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Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins
By Keith Ward
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
Richard Dawkins recently claimed that 'no theologian has ever produced a satisfactory response to his arguments'. Well-known broadcaster and author Keith Ward is one of Britain's foremost philosopher-theologians. This is his response. Ward welcomes all comers into philosophy's world of clear definitions, sharp arguments, and diverse conclusions. But when Dawkins enters this world, his passion tends to get the better of him, and he descends into stereotyping, pastiche, and mockery. In this stimulating and thought-provoking philosophical challenge, Ward demonstrates not only how Dawkins' arguments are flawed, but that a perfectly rational case can be made that there, almost certainly, is a God.
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Keith Ward
Keith Ward is a Fellow of the British Academy, and Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, London. He was formerly Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, and is one of Britain's foremost writers on comparative theology and Christian issues.
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Reviews for Why There Almost Certainly Is a God
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
4/5
4 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5given me by Margaret saylor. Very heavy-going , philosophica, yet intriguing.Didnt change my views at all.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book took me several days to read despite the fact it is relatively short at 150 pages. The reason is the content. Here at last is a book that avoids simplistic platitudes and tired old arguments traded by one side or another in religious debates. Instead the author builds a philosophical argument that systematically deconstructs the unchallenged assumptions of Dawkin's materialism, and replaces them with a philosophical framework that is at its core rational and consistent - and that makes God necessary.Keith Ward is much more honest than certain other writers in this book. His case is convincing, but he draws attention to its limitations - primarily that we must assume the universe is both rational and intelligible. Thus ultimately all he can tell us is "why there almost certainly is a God". But he does exactly that. The book is heavy going, and will probably only be appreciated fully by readers who know at least some philosophy, some logic and some physics. Ward does his best to put the argument in terms that don't require such a grounding, but the argument relies heavily on the understanding of terms such as necessity, contingency and other such concepts that are the bread and butter of philosophers, but not often discussed over a game of darts in the pub.But it is quite clear that Keith Ward does something quite remarkable - he pulls the rug from under the assumptions of materialism, and if nothing else, it shows that the arguments of Dawkins et al. cause rather more problems than they resolve. The clear message of this book -whether you accept the hypothesis of God's existence or not - is that belief in God is profoundly a rational belief.Thoroughly recommended - a book to make you think long and hard whether you agree with it or not.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book, written in an conversational, low-key and interesting style, attempts to refute the main arguments in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and to show that “the God hypothesis” is reasonable, even highly likely, given a couple of basic premises. In the end, Ward makes clear that Dawkins’ conclusions are reasonable given his (Dawkins’) materialistic premises, while “the God hypothesis” is quite reasonable given a different starting point which, in Ward’s view, is better at explaining the universe. The most important difference between the two viewpoints is that materialism sees everything as derived from physical laws of nature. In this view, consciousness, values, relationships, and other aspects of our personal world are somehow merely results of the physical phenomena and could, in principle, be fully explained by physical laws. Ward argues that idealism, “in the very broad sense of accepting consciousness or mind as the fundamental character of reality,” is a stronger foundation. His arguments are based partly on the problems of explaining consciousness on the basis of materialism, and partly on the problem that materialism itself is looking more problematic as the very concepts of matter, time, space, and energy have become highly complex. As I understand it, the barest outline of Ward’s argument has two threads. The first is the one above, that consciousness if fundamental and that personal causation exists alongside material causation. That is, some thing happen because someone, a conscious entity, wants them to happen; our sense that we are agents, capable of doing things, is not just an illusion but real. If this is true, then it is not unreasonable, he argues, that consciousness could exist apart from matter and outside the physical universe. The second thread argues that if the universe is rational, able to be understood in terms of logic and causation, then it must have a necessary (non-contingent) and eternal cause. This cause is not necessarily conscious—it could be an equation, or the fact that all possible universes must exist—but there must be something that is itself uncaused. I think this what another reviewer says is just the kalam argument. One of the more interesting aspects of the book for me was the discussion of multiple universes and how they do or don’t solve the problems of ultimate causation and the fine-tuning of our own universe. I doubt that a truly new argument for the existence or absence of God arises as often as once a century, though I don’t really know since philosophy is not my field. Still, it’s not the novelty of Ward’s arguments that makes the book worth reading, but rather the clarity of the writing and the way the arguments directly speak to those of Dawkins.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brilliant response to the inadequate arguments of Dawkins in his "The God Delusion". Respectful, intellectually humble, and devastating!