The Case Against

Six arguments that changed what would count as a reason.

A course on the thought of The God Question.

Theology · Religion

Course outline

1. If God, Why This? — The argument that changes the ground: not that theism is unproven but that it is self-contradictory, worked entirely from beliefs the theist already holds. And the reply that beat it while winning…
2. The Voice in the Conscience — An argument that starts from something the reader has felt rather than from anything in the sky — and a dilemma that dismantles it without denying a word of the experience.
3. The God-Shaped Hole — The account that explains religion entirely by where it came from, and the objection any such account faces — that a history is not a verdict, and that the rule which protects religion from being…
4. Something Happened to Me — Whether an experience can be evidence to anyone but the person who had it — and a witness who built her testimony specifically to answer the objections an outsider would raise.
5. What You're Entitled to Believe — Not whether God exists — Course I settled that no proof works — but whether you are permitted to believe it anyway. The question the reader has been carrying since lesson one, and the point at which…
6. Does It All Add Up? — The objection every believer has wanted to make since Course I — that taking the arguments one at a time is rigged — and the three positions left standing when it is answered.

Built from

This course was built from 11 books.

• Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity
• John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
• J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism
• J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
• William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
• William James, The Will to Believe
• Simone Weil, Waiting for God
• W. K. Clifford, The Scientific Basis of Morals and Other Essays
• Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God
• Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil
• Graham Oppy, Arguing about Gods

Part of the Simposeum course library.