Professor Edward Feser is an intrepid philosopher, who is not afraid to confront error head-on and expose it for what it is. That is an admirable trait. He is also a former atheist, who now defends religion from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective. In his book The Last Superstition (St. Augustine’s Press, 2008; available here ), Professor Feser takes on all four of the “New Atheists” – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. David Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, England, and a former atheist himself, was highly impressed by Professor Feser’s robust defense of the rationality of belief in God:
Anyone who comes away from The Last Superstition thinking that potboiler atheism has anything to recommend it, or that belief in God is irrational, will not be convinced by anything. For the rest of us, the book is, to use an apposite term, a godsend. And the caustic humour peppering the book adds just the sort of spice this fraught subject needs. If the Faithless Foursome were at all interested in a serious rebuttal, they now have it.
Professor Feser is a very insightful metaphysician, and I have been struck by his perspicacity more than a few times, while reading his blogs. His ability to articulate and defend Aquinas’ Five Ways to a 21st century audience is matchless. It is therefore a great pity, in my opinion, that he perceives ID as antithetical to Aquinas’ philosophy, and as an obstacle to his intellectual endeavor of convincing skeptics that the existence of God can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.
What is Professor Feser’s beef with ID, you may ask? Actually, he has a few objections to ID, but his principal complaint is that it is tied to a mechanistic conception of life. Here is his argument, Read More ›