By Robin Le Poidevin
In Arguing for Atheism , Robin Le Poidevin addresses the query of no matter if theism - the view that there's a own, transcendent author of the universe - solves the inner most mysteries of life. Philosophical defences of theism have usually been in response to the concept that it explains issues which atheistic methods can't: for instance, why the universe exists, and the way there should be goal ethical values. the most competition of Arguing for Atheism is that the opposite is right: that during truth theism fails to provide an explanation for many stuff it claims to. Such an interpretation has been argued for lately by means of 'radical theologians'; Arguing for Atheism is for that reason, a philosophical contribution to at least one of the foremost non secular problems with our instances. Designed as a textual content for collage classes within the philosophy of faith and metaphysics, this book's obtainable sort and various causes of vital philosophical strategies and positions also will make it beautiful to the overall reader.
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Additional info for Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
Example text
I could surely not have grasped the meaning of the term ‘anaesthetic’. You would know that my assertion was false because ‘anaesthetic’ means something which reduces one’s sensitivity to pain. You do not need to step into my laboratory to see Must the universe have a cause? 11 whether my assertion is true or not. The statement that ‘I have invented an anaesthetic which heightens people’s sensitivity to pain’ implies that there is an anaesthetic which does not reduce sensitivity to pain, and this is self-contradictory.
But, again, if their reasons are good ones, then the modal atheistic argument above is redundant. In summary, then, we have the following possibilities: 1 2 3 4 ‘God exists’ is analytically true, for reasons other than those provided by the modal ontological argument, so the modal ontological argument is redundant. ‘God exists’ is analytically false, so premise (2) of the modal ontological argument is false. ‘God exists’ is neither analytically true nor analytically false, and since necessary truth is the same as analytic truth, premise (1) is false.
See also Craig’s The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz, London: Macmillan, 1980, from which one can get a clear idea of the enormous variety of cosmological arguments. For a discussion of the relation between the cosmological argument and the topic of the next chapter, the notion of a necessary being, see Chapter 4 of William L. Rowe’s The Cosmological Argument, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. H. Newton-Smith’s The Structure of Time, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. ’, Religious Studies, vol.