Courtney McGrailThe Evidence for God: The Case for the Existence of the Spiritual Dimension
by Keith Ward
(Darton, Longman & Todd, £9.99).
Anthony Redmond
Keith Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on the existence of God. His main thesis is that the Western classical tradition in philosophy accepts the God conclusion.
In other words, there is a supreme spiritual reality which is the cause or underlying nature of the physical cosmos and which is of the greatest possible value or perfection.
In his latest book, he sets out what could be considered evidence for the reality of the spiritual or transcendent dimension. He writes: “If you seriously want to tackle the question ‘why do we exist?’, you have to begin by accepting that we are conscious, thinking, feeling beings and not ‘mere collections of particles’.
No purely physical account of the universe can explain consciousness, thought and feeling.”
He goes on to consider the spiritual dimension in art, morality and personal experience, among other things, as mediating evidence for God and a transcendent reality.
Materialism
He analyses the various forms of materialism and idealism and the notion of freedom of will and determinism. Now, these are somewhat abstruse subjects but Keith Ward has a knack of explaining himself in a manner understood by the average intelligent, interested reader.
It is often asked why an infinitely good and omnipotent God could allow us to do evil things. Indeed, there is a lot of evil and cruelty in the world. Keith Ward says: “Divine power could well be limited by divine freedom. If God is able to generate finite creatures who can make radically free decisions, then perhaps even God would not know what exactly they would decide. Then God would not know in advance just how God would respond to their free decisions. As a result, God’s power would be limited by having to allow for things happening that God did not intend or even know about in advance.”
In reply to the point that God can do anything, Ward reminds us that this is not so. God cannot commit sin nor do anything evil. He writes: “Perhaps we should say, not that God has absolutely unlimited power, but rather that God will have the greatest power that is compatible with the divine nature.”
Many militant atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, attack religious people for their lack of hard evidence for God’s existence and a spiritual dimension, but perhaps they are simply looking in the wrong place for the evidence.
The philosopher Michael Poole, in a critique of aspects of the philosophy and theology of Richard Dawkins, makes the valid point: “Science is an inappropriate tool for adjudicating upon the existence of God. Science is concerned with studying the natural world, the world of nature. There is no use in going to science, the study of nature, to determine whether there is anything other than nature.”
Presence
God reveals his presence to us in so many ways. He speaks to our hearts and we have a kind of sapientia cordis (wisdom of the heart) which mere words cannot express. There is nothing unreasonable about belief in God. Materialism, the denial of the spiritual dimension, fails to address or satisfy our deepest questions and longings. We have infinite longings, which only an infinite God can satisfy.
Wittgenstein said as much: “When all possible scientific problems have been answered, the real problems of life remain completely untouched.”
We are searching for a meaning and purpose to our lives, an answer to our deepest questions. Atheism offers us nothing but despair and emptiness.
As with everything Keith Ward writes, this book is thought-provoking and brilliant.