounts of religious belief are fully consistent, even supportive, of the truth of religious convictions.

Download or read book The Improbability of God written by Michael Martin and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the authors bring together for the first time an extensive collection of papers by many distinguished scholars who present a variety of arguments that the existence of God is improbable.

Download or read book God Is Not Great written by Christopher Hitchens and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.