How to Prove There Is a God: Mortimer J. Adler’s Writings and Thoughts About God

334 Pages·2012·1.72 MB·English

by  Mortimer J. Adler

How to Prove There
Is a God
Books by Mortimer Adler
Dialectic (1927) • Music Appreciation (1929) • The Nature of Judicial Proof
(with Jerome Michael, 1931) • Crime, Law, and Social Science (with Jerome
Michael, 1933) • Diagrammatics (with Maude Phelps Hutchins, 1935) • Art and
Prudence (1937) • What Man Has Made of Man (1937) • Saint Thomas and the
Gentiles (1938) • How to Read a Book (1940) • The Philosophy and Science of
Man (1940) • Problems for Thomists: The Problem of Species (1940) •
Scholasticism and Politics (as editor, 1940) • A Dialectic of Morals (1941) •
How to Think about War and Peace (1944) • A Syntopicon: An Index to The
Great Ideas (as editor, 2 volumes, 1952) • Research on Freedom (2 volumes,
1954) • The Idea of Freedom (volume 1, 1958) • The Revolution in Education
(with Milton Mayer, 1958) • The Capitalist Manifesto (with Louis O. Kelso,
1958) • The New Capitalists (with Louis O. Kelso, 1961) • Great Ideas from the
Great Books (1961) • The Idea of Freedom (volume 2, 1961) • The Great Ideas
Today (as editor, with Robert Hutchins, 1961) • Gateway to the Great Books (as
editor, 10 volumes, with Robert Hutchins, 1963) (The Conditions of Philosophy
(1965) • The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (1967) • The Annals
of America (as editor, 21 volumes, 1968) • The Time of Our Lives (1970) • The
Common Sense of Politics (1971) • Propaedia (as editor, 30 volumes, 1974) •
The American Testament (with William Gorman, 1975) • Some Questions about
Language (1976) • Philosopher at Large (1977) • Reforming Education (1977) •
Great Treasury of Western Thought (as editor, with Charles Van Doren, 1977) •
Aristotle for Everybody (1978) • How to Think about God (1980) • Six Great
Ideas (1981) • The Angels and Us (1982) • (The Paideia Proposal (1982) • How
to Speak/How to Listen (1983) • Paideia Problems and Possibilities (1983) • A
Vision of the Future (1984) • The Paideia Program (with members of the
Paideia Group, 1984) • Ten Philosophical Mistakes (1985) • A Guidebook to
Learning (1986) • We Hold These Truths (1987) • Intellect: Mind over Matter
(1990) • Truth in Religion (1990) • Haves Without Have-Nots (1991) • Desires,
Right, and Wrong (1991) • A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror (1992) • The
Great Ideas (1992) • The Four Dimensions of Philosophy (1993) • Art, the Arts,
and the Great Ideas (1994) • Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary (1995) • How to
Think about The Great Ideas (2000) • How to Prove There Is a God (2011)
How to
Prove There Is
a God
Mortimer J. Adler’s Writings and
Thoughts about God
Compiled and Edited by
Ken Dzugan
Senior Fellow and Archivist
Center for the Study of the Great Ideas
OPEN COURT
Chicago and La Salle, Illinois
To all the members of
the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas
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First printing 2012
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
How to prove there is a God : Mortimer J. Adler’s writings and thoughts about God / Mortimer J. Adler ;
edited by Ken Dzugan.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8126-9689-9 (trade paper : alk. paper)
1. Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001. 2. God—Proof. 3. God (Christianity)
I. Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001. II. Dzugan, Ken.
BT103.H69 2011
202—dc23
2011027765
Contents
Has Mortimer Adler Proved There Is a God?
I. Adler’s Case for God’s Existence
1. How to Think about God’s Existence
MORTIMER J. ADLER
2. The God I Pray To
MORTIMER J. ADLER
3. Adler Under Fire
MORTIMER J. ADLER, WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, AND JEFF GREENFIELD
II. A Debate about God and Science
4. The Guiding Hand of God in the Universe
OWEN GINGERICH
5. God, Chance, and Natural Theology
MORTIMER J. ADLER
6. Gingerich Replies to Adler
OWEN GINGERICH
7. New Developments in Science Strengthen Adler’s Argument for God’s
Existence
JOHN CRAMER
III. Adler’s Early Struggles with the God Question
8. The Demonstration of God’s Existence (1943)
MORTIMER J. ADLER
9. A Reply to Adler on God’s Existence (1943)
HERBERT THOMAS SCHWARTZ
10. A New Approach to God’s Existence (1943)
MORTIMER J. ADLER
Where These Chapters Came From
Acknowledgments and Permissions
Glossary of Terms and Phrases
Index
Has Mortimer Adler Proved There Is a God?
This book presents some of the simplest and most direct statements of Mortimer
Adler’s argument for the existence of God. Some of what appears in this book
has been completely unavailable to the public up till now, and the rest of it has
been quite hard to track down.
Much of Dr. Adler’s early work in this area might seem to take the form of
arguing against the existence of God! But this is just because Dr. Adler wanted
to show that some arguments which satisfied some people were not quite
adequate. He wanted to closely examine several different arguments which he
thought insufficient, though in some cases they contained excellent insights, in
order to make adjustments to these arguments, and finally arrive at an argument
which would be completely sound. He kept chiseling and polishing his argument
from the 1940s until the 1970s. Eventually, he believed he had arrived at the
perfectly sound argument he had been looking for.
Dr. Adler sometimes speaks of a ‘leap of faith’, but this doesn’t mean he
thought faith was required in order to show that God exists. Dr. Adler
maintained that the existence of God as creator and sustainer of the Universe
could be strictly demonstrated by pure philosophical argument, without any
recourse to faith. Where a leap of faith was required was in making a connection
between this God and the personal life of the believer—for after all, we can
imagine that there might be a God who would not care about the plight of mere
humans.
Dr. Adler worked in the tradition of philosophy known as Thomism, after St.
Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274). Most Thomists are Catholics, but Dr. Adler was
not a Catholic or even a Christian until late in his life. For most of his active life
as a philosopher, he described himself as a pagan, and yet he contributed articles
to Thomistic journals, including The Thomist. His frequent articles in the
Thomistic tradition, along with his avowed paganism, earned Dr. Adler the
nickname of “The Peeping Thomist.”
St. Thomas Aquinas held that the existence of God could be proved by pure
philosophical reasoning, without having to rely on faith, the Bible, or the
Church. In a famous passage in his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas outlined five