Religion
In reply to the discussion: Feisty entry into contentious field of atheist manifestos [View all]struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)Virtuous atheists may live well and do good but can they give hope to the hopeless cases?
Catherine Pepinster
Friday 08 March 2013
... Alvin Plantinga is the philosopher who gets both of Grayling's barrels, as a leading proponent of the ontological argument (using reason to establish the existence of a deity). Plantinga has gone on to claim this argument proves not that God exists but that it is rational to think he exists, and entirely reasonable to say that there is a maximally great entity. His claim that this is a rational argument causes Grayling to see red. But Plantinga's description of Dawkins as "dancing on the lunatic fringe" undoubtedly adds to the fire. The forthright riposte from Grayling is to accuse Plantinga of "complete intellectual irresponsibility".
I would have preferred to see what Grayling had to say about Antony Flew, one of the most influential atheistic philosophers of our time and author of The Presumption of Atheism. He declared in 2004 that he had become a theist, on the grounds that the origins of life indicate a creative intelligence. But Flew doesn't get a mention.
Grayling's earnest manifesto for humanism had much the same effect on me as eating too much lettuce did on Peter Rabbit. While wit was as absent as in part one, I was roused to laughing out loud by his explanation of how important it is to be active, rather than idle: "The engagement does not have to be any more taxing than reading, knitting or gardening, though for some it has to take the form of climbing Everest or going to the moon. And there are plenty of worthwhile and creative activities in between".
Apart from their vilification of theists, one gets the impression that humanists are always nice, polite, and middle-class. They are as keen on people being good as any vicar. The trouble is people aren't always nice, and atheism has little to say about that. Attend a humanist funeral and you'll see it works for someone who was pleasant, worked hard, and left behind a loved family. But there is no hope of redemption for anyone who doesn't measure up. It's that search for meaning and hope for the hopeless that continues to capture the imagination of those convinced of their faith, for all the rational arguments put forward by Grayling and his fellows in "the cause".
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-god-argument-by-ac-grayling-8524807.html