No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
On Thomas Nagel's Rejection of Theism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2013
Extract
In his most recent book—Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False—and in numerous places in his previous work, Thomas Nagel wishes to suggest several reasons that theism is not a live option for him (to use a phrase made famous by William James). He does not seem to intend many of his criticisms to be more than suggestive, much less decisive; nonetheless, in light of the strength of his conviction that theism is somehow inherently too outrageous an option to believe, I would like to spend a bit of time identifying and assessing the criticisms he mentions.
- Type
- Review Essay*
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2013
Footnotes
*
ThomasNagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
References
1 See Plantinga's trilogy on warrant: Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
2 Plantinga, Alvin, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nagel published his review of Plantinga's book as “A Philosopher Defends Religion,” The New York Review of Books, September 27, 2012, 62–63.
3 Moreland, James Porter, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (London: SCM Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
4 Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
5 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 123.
6 Nagel cites Broad, Charlie Dunbar's The Mind and Its Place in Nature (London: Routledge, 1925) 81–94Google Scholar and Bergson, Henri's Creative Evolution (trans. Arthur Mitchell; New York: Henry Holt, 1911)Google Scholar.
7 Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 7.
8 Ibid., 21.
9 Ibid., 25.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 26.
13 Ibid.
14 Lewis, C. S., Miracles, in C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperOne, 2002) 297–462, at 354Google Scholar.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid. [italics in original].
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 376.
19 Ibid., 383.
20 Ibid., 385.
21 Ibid., 386.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 387.
24 Ibid., 388.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., 389.
27 Ibid., 395.
28 Ibid., 395–96 [italics in original].
29 Ibid., 401.