A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism

A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism

by Gregory E. Ganssle
A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism

A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism

by Gregory E. Ganssle

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Overview

Calmly engaging the philosophical arguments posed by best-selling authors Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, and to a lesser extent, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, Gregory Ganssle's A Reasonable God is a nuanced, charitable, and philosophically well-informed defense of the existence of God. Eschewing the rhetoric and provocative purposes of the New Atheists, Ganssle instead lucidly and objectively analyzes each argument on its own philosophical merits, to see how persuasive they prove to be. Surveying topics including the relationship between faith and reason, moral arguments for the existence of God, the Darwinian theories of the origin of religion, he pays particular attention to, and ultimately rejects, what he determines is the strongest logical argument against the existence of god posed by the new atheists, put forth by Dawkins: that our universe resembles more of what an atheistic universe would be like than it does with what a theistic universe would be like.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781602582415
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Publication date: 10/01/2009
Pages: 201
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Gregory E. Ganssle is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Senior Fellow of the Rivendell Institute at Yale University. He is the author of Thinking About God: First Steps in Philosophy and editor of God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature (with David M. Woodruff).

Table of Contents

Contents:

Introduction: The New Face of Atheism

1. Science, Philosophy and the Claim that God Exists

2. Faith, Reason and Evidence

3. Three Arguments for God

4. The Design Argument

5. Darwinian Stories of the Origin of Religion

6. Three Arguments for Atheism

7. The Fittingness Argument

A Modest Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

The 'New Atheists' have made quite a splash, with easily digestible bestsellers full of arch humor and incendiary rhetoric. However, anything of lasting value in them depends upon the almost entirely philosophical arguments at their core. Greg Ganssle has produced an excellent guide to the philosophy in these books—a sensible, even-handed assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. The writing is as accessible as that of the popular authors he discusses; but Ganssle displays more philosophical subtlety, and his measured tone is that of a philosopher, not a bombastic culture warrior. He never takes a cheap shot or overstates his case.The book will be welcomed by anyone intrigued or incensed by the works of Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.; but who wants to assess their claims coolly and rationally.

Dean Zimmerman

The 'New Atheists' have made quite a splash, with easily digestible bestsellers full of arch humor and incendiary rhetoric. However, anything of lasting value in them depends upon the almost entirely philosophical arguments at their core. Greg Ganssle has produced an excellent guide to the philosophy in these books—a sensible, even-handed assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. The writing is as accessible as that of the popular authors he discusses; but Ganssle displays more philosophical subtlety, and his measured tone is that of a philosopher, not a bombastic culture warrior. He never takes a cheap shot or overstates his case.The book will be welcomed by anyone intrigued or incensed by the works of Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.; but who wants to assess their claims coolly and rationally.

Peter van Inwagen

Short, readable, philosophically informed, and easily accessible. I highly recommend it both to interested non-philosophers and as a university-level text.

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