Is God A Delusion by Reitan, Eric -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Copyright Introduction 1: On Religion and Equivocation

The Meanings of “Religion” Einsteinian Religion and the Feeling of Piety The Art of Equivocation The Eloquent Equivocations of Sam Harris The Truth amidst the Mudslinging

2: “The God Hypothesis” and the Concept of God

New Atheist Definitions of God The Supremely Good God of Traditional Theism Non-Substantive Definitions of “God” The Ethico-Religious Hope God: The Ethico-Religious Hope Fulfilled Continuity from the Ancients: Plutarch and Zoroaster Concluding Remarks

3: Divine Tyranny and the Goodness of God

4: Science, Transcendence, and Meaning

Religion vs. Superstition Virgin Mary Sightings Schleiermacher and the Transcendence of God Brains in Vats What Science Can and Cannot Say About the Transcendent The God of the Chance Gaps A Meaningful “God” The Meaning of Life Concluding Remarks

5: Philosophy and God’s Existence, Part I

The Argument from Design Why the Argument from Design Fails Dawkins’ Case Against Theism A Fundamental Difficulty with Dawkins’ Atheistic Argument

6: Philosophy and God’s Existence, Part II

The Cosmological Argument of Leibniz and Clarke Ontological Arguments and the Concept of a Necessary Being Why Not a Self-Existent Universe? The Contestable Principle of Sufficient Reason Concluding Remarks

7: Religious Consciousness

Simone Weil: The Philosophical Mystic The Varieties of Religious Experience Mysticism, its Varieties, and its Authority Sam Harris on Spiritual Experience Schleiermacher on the Essence of Religious Experience

8: The Substance of Things Hoped For

The New Atheist Attack on Faith Fides and Fiducia Catholic Faith The Failure of the Catholic View of Faith A Lutheran Alternative Love and Revelation Reason for Trust? Pragmatic Faith The Ethico-Religious Hope Revisited The Logic of Faith

9: Evil and the Meaning of Life

The Evidential Argument from Evil Theodicies A Limited Perspective Horrors The Defeat of Horror Sources of Meaning

10: The Root of All Evil?

The Need for Certainty Indifference to the Goods of This World A Cause of Violence The Hope of the World?

Notes References Index