Showing posts with label New Atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Atheism. Show all posts

God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?


'The Grand Design', by eminent scientist Stephen Hawking, is the latest blockbusting contribution to the so-called New Atheist debate, and claims that the laws of physics themselves brought the Universe into being, rather than God. In this swift and forthright reply, John Lennox, Oxford mathematician and author of 'God's Undertaker', exposes the flaws in Hawking's logic. In lively, layman's terms, Lennox guides us through the key points in Hawking's arguments - with clear explanations of the latest scientific and philosophical methods and theories - and demonstrates that far from disproving a Creator God, they make his existence seem all the more probable.

Is Religion Dangerous?


Many commentators today claim that religion is dangerous and harmful. In addressing this question, Keith Ward begins by defining what religion actually is and how most human harm has been caused. He then looks at why people say that religion is dangerous, focusing particularly on religious wars and conflicts and on specific attacks on religion, such as the claims that God is wrathful, that religion is intolerant, that religious morality is primitive and cruel. Keith Ward argues that religion produces great good - for example, in terms of hospitals, the abolition of slavery, great art and music, moral heroism, and philosophy and science. Religion, he concludes, is the best rational basis for morality.

More Than Matter?

Is There More to Life Than Molecules?

The question of what it is to be a human person is the biggest intellectual question of our day.' Keith Ward has taught philosophy and theology in British universities for the past 40 years, and he is now weighing in on a major intellectual battle: whether human persons are purely materialistic - nothing but matter - or whether there is another, deeply valuable part of us, which transcends our bodies in nature and moral worth: the soul. For centuries philosophers have debated the question, but the battle has taken the limelight through the works of the New Atheists. In this book Professor Ward guides the reader through a panoply of thinkers and traditions, arguing that there is more to humanity than bodies. In fact, he argues, there is more to the entire universe than the naked eye perceives. (And contrary to the New Atheist assertions, there are good philosophical arguments to back this up!)

Faith and Its Critics

Heralded as the exponents of a “new atheism,” critics of religion are highly visible in today’s media, and include the household names of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. David Fergusson explains their work in its historical perspective, drawing comparisons with earlier forms of atheism.

Responding to the critics through conversations on the credibility of religious belief, Darwinism, morality, fundamentalism, and our approach to reading sacred texts, he establishes a compelling case for the practical and theoretical validity of faith in the contemporary world.

An invitation to engage in a rich dialogue, Faith and Its Critics supports an informed and constructive exchange of ideas rather than a contest between two sides of the debate.
Fergusson encourages faith communities to undertake patient engagement with their critics, to acknowledge the place for change and development in their self-understanding whilst resisting the reductive explanations of the new atheism.

God and the new atheism: a critical response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens

In God and the New Atheism, a world expert on science and theology gives clear, concise, and compelling answers to the charges against religion laid out in recent best-selling books by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith), and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great). For some, these "new atheists" appear to say extremely well what they believe to be wrong with religion. But, as John Haught shows, the treatment of religion in these books is riddled with logical inconsistencies, shallow misconceptions, and crude generalizations. Can God really be dismissed as a mere delusion? Is faith really the enemy of reason? And does religion really poison everything? God and the New Atheism offers a much-needed antidote to the extremist claims of scientific fundamentalism. This provocative and accessible little book will enable readers to see through the rhetorical fog of this recent phenomenon and come to a clearer understanding of the issues at stake in this crucial debate.

Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

Currently it is fashionable to be devoutly undevout. Religion’s most passionate antagonists —Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and others— have publishers competing eagerly to market their various denunciations of religion, monotheism, Christianity, and Roman Catholicism. But contemporary antireligious polemics are based not only upon profound conceptual confusions but upon facile simplifications of history or even outright historical ignorance: so contends David Bentley Hart in this bold correction of the distortions. One of the most brilliant scholars of religion of our time, Hart provides a powerful antidote to the New Atheists’ misrepresentations of the Christian past, bringing into focus the truth about the most radical revolution in Western history.

Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

In There Is a God, Antony Flew, one of the world's preeminent atheists discloses how his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. This is a compelling and refreshingly open-minded argument that will forever change the atheism debate. 

Philosopher and former atheist Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his 1950 essay "Theology and Falsification," which became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last half century. Flew has published over thirty books, including God and Philosophy, The Presumption of Atheism, and How to Think Straight. He spent twenty years as professor of philosophy at the University of Keele and has also held positions at Oxford, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Reading. He now lives in Reading, England. 

Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible

The days have passed when the goodness of God --indeed, the reality of God itself-- could reasonably be called a consensus opinion. God's reputation has come under considerable review in recent days, with some going so far as to say that it's not we who've made a mess of things. Instead whatever it is we call God is to blame.

But is such an opinion really a fair assessment? In this magisterial collection, the contemporary complaints against belief in God are addressed with intellectual passion and rigor by some of the most astute theological and philosophical minds of the day.

The Delusion of Disbelief

Former "TIME" senior correspondent and bestselling author David Aikman offers an articulate, reasoned response to four writers at the forefront of today's anti-faith movement: Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.

The last few years have seen a great assault upon faith in the publishing world, with an influx of books denouncing religious belief. While attacks on faith are not new, what is notable about these books—several of which have hit the bestseller charts—is their contention that belief in God is not only deluded, but dangerous to society.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution

Terry Eagleton’s witty and polemical Reason, Faith, and Revolution is bound to cause a stir among scientists, theologians, people of faith and people of no faith, as well as general readers eager to understand the God Debate. On the one hand, Eagleton demolishes what he calls the “superstitious” view of God held by most atheists and agnostics and offers in its place a revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel. On the other hand, he launches a stinging assault on the betrayal of this revolution by institutional Christianity.

There is little joy here, then, either for the anti-God brigade—Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in particular—nor for many conventional believers. Instead, Eagleton offers his own vibrant account of religion and politics in a book that ranges from the Holy Spirit to the recent history of the Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers.

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