Read part 1: Stephen Law on the allegiance of philosophy in the battle between science and religion.
Read part 3: Law argues that Milbank's defence of religion is little more than pseudo-profundity.
Read part 4: Milbank argues that, when it comes to metaphysics, paradox is inevitable.
As so often in the case of debates instigated by the ‘new atheists’, Stephen Law’s piece has to be interrogated first at the level of what he supposes religious belief to be about and only secondarily at the level of whether it is reasonable to hold it.
Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods - part 2
The Anglican theologican responds to Stephen Law.
Issue 43, 12th January 2016
Continue reading
Enjoy unlimited access to the world's leading thinkers.
Start by exploring our subscription options or joining our mailing list today.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Latest Releases
Terri Ann 4 February 2016
I see a few serious problems with this reasoning, if you can call it reasoning. Firstly, there are way too many 'weird' sentences that I guess are meant to sound profound and inspired and highly intellectually clever, but in reality they are nonsense, in that they don't actually make clear logical sense.
Secondly, there are some really far fetched assumptions too, such as assuming "The demise of western civilisation and culture" if we don't believe in a god. How silly. The vast majority of hatred, evils and 'sins' are committed not by the atheists, but by the religious. Atheists abound, especially in academia and the scientific community, and they are not the 'criminals'.
Quite simply, I would say it this way:
If god created everything, absolutely everything, then he, and he alone, created evil. If he created in man the ability to think and do evil, then he did a very cruel thing. No parent I know would ever deliberately make their child evil, and then tell the child he/she has to overcome that evil by themselves using their 'free will', in order to be accepted and allowed into the family, or burn in fire in agony (hell) for billions of years after you die.
So, either god is unable to eradicate evil, meaning he in NOT omnipotent, and therefore not god, or he is unwilling to eradicate evil, which means he is NOT love, but is in fact very cruel and heartless, and has no compassion for human suffering. Therefore he is not god.
Cornell Anthony 22 January 2016
The problem of evil is an empirical argument that rests on a priori uses of justification.
Take out the a priori and everything empirical crumbles.
The argument from evil is nothing but an argument from atheistic personal preference.
David Morey 2 21 January 2016
I like some of the above, the world is both open and closed/repeating (see Hilary Lawson's Closure and Robert Pirsig's Lila) and we have to come to terms with becoming, being and begoing but I have no taste for creating a personal god idea to relate to this process, I prefer to explore post-religious philosophy, art and culture and let science study whatever regularities and patterns we can identify. I prefer to relate to existence as both a creative and destructive process, one that we can relate to with many emotional responses, but for me not seen as divine or god coloured (others may want to use these cultural artifacts but I prefer to put them to one side, although they fill our cultural history nonetheless) and this is of course an awesome and frightening process, and so vastly open and full of potential, yet as finite individuals also at times painfully closed and restricted. Worshiping or trusting such a process is no doubt comforting but a more critical and open approach is my preferred choice.
Roger.Cavanagh 18 January 2016
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/law-vs-milbank-belief-and-the-gods-part-2-auid-611
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/law-vs-milbank-belief-and-the-gods-part-2-auid-611
The link to Part 1 is incorrectly set to Part 2 at both the start and end of this piece.
Join the conversation