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Rating: 
Summary: How to Think About God - review
Review: Being a Christian with much faith in God, I wasn't sure if this book was for me. But as I began to read the opening chapters, I was intrigued by the fact that Adler was attempting to prove God's existence solely with philosophical reasoning. This follows from many years ago, when Plato and Aristotle attempted the same challenge. Their thoughts are unaffected by religious views and beliefs.
Adler begins his explanations writing about the beginning of the world itself, and how it could be explained. He then writes about what the word "God" means. Adler states that the notion of God is a theoretical construct, or supreme being. He reviews some traditional arguments to God's existence, and shows their flaws. Adler also writes about the cosmological argument that if the existence of the cosmos is to be explained, and cannot be by natural causes, then we must look at the existence of a supernatural cause.
It was interesting to read about how Adler could propose this unseen, unknown being with simple facts and critical thinking. He was very clear and the entire book was extremely readable. Sometimes throughout the book, it seemed that Adler dragged on about the same point for too long. He has some great ideas and concepts, but maybe could have presented them in fewer words.
Obviously, I believe in God already, and love Him dearly, but I enjoyed reading about God in a different light.
Rating: 
Summary: Sharon Murphy is a dolt!
Review: AS A PREFACE, I SHOULD STATE THAT I POSSESS THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD, INCLUDING DR ADLER'S INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS TITLED "THE GREAT IDEAS," AND HAVE READ THE LATTER WORD BY WORD OVER A PERIOD OF DECADES, IN ADDITION TO MANY OF THE FORMER. IN FACT I ATTENDED THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MANY YEARS AGO AND ENROLLED IN AND COMPLETED THE GREAT BOOKS PROGRAM THERE. THIS BOOK IS A REHASH, WITH SOME MODIFICATIONS, OF MANY OF THE IDEAS CONTAINED IN THE CORPUS WHICH I STUDIED. I DO NOT THINK THAT DR ADLER WILL REACH ANY TRUE PAGAN; HIS BOOK IS PROBABLY READ WITH MORE PROFIT BY A WOULD-BE BELIEVER IN THE GOD OF "THE PEOPLES OF THE BOOK" (JEWS, CHRISTIANS, AND MOSLEMS), WHO WISH TO FIND SOME "INTELLECTUAL" JUSTIFICATION FOR THEIR BELIEF. WHAT IS CHARACTERISTIC OF MANY IF NOT ALL PAGANS IS A DISTRUST OF LINGUISTIC FORMULATIONS THAT BETRAY A LACK OF HUMILITY. ALL THIS WAS SAID MUCH BETTER CENTURIES AGO BY IMMANUEL KANT, WHO SAID THAT THE PROBLEMS OF THE EXISTENCE OR NONEXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE NATURE OF HIS ATTRIBUTES, THE QUESTION OF FREE WILL VERSUS DETERMINISM, AND THE QUESTION OF PERSONAL IMMORTALITY COULD NOT BE RESOLVED LINGUISTICALLY. TO A PAGAN, THE DISPLAY OF A "HOLY BOOK" IN THE HANDS OF A GOSPEL PREACHER IS A WORSHIP OF THE WRITTEN WORD WHICH OUGHT BY NOW TO HAVE BECOME A RELICT DATING BACK TO A TIME WHEN WORDS (AND ESPECIALLY WRITTEN WORDS) POSSESSED A MAGIC OF THEIR OWN. DR ADLER FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THE HUMILITY (NOT THE ARROGANCE) OF PAGANS, WHO SYMPATHIZE WITH HIS EARLY ADHERENCE TO JUDAISM AND HIS LATER CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY, BUT WHO CANNOT BELIEVE THAT HIS ADHERENCE TO EITHER FAITH WAS BASED ON ANY LASTING INTERNAL CONFIDENCE IN HIS OWN WORD GAMES. DR ADLER, FOR WHOM I HAVE ALWAYS HAD GREAT ADMIRATION, WAS AN INDEFATIGABLE WORKER IN HIS CRAFT - THE ART OF FRAMING WORDS AND IDEAS IN COMPRENSIBLE FORM AND STYLE; HE NEVER GAVE UP THE EFFORT. WOULD THAT WE HAD MORE OF HIM. BUT HE DOES NOT CONVINCE US PAGANS.
Rating: 
Summary: A Helpful Beginning for Inquiry
Review: For an erudite review, others will serve you better. I write as one who was raised in a deeply fundamentalist (very "non-pagan") religion, and who found the God espoused by it far too small to inspire awe.If you are looking for proof that Abraham's God exists, you will not find it here. However, as one who has only recently begun a serious quest to come to terms with the idea of God, I highly recommend this book. It has provided me a foundation for subsequent reading and instruction in the process of discriminative thought---both of which have proven very helpful as I continue seeking.
Rating:
Summary: A Helpful Beginning for Inquiry
Review: For an erudite review, others will serve you better. I write as one who was raised in a deeply fundamentalist (very "non-pagan") religion, and who found the God espoused by it far too small to inspire awe. If you are looking for proof that Abraham's God exists, you will not find it here. However, as one who has only recently begun a serious quest to come to terms with the idea of God, I highly recommend this book. It has provided me a foundation for subsequent reading and instruction in the process of discriminative thought---both of which have proven very helpful as I continue seeking.
Rating:
Summary: A Compulsive Argument for the Existence of God
Review: I first came into contact with Adler's _How to Think About God_ some 20 years ago. For me the major portion of the book has been a compulsive argument for the existence of God ever since. The argument runs somewhat as follows. If the existence of the cosmos needs to be explained and if it can not be explained by natural causes, then it must be explained by supernaural causes. The existence of the cosmos is contingent; the present cosmos might have been other in its order and arrangement. The cosmos is a random one with a random number of dimensions. (I especially liked this part of the argument.) It is necessary to posit God as a preservative agent. For me this argument has been compulsive for about 20 years. In the epilogue, Adler goes on to say something very important and that is that natural theology has its limits. The nature of God, the place of humans in the cosmos, divine law and grace, etc. belong to sacral theology and " have no place in natural theology."
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Summary: A new cosmological argument by a great thinker
Review: Mortimer Adler published this book as "a guide for the 20th-century pagan." At that time he considered himself a pagan (i.e. "one who does not worship the God of Christians, Jews, or Muslims"). As a prerequisite to his argument for the existence of God Adler assumes that the cosmos may be infinite in time. For, "to affirm ... that the world or cosmos had an absolute beginning --- that it was exnihilated at an initial instant --- would be tantamount to affirming the existence of God, the world's exnihilator." Adler wants to present an argument that "avoids the error of begging the question." Likewise he rejects the need for a first cause of the cosmos. A cosmos that has "an infinite extension of time from the present backward" can also have an "infinite temporal series of causes and effects." He rejects the "best traditional argument" for the existence of God, the argument from contingency, because the contingency we actually observe in the universe is only superficial, involving mere transmutation. Yet radical contingency, involving exnihilation and annihilation of entities, is what the argument presupposes. Adler supposes instead a principle of inertia of being. With inertia "bodies set in motion continue in motion without the action of any efficient cause...and...come to rest only through the action of counteracting causes." Individual things of nature may also be brought into existence by natural causes and continue so until the action of counteracting natural causes results in their perishing. Having rejected the third premise as traditionally understood Adler now recasts it. While radical contingency may be implausible of individual things in the cosmos, it might be true of the cosmos as a whole. What is true of the whole is not always true of the parts. Unlike the component parts that make it up, the cosmos does not exist as part of a greater whole. It therefore has an independent and unconditioned existence. It does "not dependent for its existence upon a larger whole to which it belongs, as its own parts do; and...its existence is not conditioned by factors outside itself, as the existence of individual things is conditioned by factors operating in their cosmic environment." The question then becomes is its existence caused or uncaused? Adler then states "the four propositions that constitute the premises of a truly cosmological argument:" 1. The existence of an effect requiring the concurrent existence and action of an efficient cause implies the existence and action of that cause.
2. The cosmos as a whole exists.
3. The existence of the cosmos as a whole is radically contingent, which is to say that, while not needing an efficient cause of its coming to be, since it is everlasting, it nevertheless does need an efficient cause of its continuing existence, to preserve it in being and prevent it from being replaced by nothingness.
4. IF the cosmos needs an efficient cause of its continuing existence to prevent its annihilation, THEN that cause must be a supernatural being, supernatural in its action, and one the existence of which is uncaused; in other words, the supreme being, or God. Adler's argument hinges on whether the cosmos as a whole is radically contingent. To demonstrate that it is he first notes that "the cosmos which now exists is only one of many possible universes that might have existed in the infinite past, and that might still exist in the infinite future." If other universes are possible, then this one also is merely possible, not necessary. This postulate can be inferred from the cosmos manifesting chance and random happenings as well as lawful behaviour. And "whatever can be otherwise than it is can also simply not be at all." A cosmos which can be otherwise is one that also can not be. A merely possible cosmos cannot be an uncaused cosmos. A cosmos that is radically contingent in its existence needs a cause beyond itself, a supernatural cause. Adler maintains this conforms to Ockham's rule because, "we have found it necessary to posit the existence of God, the supreme being, in order to explain what needs to be explained --- the existence here and now of a merely possible cosmos." Whether the form of exnihilation is creative or preservative neither is within the power of natural causes. Adler began by rejecting in principle a creation and therefore a creating God. He then found need to explain the continued preservation of the cosmos and therefore evidence for a preserving God. And "once we affirm God's existence on the assumption of an uncreated cosmos, we can turn to the more likely assumption of a created cosmos." The idea of a created cosmos with a beginning now becomes more plausible than the idea of an eternal cosmos. Adler evaluates his argument as not giving "certitude" as to the existence of God but as demonstrating it "beyond reasonable doubt." Finally, he excogitates some of the attributes of such a supreme being: omnipotent, animate, omniscient, voluntary, and thus a "person" not a thing. I must confess finding Adler's initial assumption of an everlasting cosmos problematic. Abstract, mathematical infinities are possible. For example: There are an infinite number of points on a line between points A and B, no matter how short or long the line may be. But real, concrete infinities? You cannot put an infinite number of concrete, real things between any two objects --- no matter how thin the things nor how far apart the two objects. Space is taken up. It is likewise with real time. It is impossible to pass through an infinite series of moments. Each moment that passes uses up measurable time. If the physical past or future were infinite (i.e. if the cosmos had always existed), then we could never have passed through time to get to today. If the past is an infinite series of moments, and right now is where the series ends, then we would have passed through an infinite series and that is self-contradictory.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book.
Review: This book is quite good. Adler's way of explaining is quite clear. He makes sure that every point is understood well enough for a common arm-chair philosopher (myself and all of you). He continually repeats his purpose and the main points and definitions so as to keep everything closeknit and tied together so that a definition or concept on page 2 isn't forgotten or lost by page 92 when it is really needed most. Any negative reviews will be by closeminded atheists and theists... the atheist because he actually does give us reasonable grounds for affirming the existence of God (the God of the Philosophers); and the theist because he doesn't go far enough in saying their God has real existence. I cannot understand how anyone can rip this book. It gives the atheist what he wants- an uncreated universe (at first) and gives the theist a God and even a brigde across the chasm between the God of the Philosophers and the God of Religion (finally).
"Two Thumbs Up!"
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Summary: Tainted by his weakness to believe
Review: This books purpose is to prove God's existence plain and simple. Reading this book from an obviously brilliant man, one who could have made a much bigger impact on humanity in our spiritual and philisophical evolution if it weren't for his obvious bias towards believing in "the God of Abraham"(as he stated in his 1953 Great Ideas television show on God). He attempts to reason that God or "some supernatural cause" must have created the cosmos. However, what he, with all his brilliance and knowledge, seemed to be unable to consider is that what may be "supernatural" to humans now, may be explainable by science in a distant future. He fails to acknowledge that mankind knows an amazingly scant amount about the cosmos (or anything else for that matter) and that we are currently in the midst of a paradigm in which we are unable to think outside of until we discover something that completely shifts it (i.e. the discovery that the earth was round, Copernicus discovery of the movement of earth around the Sun, etc). This, in my mind shows a man of somewhat limited imaginative abilities, unlike that of, for example, Carl Sagan. His writings tend to show his rigidity and his inability to think beyond the early western classics and possibly of his Judeo Christian upbringing and culture. This, to me, is a sad thing. A man who seemed to be seeking for the truth, but was really fooling himself and the rest of the world. He is simply another Christian with an agenda to "prove" what he wanted to believe, instead of truly challenging his beliefs and questioning other possibilities. This is a sad story of a man who was actually unable or just unwilling to truly think freely. This prevents him from being one of the great thinkers of our time.
Rating: 
Summary: God
Review: Who really knows if God really is real because we would not had known anything about God or the existing of God if someone had not told us about him. We as people may not have seen him but in this world there people who believe that they have seen God. In the bible that was written that says that God created the earth in seven days that is why we have the seven days of the week. Now other has stated the the earth started by a big exposing in space and slam tons of rock together to form a plante.
In this their are five premises in here
1. The existence of an effect that requires the operation of a co-existent cause that implies the co-existence of that cause. The point that I got from this is that everything has a place and need to be in it and that everything that was made from one thing or another. To me that it is that something has to come form something.
2. Whatever exists either does or does not need a cause of it's existence at every monent of it;s existence. This I agree that everything has a time a place in which it was done, and that is what the authors had stated in his agruement.
3. contingent is something that is existing after it has existed and has not changed from one to another.
4. No contingent being cause the continuing existence of any other contingent being this si from the term of natural events that menas that things will happen out of or control and we can;t do anything about it but go through the motions.
5. Contingent beings exist in the world and endure or continue in existencein which all people are born and as soon as we aer we start to die.
Those five points are the mine things in this book for those poeple like him and even myself that didn't believe in God but knows that it is somehting that wakes us everyday so we can start a new day.
This book just gave a view from both sides the one were a God does exist and the other that say well this stuff about the earth had just happen from millions of stars coming together.
Morthmer Adler gave me a lot to think about on the part of the world and how we think about it. I still go on the earth was mad on tears and not days. But he does leave it open for those to think on their own about God.
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