INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Judging from the recent spate of atheist bestsellers by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, one might conclude that belief in God has become intellectually indefensible for thinking people today. But a read of their books quickly reveals that the so-called “New Atheism” lacks intellectual muscle. It is blissfully ignorant of the revolution that has taken place in Anglo-American philosophy over the last half century. It tends to reflect the scientism of a bygone generation rather than the contemporary intellectual scene.
The conclusion that belief in God has become intellectually indefensible for thinking people today is false.
Fifty years ago, the prognosis for theistic belief among the intelligentsia was grim, indeed. On April 8, 1966, Time magazine carried a lead story for which the cover was completely black except for three words emblazoned in bright red letters against the dark background: “Is God Dead?” The story described the death of God movement then current in American theology.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, however, it turned out that the news of God’s demise was “greatly exaggerated.” For while theologians were writing God’s obituary, a new generation of young philosophers was rediscovering his vitality.
Back in the 1940s and ’50s, many philosophers believed that talk about God—since it is not verifiable by the five senses—is meaningless and actual nonsense. To say, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” is no more meaningful than saying, “T’was brillig; and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”1 It’s just gibberish. This Verificationism finally collapsed, in part because philosophers realized that Verificationism itself could not be verified!
Verificationism’s collapse was the most important philosophical event of the 20th century.
Verificationism’s collapse was the most important philosophical event of the 20th century. Its downfall meant that philosophers were free once again to tackle traditional problems of philosophy that Verificationism had suppressed. Accompanying this resurgence of interest in traditional philosophical questions came something altogether unanticipated: a renaissance of Christian philosophy.
The turning point probably came in 1967, with the publication of Alvin Plantinga’s God and Other Minds. A host of Christian philosophers followed, writing in scholarly journals, participating in professional conferences, and publishing with the finest academic presses. The face of Anglo-American philosophy has been transformed as a result. Atheism, though perhaps still the dominant viewpoint at the American university, is a philosophy in retreat.
In a recent article in the secular journal Philo, University of Western Michigan philosopher Quentin Smith laments what he calls “the desecularization of academia that evolved in philosophy departments since the late 1960s.” He complains about naturalists’ passivity in the face of the wave of “intelligent and talented theists entering academia today.” Smith concludes, “God is not ‘dead’ in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.”
The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God’s existence apart from divine revelation. The goal of natural theology is to justify a broadly theistic worldview, one that is common ground among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Deists. While few philosophers would call them compelling proofs, all of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, not to mention creative new arguments, find articulate defenders today.
Let’s take, then, a quick tour of some current arguments of natural theology. We’ll look at them in skeletal form, so as to make the logic of the arguments very clear. The bare bones of the arguments can then be fleshed out with further discussion.
A good argument must obey the rules of logic; express true premises; and have premises more plausible than their opposites.
Before we look at specific arguments, however, we need to be clear what makes for a good argument. By an “argument,” philosophers mean a series of statements (called premises) leading to a conclusion. To be a good argument, an argument must meet three conditions: (1) it obeys the rules of logic; (2) its premises are true; and (3) its premises are more plausible than their opposites. So defined, we want to see whether there are any good arguments for God’s existence.