02 April 2008

the faith (2)

Continuing with a review of Charles Colson, The Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). . .

Chapter Two: God Is
is straight Colson, and what you typically would expect from him.  He briefly presents three *ideas of origin* as an apologetic for the existence of God: 1) a godless material universe; 2) god is an intelligent presence in all things (a universal mind); 3) a personal god.  Each reads as a quick summary statement of each particular position - again reflecting Colson's desire to engage typical laity rather than immersing in intense academic debate.

The meat of this chapter is built upon Alvin Plantiga's rational assertion that God is, a defense of theism by challenging the unscientifically-observable belief that other people have minds
 (this is an attack on solipsism which could not rightly conclude such a hypothesis).  In the end Colson returns to the argument that belief in God is not irrational, which seems to be a fairly standard move for his apologetic technique.  He goes after Dawkins specifically by exposing his absurd notion, "Any God capable of designing a universe, carefully tuned to lead to our evolution, must be a supremely complex and improbable entity that needs an even bigger explanation than the one he is supposed to provide" (39).

Better to take Pascal's wager on that one?. . . ?. . .

While the beginning of the chapter appears as though Colson is going to weigh too heavily on experience and feeling over rational thought regarding the existence of God, he redeems himself by striking a solid balance between what we experience and what we rationalize.  I was genuinely impressed with how both ends come together in this chapter.

No comments: