God?
Craig, William Lane & Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter & PRUSAK, BERNARD G.
PLAYING WITH FIRE God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist l' illiunr Ininc ()wig and Walter 1-Armstrong Bernard G. Prusak have seen things," Thomas Aquinas is reputed to...
...I can't wait for the conspiracy novel based on this plot...
...cal National Conference to BOOR Milwaukee, WI A national assembly of lay persons, religious, priests and bishops working together to foster peace, justice and love in the spirit of Vatican 11 and the U.B...
...10 percent, 6 times...
...Did he mean that his writings were fit only for burning...
...3-line mini-mum...
...MICHAEL W. HOVEY Detroit, Mich...
...but at the same time we can-not wholly be trusted with it...
...Now, can we really talk of such a being as existing, or even as a being, when we use these words to speak of other things in our common experience...
...First, he offers a version of "the evidential argument from evil" (according to him): "Any neutral survey of the evidence is...bound to point away from the existence of God...
...Or did he mean to suggest that he had been playing with fire, something so elemental and powerful that it cannot safely be grasped, or sometimes even contained: something that threatened to reduce his words to ashes...
...C L A S S I F I E D RATES: $1.20 per word...
...The medievals took it to be God's essence to exist—see again Exodus 3:14—so that what God is suffices for God to be...
...MIMI MAHON Bryn Mawr, Pa...
...Finally, Sinnott-Armstrong claims that belief in God violates our common standards for justified belief—first and fore-most that "we should not believe in entities for which we have no evidence...
...If so, we would have to believe that a person could be converted by a syllogism...
...Others might op-pose the war in Iraq, knowing that Pope John Paul II has said that war is 'a defeat for humanity.'" Following the small-group discussions, I asked the students to share their comments...
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...Sinnott-Armstrong then goes on the offensive, presenting several "reasons to believe that there is no God...
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...Yes, Job came to deeper knowledge of God through his suffering...
...but it seems dubious to claim that persons who do not share this faith lack all "excuse...
...In other words, Craig's arguments, even if they were absolutely conclusive, do not yield the conclusion that he wants...
...A1..Ahems Bernard Jli,icr...
...People have changed their advance directives...
...A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, which should be subtitled "between an Evangelical Christian [Craig] and an Atheist [Sinnott-Armstrong]," takes up the perennial question of whether God exists, where God refers to the all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, personal, eternal creator of Christian theism...
...SI Pierre-Marie Cy, O1 James M. Hayes Raymond G. Hunthau,en l>rnis f u me Ilurl,ey, O\1I I'ierrc mud I(ohcrl Nan kaiser \V"ilii;nu (ardii al Keeler Coluniha IKell, OSB 1 Hurl (..udinal Kiinig Irving R. Levine Piero Marini Dr...
...Bernard G. Prusak teaches humanities at Boston University...
...third, that "God makes sense of objective moral values in the world...
...In chapter 2, Sinnott-Armstrong criticizes each of these "reasons" rather convincingly, at least inasmuch as Craig believes himself to have eliminated all reasonable doubt about God's existence...
...Young & ignorant Concerning John C. Cavadini's "Ignorant Catholics" (April 9): Last fall I taught a course titled "Contemporary Peacemakers" at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York...
...Call EPS at 202-884-9021 or e-mail jolliffec@trinitydc.edu...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...Surely, if God exists, God does not exist as a rock, plant, animal, artifact, or human being does...
...What the book does not consider, however, is what a debate of this question is good for...
...Craig proposes, fifth and finally, that "God can be immediately known and experienced...
...Craig also claims that Sinnott-Armstrong's rejection of the argument from fine tuning exemplifies "the willful blindness to which traditional atheism leads"—a statement that, while not representative of Craig at his best, is too revealing of his mindset to be passed over...
...For example," I told them, "some of you might support the war in Iraq or against terrorism based on your feelings of patriotism...
...In any event, it is worth remarking that neither philosopher says a word about Christology in discussing the significance of suffering...
...I mean, he's not even an American...
...Following the example of Aquinas's theological and philosophical writings, God...
...Both authors bring impressive learning and passion to the question...
...Martin Mari, 1hl~ti Ikheon I,edcrirl: I...
...This last argument calls for explanation: according to Craig, the facts about Jesus credited by New Testament scholars, believing and unbelieving alike, are best explained by the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead—a statement that implies God's existence...
...second, that "God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life...
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...The heavens may tell the glory of God to some-one who already believes...
...Contemporary philosophy gives some reasons to think that this confidence is not groundless: though the incredible complexity of the universe and the infinitesimal likelihood that there would be creatures like us may not prove God's existence, they might well be taken to point to it...
...In reply, Craig might well have remarked that Sinnott-Armstrong's second argument turns on a lame analogy, and that his third limps from never having asked both just what could count as evidence for God's existence could anything for Sinnott-Armstrong?—and further what it means to say that God "exists...
...To have a family member die is almost universally difficult...
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...Commonweal 30 May 21, 2004...
...The recent Vatican statement increases these burdens in-appropriately and unnecessarily...
...I must have missed something...
...O1' William Ed,, and Power Brother Roger of lain I:enii Joseph Dc Roo I (Ivv.1rd Schillebeeckx, OP ldrianus Cardinal Simonis I collard D'Souza \I,iry Luke ohin, 1)„nald Trautman 1lugusto"Lrujillo Arango Gennaro Verolino An inside perspective on Vatican 11 Commonweal 2 9 May 21, 2004 that Evangelical Christianity is growing at its greatest rate...
...More than simply stating their "position," I asked them to examine what the criteria for their judgments were...
...There has already been harm done by the pope's statement...
...It is, if we are honest with ourselves, a bold, possibly even foolhardy undertaking...
...At the least, we can hope to learn humility...
...BARBARA SORIN Harrisburg, Pa...
...But how do you argue for or against the "existence" of such a "being...
...The writer is an advanced practice nurse in palliative care and ethics and a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics...
...One young woman spoke first: "Professor Hovey, I hope you don't get upset with me, but, well, I consider myself a good Catholic and everything—I go to Mass every Sunday—but I don't really care what the pope said about the war...
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...According to Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong, the God of Christian theism can apparently be understood without having to consider the Incarnation, crucifixion, and Resurrection...
...Not only is the desire to know basic to who we are...
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...it seems right to say that we have an obligation to put our beliefs to the test...
...Thoughts like these led the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to wonder whether arguments about the existence of God are not really about ways of envisioning the world...
...and, fourth, that "God makes sense of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus...
...Conspiracy theory I am sure the Vatican and the pope have anticipated the following scenario: the pope has a massive stroke and is left in a persistent vegetative state...
...Is there a vice pope...
...It is difficult here to suppress the feeling, however uncharitable, that the man knows no shame in the service of his faith...
...but do we want to say, then, that God allows suffering for this purpose...
...To be sure, in traditional Catholic thought, God's "demonstrability" has been considered, in Aquinas's terms, to belong not to the "articles of faith" but to the "preambles to the articles...
...He has a feeding tube and hydration tube—and continues to exist for five or ten years...
...But if, as Aquinas claims, faith presupposes "natural knowledge" of God, just as grace presupposes nature, it likely shouldbe added that this natural knowledge presupposes, though it is not strictly built upon, at least some disposition to-ward faith...
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...Second, he turns to what he calls "the problem of action," or how an eternal being could act in time...
...Bishops' Call To Action...
...So Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical letter Fides et ratio, affirms the First Vatican Council's confidence in "the natural knowability of God," that is, the power of "natural reason" to know God through the world...
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...Even the book of Job does not...
...A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist l' illiunr Ininc ()wig and Walter 1-Armstrong Bernard G. Prusak have seen things," Thomas Aquinas is reputed to have remarked toward the end of his life, "which make all my writings like straw...
...In the book's opening chapter, Craig presents "five reasons God exists...
...Analogously, it may be claimed that human beings must play with fire—must dare to talk about the first and last things—in order to be human...
...He argues, first, that "God makes sense of the origin of the universe...
...Family members are demanding tube feedings for dying patients, "because the pope says we have to...
...Who will speak for the pope...
...Aquinas and others thought not and so spoke of God "analogically," which is to say through a mirror darkly...
...and, after the Holocaust, the very thought seems repulsive...
...First the arguments—though obviously a brief review can do little more than state the conclusions...
...Sinnott-Armstrong has interesting things to say about the argument from fine-tuning, and he rightly observes more generally that "what [Craig] argues for is a creator or a designer or an external source of religious experience," which is not self-evidently the same as the God of Christian theism...
...may not be gratuitous with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God," a claim that he seeks to support by noting that "it is precisely in countries that have endured severe hardship Offers stoories, rrflecrions and inlcrvs kith 3 of the most prominent cardinals, bishops and theologians of our era: I ram:is Cardinal -Arinse Cregovy Baum Idmond Bli~rn I'rinso Carlo lIet Charles Albert lIu,,sell Lucien Dciss, CSSp I rank Marcus Fernando Joseph Gelineau...
...as he sees it, belief in God is thus "a properly basic belief," foundational to a per-son's belief system in the same way that belief in other minds is...
...make agnostics...
...The statement is obscure...
...Instead of such considerations, Craig resorts to sentiments like, though "every-body admits that the world is filled with apparently gratuitous suffering," it does not follow "that these apparently gratuitous evils really are gratuitous " Craig even proposes that "many evils in life...
...Is there a plan of succession...
...in-stead, he seems to take it on faith...
...Yet he does not say why all of these attributes should be understood to belong to the same being, namely, the God of Christian theism...
...Further, according to these myths, the gift was given illicitly...
...According to Sinnott-Armstrong, "To say that God is eternal is to say that He exists outside of time," a modality of existence that "can be explained by analogy with numbers...
...Straw is extremely combustible...
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...In our first class, I asked my students to share, in small groups, their thoughts on the war in Iraq and the "war against terrorism...
...In other words, what is such a debate sup-posed to do: make theists...
...make atheists...
...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) jured patients, we know this is often impossible...
...Since numbers, however, cannot be conceived to act in time, neither can God, who is thereby stripped of the title of creator and banished from history...
...For human life to be properly human, the myths suggest, we must have fire...
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...Ancient myths teach that fire was given to us by the gods...
...For more information contact: Call To Action 35 W. Roscoe 1-N Chicago: lL 60618 w.cta-usa.org l=-mail: cta@cfa-usa.org (773) 404-0004 fax (773) 404-1610 Irsan imme Midwest Airlines Center November 5-7, 2004 Commonweal 2 8 May 21, 2004 Craig counters that his "five reasons to believe that God exists constitute a progressive, systematic case for Christian theism," so that in the end we "re-cover a striking number of the traditional attributes of God...
...For we are liable then to think ourselves much more powerful than we are...
...When God's reply to Moses in Exodus 3:14 is read in this light, "I am who am," or "I will be what I will be," might be interpreted, "How could you ever know...
...Playing with fire seems to describe well what human beings who dare to talk about the first and last things—what we call the divine—dare to do...
...Yet further, we would have to put great faith in the reach of human reason...
Vol. 131 • May 2004 • No. 10
