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Can Theology Rebut the Attacks of the 'New Atheists'?
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Urged on by the likes of Richard Dawkins and others, telling the audience to "dare to use its common sense", the modern theologian and layman theist has to ask them to listen to some very large and strange ideas, and attempt to show that this issue is both interesting and resistant to simplistic certainties. Showing for example, that the God attacked by atheism is a modern construct produced by Enlightenment rationalism, and that previous theism remains untouched by such concepts.
Descartes being the key initiator of this modern conception which implies that God is an object of thought: a being who exists in the same way as other things exist. For pre-modern theology God was not a 'thing' at all, but as expressed by Aquinas ; God is transcendent, beyond our categories, something of which we can have no understanding.
With the insights of postmodernism, is not this earlier conception, not a freer one from the 'Idol-God' of the Enlightenment ?
Descartes being the key initiator of this modern conception which implies that God is an object of thought: a being who exists in the same way as other things exist. For pre-modern theology God was not a 'thing' at all, but as expressed by Aquinas ; God is transcendent, beyond our categories, something of which we can have no understanding.
With the insights of postmodernism, is not this earlier conception, not a freer one from the 'Idol-God' of the Enlightenment ?
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Aquinas is cheating
In a sense although the term is Huxley's 600 years later that's the (strong) agnostic's argument.
Typically characterised by "I don't know and you don't know either"
As I say though Aquinas cheats - he wants to have his cake and eat it
His argument is "I know but it's beyond our understanding"
It is rather remarkable that for a man who claims God is beyond our understanding he goes on to write many hundreds of pages on his conclusions about God.
I particularly love some of his proofs of God.
Some things are more beautiful than others, a rose is more beautiful than a dung heap, therefore there is a scale of beauty and something is more beautiful than everything else - that is God.
That's a beaut!
Socrates would have made him stand in the corner for that one!
In a sense although the term is Huxley's 600 years later that's the (strong) agnostic's argument.
Typically characterised by "I don't know and you don't know either"
As I say though Aquinas cheats - he wants to have his cake and eat it
His argument is "I know but it's beyond our understanding"
It is rather remarkable that for a man who claims God is beyond our understanding he goes on to write many hundreds of pages on his conclusions about God.
I particularly love some of his proofs of God.
Some things are more beautiful than others, a rose is more beautiful than a dung heap, therefore there is a scale of beauty and something is more beautiful than everything else - that is God.
That's a beaut!
Socrates would have made him stand in the corner for that one!
Its a cop - out to say that "god" is something of which we can have no understanding - a shortcut to avoid the difficult arguments.
The Abrahamic faiths all believe in a god that can touch the world ; can answer intercessory prayer ; can heal the halt and the lame and provide a paradise in the next world if not this. Such a god cannot be transcendant and must interact with the universe. Such interactions would be observable, measurable. No such evidence exists.
If your faith gives you comfort, fine. It seems to me though that this special pleading, this plea to exempt god from logic and science is merely to maintain an illusion, and one that permits all sorts of rotten activities in the name of your particular flavour of faith.Personally, I think the price to society of accomodating faith based irrationality is too high........
The Abrahamic faiths all believe in a god that can touch the world ; can answer intercessory prayer ; can heal the halt and the lame and provide a paradise in the next world if not this. Such a god cannot be transcendant and must interact with the universe. Such interactions would be observable, measurable. No such evidence exists.
If your faith gives you comfort, fine. It seems to me though that this special pleading, this plea to exempt god from logic and science is merely to maintain an illusion, and one that permits all sorts of rotten activities in the name of your particular flavour of faith.Personally, I think the price to society of accomodating faith based irrationality is too high........
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I don't think I accept your premise.
Yes the notion of God changed in the enlightenment, you saw Deism spring up and people started to see a number of possibilities of God.
(However I would argue that was not an Enlightenment event but predated that. Generally the Enlightenment is thought of as an eighteenth century phenomina, Descartes's a century earlier.)
Despite this the ancient superstitious God did not vanish, it was to be found in abundance in poorly educated often Catholic regions.
This notion of God simply did not show up for the fight once atheism became safe to claim.
Remember even in the enlightenment this was dangerous - Thomas Paine was famously accused of being an atheist and Baron D'Holbach's book The System of Nature had to be published anonymously
This pre-enlightenment medieval view of God may have found some fans in the Oxford movement a century later but it was pretty laughable by then.
By this time there was general education and rationality pretty easilly knocked over the image of a physical God sitting in the sky who would raise people from their coffins.
Yes Yes but was it freer? I hear you ask
Freer of what? Freer from the bounds of rationality? Probably but surely that's a circular argument?
Was pre-rational belief freer of rationality? - duh yes
Yes the notion of God changed in the enlightenment, you saw Deism spring up and people started to see a number of possibilities of God.
(However I would argue that was not an Enlightenment event but predated that. Generally the Enlightenment is thought of as an eighteenth century phenomina, Descartes's a century earlier.)
Despite this the ancient superstitious God did not vanish, it was to be found in abundance in poorly educated often Catholic regions.
This notion of God simply did not show up for the fight once atheism became safe to claim.
Remember even in the enlightenment this was dangerous - Thomas Paine was famously accused of being an atheist and Baron D'Holbach's book The System of Nature had to be published anonymously
This pre-enlightenment medieval view of God may have found some fans in the Oxford movement a century later but it was pretty laughable by then.
By this time there was general education and rationality pretty easilly knocked over the image of a physical God sitting in the sky who would raise people from their coffins.
Yes Yes but was it freer? I hear you ask
Freer of what? Freer from the bounds of rationality? Probably but surely that's a circular argument?
Was pre-rational belief freer of rationality? - duh yes
//Can theology rebut the attacks of the 'New Atheists'?//
It can try, but it can't succeed.
//the modern theologian and layman theist has to ask them to listen to some very large and strange ideas, and attempt to show that this issue is both interesting and resistant to simplistic certainties.//
There are no certainties. I have never heard a good argument for the existence of God, and certainly not from Aquinas.
It can try, but it can't succeed.
//the modern theologian and layman theist has to ask them to listen to some very large and strange ideas, and attempt to show that this issue is both interesting and resistant to simplistic certainties.//
There are no certainties. I have never heard a good argument for the existence of God, and certainly not from Aquinas.
I never have been able to grasp the 'logic' behind our lack of omniscience being a justification for making it up as we go along while disregarding contradictory established facts that rule out arbitrary assertions derived from imaginations unfettered by the limitations imposed by reality on what can possibly be.
Romanticism, divorced from objectivity, is the breeding ground of countless fantasies entertained at the expense of what might have been.
Romanticism, divorced from objectivity, is the breeding ground of countless fantasies entertained at the expense of what might have been.
As a species, we are very poor at comprehending the very very small and the very very big - At a visceral level, trying to comprehend the sheer vastness of the universe, or the some of the more counter -intuitive elements of quantum theory seems impossible.
Does not mean that, as a species, we cannot at least be aware that such vastness exists, or that sub atomic particles behave weirdly. And, our rather amazing species has invented mathematics to allow us to create working models and consequential predictable events that can be observed and measured.
So, your assertion is false, Khandro - or at least irrelevant. I would contend that it is highly likely that there are things that we cannot comprehend viscerally at a personal, individual level - but that does not matter, since we can, through science, and philosophy and mathematics nake use of the knowledge. We have some truly amazing abilities, as a species :).
Does not mean that, as a species, we cannot at least be aware that such vastness exists, or that sub atomic particles behave weirdly. And, our rather amazing species has invented mathematics to allow us to create working models and consequential predictable events that can be observed and measured.
So, your assertion is false, Khandro - or at least irrelevant. I would contend that it is highly likely that there are things that we cannot comprehend viscerally at a personal, individual level - but that does not matter, since we can, through science, and philosophy and mathematics nake use of the knowledge. We have some truly amazing abilities, as a species :).
Khandro, //Do you consider the human brain capable of encompassing all Universal phenomena?//
‘Capable’? Yes, the human brain is ‘capable’. Whilst some things are currently beyond our understanding, it doesn’t follow that they will remain so. Abandoning the search for truth and knowledge by accepting explanations that attribute the unknown to the unknown is a dereliction of duty to our own intellect. We live and learn.
‘Capable’? Yes, the human brain is ‘capable’. Whilst some things are currently beyond our understanding, it doesn’t follow that they will remain so. Abandoning the search for truth and knowledge by accepting explanations that attribute the unknown to the unknown is a dereliction of duty to our own intellect. We live and learn.
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