Product Description

Discover why ...

... Plato was not a world-hating totalitarian

... Aquinas's Five Ways are not so bad after all

... Kicking stones cannot refute Bishop Berkeley

... Schopenhauer was not quite an atheist

... and other refreshing new perspectives on
spiritual thinking in western philosophy.

This entertaining book posits the theory that philosophy, far from being the enemy of religion, has more often than not supported a non-materialist view of the universe. Keith Ward re-examines the works of western philosophy's greatest thinkers - from Plato and Aquinas to Kant and Hegel - and suggests that the majority accepted `the God conclusion': that there is a supreme spiritual reality which is the cause or underlying nature of the physical cosmos.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165510 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Keith Ward was Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion in the University of London, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. The God Conclusion is a revised and expanded version of his 2008 Sarum Lectures and 2007-8 Gresham College Lectures.

Customer Reviews

God exists, but is he a person?
Another excellent book from Keith Ward in which he explores the concepts of God developed by great philosophers down the ages. He succeeds in showing that theism - belief in God - has been the default position in Western philosophy, rather than a product of irrationality and superstition, which is how dogmatic atheists such as Dawkins try to depict it. However, Ward's starting point is that of a committed theist who believes in a personal God with anthropomorphic characteristics. Whilst he demonstrates that belief in God is rational, he fails in my opinion to provide a compelling case for the personal God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and his treatment of non-personal concepts of deity, such as pantheism and panentheism, is perfunctory at best. This is troubling, as part of Ward's mission over the years has been to show the compatibility of science and religion. But the God Einstein believed in was the God of Spinoza, who equated God with the cosmos conceived as a totality, not the God of Abraham. Any theist who aspires to develop an intellectually persuasive case against atheists such as Dawkins needs to address this lacuna, and I hope that Ward will start doing so in some of his future writing. His latest book left me feeling that his commitment to a personal God is ultimately a matter of faith and preference, rather than the product of intellectual reflection so, whilst it is a fascinating read, no atheist is going to feel even remotely challenged by the arguments put forward here.