Customer Reviews

Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

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This book is for professional philosophers, which is a shame because its topic, the existence of God, is obviously one that interests many people. However, because of the occurrence in it of many technical terms (such as "Bayesian" and "side constraints") that receive no or very little explanation, this book would have to double in length in order to be accessible to the general public. I took a star off of its rating because of this.

Most of the argumentation in this book is directed at the belief of many atheists that the universe is self-explanatory. Forrest argues that the best explanation for many features of our universe (for example, that it is life-friendly and that consciousness exists in it) is that there is a personal God. I had only some minor quibbles about this section of the book.

The last chapter of the book is devoted to arguing that the existence of evil is consistent with the existence of God, and his argument breaks down in this chapter, for which I took off another star. He claims that God's doing nothing about evil is justified if we are eventually given compensation for this (the compensation being eternal bliss) and if it would be irrational to reject this compensation.

However, imagine that you wake up one morning in a hospital bed, minus a kidney. During the night, it seems, the authorities trundled you off to the hospital and took out your kidney for the sake of someone else who desperately needed it. To compensate you for this outrage, you will be awarded a billion dollars.

Maybe you would agree that this was adequate compensation; then again, maybe you wouldn't. But whether you agreed or disagreed, and whether it is rational to agree or irrational to agree, the fact remains that what the authorities did to you was morally wrong. The compensation given to you, even if you agree to it (or even if it would be irrational for you not to agree to it), at best only excuses those who did this. It in no way justifies them. If it did justify them, then this sort of thing would be allowed, which it isn't. Accordingly, Forrest's attempt to explain why God does nothing about evil doesn't work.

Lop off the last chapter and make the rest of the book intelligible to the general public, and this would be a much more enjoyable book.