Stewart GoetzCritiques

This was a clear and thorough description of the history of the philosophical arguments for and against the existence of a “soul”, from the Greeks to the present day. It is easy to forget that this is a historical overview and not a single argument. So, after careful reading from beginning to end, where the authors first mention “the Big Bang”, I was upset to realize that after all this thinking, reasoning, and discussion, it all boils down to whether you believe the Big Bang was a purely natural event or a purposeful act of God. Although the last chapter mentions modern day thinking, I’ll need to find something more in depth on the current state of the arguments in order to write my sequel to Perturbations Of The Reality Field.

This is a collection of philosophical essays that deal with the idea of anti-materialism, that dualism is a proper way for philosophers to look at the world, that indeed there is a soul, and this explains things better. I got onto this book because one of the editors, Mark Baker, wrote an excellent book, the Atoms of Lanugage, which descibes the grammatical diversity of the world's languages. The essays in many cases are technical and deep, and the book is not easy going. The authors mostly reject the strict dualism of Descartes, but feel we need to get beyond the idea of materialism as the null hypothesis. Some homage is paid to Noam Chomsky, which I am not sure is necessary.

Well reasoned and irenic. Although I'm not a philosopher, and only took a single philosophy class in college, I was able to understand the arguements, although I did read much slower than I usually do. If you are interested in scientism or naturalism and what the arguements are against them from a theist perspective I recomend this book. With naturalism and scientism almost assumed in the academy and throughout current Western culture, this book provides a nice counterpoint and a good foundation for a thoughtful and intellectually inclined theist.

Very insightful introduction to the naturalism debate. Also commendable is the scope of the project which isn't too pretentious; it is rather more modest and doesn't pretend to be full of "take-down" arguments but possesses much more nuance than I feel many readers of this work may be willing to offer themselves. A work to be taken seriously.½