Wednesday, February 11, 2015

How Should We Speak of God? A Response to Daniel Linford

My new article, "How Should We Speak of God? A Response to Daniel Linford" has been posted at Strange Notions. Here is an excerpt:

Last December, an article by Daniel Linford entitled "Do Atheists Reject the Wrong Kind of God? Not Likely" appeared at Scientia Salon. Certain recent "popular books,” according to Linford, have advanced a "mystical" notion of God, arguing that contemporary atheists have directed their disbelief only toward "smaller" conceptions of the divine. Three contemporaries are singled out: Karen Armstrong, John Haught, and David Bentley Hart.

On what Linford denominates the "mystical" view, God is radically transcendent, not a being within the cosmic order, and cannot be circumscribed by human language. Many of the atheist assaults are directed against a God who is, more or less, a being among beings, and a person much like us. Linford believes that sophisticated thinkers have sought to outflank such arguments by moving to higher ground, positing a God who escapes our language and ways of thought.

Read the whole thing here.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

A Webb of Confusion

Stephen Webb's recent article, "The End of the Analogy of Being," follows a now familiar pattern. Webb sets forth a characterization of some thinker that bears almost no resemblance to what that thinker said, and, on consulting that thinker's works, I usually find him to be saying the exact opposite. Webb is hardly ever clear, when he attributes a belief to someone, if that belief is explicitly held or a consequence (welcome or otherwise) of that thinker's views. And, if the latter, Webb never says what the specific propositions are that lead to the portrait Webb paints.