''God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason'' is a 2012 book by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

philosopher Herman Philipse, written in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and published in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. Philipse found his '' Atheist Manifesto'' (1995) to be too hastily and superficially written, and decided to set up a more complete work to systematically refute all the arguments for the

existence of God The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorize ...

and adherence to any form of

theism Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with '' deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred ...

. To gain insight in how a religious person substantiates the existence of

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

, Philipse presents a "religious decision tree" that leads to four categories of theists. He starts by asking: Is the statement "God exists" a factual truth claim? # If not, somebody claims that God does not factually exists, but is merely a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

. Defenders of this position are, according to Philipse, following the tradition of

Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...

, and are currently represented by people like D.Z. Phillips and

Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong (born 14 November 1944) is a British author and commentator of Irish Catholic descent known for her books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic religious sister, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and ...

. # If yes, is it necessary to invoke any kind of (

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...

al) argumentation or ( empirical) evidence to back up this truth claim? ## If not, somebody claims that God factually exists, but that one may assert this without invoking any kind of argumentation or evidence.

Alvin Plantinga Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic. From 1963 to 198 ...

is among those defending this position, aiming to explain the world in the case God exists, which itself remains a matter of faith (an axiom or presupposition, according to Plantinga). ## If yes, does this argumentation or evidence need to be

scientific Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

in nature (to have gone through the

scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific ...

), and is there no possibility to completely achieve a proof of God through one's own standards? ### If not, somebody claims that God factually exists, and that one can prove this, but not in a scientific manner. Defenders of this position make use of what Philipse calls "typically religious arguments", such as

revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...

religious text Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual pr ...

religious experience A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense ...

prayer Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified ...

speaking in tongues Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, is a practice in which people utter words or speech-like sounds, often thought by believers to be languages unknown to the speaker. One definition used by linguists is the fluid vocalizing of sp ...

, a convulsion with foam at the mouth etc. Although himself an agnostic, the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould described this point of view as

non-overlapping magisteria Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view, advocated by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion each represent different areas of inquiry, fact vs. values, so there is a difference between the "nets" over which the ...

(NOMA): science and religion are two entirely different enterprises and have nothing to say about each other; therefore, science cannot assess the existence of God. The opposite of this is the god of the gaps argument, namely that if science can't explain any given phenomenon, religion can, often by postulating a god. ### If yes, somebody claims that God factually exists, and that his existence can be demonstrated using scientific evidence. This position is held by people like

Richard Swinburne Richard Granville Swinburne (IPA ) (born December 26, 1934) is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for ...

and Stephen D. Unwin, who, for example, try to show the probability of God's existence using Bayes' theorem. The

intelligent design movement The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific Article available froUniversiteit Gent/ref> idea of intelligent design (ID), which ...

(ID) claimed to possess scientific evidence for the traditional divine

creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing * Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it * Creationism, the belief tha ...

myth that would refute the

theory of evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variatio ...

(among other scientific facts). Aside from ID, there are many other creationist movements with scientific pretenses. Next, Philipse tries to refute arguments from every category step by step, but especially from the last case, namely Bayes' theorem as used by Swinburne. Based on his critiques of the last two cases ("God is supernatural" and "God's existence is within reach of natural theology") he concludes that: # God's existence is a meaningless predicate, according to the definitions of substance dualists and supernaturalists. (See also,

theological noncognitivism Theological noncognitivism is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as "God", is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like "God exists" are cognitively meaningless. It may be c ...

). # If theism were meaningful, it would have no

predictive power The concept of predictive power, the power of a scientific theory to generate testable predictions, differs from '' explanatory power'' and ''descriptive power'' (where phenomena that are already known are retrospectively explained or describe ...

upon the existing evidence, because theists render the claim

unfalsifiable Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the Philosophy of science, philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as t ...

every time evidence on the contrary is explained away with responses like "

God works in mysterious ways "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" is a Christian hymn, written in 1773 by William Cowper from England. It was written by Cowper in 1773 as a poem entitled "Light Shining out of Darkness". The poem was the last hymn text that Cowper wrote. It was w ...

" (See also the

problem of evil The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycl ...

). Therefore Bayesian arguments are inapplicable. # Therefore, because neither strategy is epistemologically satisfactory, one should conclude that atheism is a more principled position than theism.

Notes and references

{{Portal bar, Philosophy, Religion, Books 2012 non-fiction books Books about atheism Books about religion and science Books by Herman Philipse Oxford University Press books