Objecting to God by Colin Howson

by Colin Howson

The growth of science and a correspondingly scientific way of looking at evidence have for the last three centuries slowly been gaining ground over religious explanations of the cosmos and mankind's place in it. However, not only is secularism now under renewed attack from religious fundamentalism, but it has also been widely claimed that the scientific evidence itself points strongly to a universe deliberately fine-tuned for life to evolve in it. In addition, certain aspects of human life, like consciousness and the ability to recognise the existence of universal moral standards, seem completely resistant to evolutionary explanation. In this book Colin Howson analyses in detail the evidence which is claimed to support belief in God's existence and argues that the claim is not well-founded. Moreover, there is very compelling evidence that an all-powerful, all-knowing God not only does not exist but cannot exist, a conclusion both surprising and provocative.

Genres: Philosophy, Atheism

Paperback Bunko

First published July 27, 2011

Reviews

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author makes a three-pronged attack against the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient being characterized by the Abrahamic religions.

i) The authenticity of the religious text is questioned as these supposed eye witness accounts were written decades after the event by those who only heard about the stories second hand, and these bear striking similarities to local myths prevalent at the time.
ii) From a philosophical view point, the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient being quickly runs into logical fallacies.
iii) The explanatory power of religion for the existence of the universe and human life is significantly nullified by the advance of science which offer a more compelling explanation through verifiable facts.

The author concludes that God does not exist, and religious texts from the Abrahamic religions has not been instructive in man’s search for truth and enlightenment. Rather, the harm that resulted from it through wars and discrimination heavily outweigh any moral teachings that may be gleaned through selective reading of the texts.

Regardless of ones’ opinion on this on-going debate, this book deals with a complex topic in a concise and approachable manner. I personally enjoyed reading this, but my only reservation in recommending this book fully is that at times the author is unnecessarily provocative in his criticisms, which harms the purpose of the book which is to inform and encourage reasoned discourse on this already highly charged topic.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't categorize this as 'new-atheism', so drawing parallels between this book and that of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett etc. is pointless. It's a bit short, but incedibly well argued. Got pretty complicated at times as it deals with probabilistic theory and Bayes theorem quite a lot.

Lost a star because there were a couple of times where I disagreed with his objections to God... no surprise that these were instances when he simply dismissed obvious counter objections.

His constant referral to the Problem of Evil was another weakness, i thought. Even though it is a decent and persuasive argument against the existence of God, it has been dealt with by Pantinga and I don't think it's wise to consistently invoke it when it is by no means an uncontroversial argument.

All that said, amazing book, really enjoyed it.

[Daniel Tung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice objections to God's existence, from a logical-probabilistic analysis. I prefer this to Dawkin's book. Highly recommended.