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As always with Chesterton, there is in this analysis something (as he said of Blake) "very plain and emphatic." He sees in Christianity a rare blending of philosophy and mythology, or reason and story, which satisfies both the mind and the heart. On both levels it rings true. As he puts it, "in answer to the historical query of why it was accepted, and is accepted, I answer for millions of others in my reply; because it fits the lock; because it is like life." Here, as so often in Chesterton, we sense a lived, awakened faith. All that he writes derives from a keen intellect guided by the heart's own knowledge. ~ Doug Thorpe
Gary R. Habermas (College Press: June 1, 1996), 298 pages.
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In this very influential and widely respected volume, Habermas provides evidence that a man named Jesus really did live in Palestine in the first century, using the ordinary canons of historical research (artifactual evidence, inscriptional evidence, and literary evidence). Habermas shows the difference between honest literary/historical investigation & bias proclamations. He's not afraid to take on skeptics, meeting their hypotheses head-on. He not only details opposing viewpoints, but provides heavily footnoted sources to back up his argument that Jesus is not a myth "created" by man, but a real man whose "historical" life is "reported" with so much evidence that it's hard to ignore.
Albert Schweitzer, W. Montgomery (Dover: Feb 11, 2005), 416 pages.
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This book is a turning point in the history of Jesus studies. Schweitzer demonstrates how previous research was really an (unwitting) attempt by liberal and rationalist theologians to proof-text a Jesus who would embarrass orthodox Protestantism and serve as a figurehead for liberal ("Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of Man") Christianity. Schweitzer showed how each historical reconstruction of Jesus uncannily matched the beliefs and agenda of the scholar in question. But Schweitzer knew the Christ of orthodoxy was not the historical Jesus either. One could only discover the latter by being willing to find the unexpected, and Schweitzer thought he found a Jesus who was a prophet of the end of the world, who expected to judge the earth as the Son of Man, and who died tragically mistaken. Even so, he still serves as a beacon of spiritual force for the ages. As does Schweitzer's great book! ~ Robert M. Price
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Denying the existence of the soul has devastating effects on our valuation of human beings maintains Ward in this closely argued book. He examines a diversity of philosophical, anthropological and scientific attacks on God and the reality of the human soul. Taking current scientific arguments back to their essentials, he presents a convincing case. Ward is one of Britain's foremost writers on comparative religion and Christian issues.
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Searle stridently rejects current physicalist orthodoxies in the philosophy of mind, but instead of considering dualism, he offers his own monistic solution, "biological naturalism." More than anything else, he argues, it is the neglect of consciousness that results in so much barrenness and sterility in psychology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science: there can be no study of mind that leaves out consciousness.
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Most recent texts in moral philosophy have either concentrated on practical moral issues or else, if theoretical, have tended toward one-sided presentations of recent, fashionable views. Discussions of applied ethics cannot go very far without revealing underlying philosophical assumptions about how deeper, more general issues are treated. Similarly, recent approaches to ethics are difficult to understand without a knowledge of the context of the historical views against which these approaches are reacting. The Nature of Moral Thinking will satisfy the intellectually curious student, providing a solid and fair discussion of the classical philosophical questions about our moral thinking, surveying the main types of meta-ethical and normative ethical theories, while not excluding the more recent discussions of moral realism, of anti-realism, and of virtue morality. Francis Snare demonstrates that glib intellectualistic thinking about morality, especially in regard to relativism andsubjectivism, is seriously flawed. He also focuses attention on the question of whether particular theories of the origins of morality (for example, those of Nietzsche and Marx) undermine morality. All students and teachers of ethics and philosophy will find this book one of the most complete and detailed introductory-level surveys of the foundations of ethics with emphasis on the problems of the subjectivity, the relativity, and the origins of morality. ~ Product Description
Peter Kreeft (Servant Publications: May, 1990), 218 pages.
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Peter Kreeft has written a great little book for all those who are
tired of hearing 'it's not so black and white'. Kreeft does an
excellent job of explaining, simply and clearly, that right and wrong
are objective - regardless of whether or not it is easy or makes
someone happy. Kreeft also clears up some moral misconceptions like 'if
it doesn't hurt anyone else, then it's ok' and 'the end justifies the
means'. Also included in this book is an excellent discussion,
scientifically based, on why abortion is objectively wrong (such as the
fact that science has always defined a fetus as another human life,
science has never been able to come up with a concrete time limit on
so-called viability, and that a fetus has a distinct human genetic code
that is separate from it's mother's). While
in reading this book Kreeft does spend some time talking about God and
his Christian faith, his arguments are philosophically and
scientifically sound across the religious spectrum. Regardless of a
reader's religion/athiesm, Kreeft's logic applies. While Kreeft argues
that morality comes from God, he also demonstrates that one need not
know that or believe in God to understand and use objective morals. ~ Tammy L. Schilling
Russ Shafer-Landau (Oxford University Press: July, 2005), 332 pages.
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Shafer-Landau defends
non-naturalist moral realism. Moral realism is the thesis there are
objective moral facts. In other words, it is the thesis that there are
moral facts, and they are not constituted by what any actual or
possible person (or any actual or possible group of persons) thinks,
feels, believes, etc. Shafer-Landau argues that these objective moral
facts are non-natural facts. The moral facts are sui generis, and in
particular they are not a sort of natural facts. His non-naturalism
also includes a thesis about moral language: that it cannot be analyzed
into the language of the natural or social sciences. In
explaining his position, Shafer-Landau emphasizes that it does not
commit him to the existence of strange, inexplicable moral stuff. His
position is that the moral facts are wholly constituted by non-moral
(probably wholly natural) facts, though they are not identical to any
non-moral facts. This rests on a form of property pluralism according
to which moral properties, though not identical to non-moral
properties, are realized by non-moral properties. Things have moral
properties that are not identical to natural properties, and therefore
moral facts (i.e. facts about which things have which moral properties)
are wholly constituted by natural facts but are not themselves natural
facts. ~ ctdreyer at Amazon.com
Robert Audi (Oxford University Press: September, 1997), 320 pages.
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This book presents an ethical theory that uniquely integrates
naturalistic and rationalistic elements. Robert Audi develops his
theory in four areas: moral epistemology, the metaphysics of ethics,
moral psychology, and the foundations of ethics. Comprising both new
and published work, the book sets forth a moderate intuitionism,
clarifies the relation between reason and motivation, constructs a
theory of intrinsic value and its place in moral obligation, and
presents a sophisticated account of moral justification. The concluding
chapter articulates a new normative framework built from both Kantian
and intuitionist elements. Connecting ethics in novel ways to both the
theory of value and the philosophy of action, the essays explore topics
such as ethical intuition, reason and judgement, and virtue. Audi also
considers major views in the history of ethics, including those of
Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill, Moore, and W. D. Ross, and engages
contemporary work on autonomy, responsibility, objectivity, reasons,
and other issues. Clear and conceptually rich, this book makes vital
reading for students and scholars of ethics.
