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54 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Ward to the wise!, 17 Sep 2008
This deceptively slim volume of 159 pages is a book of three parts and eight chapters. It has been primarily written as a refutation of the arguments to be found in chapters 2 and 4 of Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion'(chapter 4 from which the book takes its slightly ammended title), as Ward explains (p10):"...because those are the chapters in which he enters into the territory of philosophy, of arguments about God and the ultimate nature of reality. That is my territory...". The book however goes well beyond the bounds of its remit and quickly builds into a comprehensive, sophisticated and nuanced defence of theism as a rational worldview whilst simultaineously critiqueing and exposing the philosophical weakness and naivity of the reductionist materialist position of the Neo-athiests. This is not a defence of christian doctrine or beliefs (we are not in C.S.Lewis territory here!) but of the rationality and cogency of theism, as Ward states(P137): "In this book I am not discussing the topic of revealed religion or defending the Christian faith specifically.I am concerned with general reasons for believing in God, or for accepting the God hypothesis. Those reasons hold good for any theist, Jewish, Christian ,Muslim, Hindu or Sikh...".
Keith Wards arguments do not lend themselves to simple synopsis but they cover areas such as: the New Design Argument, Causality, Certainty(practical and theoretical), Chance(two meanings of), Common Sense, Complexity and the improbability of God, Conciousness, The Cosmological argument, Eternal things and causality, Eternity of God, Evidence for God, Faith, Final explaination, First cause argument, Five Ways of demonstrating God, the God hypothesis, Goods(objective and intrinsic), Idealists and idealism, Immortality, Intelligence, Materialism, Matter, The difference between the scientific and metaphisical hypothesis, Mind, Morality and reigion, the Multiverse, Necessity and contingency, Occams razor, the alleged paradox of Omniscience and Omnipotence, Ontological argument, Personal explanation, Probability, Proofs of God, Purpose in the Universe, Reductionism in science, Relationship as an intrinsic good or perfection, Revelation, Self-transcendance, Simplicity of the laws of nature, Simplicity (three senses of), Simplicity,complexity and probability, "Skyhookery", Theory of everything, Timelessness of God and Transcendance.
Philosophers and scientists engaged with include: Anselm, Aquinas, Aristotle, Peter Atkins, A.J.Ayer, Martin Buber, Paul Davis, Daniel Dennet, Descartes, Einstein, Bernard d'Espagnate, Hugh Everett, Stephen j.Gould, John Gribbin, Steven Hawking, Hegel, Fred Hoyle, David Hume, Kant, Gottfried Liebniz, Lock, Simon Conway Morris, Isaac Newton, Rudolf Otto, Roger Penrose, Alvin Plantinga, Martin Rees, Thomas Reid, Matt Ridley, Jean Paul Satre, Spinoza, Swinburne, Richard Taylor, Max Tegmark, Steven Weinberg and E.O.Wilson.
As I said, a deceptively thin volume! But one which covers an immense area of philosophical and scientific ground. And although a refutation of the arguments of a notoriously splenetic and ill mannered adversary 'Why there almost certainly is a God' is a measured, dispassionate and gracefully written riposte (-and then some!). Recommended to the more philosophically inclined Christian reader.
Possible further reading:
Gods Undertaker by John Lennox.
Dawkins God by Alister McGrath.
Creation and the world of science by Arthur Peacock.
Science and Creation by John Polkinghorne.
Reason and Reality By John Polkinghorne.
The Existence of God by Richard Swinburne.
The Coherence of Theism. ""
The Existence of God. ""
God, Freedom and evil by Alvin Plantinga.
God, Chance and Neccesity By Keith Ward.
The Big Questions in science and Religion By Keith Ward.
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