Wednesday, January 22, 2020

WSIBC: “God and Existence” – Part 1: “The Question”

In chapter 4 of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC), author James Anderson presents his reasons for believing that a god exists. Over the next few installments in my examination of Anderson’s book, I will focus on each of the sections of this chapter. Anderson heads the six sections of chapter 4, subtitled “God is There,” which runs from pages 93 to 138, with the following headings:
“God and Existence”(pp. 102-106)  
“God and Values” (pp. 106-110)  
“God and Morality” (pp. 110-115)  
“God and Reason” (pp. 115-119)  
“God and Mind” (pp. 119-125)  
“God and Science” (pp. 126-135)
Anderson closes out the chapter with a discussion regarding whether or not arguments are needed in the first place for believing that a god exists – and given that the vast majority of believers accept their theism on psycho-emotional grounds as opposed to rational grounds, there should be no surprise when Anderson concludes that arguments in fact are not needed (now he tells us!). A number of issues come to the surface in that section, so that will have to wait for a later entry on this blog. For now, I want to explore the first case which Anderson outlines in his book’s fourth chapter. After reviewing the six preceding sections of the chapter, one might suppose that he should have just skipped them entirely.