Theism and Humanism, Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow, 1914

by Arthur Balfour

Publisher: New York, Hodder and Stoughton, George H. Doran Company Publication date: 1915 Subjects: Humanism Theism Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Christian, Christianity, Theology, Nonfiction, Cs Lewis

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Arthur James Balfour, first earl of Balfour, served from 1902 as British prime minister to 1905 and later from 1916 as foreign secretary under David Lloyd George to 1919 and in 1917 promised support for a national homeland for Jews in Palestine but provided to safeguard the rights of existing communities.

This knight of the Garter, member of order of merit, privy councilor, fellow of royal society and academy, deputy lieutenant, statesman, and politician led Conservative party of the United Kingdom. He issued the declaration on behalf of the cabinet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...

Reviews

[Jacques]

A quote from the book: "Life, they would admit, is but a poor thing if it does no more than fill with vain desires the brief interval between two material “accidents”—the “accident” which brought it into being, and the “accident” which will extinguish it for ever. But this (they will say) is no argument. A wise man faces facts, a good man prefers the hardest truth to the most alluring illusion. If there be no ground for assuming a living purpose behind the indifferent mask of nature, let us not fill the vacancy with a phantasm of our own creation. Let us at least sink back into the nothingness from which we rose with our intellectual integrity undamaged. Let all other values perish, so long as rational values remain undimmed. Here, according to my view, lies the great illusion. Those who in all sincerity, and often with deep emotion, plead after a fashion like this, profoundly misunderstand the situation."

[Rex Libris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gifford Lectures are an annual lecture series that focuses on the topic of natural theology. In this particular installment Balfour discusses the mechanism of natural selection in relation to such topics as art, beauty, science, and ethics. Natural selection, Balfour argues, can explain concepts such as those listed above up to a certain point. But we have principles in these areas beyond anything that natural selection would ever require, let alone naturally be able to produce. these higher principles are where theism/natural theology come into play.

[Ray Schneider]

Book recommended by C.S. Lewis. I also picked up a copy, much harder to find, of "Theism and Thought" a continuation of the Gifford Lectures that were interrupted in the first instance by war.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because it was one of the books that influenced C.S. Lewis (and it's quite impressive to see a prime minister deliver the Gifford Lectures - I doubt Boris ever will). It don't think I disagreed a lot with the contents of the book but it was quite dry.

[Zane Greenwald · Rating 5 out of 5]

VERY heavy read. Balfour is complex speaker with sentences that would go like half a page long, but once you grasp the concepts he's getting at it a pretty big lightbulb moment. I remember saying out loud "Oh, that's good!" multiple times lol.

[Melissa]

CS Lewis top 10

[Aaron Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Humanism without Theism loses more than half its value.”

“Beauty must be more than an accident. The source of morality must be moral. The source of knowledge must be rational.”