God Is Not Dead Yet
You might think from the recent spate of atheist best-sellers that belief in God has become intellectually indefensible for thinking people today. But a look at these books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, among others, quickly reveals that the so-called New Atheism lacks intellectual muscle. It is blissfully ignorant of the revolution that has taken place in Anglo-American philosophy. It reflects the scientism of a bygone generation rather than the contemporary intellectual scene.
That generation's cultural high point came on April 8, 1966, when Time magazine carried a lead story for which the cover was completely black except for three words emblazoned in bright red letters: "Is God Dead?" The story described the "death of God" movement, then current in American theology.
But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of God's demise was premature. For at the same time theologians were writing God's obituary, a new generation of young philosophers was rediscovering his vitality.
Back in the 1940s and '50s, many philosophers believed that talk about God, since it is not verifiable by the five senses, is meaningless—actual nonsense. This verificationism finally collapsed, in part because philosophers realized that verificationism itself could not be verified! The collapse of verificationism was the most important philosophical event of the 20th century. Its downfall meant that philosophers were free once again to tackle traditional problems of philosophy that verificationism had suppressed. Accompanying this resurgence of interest in traditional philosophical questions came something altogether unanticipated: a renaissance of Christian philosophy.
The turning point probably came in 1967, with the publication ...
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The Gnu
Craig's account of the state of play in theistic arguments seem to me to be correct, especially in the impact that they have had in the academy -- not clinching the case for theism as much as earning it the right to be part of the conversation. His identification of so-called post-modernism with modernism also seems right and it is plausible to say that the reaction of "The New Atheism" has been based on trying to turn back the clock on the presumptions of secular philosophy.
Matt
Heh, as far as summing up the current arguments goes, not bad. The new ontological argument in particular seems very persuasive. The christian community could use a bit of the flexing of its intellectual muscle. At commenter number three, the argument goes that everything which -begins- has to have a cause. God did not have a beginning, so the objection doesn't apply, and he doesn't need a further explanation, either, because he exists necessarily.
just one reader
Those who think these arguments Craig lists are long-refuted medieval retreads need to get the word out to atheist philosophers of religion, who still take them quite seriously. I read the technical stuff these guys write for a living, as I imagine a handful of others here do, and can tell you that these people are talking about these arguments yet today, as Craig says. This is not to say they would not discuss them and offer nuanced rebuttals--to which theistic philosophers of religion would in turn offer their own nuanced rejoinders. They do. But they take them very seriously and this is much of what transpires in professional journals in philosophy of religion, which is again testimony to the renaissance in Christian philosophy in the academy. I wager that most atheist philosophers who make their living in this stuff are embarrassed by the shallowness of argument and poverty of research clearly evident to them in books like The God Delusion, god Is Not Great, and the Harris books.