As a youngster, I read a (stunning :-) book that contained this: “What the hell are you getting so upset about?” he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I don’t,” she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. “But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.” Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. “Let’s have a little more religious freedom between us,” he proposed obligingly. “You don’t believe in the God you want to, and I won’t believe in the God I want to. Is that a deal?” (for a more extended quote: http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/the-god-i-dont-believe-in-is-a-good-kind-god/ ) If you haven't read (or haven't recently . . .) Heller's book, you really should :-) Thanks . . . tom On Sep 17, 2012, at 1:52 AM, Roger Critchlow <r...@elf.org> wrote: > Reading > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/philosopher-defends-religion/ > was a rather odd experience this week, mixed in with Sam Bacile, the > Salafists, the zombies, and whatever. > > The review is by a non-believer (Thomas Nagel) who finds the book, written by > a believer (Alvin Plantinga), very interesting, even though he doesn't > believe it. Plantinga's day job is analytic philosophy, so he gets very > precisely into what he thinks it is that his faith and his beliefs do for > him. Finally, the main argument is sort a grand slam of creationism: we > wouldn't be able to correctly figure out how the world works if the deity, > more specifically the deity that Plantinga believes in, wasn't helping us > along the way. Why would natural selection by itself care anything about > the truth? > > As the reviewer says: "The interest of this book, especially for secular > readers, is its presentation from the inside of the point of view of a > philosophically subtle and scientifically informed theist—an outlook with > which many of them will not be familiar." > > -- rec -- > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
