Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

Reasonable Faith

by J.D.D. Hutto

Having spent the spring term teaching philosophy of religion to first-year university students I found at the end of the term few proponents for God’s existence (apart from those who entered the course already armed with a firm belief). For to those who are persuaded by reason alone (as all good philosophers must be) it seems that atheism is the only honest stance we can take. Here I hope to show that reason does not in fact endorse such atheistic conclusions. But first let us examine why it is such a popular position to young (and some older) philosophers.

It is argued by atheists that if we consider the characteristics ascribed to God by classical theism (i.

…