One of the great tasks of Mortimer Adler’s illustrious life was his search for a watertight proof of the existence of God. Adler believed that his search had been successful.Adler spent years studying the classic proofs of God’s existence, especially Aquinas’s Five Ways, and found shortcomings in all of them, as conventionally understood. But he thought that some of them contained ideas which, if properly developed, could be improved, and he continued to search for a satisfying and logically unassailable proof. Toward the end of the 1970s, he believed he had arrived at such a proof, which he presented in his historic work, How to Think about God (1980). In the writings assembled in How to Prove There Is a God, Adler gives us his approach to the question of God’s existence in fresh and popular form. He defends his position against critics, both believers and skeptics. The book includes a transcript of one of Adler’s appearances on William Buckley’s Firing Line, Adler’s revealing interview with Edward Wakin, the exchange of views on natural theology between Adler and Owen Gingerich, and John Cramer’s eloquent argument that the trend of modern cosmology supports Adler’s early struggles with the question of God’s existence.
Spis treści
Contents Has Mortimer Adler Proved There Is a God? vii I. Adler’s Case for God’s Existence1. How to Think about God’s Existence MORTIMER J. ADLER 32. The God I Pray To MORTIMER J. ADLER 93. Adler Under Fire MORTIMER J. ADLER, WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, AND JEFF GREENFIELD 15II. A Debate about God and Science 4. The Guiding Hand of God in the Universe OWEN GINGERICH 475. God, Chance, and Natural Theology MORTIMER J. ADLER 656. Gingerich Replies to Adler OWEN GINGERICH 837. New Developments in Science Strengthen Adler’s Argument for God’s Existence JOHN CRAMER 87III. Adler’s Early Struggles with the God Question8. The Demonstration of God’s Existence (1943) MORTIMER J. ADLER 1099. A Reply to Adler on God’s Existence (1943) HERBERT THOMAS SCHWARTZ 13910. A New Approach to God’s Existence (1943) MORTIMER J. ADLER 163Where These Chapters Came From 293Acknowledgments and Permissions 297Glossary of Terms and Phrases 299Index 301
O autorze
MORTIMER J. ADLER, who died in 2001, left an indelible mark on American culture. Beginning in the 1930s, Adler was the major force in promoting the Great Books idea as an educational paradigm. He founded the Institute for Philosophical Research, launched the Paideia movement for educational reform, and revolutionized the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Dr. Adler edited hundreds of books and authored over sixty, ranging from original philosophical contributions to popular best-sellers like How to Read a Book.KEN DZUGAN, a graduate of MIT, had enjoyed a varied career in business, city planning, and real estate development, when in 1990 he read Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. This experience transformed my life. It dramatically changed what I read, how I read, and why I read.” In his role as Archivist at the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas, Dzugan is working his way through over 200, 000 pages of Dr. Adler’s papers, and has found over four hundred works never listed in any Adler bibliography, including one entire completed book.
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