Synopses & Reviews
"A startling achievement....I cannot overemphasize how original and groundbreaking this work is, or recommend this book too highly. The argument throughout is clear, succinct, and rigorous. It represents the highest standards of analytical philosophy. All future work, if it is to be up to speed, will have to deal with what Menssen and Sullivan have done." Book jacket.
Synopsis
Is there a good God? And if there is, has that God revealed anything of significance to us? Philosophers pondering these two questions have automatically assumed that the first must be answered before the second. Sandra Menssen and Thomas Sullivan examine how God's voice can be heard in the content of revelatory claims, stories, myths, poetry, exhortations, legal codes, and more. They argue that rather than taking the written word of any religion out of the philosophical proof equation, those very words should be considered as the voice of the God accused of not existing. The Agnostic Inquirer makes a clear, analytical claim that without these revelatory words, atheists and agnostics are missing a large part of the relevant database of the existence of God, while many theists are working with an impoverished database in trying to explain the foundations of their faith.
Table of Contents
The need for an alternative philosophical approach to a perduring question : has a good God revealed anything to us? -- A preferable philosophical approach to the great question -- Objection : inquiry into revelatory claims is pointless due to problems about evil -- Objection : no acceptable method exists for assessing the content of revelatory claims -- Objection : revelatory claims lack adequate explanatory power -- Objection : the requirement of faith invalidates mainline revelatory claims.