Download Ebook The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt
So, just be here, discover guide The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt now and also read that rapidly. Be the first to read this e-book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt by downloading in the web link. We have other publications to check out in this web site. So, you can discover them additionally quickly. Well, now we have done to provide you the very best publication to review today, this The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt is actually proper for you. Never ever disregard that you need this publication The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt to make far better life. On the internet book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt will really give easy of every little thing to check out and also take the benefits.
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt
Download Ebook The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt
Reviewing a book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt is type of simple activity to do each time you want. Also reviewing each time you want, this activity will not disrupt your various other tasks; lots of people generally review guides The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt when they are having the downtime. What regarding you? What do you do when having the downtime? Do not you invest for worthless things? This is why you have to obtain the book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt as well as attempt to have reading habit. Reviewing this publication The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt will not make you pointless. It will certainly offer much more advantages.
Reviewing routine will constantly lead people not to satisfied reading The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt, an e-book, ten publication, hundreds e-books, as well as a lot more. One that will make them feel completely satisfied is finishing reading this book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt as well as getting the notification of guides, then finding the various other next publication to read. It proceeds a growing number of. The time to complete reviewing an e-book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt will be constantly numerous depending on spar time to invest; one instance is this The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt
Now, exactly how do you know where to purchase this publication The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt Don't bother, now you could not visit guide shop under the brilliant sun or night to search the publication The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt We right here always aid you to locate hundreds kinds of publication. One of them is this publication qualified The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt You might visit the link web page supplied in this set then go for downloading and install. It will not take more times. Simply attach to your net accessibility and you can access the publication The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt on the internet. Obviously, after downloading The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt, you may not print it.
You can conserve the soft documents of this publication The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt It will certainly depend on your extra time and also tasks to open and also read this book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt soft data. So, you could not be afraid to bring this book The Non-Existence Of God, By Nicholas Everitt anywhere you go. Just include this sot documents to your gizmo or computer disk to permit you check out each time and also all over you have time.
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.
- Sales Rank: #1394862 in Books
- Published on: 2003-12-18
- Released on: 2003-11-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 11.69" h x .80" w x 8.26" l, 1.17 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
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).
Most helpful customer reviews
56 of 75 people found the following review helpful.
Clear writing, uneven research, unpersuasive argument
By Timothy McGrew
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.
76 of 82 people found the following review helpful.
A Balanced and Sophisticated Assessment of Theism
By YF
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.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
The best book on atheism
By A Skeptical Reader
Of the many books that I have read arguing both for and against the existence of God, this is definitely the very best in the "against" category. I have been an atheist for many years, so the author did not have to convince me. I found his treatment of the topic to be extremely well organized, lucid, and both comprehensive and concise. I decided to read the book because it had been chosen as one of the top atheist books of the year, and I quickly understood why it was. Don't be fooled by the theist reviewers who post low scores on books like this - typically, they often haven't even actually read it, or if they have, they didn't understand it because they have religious blinders on. In any case, this is definitely worth reading even if you have read other atheist books, if nothing else because the author introduces a new argument against God's existence, the "Argument from Scale." The only other atheist book that comes close to this one, in my opinion, is Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification.
See all 4 customer reviews...
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt PDF
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt EPub
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Doc
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt iBooks
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt rtf
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Mobipocket
The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Kindle
[C136.Ebook] Download Ebook The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Doc
[C136.Ebook] Download Ebook The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Doc
[C136.Ebook] Download Ebook The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Doc
[C136.Ebook] Download Ebook The Non-Existence of God, by Nicholas Everitt Doc
