The Non-Existence of God [Paperback]

Nicholas Everitt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415301076 | ISBN-13: 978-0415301077 | Publication Date: December 18, 2003 | Edition: 1

Is it possible to prove or disprove God's existence? Arguments for the existence of God have taken many different forms over the centuries: in The Non-Existence of God, Nicholas Everitt considers all of the arguments and examines the role that reason and knowledge play in the debate over God's existence. He draws on recent scientific disputes over neo-Darwinism, the implication of 'big bang' cosmology, and the temporal and spatial size of the universe; and discusses some of the most recent work on the subject, leading to a controversial conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Aimed primarily at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in philosophy ... The Existence of God, though, is welcome confirmation that philosophical sophistication is not incompatible with clarity and sheer, bracing good sense.' - New Humanist

'This is a fine discussion of some of the central problems in the philosophy of religion ... a very considerable achievement, which clearly and provocatively gives new life to some ancient issues.' - Ars Disputandi

'A brilliant analysis of the arguments for and against the existence of God. Although written primarily as a textbook, the clarity of exposition makes it ideal as a primer for any reader who really wants to get to grips with the issues.' - The Scientific and Medical Network

'The Non-Existence of God, though, is welcome confirmation that philosophical sophistication is not incompatible with clarity and sheer, bracing good sense.' - New Humanist

' ... this is a lively and thought-provoking book which genuinely brings fresh insights.' - Theology

' ... provides a comprehensive overview of most strands in what has become a complex debate. Issues of epistemology are covered sensibly and the main theistic arguments are criticised probingly. This makes it a useful introductory text for students or the (dedicated) layperson.' - The Philosophers' Magazine

About the Author

Nicholas Everitt is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the co-author of Modern Epistemology (1995).

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (December 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415301076
• ISBN-13: 978-0415301077
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,544,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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69 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Balanced and Sophisticated Assessment of Theism, June 16, 2004

By 

Yonatan Fishman (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Non-Existence of God (Paperback)

One of the most balanced and sophisticated evaluations of theistic arguments I have encountered. The author considers contemporary versions of arguments for the existence of God and demonstrates them to be deeply flawed. The author makes the case that the existence of the tri-omni God has empirically verifiable consequences and that taken together, absence of evidence for God's existence and evidence of God's absence render God's existence highly improbable. Everitt further demonstrates that many of God's traditional attributes (e.g., omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence) when considered in conjunction, show God's existence to be self-contradictory and hence that God's existence is not only improbable (given evidential considerations), but is impossible (given logical considerations).

Everitt sets up no straw men. He fairly presents what are generally considered to be among the best contemporary theistic arguments available and systematically dismantles them. Throughout he also considers possible theistic rebuttals to atheistic critiques and exposes their impotence. This well-written and carefully argued book is highly recommended to both theists, who wish to challenge their faith by the fire of reason and to non-believers, who will gain greater sophistication in their arguments for the non-existence of God.

33 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Clear writing, uneven research, unpersuasive argument, January 31, 2008

By 

Timothy McGrew "Philosopher" (Kalamazoo, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Non-Existence of God (Paperback)

First, the good news: Everitt's book is clearly written and well organized. He has read a fair amount of the relevant literature, and in his suggested readings at the end of each chapter he is quite evenhanded, recommending books by authors like Richard Swinburne and Stephen T. Davis, with whom he disagrees deeply, as well as books by his fellow unbelievers.

Now the not so good news: Everitt's treatment of the arguments for the existence of God is not particularly sophisticated, and in places he fails to engage with some of the most important recent work. This comes out very clearly in chapter 6, where he discusses arguments to and from miracles. He mentions neither David Johnson's work Hume, Holism, and Miracles (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion) nor Robert Fogelin's A Defense of Hume on Miracles (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy). He mentions but fails to engage with John Earman's book Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles, a significant omission since Earman's work is inter alia a sustained and sophisticated critique of the conclusion Everitt takes Hume to have established -- that even in the most favorable circumstances possible, it would not be rational to believe that a miracle has occurred. (Everitt, p. 116) The chapter on miracles has no discussion of Bayes's Theorem and the role it plays in contemporary reconstructions of the argument from testimony to the miraculous, though Everitt has (very gingerly) introduced a bit of Bayesian reasoning on p. 77 in his discussion of Swinburne's cosmological argument.

The presentation of Hume's argument against miracles follows J. L. Mackie's presentation in The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God, stressing the claim that if the overall evidence makes it rational for us to believe that a putative event M was a violation of the laws of nature, then that same overall evidence makes it irrational for us to believe that M actually occurred. (See p. 117.) Everitt shows no awareness of the problems lurking here. It is not clear how the inverse claim should be construed (is it the claim that P(M violates the laws of nature) = 1 - P(M actually occurred)? or that for all E, if P(M violates the laws of nature|E) > P(M violates the laws of nature), then P(M actually occurred|E) < P(M actually occurred)? or ... ?); and under almost any interesting construal it stands in need of argument that it never receives. Everitt asserts without argument that if a miracle is a violation of a law of nature it is maximally improbable (p. 115), showing no awareness of the long history of criticism of this claim from the early 1700s onward.

Everitt's attempt to give a fourfold classification of concepts of miracle is another place where deeper engagement with recent work, e.g. Robert Larmer's Water into Wine?: An Investigation of the Concept of Miracle, would have helped him to focus the discussion. Some accounts deserve to be taken more seriously (and understood more fairly) than they are. Ironically, one of these is an account proposed by J. L. Mackie, which Everitt (p. 119) misunderstands and therefore dismisses out of hand. Other, less plausible proposals get nearly equal time. These latter are not exactly straw men, for Everitt does try to find people who have defended them. But those familiar with the field are likely to think that they deserve more neglect than Everitt has given them.

The chapter on the ontological argument is another place where Everitt's presentation is light on detail. There is no discussion of Kurt Godel's ontological argument, for example; and even the versions discussed are mostly informal, verbal versions, though for the discussion of Hartshorne's version he cannot avoid a few lines of modal logic. Here I am more sympathetic to Everitt, since I think that the ontological argument fails in all of its forms. But even the criticisms he levels against Plantinga's formulation, for example, do not do full justice to the subtlety of the argument.

The chapters that attempt to show the incoherence of the traditional concept of God are, on the whole, quite weak. Everitt argues, for example, that Big Bang cosmology shows that past time was finite, and he concludes from this that God, conceived of as an eternal being, cannot exist, since (according to Big Bang cosmology) nothing has had infinite duration. Neither the premise nor the inference is backed by a compelling line of argument. Everitt is following the lead of others and should not shoulder full blame for this particular weak argument. Still, it is a bruised reed for atheism to lean on.

Perhaps the worst chapter in the entire volume is chapter 11, on Arguments from Scale. Everitt urges that the sheer age and size of the universe as revealed by modern astronomy provide evidence against theism. The argument depends entirely on the premise that "humans are the jewel of creation" -- by which Everitt means at least that if God exists, we would expect every aspect of the created universe to be "on a human scale" both temporally and spatially. (p. 215) This claim, however, reveals nothing except the poverty of Everitt's theological knowledge. The whole argument was effectively buried by Thomas Chalmers in his Discourses on the Christian revelation viewed in connection with the modern astronomy (1817). It is painful to see a contemporary author trying to resurrect it in the service of infidelity.

The concluding chapter attempts to draw together the various lines of argument, and naturally the strength of such a summary depends in part on the success of the arguments preceding it. But in this case there are other reasons to be dissatisfied with Everitt's own attempt to sum up his case. He makes some needless and baffling claims, e.g., that one can have empirical disconfirmation for a self-contradictory proposition like (p & ~p). (See p. 304.) Worse, he fails to see how different theistic proofs with somewhat different conclusions may be coordinated in an overall cumulative case for the existence of God, an epistemological issue discussed with great subtlety and finesse by Richard Swinburne in The Existence of God. Of course, Everitt thinks that the arguments are all failures, or at least that they are all very weak. But his substantive evaluation, even if it were backed up by better argument, should be distinguished from the structural question of how a cumulative case is constructed -- not only in religion but in almost any field. Everitt's treatment of this important topic is disappointingly weak.

In fairness, it is very difficult to write a book of moderate size on this vast topic. Mackie's book, for all its flaws, remains the classic treatment of its size. For anything even approaching a full-scale treatment of these issues from the side of unbelief, one needs a work three times as long like Jordan Howard Sobel's Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God. But Sobel's book is really written for the professional philosopher who is familiar with modal logic, probability theory, and transfinite mathematics. Everitt's book is not, and for that very reason it is both vastly more accessible and vastly less powerful than Sobel's. Each work has the defects of its qualities.

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A logic review, March 20, 2008

By 

Luis Blin Munoz "fblin6" (Miami, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Non-Existence of God (Paperback)

This book can be analyzed from various points. Previous reviews have had the philosophical approach that I am not enough prepared to discuss. What I can give is a "educated" opinion, although not trained one in the subject.
I like the book. It was easy to read nevertheless the complex and some time hard to follow arguments. According to others reviews the book has not all the "right" arguments or the more accepted. I can't judge that But I can say that It is a open minder book. It present many of the arguments/propositions/"proves" in a general and clear view that can help to many people to see or at least to "think" in the subject in a most rational and logical way.

It is true that is open to reader accept some of the argument although the intention of the book was in many, if not all the cases, to prove the failure in the argument pro-god. The point is that Everitt does it without critics, in a fair way, and probably in an easy way to understand for many people in most part of the book.

Definitely this book is not for fanatics, but It can be for a religious person with an open mind.