بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
God Is Great, God Is Good
Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible!
Edited by: William Lane Craig & Chad Meister
Introduction
· Sam Harris opines, “It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.” [Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 67.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 73-74). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
PART ONE: God Is
1 Richard Dawkins on Arguments for God (William Lane Craig)
· What makes the big bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing. As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains: The coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science … is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization … upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing. [Interview of Paul Davies by Philip Adams, “The Big Questions: In the Beginning,” ABC Science Online, January 17, 2002 http://www.abc.net.au/science/bigquestions/s460625.htm] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 156-160). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Remarkably, however, he doesn’t dispute either premise! Instead, he questions the theological significance of the argument’s conclusion: Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts. [Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), p. 77.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 193-197). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Since it’s impossible to extend space-time through a singularity to a prior state, the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems implied the absolute beginning of the universe. Reflecting on the impact of this discovery, Hawking notes that the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems “led to the abandonment of attempts (mainly by the Russians) to argue that there was a previous contracting phase and a non-singular bounce into expansion. Instead almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.” [Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 292-296). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Ya. B. Zeldovich and I. D. Novikov therefore conclude, “The multicycle model has an infinite future, but only a finite past.” [21I. D. Novikov and Ya. B. Zeldovich, “Physical Processes near Cosmological Singularities,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 11 (1973): 401-2.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 308-309). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· The implications? “There is no baby universe branching off, as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe. I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.” [Stephen W. Hawking, “Information Loss in Black Holes” at http://arXiv:hep-th/0507171 Accessed April 28, 2009.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 331-333). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Roger Penrose has calculated that it is inconceivably more probable that our solar system should suddenly form by the random collision of particles than that a finely tuned universe should exist. (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison.) [See Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (New York: Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-65.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 347-349). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Dawkins protests, “A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple.” [27Dawkins, God Delusion, p. 149.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 381-383). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
2 The Image of God and the Failure of Scientific Atheism (J. P. Moreland)
· John Searle recently noted, there is exactly one overriding question in contemporary philosophy … How do we fit in? … How can we square this self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, non-rational, brute physical particles?” [John Searle, Freedom & Neurobiology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 4-5.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 471-474). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· In the seismic book recounting the shift to theism by famous atheist Antony Flew—There Is a God—Roy Abraham Varghese notes that: the rationality [consciousness, freedom of the will and unified-self] that we unmistakably experience—ranging from the laws of nature to our capacity for rational thought—cannot be explained if it does not have an ultimate ground, which can be nothing less than an infinite mind. [3Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese, There Is a God (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 167.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 477-480). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Carl Sagan flatly asserts: “I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label.” [Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 105.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 648-649). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
PART TWO: God Is GREAT
6 Evolutionary Explanations of Religion (Michael J. Murray)
· Michael Persinger, professor of behavioral neuroscience at Laurentian University, argues that this work shows us that “God is an artifact of the brain.” [J. K. Chu, B. Liston, M. Sieger and D. Williams, “Is God in Our Genes?” Time, October 25, 2004.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 1578-1580). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Dawkins concludes that “the irrationality of religion is a by-product of the built in irrationality mechanism in the brain.” [Richard Dawkins, “Viruses of the Mind,” posted on Center for the Study of Complex Systems (September 2001) http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 1580-1581). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Matthew Alper, author of The God Part of the Brain, argues as follows: If belief in God is produced by a genetically inherited trait, if the human species is “hardwired” to believe in a spirit world, this could suggest that God doesn’t exist as something “out there,” beyond and independent of us, but rather as the product of an inherited perception, the manifestation of an evolutionary adaptation that exists exclusively within the human brain. If true, this would imply that there is no actual spiritual reality, no God or gods, no soul, or afterlife. Consequently, humankind can no longer be viewed as a product of God but rather God must be viewed as a product of human cognition. [Matthew Alper, The God Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God (New York: Rogue Press, 2000), p. 79.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 1581-1587). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· For now, what we should conclude is that contemporary psychology has shown us the rather unsurprising fact that, in the words of Oxford psychologist Justin Barrett, “belief in gods and God particularly arises through the natural, ordinary operation of human minds in natural ordinary environments.” [Justin L. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2004).] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 1634-1636). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· This discovery echoes the claim made four hundred plus years earlier by John Calvin that “there is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.” [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.3.1.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 1636-1638). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
PART THREE: God Is GOOD
8 Is Religion Evil? )Alister McGrath(
· The importance of this theme for Dostoyevsky is best appreciated from his 1878 letter to N. L. Ozmidov, in which he sets out the implications of atheism for morality: Now assume that there is no God, or immortality of the soul. Now tell me, why should I live righteously and do good deeds, if I am to die entirely on earth? … And if that is so, why shouldn’t I (as long as I can rely on my cleverness and agility to avoid being caught by the law) cut another man’s throat, rob and steal? [Letter to N. L. Ozmidov in Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew, ed. Joseph Frank and David I. Goldstein (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), p. 446.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 1970-1975). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Dawkins makes a significant concession in recognizing the sociological origins of division and exclusion. “Religion is a label of in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta, not necessarily worse than other labels such as skin colour, language, or preferred football team, but often available when other labels are not.” [Dawkins, God Delusion, p. 259.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 2034-2036). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
· Michael Shermer, president of the Skeptics Society, has made the significant point that religions were implicated in some human tragedies such as holy wars. While rightly castigating these—a criticism which I gladly endorse—Shermer goes on to emphasize that there is clearly a significant positive side to religion: For every one of these grand tragedies there are ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good that go unreported … Religion, like all social institutions of such historical depth and cultural impact, cannot be reduced to an unambiguous good or evil. [Michael Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (New York: Freeman, 2000), p. 71.] [William Lane Craig; Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Large Print 16pt) (Kindle Locations 2059-2064). ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. Kindle Edition.]
الحمد لله الذي بنعمته تتمّ الصَّالِحات