God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible

by William Lane Craig (Editor), Chad Meister (Editor)

Overview

• 2011 Outreach Magazine Book Award winner
• 2010 Christianity Today Book Award winner

The days have passed when the goodness of God—indeed, the reality of God itself—could reasonably be called a consensus opinion. God's reputation has come under considerable review in recent days, with some going so far as to say that it's not we who've made a mess of things. Instead whatever it is we call God is to blame.But is such an opinion really a fair assessment? In this magisterial collection, the contemporary complaints against belief in God are addressed with intellectual passion and rigor by some of the most astute theological and philosophical minds of the day:

• J. P. Moreland
• Paul Moser
• John Polkinghorne
• Michael Behe
• Michael J. Murray
• Alister McGrath
• Paul Copan
• Jerry Walls
• Charles Taliaferro
• Scot McKnight
• Gary Habermas
• Mark Mittelberg
• Chad Meister
• William Lane Craig

Including an interview by Gary Habermas with noted convert to theism Antony Flew, and a direct critical response to Richard Dawkins's God Delusion by Alvin Plantinga, God Is Great, God Is Good offers convincing and compelling reassurance that though the world has changed, God has not.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780830837267
Publisher:	InterVarsity Press
Publication date:	10/15/2009
Pages:	265
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Chad Meister (Ph.D., Marquette University) is professor of philosophy at Bethel College in Mishawaka, Indiana.

William Lane Craig (Ph.D., philosophy, University of Birmingham; D.Theol., systematic theology, University of Munich) is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, in La Mirada, California. He is also president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: God Is
1 Richard Dawkins on Arguments for God
William Lane Craig

2 The Image of God and the Failure of Scientific Atheism
J. P. Moreland

3 Evidence of a Morally Perfect God
Paul K. Moser

Part Two: God Is Great
4 God and Physics
John Polkinghorne

5 God and Evolution
Michael J. Behe

6 Evolutionary Explanations of Religion?
Michael J. Murray

Part Three: God Is Good
7 God, Evil and Morality
Chad Meister

8 Is Religion Evil?
Alister McGrath

9 Are Old Testament Laws Evil?
Paul Copan

10 How Could God Create Hell?
Jerry L. Walls

Part Four: Why It Matters
11 Recognizing Divine Revelation
Charles Taliaferro

12 The Messiah You Never Expected
Scot McKnight

13 Tracing Jesus' Resurrection to Its Earliest Eyewitness Accounts
Gary R. Habermas

14 Why Faith in Jesus Matters
Mark Mittelberg

Postscript: My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism
Antony Flew (with Gary Habermas)

Appendix A: The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism "Ad Absurdum": Review of
Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion
Alvin Plantinga

Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book has plenty of food for thought for believing Christians (and unbelievers!) who need a reason to believe in Jesus Christ and the Church."

Glenn B. Siniscalchi

"Craig and Meister bring together cutting-edge essays that attest powerfully to the massive and growing evidence in favor of theism in general and Christianity in particular. Each essay responds to the charges made by the New Atheists, but this is by no means a polemical book. The writeres set a high bar for reasonable, responsible discourse, and they live up to it."

The 2010 Christianity Today Book Awards

"Craig and Meister have assembled careful, thoughtful, credible, well-communicated views, which can be used to support, expand and individualize curriculum. These essays challenge and argue the New Atheists."

Richard O. Wright

"There is no way, apart from deep and abiding spiritual blindness, that an atheist could read this book and walk away thinking belief in God is nonsensical, irrational, or unscientific."

Craig Hazen

It is reassuring that so gifted a pair of astute minds has taken time to respond to such works as Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchen's God is not Great.

Betty Waller

"The essays in this book are all clearly argued, and will reassure the already faithful that they are neither daft nor deluded."

Lucy Huskinson

"This book has plenty of food for thought for believing Christians (and unbelievers!) who need a reason to believe in Jesus Christ and the Church."

--Glenn B. Siniscalchi, American Theological Inquiry, January 2010

"Craig and Meister bring together cutting-edge essays that attest powerfully to the massive and growing evidence in favor of theism in general and Christianity in particular. Each essay responds to the charges made by the New Atheists, but this is by no means a polemical book. The writeres set a high bar for reasonable, responsible discourse, and they live up to it."

--The 2010 Christianity Today Book Awards, Apologetics/Evangelism Category Winner, February 2010

"Craig and Meister have assembled careful, thoughtful, credible, well-communicated views, which can be used to support, expand and individualize curriculum. These essays challenge and argue the New Atheists."

--Richard O. Wright, Youth Worker Journal, January/February 2010

"The essays in this book are all clearly argued, and will reassure the already faithful that they are neither daft nor deluded."

--Lucy Huskinson, Church Times, April 7, 2010

"There is no way, apart from deep and abiding spiritual blindness, that an atheist could read this book and walk away thinking belief in God is nonsensical, irrational, or unscientific."

--Craig Hazen, Outreach, March-April 2011

It is reassuring that so gifted a pair of astute minds has taken time to respond to such works as Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchen's God is not Great.

--Betty Waller, The Lamplighter

From the Publisher