The Evidence for God by Keith Ward | Book Talk

#maybemidrash2021

If want to find me elsewhere:

[aaronfacer]

I loved your last point! A very fascinating video 🙂

[RovingReader]

Great discussion! I agree with so much of what you disagreed with, even as a Christian!

[thesecretsocietyofbooks]

If you reduce the mental to the physical then you sacrifice the subjective and the qualitative which is experience itself. The physical is by definition objective, quantitative and nonintentional. If you bite the bullet and reduce the mental to the physical you forfeit intentionality if you forfeit intentionality, you forfeit reason because reason is truth directive. Would you say that a device that has sensors like a microphone or a camera, that processes information, has an experience or intentional states?. - K

[tomlabooks]

Great review! I suspected that this book would be difficult to digest - even just from the title. Sounds like he moves dangerously close to intelligent design territory. I fully agree with your point about the “overall materiality” of the mind: that in itself shouldn’t be seen as an obstacle to any religion or religious view, and yet many religious people see it as such. Also great point towards the end of your video about logic and rationality being insufficient to reach belief or unbelief. That’s basically Virgil having to stop along the Divine Comedy journey. Even Aquinas in his “5 proofs” made it clear that those were “a posteriori” logical arguments that, in and of themselves, were not sufficient to determine faith or lack thereof. Go Midrash! 😎

[AmandaJHMorton]

I find that a lot of what is called apologetics like this book are helpful for people who already believe but have doubts and for people who are on the cusp of believing. However, people who are already determined in their belief for or against are not moved as much by such discussions (or only towards what they already believe). I would say that from a believer’s perspective his logic doesn’t sound circular or misdirected just from what you shared. Perhaps the presupposition he has of duality and your disagreement to that presupposition colors your view of his overall logic, when possibly in reality his logic works when based on the already formed logic of duality. In that case perhaps you would need to investigate arguments on duality before investigating his arguments in order to fully appreciate his logic.


Naturalism itself is a philosophy, even though it seems directly based on scientific reality. But not all wisdom is science. Whether naturalism or dualism is the true reality is still (philosophically) unknown and continues to be discussed in philosophical communities. Dualism as a presupposition is important to Christian philosophy and other religions because of the idea of a soul.

Morality as an evidence for God does not negate the innate pull to live morally that atheists also feel. The argument more so expresses that God exists because that innate morality is in all of us whether we believe or not. The argument asks, so where did that innate pull to morality come from in the first place. You may say morality is purely a physical reality. As you say in the video, if we logically see when we behave in a moral way it is better for everyone, then we decide to behave morally. But where did that idea of “better” originate? Where did the _logic_ to see that living morally is better originate? And for that matter, what compels us to _decide_ to behave morally (belief being a component or not)? That is the nature of such arguments, not that people can only be moral if they are believers.

Thanks for your video. I hope my thoughts were helpful.

[saintdonoghue]

if this video is incoherent, there's no hope for the rest of us!

[RickMacDonnell]

There are few things more frightening to me than religious people saying that morality doesn't exist without belief in God ... because, to me, it sounds like if they didn't believe in God then they would do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, consequences be damned? As if assault in any shape or form isn't inherently wrong. It's absolutely bonkers to me that anyone makes this kind of argument for God's existence.

I loved the last few minutes of this video, specifically. I'm so there with you in terms of getting to a point where these kinds of arguments/contests are just so tiring and uneventful. Because you're right: people aren't believing in God because of evidence, so you can't logic them out of belief. In my opinion, people believe because they want to believe, plain and simple. They prefer to live in a world where a God exists, so they choose to think that he does. That's probably a slight oversimplification, but I think it's largely true. And if that's the case, arguing against it is just a waste of everyone's time. And yet I've spent 20 years trying to do it LOL