Recently, I wrote a trio of posts titled Hurtling Toward the Cliff in response to an article by physicist Stephen Weinberg titled Without God. Over the course of the next two weeks or so I'd like to elaborate on this theme in a series of posts which will examine a number of facts about the world and human existence and consider these facts in the light of both atheism and theism. The series will borrow for its title Weinberg's Without God.
It'll be my contention in the series that theism offers a far superior account of these facts, that it makes better sense of them, than does atheism and that the theistic view of the world is therefore more intellectually satisfying and more rational than is it's opposite. Seventeen facts or phenomena about the world and human life will be considered:
- The fact that the universe had a beginning
- The fact of cosmic design
- The fact of biological information
- The fact of human consciousness
- The joy we experience in an encounter of beauty
- The fact that we believe our reason to be reliable
- Our sense that we have free will
- Our desire for answers to life's deepest questions
- Our sense of moral obligation
- Our sense of guilt
- Our belief in human dignity
- Our belief in human worth
- Our belief that there are basic human rights
- Our desire for justice
- Our need for meaning and purpose
- Our belief that we have an enduring self
- Our desire to survive our own death
In what follows it will be argued that theism provides an easier, more comfortable explanation for each of the above than does atheism. When taken together they add up to a powerful case for the proposition that it's eminently reasonable to believe that a personal mind, a mind similar to that imputed to the God of Christian theism, undergirds the world.
The first installment of the argument will be posted tomorrow.
RLC
