Table of Contents

PART 1. PRELIMINARIES

Chapter 1: Why Not Agnosticism?

• Proving Non-Existence
  The Burden of Proof
  Fallibilism
  The Common Sense View
  Is Atheism Itself a Metaphysical Belief?
  Summary

Chapter 2: Which God Are You Denying?

• Kidneys and Hearts
  What Is God?
  Magenta and Pink
  Tolerable Misdescriptions
  Life Force
  The Argument from Experience
  Our Natural Being
  The Point

Chapter 3: Religion without God?

• Religious Atheism
  Spirit
  The Backdoor God
  Conclusion

Chapter 4: Metaphor and Sacred Texts

• Inconsistencies
  Improbabilities
  Ignored Dictums
  Partial Literalism
  Metaphorical Reading
  Ricœur and Company

PART II. “PROOFS”

Chapter 5: Ontologic Illogic

• A Priori and A Posteriori Arguments
  The Ontological Argument
  Null Sets and Hypotheticals
  Barretteless and Imaginary Dolls
  Necessary Existence
  Summary

Chapter 6: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

• The Cosmological Argument
  Inconsistency
  Infinity
  The Kala‾m Argument
  Necessary Beings
  Best Explanation
  Conclusion

Chapter 7: Design or Evolution?

• The Design Argument
  The Appeal
  The Evolutionary Account
  Chance and Fruit Flies
  Intelligent Design?

Chapter 8: Fine Tuning and Analogy

• The Design Argument (Again)
  Fine Tuning and Biogenesis
  Analogical Argument Structure
  Watches and Astrolabes
  Summary

Chapter 9: The Moral Argument

• Aquinas’s Version
  Kant’s Version
  Summary

PART III: ATTRIBUTES

Chapter 10: The Problem of Suffering

• Inscrutability
  Free Will
  Eschatological Recompense
  Moral Fortitude
  Summary

Chapter 11: Omnipotence

• The Paradox of the Stone
  No Impossible Powers
  Two Impossible Acts Are Easier Than One
  Mortal Comprehension

Chapter 12: Omniscience and Free Will

• The Basic Problem
  Weakening Knowledge
  Out of Time
  Different Necessities
  Other Worlds
  Summary

Chapter 13: Time and Immutability

• Problems with Immutability
  Anthropomorphizing
  Time Revisited
  Summary

Chapter 14: Is God Love?

• Different Kinds of Love

PART IV. FAITH

Chapter 15: Faith and Reason

• God Is Special
  Secular Faiths
  Conclusion

Chapter 16: Fideism

• Kierkegaardian Fideism
  Wittgensteinian Fideism

Chapter 17: Ultimate Concern

• Ontological, Not Cosmological
  Three Ambiguities
  The Problem

Chapter 18: Po-Mo Theo

• A Monkey in a Box?
  Summary

Chapter 19: Pascal’s Wager

• Two Problems
  Defending Pascal

Chapter 20: Non-Falsifiability

• Flew’s Garden
  Not Logical Positivism
  Falsification and Verification
  Objections
  Replies
  Summary

PART V. IMPLICATIONS

Chapter 21: Mysticism

• Common Components
  Content
  Method
  Self-Confirming
  Judging by the Effects
  Conclusion

Chapter 22: God and Morality

• Moral Principles
  The Euthyphro Argument
  Innate Morality?
  Sin and Moral Intuition
  Strategic Interaction
  Conclusion

Chapter 23: The Meaning of Life

• The Problem of Nihilism
  Reductio Ad Absurdum
  The Argument from Consistency
  The Non Sequitur
  Death
  Rephrasing the Question

Chapter 24: Death

• Platonic Arguments
  Ghosts in the Machine
  Brain Damage
  Near-Death Experiences
  The Identity Argument
  Summary

Chapter 25: Error Theory

• Religion’s Success
  Psychological and Sociological Accounts
  The Evolution of Belief
  Conclusion?

Notes
Bibliography
Author Index