The God Conclusion: God and the Western Philosophical Tradition (Religion Today) [Kindle Edition]

Another excellent book from Keith Ward in which he explores the concepts of God developed by great philosophers down the ages. He succeeds in showing that theism - belief in God - has been the default position in Western philosophy, rather than a product of irrationality and superstition, which is how dogmatic atheists such as Dawkins try to depict it. However, Ward's starting point is that of a committed theist who believes in a personal God with anthropomorphic characteristics. Whilst he demonstrates that belief in God is rational, he fails in my opinion to provide a compelling case for the personal God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and his treatment of non-personal concepts of deity, such as pantheism and panentheism, is perfunctory at best. This is troubling, as part of Ward's mission over the years has been to show the compatibility of science and religion. But the God Einstein believed in was the God of Spinoza, who equated God with the cosmos conceived as a totality, not the God of Abraham. Any theist who aspires to develop an intellectually persuasive case against atheists such as Dawkins needs to address this lacuna, and I hope that Ward will start doing so in some of his future writing. His latest book left me feeling that his commitment to a personal God is ultimately a matter of faith and preference, rather than the product of intellectual reflection so, whilst it is a fascinating read, no atheist is going to feel even remotely challenged by the arguments put forward here.

In this book, Keith Ward argues that the Western philosophical tradition from Plato onwards has, for the most part, held the idea that the universe reflects the workings of an underlying rational Mind to be eminently intellectually respectable. This Mind may be calls God, and it can be seen as giving value and purpose to the world we know. Starting with Plato's view of the world as the manifestation of an underlying Form that is supremely rational, Ward has an interesting analysis of links between the thought of Aquinas and the insights of modern cosmology, and argues the case for Descartes as not quite the arch-materialist he is sometimes held to be. Berkeley's belief that the very existence of matter depends on a Mind is cogently made, and in a way that made me want to read up more on this somewhat neglected 18th-century thinker. Perhaps his clearest chapters are, surprisingly, on Hegel and Schopenhauer as supporters of an `Idealist' view of the world as guided by a rational Mind.

The going gets rather tougher, though, and in my view less intellectually rigorous, when we get onto Hume, Kant and Nietzsche. I should point out that this is a pretty demanding book in places if you're starting from little or no knowledge of the thinkers in question. Ward challenges the logic of Hume's empiricism, arguing that Hume's thought, based as it is on the validity of sense-data alone, undermines this rational basis of the (mathematical) `truths' of modern cosmology that are amenable to rationality, but not derived from empirical observation. But Ward seems to assert the prior status of rationality here, rather than offering a fully cogent argument for it, just as in his chapters on Kant he seems to object to Kant's division of the `phenomenal' and the `noumenal' more forcefully than cogently. On Nietzsche, he insists (rather than argues) that constrained freedom is somehow more valuable than limitless freedom.

As a result, the author's claim in the final chapter that `God' is the best defence of the intelligibility of the cosmos, the objective importance of moral ideals and the `affirmation of goodness, the joy and the beauty of life', is perhaps more impassioned than it is altogether convincing. The parts that are convincing are satisfyingly so, but I was left with the feeling that I'd need to read more on Hume, Kant and Nietzsche before deciding whether I felt able to agree or disagree with Ward.