This witty and learned exploration of the many views of the nature and existence of God, as expressed by the major philosophers of the Western world from the medieval period to the present day, is the last work of noted philosopher Paul Edwards. In his unique tradermark style, laced with erudition and acerbic humour, Edwards addresses how the concept of God has changed over the centuries, in large part due to the analyses of such sceptical thinkers as David Hume, Thomas Paine, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. A long-time critic of theistic arguments, Edwards demonstrates a masterful understanding of the ways in which the scientific revolution of the 17th century, the Enlightenment of the 18th century, the evolutionary materialism of the 19th century, and the rise of analytic and existentialist philosophies in the 20th century prepared the way for the growing role of atheism in the 21st century.This work is a tour-de-force – a master storyteller’s idiosyncratic evaluation of the views of dozens of Western thinkers on perennial topics in the philosophy of religion. Though not all of the philosophers discussed were non-believers or anti-religious, they can be considered to be – like Edwards himself – ‘freethinkers’. They pursued the cause of knowledge wherever their thinking led them, often to iconoclastic positions. Editor Timothy Madigan, who gave Edwards thoughtful feedback over the years on various drafts of this work and complied it for publication after Edwards’ death, has written an appreciative and informative introduction. ~ Product Description
Leopold Von Ranke’s famous maxim that the historian’s task is to “tell it like it was” may be ridiculed by those who doubt the possibility or even the desirability of objective history, but I believe Von Ranke was fundamentally correct. In the case of intellectual history, this involves understanding a thinker on his or her own terms, in his or her own context. It is coming to grips with a document’s meaning and penetrating what underlies the arguments being advanced. It is no about rehabilitating or castigating those long dead, but about grasping objectively what is being said and why. ¶ While objectivity is the historian’s goal, this does not mean that the historian is void of personal commitments, or that he or she must remain neutral as to the truth or falsity of the positions under consideration. The point is simply that history qua history is not about passing such judgments but is merely about getting the story straight, however the chips may fall. It is only after the position has been understood on its own terms and without bias that the historian may turn to evaluation and employ the fruits of his or her discovery in polemical or other theological application. But at that point we’ve moved beyond the historical task simpliciter and into something else — something wonderfully valuable and necessary, perhaps, but something different nonetheless.
From public-policy decisions and world events to theology, the arts, education, and even conversations with friends, history’s most influential ideas affect nearly everything we see, think, and do. Thus it is critical to understand and take seriously the ideas that are shaping us. The greater our familiarity with the streams of thought that have saturated Western culture through the ages, the greater our ability to influence this culture for Christ. R. C. Sproul expertly leads the way with The Consequences of Ideas. Tracing the contours of Western philosophy from the ancients to the molders of modern thought-including Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, and Freud-Sproul proves that ideas are not just passing fads. They endure for generations to come, with wide-ranging consequences for us all.~ Synopsis
One suspects that some modern philosophers have used the device of defining morality as a means of softening the rigours of subjectivism. They are unable to accept an objectivist ethic, and feel forced to conclude that moral utterances merely express attitudes that men happen to have acquired. They are, however, reluctant to accept the consequence that they have no reason for condemning the moral attitudes of (say) Hitler except that they do not happen to share them. They try to avoid this conclusion by saying that it applies only to certain kinds of attitude. Others may be excluded simply because, by definition, they are not moral. ¶ It is clear, however, that to say … that moral desires are, by definition, those impersonal desires which we want others to share does not excuse us from saying why we think that personal desires should yield to impersonal ones, when they conflict; nor does it justify us in condemning another man if he prefers to give precedence to personal desires. Again, to say … that moral principles are, by definition, ‘universalizable’ does not automatically justify a preference for universalizable principles over ones that cannot be universalized. The hard questions for subjectivism still remain, however morality is defined.
This is an accessible response to the
contemporary anti-God arguments of the ‘new atheists’ (Dawkins,
Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Grayling, etc). Atheism has become militant
in the past few years, with its own popular mass media evangelists such
as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. In this readable book, Christian
philosopher Peter S. Williams considers the arguments of the ‘new
atheists’ and finds them wanting. Williams explains the history of
atheism and responds to the claims that: ‘belief in God causes more
harm than good’; ‘religion is about blind faith and science is the only
way to know things’; ‘science can explain religion away’; ‘there is not
enough evidence for God’; ‘the arguments for God’s existence do not
work’. Williams argues that belief in God is more intellectually
plausible than atheism. ~ Product Description
People often talk about worldview when describing the philosophy that guides their lives. But how have we come by our worldviews, and what impact did Christianity have on those that are common to Western civilization? This authoritative, accessible survey traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. It demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that, based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God, established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization. The two-pronged assault in our time on the biblically based worldview by postmodern philosophy and the writings of neo-atheists has made it even more crucial that we acknowledge and defend its historical roots. Unique among books on the topic, this work discusses Western worldviews as a continuous narrative rather than as simply a catalogue of ideas, and traces the effects changes in worldview had on society. It helps readers understand their own worldviews and those of other people and helps them recognize the consequences that worldviews hold. Professors, students, and armchair historians alike will profit from this book. ~ Back Cover
The author, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, has produced a work that deserves close scrutiny. The casual reader is likely to conclude that Shriver is addressing, in some flight of fancy, the oxymoronic. After all, political forgiveness seems patently absurd, especially given the history of the 20th century-not to mention our contemporary culture of violence. However, while recognizing that forgiveness is a morally complex concept, Shriver argues that it reaches beyond the realm of the personal to the arena of political ethics. He contends that forgiveness is (or at least should be seen as) an indispensable element in politics and that it is an essential ingredient in our attempt to construct a proper political ethics. Not everyone will be persuaded by Shriver’s attempt to make forgiveness the cornerstone of a political ethic; nonetheless, his argument should not be ignored. ~ Library Journal
Chapter Four: Say No to the Sacred Public Square 77
Chapter Five: Say No to the Naked Public Square 107
Chapter Six: A Cosmopolitan and Civil Public Square 133
Chapter Seven: Starting with Ourselves 165
Afterword: The Williamsburg Charter 177
Acknowledgments 199
Notes 201
Index 209
Chapter One
A World Safe for Diversity
It would be a safe but sad bet that someone, somewhere in the world, is killing someone else at this very moment in the name of religion or ideology.
Currently, the world’s newspapers give us each day our daily read of the Sunni Muslims ferociously slaughtering Shia Muslims in Baghdad, and of Shia Muslims ferociously slaughtering Sunni Muslims in revenge. Elsewhere it might be Muslims and Hindus killing each other in Kashmir, or Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka, or Muslims and animists in Sudan. Earlier it would have been Protestants and Catholics in Ulster, and Muslims, Orthodox, and Catholics in the Balkans. These are just some of the infamous examples of the carnage, and the devil is usually in the detail of the images and words. As one radical Muslim’s placard declared with a stunning lack of self-consciousness: “Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion.”
But before anyone drifts off into the well-rehearsed litany of blaming it all on religion, we should remember that modern “terror” began in France in 1789 in the name of secular Reason, killing several million in its wars and committing a near-genocide in the Vendée on its first outing. Nearer our own time, close to a hundred million people were slaughtered in the twentieth century by secularist regimes, led by secularist intellectuals, in the name of secularist ideologies—far more than the deaths from all the religious persecutions and repressions in Western history combined.
In the world’s most murderous century, about one hundred million humanbeings were killed in war, another hundred million under political repression, and yet another hundred million in ethnic and sectarian violence.1
Unquestionably, religion can be divisive, violent, and evil. But, also unquestionably, secularism can be oppressive, murderous, and evil, too. Leaving aside Hitler, who was anti-Christian but not an atheist, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, the Young Turks, and the Spanish
Republicans were all secularist, though cut from the same cloth as Osama bin Laden and Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi. When priests and nuns were slaughtered by the thousands and churches sacked and destroyed in the Spanish Civil War, a Republican wrote: “These burnings were the autos da fé necessary for the progress of civilization.”2
This is no moment for crowing by either side, or for cheap attacks and mindless finger-pointing by anyone. There is enough blame to go around to sober us all, and the urgent need is for solutions, not scapegoats. As Ambrose Bierce pronounced with bitter accuracy in The Devil’s Dictionary, “The defining feature of humanity is inhumanity.”3
But the point at which we must begin to respond is to face up to the core of the dilemma today: How do we live with our deepest differences, especially when those differences are religious and ideological? The place at which we must begin to search for answers is the United States. Not because the problem is worse here than elsewhere—on the contrary—but because America has the best cultural resources, and therefore the greatest responsibility to point the way forward in
answering the deepest questions.
This short essay is a proposal for restoring civility in America, as one model for fostering
civility around the world and helping to make the world safe for diversity. But civility must truly be restored. It is not to be confused with niceness and mere etiquette or dismissed as squeamishness about differences. It is a tough, robust, substantive concept that is a
republican virtue, critical to both democracy and civil society, and a manner of conduct that will be decisive for the future of the American republic.4
Let America Be America
“Let America be America.” That maxim is not a statement of jingoism or empty bombast when written by a foreigner. Yet if ever there was a time for Americans to live up to the saying and save it from becoming a cliché, let alone a form of rank hypocrisy, it is now. The alternative is to
let things slip, and accelerate the moment when the need will be to save America from herself.
As history’s first new nation and the current lead society in the modern world, the United States is distinctive for the way it was founded by intention and by ideas. American ideals and institutions do not trail off into the mists of antiquity as do those of many nations. They were born in an unprecedented burst of brilliant thinking and political building, and from the very beginning they engaged constructively with many of the central challenges and characteristic features of the modern world.
Freedom, equal opportunity, the rule of law, mutual responsibility, representative government, the separation of powers, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, justice grounded in due process and the presumption of innocence, universal public education—as words, these ideals trip off the tongue lightly; but as principles, they form the bedrock on which the greatness of America has been built.
Earlier, many people around the world were blind to the significance of what George Washington called “the great experiment” and the founders declared “the new order of the ages.” Unlike Alexis de Tocqueville, such people did not see the meaning and importance of the rise of democracy in America. And while their traditional ways of life endured, they could afford to ignore it.
That is no longer the case. The global era has thrust almost all the world into the same avalanche of change and choice, so that many formerly traditional countries are now scrambling to come to terms with modern problems for which their traditions and customs have not prepared them.
Witness, for example, the once-homogeneous British and Dutch scrambling to adapt their traditional views of tolerance to a whirlwind of disruptive diversity undreamed of a generation ago; or the hauteur of the French at being forced to renegotiate their strictly secular way of public life under the impact of Muslim immigration while still pressing to keep any reference to
Europe’s two-thousand-year Christian past out of the preamble to the European Constitution. Both of these are the sort of challenges that the United States has wrestled with from the very beginning; and for anyone willing to learn, the American experience is highly instructive.
In a world torn apart by religious extremism on the one side and a
strident secularism on the other, no question is more urgent than how
we live with our deepest differences — especially our religious and
ideological differences. The Case for Civility is a proposal
for restoring civility in America as a way to foster civility around
the world. Influential Christian writer and speaker Os Guinness makes a
passionate plea to put an end to the polarization of American politics
and culture that — rather than creating a public space for real
debate — threatens to reverse the very principles our founders set into
motion and that have long preserved liberty, diversity, and unity in
this country. Guinness takes on the contemporary threat of
the excesses of the Religious Right and the secular Left, arguing that
we must find a middle ground between privileging one religion over
another and attempting to make all public expression of faith
illegal. If we do not do this, Guinness contends, Western civilization
as we know it will die. Always provocative and deeply insightful,
Guinness puts forth a vision of a new, practical "civil and
cosmopolitan public square" that speaks not only to America's immediate
concerns but to the long-term interests of the republic and the world. ~ Product Description
A fascinating journey through Western civilization’s ongoing attempts to understand and explain the concept of God. Celebrated religion scholar Armstrong (The Bible: A Biography, 2007, etc.) creates more than a history of religion; she effectively demonstrates how the West (broadly speaking) has grappled with the existence of deity and captured the concept in words, art and ideas. Beginning in the majestic caves of Lascaux, Armstrong explores how religion became a meaningful part of prehistoric societies, and the ways in which these societies passed down their practices and ideas in the earliest forms of art. The author then moves on to early monotheism and its rivals, offering a brilliant examination of ancient Greek views on religion and reason, which laid the groundwork for so much of Western thought. Looking at the early Christians and Diaspora-era Jews in tandem, Armstrong delves into Talmudic study and midrash, as well as Christian adaptations of theological concepts. Throughout the book, the author argues against religion as an abstraction, noting that it most truly exists in practice. "Faith . . . was a matter of practical insight and active commitment," she writes. "It had little to do with abstract belief or theological conjecture." Nevertheless, scholars have always attempted to define and "prove" God, and Armstrong admirably outlines the best of them through the centuries, including Origen, Anselm, Pascal and Tillich. Armstrong claims that the "warfare" between science and religion is a myth perpetuated by those with axes to grind. Likewise, the modern atheist movement, "death of God" theology and even fundamentalism arise from extremists who see religion as correct doctrine,not correct praxis. Though mostly focused on the West, Armstrong maintains a global perspective, masterfully weaving in her solid understanding of the world’s panoply of faiths. Accessible, intriguing study of how we see God. ~ Kirkus Reviews