Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith is a persuasive 1992 book written as a series of letters to a young atheist named Michael. In Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith famous philosopher Peter Kreeft corresponds via mail with a young atheist who is wrestling with the question of God. Their correspondence covers the primary reasons people do not believe in God, including violence committed in the name of religion, the problem of evil, and other bad in the world. They also discuss many of the reasons for belief Would you find this book useful?
Summary of Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith
The form Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith takes is simple. Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith consists of forty-five letters that move from a hesitant beginning to more complex and a bit longer. The letters themselves dance around questions of definitions, as the author and his correspondent seek to define their terms, and they wrestle with arguments for and against faith, and come to a fairly friendly banter that ends with an invitation by the author to talk as friends with the fictional boy. Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith carries with it a sense that this is the kind of interaction that could happen in some realistic universe.
This book is one that brings to mind a truth about engaging in dialogue. Dialogue between believers and skeptics, can be conducted in a warm and friendly and polite and respectful and productive manner as occurs in Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith. Both the author and the fictional correspondent appear to be polite and intellectual and, more importantly, a willingness to communicate and engage what the other is thinking. This undertone of civility makes this discourse possible.
Atheism Defined
Atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Mant people in the world hold atheistic beliefs. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which is the belief that at least one deity exists. It is Atheism that Kreeft battles in Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith.
There are three main arguments for atheism. The first is an epistemological argument. Skepticism, based on the work of David Hume argues that certainty about anything is not possible, so we cannot know for sure whether or not God exists. Hume, however, held that such unobservable metaphysical concepts should be rejected as “sophistry and illusion.”
The second argument is a logical argument. Some atheists believe the various conceptions of gods, such as the God of Christianity, are ascribed logically inconsistent qualities. Such atheists present deductive arguments against God’s existence, which assert the incompatibility between these traits: perfection, creator-status, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, transcendence, personhood (a personal being), non-physicality, justice, and mercy.
Finally, the third argument is of the ontological variety. This is the most common atheistic belief. It holds there is only one kind of fundamental substance. This view omits the possibility of a non-material divine being. Physicalism is the belief that only physical entities exist. Philosophies opposed to the materialism or physicalism include idealism, dualism and other forms of monism.
Conclusion
Some atheists, most recently Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins building upon such thinkers as Bertrand Russell, Robert G. Ingersoll, and Voltaire, have criticized religions, citing harmful aspects of religious practices and doctrines. They are unpersuaded by the bountiful evidence of God in the natural world and the scriptures. Maybe the arguments of Kreeft in Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith will persuade them.
