Where Alister McGrath delivered this lecture.\u00a0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet another passage from Alister McGrath\u2019s \u201cTwilight of Atheism\u201d talk as it appears, transcript, in Eric Metaxas, ed., Life, God, and Other Small Topics: Conversations from Socrates in the City<\/em> (New York: Plume\/Penguin, 2011):<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of you may have read Terry Eagleton\u2019s very interesting review of Dawkins\u2019s The God Delusion<\/em> in the London Review of Books<\/em>, and one of the points he makes \u2014 and again, it\u2019s an intriguing point that you may like to think about \u2014 is that all of us are perfectly used to holding certain beliefs as true or even reliable, even though we cannot prove them to be absolutely true.\u00a0 That\u2019s just the way life is, Terry Eagleton says, and therefore, we ought to expect that the best we can hope to show is there are good reasons for thinking that these beliefs are true, even if we cannot prove them with absolute certainty.<\/span><\/p>\nJust think of a hypothetical experiment.\u00a0 I want you to imagine that you have a leading atheist philosopher sharing this platform with me, and both this philosopher and I are challenged to prove our beliefs.\u00a0 I would try very hard to give you the reasons why I believe in God, and I\u2019m sure I would do it reasonably well.\u00a0 However, I would not be able to prove my case with knock-down certainty, but neither would my opponent.\u00a0 The whole argument \u2014 whether there is a God, whether there isn\u2019t \u2014 is stalemated and has been so for many years.\u00a0 Intriguingly, that brings us to the position that the person who says there is a God and the person who says there is no God are actually taking their positions as a matter of faith.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s an intriguing possibility to think about that. . . .<\/span><\/p>\nI believe passionately that religious belief does need to be challenged.\u00a0 Why do you believe that?\u00a0 Can you give us reasons for thinking this makes sense?<\/em>\u00a0 It\u2019s about being held accountable in the public arena, and I\u2019m very, very happy to do that.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s very necessary and very important. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n[T]here are many Christian writers who already do this, and I\u2019m slightly surprised when I read Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett, who seem to have managed to have gotten to this point in their lives without actually having encountered people like Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, C. S. Lewis even, and Thomas Aquinas, all of whom, I think, give good indications of what the intellectual basis of faith might be.\u00a0 (255)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Park City, Utah<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Yet another passage from Alister McGrath\u2019s \u201cTwilight of Atheism\u201d talk as it appears, transcript, in Eric Metaxas, ed., Life, God, and Other Small Topics: Conversations from Socrates in the City (New York: Plume\/Penguin, 2011): \u00a0 Some of you may have read Terry Eagleton\u2019s very interesting review of Dawkins\u2019s The God Delusion in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4171,2842,9221,17434,11105,1014,11914,1543,17428,834,5168,909,17440,915,837,17437,17431,3907,743,8669,177,16205,17159,243,810,9755,14719],"class_list":["post-88513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agnostic","tag-agnosticism","tag-alister-mcgrath","tag-alvin-plantinga","tag-aquinas","tag-atheism","tag-belief","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-certainty","tag-daniel-dennett","tag-evidence","tag-faith","tag-god-delusion","tag-knowledge","tag-new-atheism","tag-new-atheist","tag-nicholas-wolterstorff","tag-proof","tag-religion","tag-religious","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-richard-swinburne","tag-sam-harris","tag-science","tag-terry-eagleton","tag-thomas","tag-unbelief"],"yoast_head":"\n
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