Ian Kluge

Author's details

Name: Ian Kluge
Date registered: September 11, 2010

Latest posts

  1. The God Debates #3: Fine-tuning God — February 29, 2012
  2. The God Debates #2: Theology Beyond the World — February 22, 2012
  3. The God Debates #1: Less Than Meets the Eye — February 15, 2012
  4. Grand Design Part 5: The God of Science — July 1, 2011
  5. Grand Design Part 4: Doing Away with God — June 24, 2011

Most commented posts

  1. The “New Atheism” 5: Meme Theory and HADDs — 21 comments
  2. The God Debates #1: Less Than Meets the Eye — 17 comments
  3. Grand Design Part 2: Multiverses — 10 comments
  4. The “New Atheism”–A Bahá’í Perspective 1: What is New Atheism? — 7 comments
  5. The “New Atheism” 15: Presentism — 7 comments

Author's posts listings

Feb 29

The God Debates #3: Fine-tuning God

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Part 3 of a discussion and critique of John R. Shook’s The God Debates Let us look at one more example of Shook’s straw-man methodology. He says, “The basic ‘fine-tuning’ argument for god has this form: If god exists, then it is highly probable that this universe would permit life; The universe is organized to …

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1 comment

Feb 22

The God Debates #2: Theology Beyond the World

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Part 2 of a discussion and critique of John R. Shook’s The God Debates Behind the logical plausibility of God lies another argument Shook dismisses in The God Debates, namely, the “Theology beyond the World”(3) which argues that “god is the necessary condition for the universe, for its order, and for its intelligibility.”(4) He recognizes …

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4 comments

Feb 15

The God Debates #1: Less Than Meets the Eye

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Let’s start with the good news: The God Debates maintains a civil tone amid the often shrill abuse of the real-world God debates. Nothing like the late Christopher Hitchen’s somewhat hysterical contention that teaching children religion is equivalent to child-abuse;  no suggestion of Harris’s ominously totalitarian claim that even tolerating religious belief and freedom is …

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17 comments

Jul 01

Grand Design Part 5: The God of Science

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This is the fifth and final installment in Ian Kluge’s series on Hawking and Mlodinow’s The Grand Design. ————————————————————————————————— The reference to something transcending matter is, of course, a reference to God in His ontological fu nction i.e. God as the source and ground of being, not the “personal” God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. …

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6 comments

Jun 24

Grand Design Part 4: Doing Away with God

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This is the fourth in a series of commentaries on Hawking and Mlodinow’s The Grand Design by Common Ground contributor Ian Kluge. ============================== Doing Away with God Hawking and Mlodinow propose to do away with God as a necessary part of explaining the existence of the universe. They believe that the three “why? questions” (171) …

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5 comments

Jun 17

Grand Design Part 3: Model-Dependent Realism

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In this third part of my review of The Grand Design (Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow), I’d like to take a closer look at their theory of “model-dependent realism”(42). This is one of Hawking’s and Mlodinow’s main contributions in The Grand Design. According to this theory: a physical theory or world-picture is a model (generally …

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4 comments

Jun 10

Grand Design Part 2: Multiverses

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This is the second in a series of discussions of Hawking and Mlodinow’s The Grand Design. Today:  The Logic of Multiverses Multiverses are another source of logical difficulties for Hawking and Mlodinow. The Grand Design claims that the existence of multiverses can explain why the universe we inhabit is fine-tuned for life without resorting to …

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10 comments

Jun 03

Grand Design Part 1: God, Creation and Miracles

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The Grand Design

Ian Kluge reviews The Grand Design Stephen Hawking’s and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design begins with a grand or perhaps, grandiose, claim that “philosophy is dead” and goes on from there. The book proceeds to tell us that an infinite stack of multiverses – instead of turtles – explains our allegedly ‘fine-tuned’ existence on earth. …

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6 comments

Feb 18

The “New Atheism” and the Bahá’í Faith: A Meaningful Dialogue?

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As is to be expected, there are far more differences than similarities between the new atheist philosophies and the Bahá’í Writings—though the extent of the similarities and their foundational nature is surprising. The question remains, however, “Are these similarities enough to allow a meaningful dialogue between the two?” Can the differences between the new atheists …

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Feb 11

The “New Atheism” 22: Realist Ontology

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Along with a realist ethics and a realist epistemology, the new atheists and the Bahá’í Writings share a realist ontology. In its simplest terms, ontology is one’s theory of reality, its nature and modes of being. Although ontology seems far removed from ordinary human concerns, all human beings and cultures possess an ontology, although it …

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