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Realism, Non-Realism and Atheism: Why Believe in an Objectively Real God?

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Is God Real?

Part of the book series: Library of Philosophy and Religion ((LPR))

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Abstract

The transcendent God has for many become an unavailable God. As Jean-Paul Sartre proclaims in his play The Devil and the Good Lord:

I supplicated, I demanded a sign, I sent messages to Heaven, no reply. Heaven ignored my very name. Each minute I wondered what I could be in the eyes of God. Now I know the answer: nothing. God does not see me, God does not hear me, God does not know me… I am going to tell you a colossal joke: God doesn’t exist.1

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Notes

  1. John A.T. Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), p. 43. (Italics mine.)

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  2. For a classic presentation of verificationism against theism see A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952), Introduction, pp. 5–16, and pp. 115–17.

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  3. A clear and concise response is offered by George I. Mavrodes in ‘God and Verification’, Canadian Journal of Theology, Vol. 10 (1964), reprinted in

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  4. Malcolm L. Diamond and Thomas V. Litzenburg, Jr. (eds), The Logic of God: Theology and Verification (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), p. 223.

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  5. See also Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 156–68.

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  6. John Hick takes a different tack, accepting the verificationist challenge and arguing that the existence of God is a potentially verifiable fact. See Hick, ‘Theology and Verification’, Theology Today, Vol. 17 (1960), reprinted in

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  7. Basil Mitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 1971), pp. 53–71.

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  8. David Hume, in Nelson Pike (ed.), Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), Part V (pp. 48 and 51). Cf. Part II (p. 32).

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  9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, repr. 1973), pp. 500–24.

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  10. Immanuel Kant, in Allen W. Wood and Gertrude M. Clark (eds), Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press: 1978), p. 161.

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  11. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 89.

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  12. (Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. David F. Swenson, 2nd ed., trans. rev. by Howard V. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 25 and p. 26).

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  13. Gordon Kaufman, The Theological Imagination (Philadelphiha: Westminster Press, 1981), p. 268 and p. 72.

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  14. Gordon D. Kaufman, Theology for a Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 37 and 42.

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  15. D.Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 60.

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  16. See also Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 29.

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  17. D.Z. Phillips, Religion Without Explanation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), pp. 148–149.

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  18. D.Z. Phillips, review of Reason, Relativism and God in The Times Literary Supplement, 14 November, 1986, p. 1289.

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  19. Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 9.

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  20. Bertrand Russell and F.C. Copleston, ‘A Debate on the Existence of God’, repr. in John Hick (ed.), The Existence of God (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 173 and 175.

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  21. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1957), pp. 13–14.

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  22. Sigmund Freud, The Failure of an Illusion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, rev. 1964), p. 50.

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  23. Antony Flew, The Presumption of Atheism and Other Philosophical Essays on God, Freedom, and Immortality (London: Elek, 1976), p. 18.

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  24. See William James, ‘Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth’, in Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975).

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  25. See Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Green and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. 142.

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  26. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford University Press, 6th edn, repr. 1972), p. 435.

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  27. John Hick, The Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. 37.

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  28. See also Hick, God Has Many Names (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982).

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  29. See Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 20.

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Authors
  1. Joseph Runzo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chapman University, Orange, California, USA

    Joseph Runzo (Professor of Philosophy and of Religion) (Professor of Philosophy and of Religion)

Copyright information

© 1993 Claremont Graduate School

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Runzo, J. (1993). Realism, Non-Realism and Atheism: Why Believe in an Objectively Real God?. In: Runzo, J. (eds) Is God Real?. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22693-1_8

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