Natural Theology : A Reassessment

Abstract

Natural Theology: A Reassessment offers corrections to widespread misinterpretations of the authoritative sources of Christian theology and shows that these sources affirm a traditional view of natural theology that refers to what can be rationally believed about God without using religious doctrines as premises. Contrary to popular misconceptions, Hume and Kant did not successfully rebut the arguments of natural theology, which are still being defended today. This book develops a more rigorous deductively valid formulation of the Cosmological, Teleological, and Moral Arguments for the existence of God and shows how the truth of their premises can be defended, thus demonstrating the soundness of these arguments which show that God exists. Using a unique approach which engages with philosophical theology of both analytic and continental traditions, it offers new arguments to address long-standing problems in epistemology of theology concerning foundationalism, epistemic circularity, divine transcendence, the culturally variant notion of human reason, the lack of consensus among experts, and the accusation of anthropomorphism and ontotheology and provides a thorough response to theological objections, the god-of-the-gaps objection, and the objection that arguments are open to revisions. The author develops an interdisciplinary approach involving theology, philosophy, and science to move the discussion ahead in a new and significant way. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.