Seeking God

What's inside

1. 1Ground Rules32 lessons
   • Not an Old Man in the Sky
   • The Buck Stops Somewhere
   • Outside Time and Stuff
   • Maximally Everything
   • The God of the Philosophers
   • Zeus Was Never the Question
   • What Reason Can't Tell You
   • The Target, Defined
   • Reasons, Not Shouting
   • Valid Doesn't Mean True
   • Sound Means True and Tight
   • Proof vs. a Good Bet
   • Who Has to Prove What?
   • Extraordinary Claims and What Counts as Evidence
   • The Best Explanation Wins
   • Thinking Fair: Traps to Avoid
   • Hasn't Science Disproved God?
   • Isn't Faith Just Believing Without Evidence?
   • Aren't Faith and Reason Enemies?
   • Don't Smart People Just Not Believe?
   • Can We Really Know Anything About This?
   • If God Were Real, Wouldn't It Be Obvious?
   • Isn't Belief Just How You Were Raised?
   • Does Any of This Even Matter?
   • God as a Mirror
   • The Comforting Father
   • Society Worshipping Itself
   • The Case at Its Strongest
   • The Genetic Fallacy, Again
   • It Cuts Both Ways
   • It Explains Too Much
   • What It Does and Doesn't Show
2. 2The World Points Beyond Itself16 lessons
   • Everyone Builds Altars
   • The God Above the Gods
   • Everyone Worships Something
   • What the Search Points To
   • The Sense of Ought
   • The Same Core Everywhere
   • From Law to Lawgiver
   • Where Does the Standard Come From?
   • The Hunger Nothing Fills
   • A Word for the Ache
   • Desires and Their Objects
   • Following the Longing
   • Beauty Stops You
   • More Than Taste
   • The True, the Good, and the Beautiful
   • Where Beauty Points
3. 3The Toolmakers16 lessons
   • Meet Plato
   • The Allegory of the Cave
   • The World of Forms
   • Sharing in the Form
   • The Form of the Good
   • The Ladder of Beauty
   • More and Less
   • What Plato Gave Us
   • Meet Aristotle
   • Potency and Act
   • Nothing Moves Itself
   • The Four Causes
   • Everything Is For Something
   • The Unmoved Mover
   • What Must Be
   • From Athens to Aquinas
4. 4The Five Ways16 lessons
   • Five Roads, One Destination
   • The First Way — From Motion
   • But What Moved God?
   • The Second Way — From Cause
   • The Third Way — From Contingency
   • Who Made God? and Other Objections
   • The Cosmological Family
   • A Conversation at the Threshold
   • The Fourth Way — From Degrees
   • The Fourth Way: Does It Work?
   • The Fifth Way — From Purpose
   • The Fifth Way vs. Modern Objections
   • What the Five Ways Prove — and Don't
   • God of the Gaps?
   • The Five Ways Today
   • Reason Reaches the Threshold
5. 5More Arguments24 lessons
   • What It's Like to Be You
   • The Hard Problem
   • Mary's Room
   • The Materialist's Best Shot
   • Mind Doesn't Look Like Matter
   • Is the Universe Made of Mind-Stuff?
   • From Inner Light to a Source
   • What the Argument Does and Doesn't Show
   • Where Do Your Thoughts Come From?
   • The Branch You're Sitting On
   • Darwin's Doubt
   • The Naturalist's Reply
   • Reason Needs a Ground
   • The Comprehensible Universe
   • Two Pictures, Side by Side
   • Scope and Honesty
   • The Goldilocks Universe
   • Just How Fine?
   • Three Explanations
   • The Multiverse
   • Chance, Necessity, or Design?
   • Does Fine-Tuning Point Anywhere?
   • Fine-Tuning and the Fifth Way
   • Honest Verdict
6. 6The Hardest Question8 lessons
   • The Hardest Question
   • Two Different Problems
   • The Free-Will Defense
   • Natural Evil and Soul-Making
   • The Problem of Good
   • Are We in a Position to Judge?
   • What the Problem Does and Doesn't Show
   • When It Stops Being a Puzzle
7. 7Reason Reaches the Threshold8 lessons
   • Where Reason Has Brought You
   • The Choice You Can't Avoid
   • Pascal's Wager
   • What Pascal Did NOT Say
   • The Many Gods Objection
   • Reason and the Leap
   • The Edge of Reason
   • The Seeker's Arrival