cover image A Case for the Existence of God

A Case for the Existence of God

Dean L. Overman, . . Rowman & Littlefield, $24.95 (229pp) ISBN 978-0-7425-6312-4

In an age when atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are loudly challenging the existence of God, former Oxford University Templeton scholar Overman resurrects the age-old attempt to make the case for God's existence. Such arguments for God's existence dominated theology from the Middle Ages through the 18th century, and students of philosophy of religion still debate Aquinas's cosmological argument, Anselm's ontological argument and Kant's moral argument. Overman builds on Aquinas's formula by contending that we understand God's existence through an understanding of the world (cosmos). The contingency and dependence of creatures and creations reveals the existence of a Being that is a necessary Cause and neither contingent nor dependent. Overman takes this argument one step further and argues that knowledge of God is ultimately personal knowledge. He examines the ways that thinkers from Kierkegaard and Buber to Tolstoy and Simone Weil develop their own knowledge of God and proposes them as models of our knowing God. While Overman's attention to these thinkers offers a fresh approach to the case for God's existence, much of his book is a tired review of well-known materials. (Feb.)