Your intention seemed to me to advocate for some anti-atheist conclusion that you take the author and/or reviewer to have advocated. If so, then I think that it's your job to explain it and to defend it.
The anti-atheist message, if that's what you want to call it, was delivered by the atheistic journalist* who was agreeing with the theistic author** of the book that the atheists need to lift their (philosophical) game. The reason I quoted the article was because I hoped to fast track the discussion to this point. I figured that since it was delivered by an atheist, the message would be sugar coated enough to slide through the quagmire of identity politics that seem to derail such discussions before they get started.
*who, for the record, felt that atheists needed to lift their game to deliver stronger, relevant arguments.
**who, for the record, (apparently, since I haven't read the book) felt the arguments offered by atheists were weak on account of being irrelevant
Assuming that characterization of atheists is even accurate, and assuming (for the sake of argument) that the implied criticism is correct, then what would you favor replacing these grievous atheist errors with? What's your alternative?
I thought it was obvious : bring philosophical critiques to philosophical arguments .. .. as opposed to gathering semantics and paradigms of science in an attempt to frog-march all philosophical problems into the Colosseum of science.
Or more accurately a theological one. (I don't think that we should equate theology and philosophy.)
As it pertains to this thread, it is a philosophical issue. There is much about theology that can be cultural, political etc, which serves to divert the topic simply on account of its broadness. IOW I think its clear we are talking about the philosophical substance of this issue, and not the various means individuals and groups take to incorporate or interpret that philosophical element into their lives or societies at different times. I mean suppose you want to critique the catholic church, you've got about 1600 years of history to work with.
Sure, you can launch a/theistic critiques of such things, but the culmination of all such critiques (especially from the POV of the atheist) lies in God sincd that is the point of illumination (or the bud you have to nip, according to intention).
Who insists that it is an "inherently scientific problem"? (Maybe Dawkins, Coyne or people like that. But even then, I don't want to put words in their mouths.)
Or you could look at the trickle down effects of their disciples, which may not necessarily be thick in quality, but definitely fast. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you are perhaps the only contributor here that doesn't overtly demand questions of God be framed and answered explicitly in a scientific manner (I was going to say "empirical", but actually not even you appear to go that far).
IOW by any stretch of the issue, there appears to be dominant bias (by the "against" party) to relocate the problem to the football field of empiricism, and no questioning on whether that is the place the problem can actually be scrutinized.
If it works out that it isn't the place, than all subsequent scrutinizing is irrelevant.
But it is typically an existence claim. That puts it in the metaphysical arena. It's also typically a knowledge claim. People claim to believe or even to know that God exists. And that puts it in the epistemological arena.
If we (as I generally do) understand 'knowledge' to mean something like 'justified true belief', then most weight would seem to fall on the word 'justified'.
How is purported 'knowledge' of God justified?
We must not only have a proposition in mind that we believe is true. Nor is it sufficient that it in fact be true. (That correspondence might just be luck or happenstance.) We need some satisfactory reason to believe that it's true.
That's what motivates all the incessant talk about 'evidence'. If the word 'evidence' suggests 'science' to you and yours, then you need to propose an alternative form of extra-evidential justification that you think is more appropriate to theistic propositions. That's your task, not theirs.
And that, of course is a massive philosophical topic, which is the primary focus of scriptural commentary, practice, presentation etc. Its not even a topic that provides an immediate and obvious answer ... or rather, even if one is presented with an immediate and obvious answer, the thinking, justification and reasoning behind it are not easily apparent. Kind of like, for some people its easy to accept 1+1=2. For others, they have to read Principia Mathematica.
For the purposes of brevity however, I would suggest that if God is defined as something unique to reality, not only in the special object sense (ie demiurge), but the ontological sense (unconditioned cause of all causes), then all conventional wisdoms, justifications and reasonings based on unpacking conditioned caused things are either moot or subject to a severe sort of scrutiny to determine their validity as epistemological tools. If one is not prepared to apply that scrutiny, they do not pass Go and collect $200.
They aren't 'barking up trees', let alone the wrong tree. They are just saying that if you ever hope to convince them of the truth of theism, you need to present them with something that convinces them. (Call it 'evidence' or whatever you like.) Otherwise they will say that they aren't aware of anything that justifies theistic belief. That's reasonable enough.
If atheists aren't convinced they need to make relevant arguments to challenge theists, theists do not own the problem.
IOW atheists are not required to "convert" in order to provide legitimate critiques.
And I quoted it and responded to it. It has a couple of serious defects in my opinion.
First, this rather cosmic conception isn't entirely consistent with much of theistic religious tradition that does present God as a 'person', a person who is 'creator', 'designer', 'judge' and the Bible's memorable 'Lord' (a title given to an ancient king.) The reviewer's favored cosmic concept is taken from late-antique philosophical theology that tries to combine preexisting Christian (and later Muslim) tradition with Neoplatonism. In India, we see a rather different sequence of ideas, but again the interplay of personalized traditions with more abstract philosophy.
Granted, Christianity has unique problems in deriving its philosophical traditions from southern europe (and then deriving something else again from a rejection of southern european culture by the northerners).
But straight off the cuff, there are serious flaws in your deeming personalism as irreconciable with a cosmic God. I mean, you could talk about your personalism as being irreconciable with being unconditioned, independent, cause of all causes, etc. If you want to take that further, you would have to talk about how your experience of "selfhood" is sufficient to gauge what is the limit of God. IOW is it really a case of logically untenable propositions, like a round square, or is it a case of cutting the coat to the cloth?
You could even take this query further, and determine whether it is a question even answerable according to whatever powers of inquiry we could muster from our (unenlightened) position.
Second, giving the concept of 'God' an exceedingly metaphysical spin seemingly reduces God to being whatever fulfills particular metaphysical functions. God is the source and origin of the universe (the big bang can assume that role), God is the source of the universe's order and whatever sustains it from moment to moment (the laws of physics can take over that). Sure, we can make these kind of moves, but something of vital importance to religion is being lost. God loses "his" emotional resonance, 'his" psychological relevance to human beings, "his" role in ethics, and "his" Holiness. The 'Laws of Physics' are very different sorts of things than 'God'.
It is not necessary that we have access to God's power of universal creation, maintenance and destruction in order to have access to God
And there is nothing in God operating from such a position that prevents Him from having access to us.
Or at least, so far you haven't offered anything. You have talked about it in a way to suggest its not possible to us to act like that.
... con't
