A couple months ago, I wrote a review on Amazon of the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, a book Luke was quite enthusiastic about. The review promised a more detailed review at my blog, which I’ve sort of realized I’ll never get around to, but here’s the original:

Like Luke Muehlhauser (author of the current “most helpful review”), I’m an atheist with a big interest in philosophy of religion. I’m ambivalent about his comment that this is the best defense of theism ever assembled, but at least it’s the best that’s been assembled in some time. But it’s not as good as one would have hoped, given the page count and, especially, the price tag.

The problem with the book is that over half the essays included in it discuss many important parts of their arguments in great detail, but have one crucial step in the argument which gets minimal defense, and pretty obviously should have gotten more in order to make the argument convincing.

Consider the chapter on William Lane Craig’s kalam cosmological argument. The basic argument says that everything that begins to exist has a cause, the universe began to exist, so the universe has a cause, and then further arguments are given to show that the cause is God. When I first read this argument in the 2nd edition of Craig’s book Reasonable Faith, I thought this last step, showing that the cause is God, was the weakest point in Craig’s presentation. It’s also this point that got the least attention in the Blackwell Companion: roughly three pages out of a one hundred page article. This is barely more space than was given to this crucial step in the argument in the latest edition of Reasonable Faith, even though as a whole the Reasonable Faith discussion is less than half the length of the Blackwell Companion discussion.

Someone seriously interested in Craig’s arguments should certainly read the Blackwell Companion article if they can, because it’s the most detailed presentation of the kalam argument argument Craig has produced in years. However, one would have hoped that in a 100-page essay he would had a reasonably thorough defense of each of the argument’s steps rather than just most of them. Over half the chapters are like this: not completely terrible, but not as good as they should have been given the space the authors had to work with.

I also have a hard time seeing some of the most respected historical defenders of theism, particularly Thomas Aquinas and Samuel Clarke, making the kinds of poorly thought-out presentations found in the Blackwell Companion. That’s why I’m reluctant to call this the GREATEST DEFENSE OF THEISM EVAR, though I recognize the advantages of some of the arguments in the Blackwell Companion over those of Aquinas and Clarke.

A few days from now I plan on writing a post at my blog (The Uncredible Hallq, Google it) explaining some of the weaknesses of the arguments for those interested in a discussion of that, but here I’m keeping my comments focused on advice for people thinking of buying/borrowing the book. My final verdict is if you’re in acquisitions at a university library, you should certainly buy this for your library, and people with a serious interest in philosophy of religion should take a look at this book if they can do so for free. But individuals who can’t get it for free probably have better things to spend their money on, and won’t really be missing all that much.

Actually, the arguments of Aquinas and Clarke are kinda silly, they both rely on the principle that causes resemble their effects. So really there isn’t much in the way of good arguments for the existence of God out there.