A Philosophical, Scientific and Theological Defense for the Notion that a God Exists PDF Download

Author: Hal Flemings
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780761826477
Category : God
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In A Philosophical, Scientific and Theological Defense for the Notion That a God Exists, Hal Flemings presents an overview of the history of the debate on the question of the existence of God. In an objective fashion, Flemings provides equal voice to opposing views while not hiding his own. He treats the problem of evil from a new perspective, which includes moral evil and natural evil (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, etc.) and discusses the relationship between God and the theoretical and factual sciences.

Author: Stephen T Davis
Publisher: Lion Books
ISBN: 0745980074
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
If God exists, why doesn't he eliminate suffering and evil? Does evolution disprove Christianity? Can religion be explained by cognitive science? People have grappled for ages with these kinds of questions. And many in today's academic world find Christian belief untenable. But renowned philosopher Stephen Davis argues that belief in God is indeed a rational and intellectually sound endeavor. Drawing on a lifetime of rigorous reflection and critical thinking, he explores perennial and contemporary challenges to Christian faith. Davis appraises objections fairly and openly, offering thoughtful approaches to common intellectual problems. Real questions warrant reasonable responses. Examine for yourself the rationality of the Christian faith.

Author: Victor J. Stenger
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161592003X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. This book contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, physicist Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. This paperback edition of the New York Times bestselling hardcover edition contains a new foreword by Christopher Hitchens and a postscript by the author in which he responds to reviewers' criticisms of the original edition.

Author: Peter Forrest
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801432552
Category : Religion and science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Peter Forrest expounds a program of best-explanation apologetics. He contends that since the existence of God would provide the best possible explanation of various facts, those facts support theism. Among the facts cited are the suitability of the universe for life, the regularity of the universe, the human capacity for intellectual progress, the experience of a moral order, and various forms of beauty. The beauty that interests Forrest as evidence for the existence of God includes sensuous beauty; the beauty of the natural order, as revealed by the sciences; and the beauty of necessity discovered by mathematicians. In addressing the need for an adequate motive for creation, Forrest conjectures that God created the universe for embodied persons not for their life on earth alone but also for an afterlife. Forrest acknowledges the speculative nature of such an account. He suggests that philosophical speculation is also required to defend theism against the charge that it is too extravagant a hypothesis to be warranted. Providing a speculative defense against the argument from evil, he explains how such speculations can be used to support best-explanation arguments without the conclusions themselves being rendered purely speculative.

Author: Craig J. Radford
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1644580810
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Does science prove God's existence or provide more reasons to doubt? Does God truly exist? That is the age-old seemingly unanswerable question. But what if there was an answer? What if the answer has been staring us right in the face for centuries, but we've been too busy missing the forest for the trees? This book invites you to take a step back and look at the broader picture. It offers anecdotes, observations and, most importantly, scientific evidence of the universal, all-encompassing, culture-transcending purpose that connects us all. In that purpose, we find many paths to a knowledge that has eluded humankind for as long as we have had the ability to wonder: proof that God does indeed exist. We find this knowledge in the stars, in the nature of time, in the laws of physics, in our own bodies, and in equations as complex as advanced calculus and unconditional love. It's just a matter of knowing where (and how) to look. In a centuries-old debate that has always placed science in an adversarial role with faith, this book brings the two camps together, using logic and reason to prove the existence of God. For the atheist, these pages eschew scriptural references in favor of evolutionary, philosophical, cultural, and natural evidence. For the believer, this book enhances your faith with affirmative arguments steeped in mathematics, particle physics, and a host of other scientific and real-world observations. And for anyone who has ever looked up at the sky and wondered what might lie beyond, this book provides a clear, compelling, life-affirming answer. "Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything." "" Napoleon Hill "As a secularist and humanist who doesn't share the same conclusions, I was surprised with what an enjoyable read this is. This is the strongest summary to date that I've seen for the Theist position." "" Jeremy Runnells, author of the CES Letter "Written through a Euro-centric philosophical and western science lens, one has the opportunity to consider not only the argument for and against the belief in a God, but to contemplate a middle ground where the dualities of such sit squarely within the most important part of the equation- the one who asks the question. This book is a worthwhile read, particularly for those seeking to dive more deeply into the self." "" Jonathan Webb, Dr. of Theology

Author: James F. Sennett
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 9780830827671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
James F. Sennett and Douglas Groothuis have assembled a distinguished array of scholars to examine the Humean legacy with care and make the case for a more robust, if chastened, natural theology after Hume.

Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
"Theodicy" is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz published in 1710, whose optimistic approach to the problem of evil is thought to have inspired Voltaire's "Candide". Much of the work consists of a response to the ideas of the French philosopher Pierre Bayle, with whom Leibniz carried on a debate for many years. The "Theodicy" tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws. Leibniz distinguishes three forms of evil: moral, physical, and metaphysical. Moral evil is sin, physical evil is pain, and metaphysical evil is limitation. God permits moral and physical evil for the sake of greater goods, and metaphysical evil is unavoidable since any created universe must necessarily fall short of God's absolute perfection.

Author: Yujin Nagasawa
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136737464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Does God exist? What are the various arguments that seek to prove the existence of God? Can atheists refute these arguments? The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction assesses classical and contemporary arguments concerning the existence of God: the ontological argument, introducing the nature of existence, possible worlds, parody objections, and the evolutionary origin of the concept of God the cosmological argument, discussing metaphysical paradoxes of infinity, scientific models of the universe, and philosophers’ discussions about ultimate reality and the meaning of life the design argument, addressing Aquinas’s Fifth Way, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the concept of irreducible complexity, and the current controversy over intelligent design and school education. Bringing the subject fully up to date, Yujin Nagasawa explains these arguments in relation to recent research in cognitive science, the mathematics of infinity, big bang cosmology, and debates about ethics and morality in light of contemporary political and social events. The book also includes fascinating insights into the passions, beliefs and struggles of the philosophers and scientists who have tackled the challenge of proving the existence of God, including Thomas Aquinas, and Kurt Gödel - who at the end of his career as a famous mathematician worked on a secret project to prove the existence of God. The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal gateway to the philosophy of religion and an excellent starting point for anyone interested in arguments about the existence of God.

Author: Glenn F. Chesnut
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1532070349
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This book is more than just a set of logical proofs. It shows us who and what God is, and explains how our universe exploded into existence in the Big Bang, some 13.799 billion years ago, in such a way that all other Being in the universe derives its existence and nature — and its capacities for growth, power, moral character, change, and novelty — from God as the Ground of Being. This is a book for people who are interested in philosophy. It begins with a discussion of some of the fallacies into which the concept of infinity has led careless thinkers over the centuries. In particular, Chesnut demonstrates how often the modern defenses of atheism have been based on what are no more than pseudo-infinite regresses. This includes in particular self-delusive attempts to get rid of God by constructing what would be no more than imaginary universe-sized perpetual motion machines. The last half of the book then has as its central focus the set of Five Proofs for the Existence of God formulated by the great medieval thinker St. Thomas Aquinas, where Chesnut begins by showing how each of the proofs was interpreted in the middle ages. But the development of modern science requires that the Five Proofs be reworked for today, so he shows, for example, how the Proof from Motion can be reworded as an Argument from Energy, subject to the laws of thermodynamics, and how the Proof from Gradations in Truth and Value forces us to decide whether we will accept that at least some moral values are real, or instead will become what modern psychologists call psychopaths. This present book, combined with the work Chesnut authored nine years ago — God and Spirituality: Philosophical Essays — sets out an architectonic philosophical system for the twenty-first century, grounded on one side in the classics of the ancient Greco-Roman world and the medieval period, but on the other hand taking seriously the revolutionary changes in western thought produced by the development of twentieth-century science, including relativity, quantum theory, the uncertainty principle, and Gödel’s proof.

Author: Herman Philipse
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191505056
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
God in the Age of Science? is a critical examination of strategies for the philosophical defence of religious belief. The main options may be presented as the end nodes of a decision tree for religious believers. The faithful can interpret a creedal statement (e.g. 'God exists') either as a truth claim, or otherwise. If it is a truth claim, they can either be warranted to endorse it without evidence, or not. Finally, if evidence is needed, should its evidential support be assessed by the same logical criteria that we use in evaluating evidence in science, or not? Each of these options has been defended by prominent analytic philosophers of religion. In part I Herman Philipse assesses these options and argues that the most promising for believers who want to be justified in accepting their creed in our scientific age is the Bayesian cumulative case strategy developed by Richard Swinburne. Parts II and III are devoted to an in-depth analysis of this case for theism. Using a 'strategy of subsidiary arguments', Philipse concludes (1) that theism cannot be stated meaningfully; (2) that if theism were meaningful, it would have no predictive power concerning existing evidence, so that Bayesian arguments cannot get started; and (3) that if the Bayesian cumulative case strategy did work, one should conclude that atheism is more probable than theism. Philipse provides a careful, rigorous, and original critique of theism in the world today.