God, Reason and Theistic Proofs (Reason and Religion)

Rating:
Summary: Decent. Not great, not terrible.
Review: Davis offers a largely sympathetic overview of arguments for the existence of god and common objections to them. The book is good as far as it goes, but Davis has an unfortunate tendency to lean heavily on personal intuition when the issues become the most difficult, and hence the most interesting. This is disappointing, because Davis is obviously intelligent enough to have done much more. Had he sought more carefully to identify the reasons underlying his intuitions, the book would surely have been a five-star effort. I enjoyed the book, and do not at all regret having spent time reading it, but I hoped for much more.

Rating:
Summary: The best introduction I have come across
Review: I first came across the work of Stephen T Davis a couple of years ago reading his `Logic and the Nature of God' (published 1983). Whilst the target readership is clearly different (the first being professional academic and this the interested theology/philosophy student) the improvement in readability is immense. I would recommend this book to anyone undertaking an introductory Philosophy of Religion/Philosophical Theology course. The book would probably be difficult work for someone with no theology or philosophy background although certainly not impossible. One of the big advantages of this book is that the chapters can be read as stand alone introductions to the various theistic indicators (more commonly referred to as proofs).

The book begins after a brief outline of what is a theistic proof with the a priori ontological argument. In addition there are chapters on the Cosmological, Design, Pascalian wager and argument(s) from religious experience as well as some other more (historically) minor arguments. In my mind this is where Davis is most useful. Interspersed between these chapters the important topics of `Theistic Proofs and Religious Realism' and `Theistic Proofs and Foundationalism' are covered. Whilst as a reference work this is fine the arbitrary location of these chapters can make the book jump around somewhat for someone reading from cover to cover. For instance the chapter on foundationalism is placed after that on the Cosmological argument. However, the Cosmological argument is as much helped by a strong foundationalist epistemology as any other. I have no doubt that Davis would agree with this, however, the layout of the book does not make this clear. It would surely have made more sense to deal with these two topics prior to all the a posteroiri arguments. It is with this in mind that "God, Reason and Theistic Proofs" has been given three stars. However, as a first point of call (especially as preparatory reading) for Philosophy of Religion classes or research into the individual generic theistic indicators this book would receive five stars as it is an excellent resource in this area of natural theology.

Rating:
Summary: An Adequate Look Into Theistic Proofs
Review: I'm an atheist and I'm very interested in philosophy and religion. I purchased this book so that I would have a better idea how theists use arguments to bolster their faith. This book is satisfactory, although it could be much better. Stephen Davis, the author, sometimes writes unnecessarily complicated sentences which only serves to confuse the reader. For the most part, however, he is rather clear. He gives a rather in depth look into the most popular proofs for the existence of God and examines the objections to them. This book was an interesting read, but a basic philosophical background will probably be necessary in order for a person to fully understand the arguments which Davis examines. The only other complaint I have about the book is Davis's major (and unjustified) leaps of logic. He sometimes examines a theistic proof and then concludes that it proves the existence of God, but he fails to consider the most basic objections to these very proofs. It almost seems as if he is ignoring these objections. Otherwise, it was a fairly enjoyable read.

Rating:
Summary: An Adequate Look Into Theistic Proofs
Review: This is a very good introduction to the issue (though not perfect in my opinion). It not only deals with many proofs but has also some metadiscussions about the idea of theistic proofs and their alternatives.