Objecting to God

The growth of science and a correspondingly scientific way of looking at evidence have for the last three centuries slowly been gaining ground over religious explanations of the cosmos and mankind's place in it. However, not only is secularism now under renewed attack from religious fundamentalism, but it has also been widely claimed that the scientific evidence itself points strongly to a universe deliberately fine-tuned for life to evolve in it. In addition, certain aspects of human life, like consciousness and the ability to recognise the existence of universal moral standards, seem completely resistant to evolutionary explanation. In this book Colin Howson analyses in detail the evidence which is claimed to support belief in God's existence and argues that the claim is not well-founded. Moreover, there is very compelling evidence that an all-powerful, all-knowing God not only does not exist but cannot exist, a conclusion both surprising and provocative.

Preface; 1. The trouble with God; 2. God unlimited; 3. How to reason if you must; 4. The well-tempered universe; 5. What does it all mean?; 6. Moral equilibrium; 7. What is life without thee?; 8. It necessarily ain't so.

Many people believe uncritically that a loving and forgiving God exists. This book provides a full analysis of the evidence used to support a belief in God, arguing that the evidence suggests our recognition of moral standards actually has an evolutionary explanation.

Colin Howson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and Emeritus Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief (2000), Logic with Trees (1997) and, with Peter Urbach, Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach (3rd edition, 2006).