Memperdebatkan Tuhan

by Graham Oppy

“Apakah Tuhan ada?” sellau mengusik para filsuf dari segala zaman. Sebagian mengajukan berbagai macam argumen untuk mendukung jawaban afirmatif. Akan tetapi, sebagian lainnya secara skeptis menanggapi jawaban dan argumen tersebut.

Graham Oppy adalah kelompok filsuf yang kedua. Di dalam buku ini, ia mengevaluasi argumen-argumen yang mendukung dan menentang keberadaan Tuhan. Ia menunjukkan bahwa tidak ada satu pun dari argumen-argumen tersebut yang cukup kuat untuk mengubah pikiran orang yang rasional di dalam perdebatan tentang pertanyaan keberadaan Tuhan. Kesimpulan Oppy didukung oleh analisis rinci terhadap argumen-argumen tersebut –mulai dari Anselmus sampai dengan Alexander Pruss– termasuk dengan mengembangkan teori tentang tujuan dari argumen dan kriteria yang seharusnya digunakan dalam menilai apakah argumen-argumen tersebut berhasil atau tidak.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Atheism, Theology, Metaphysics, Nonfiction, Christianity

635 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Graham Robert Oppy is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as CEO of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, Chief Editor of the Australasian Philosophical Review, Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and serves on the editorial boards of Philo, Philosopher's Compass, Religious Studies, and Sophia. He was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2009. (Source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Avel Deleon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Graham Oppy is a giant intellectual he has brought light to the philosophy of religion. He is an atheist and is considered the best of the best. I like to read atheistic literature but some of the books, I have read don't have enough substance. They either are clueless in scripture, or the deeply misunderstand the relationship between faith and reason. I have briefly read through the four horsemen; Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennet, and Sam Harris. Christopher Hitchens for personal reasons is my favorite of the four; Richard Dawkins argues like a sophomore in college, and I don't personally take his arguments seriously. If you want to know the best argument against the existence of God, read this book. The book is hard, and you must digest chapter by chapter. It's worth your time, the time invested will not go to waste. This work reminds of J. L. Mackie's, "Miracles Of Theism." He goes through the classical arguments of God. The ontological, the cosmological, the teleological argument, and other arguments. The philsophy of Religion is greatly indebted to his works and his rigorous history of the philosophy of religion. This man treats the arguments of Christians seriously and doesn't presuppose atheism in his premises a reasoning skill Christians should learn.

[Curby Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oppy is an atheist so I obviously disagree with him on pretty much everything. However this is a very good book to read if you want an overview of atheist arguments and critiques of Theistic ones. Oppy is fair not to straw man the other side. Unlike Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris he actually takes the time to understand and interact with the other side. I wish more atheists would read Oppy rather than the dreck that is found on the internet skeptic sites.

However my main critique of Oppy is that in answering Theist arguments he seems to just throw up every possible objection in what appears to be an attempt to provide talking points for atheism. No surprise, but I didn't really find any of his objections to be powerful or even troublesome.

[Sebastian Montesinos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. Graham Oppy is one of the top academics in the philosophy of religion, and this is his seminal work. He expertly dissects and criticizes all the major arguments for God's existence, ultimately concluding that none are successful. His analysis is top notch - he looks at the best formulations of these arguments from the most well educated and compelling theistic philosophers, and he frequently draws on disparate fields in philosophy to illustrate the controversial premises which underly these arguments. In particular, I found his critiques of Paley's watchmaker argument, the Kalam, and Pascal's wager to be specifically insightful and devastating. His chapter on the problem of evil is also very interesting - he objects to the 'skeptical theist' response to the evidential problem of evil by suggesting such a view would lead us into untenable moral skepticism, and develops a critique of the free will defense via the problem of heaven.

This is an essential book for those who are serious about the philosophy of religion and exploring the viability of theism - theists and nontheists can benefit from Oppy's analysis. That being said, this isn't a book I'd recommend to people with little familiarity in the philosophy of religion - the book is not written for a popular audience and I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with some work in the field and some of the arguments discussed before reading the book.

[Collin Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I figured I owed atheism another shot after reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, a notoriously poorly argued but widely popular book, a few years ago. Oppy is represents a much more well thought out atheists than Dawkins, and much less militant. Oppy’s position is that there are no successful arguments for God’s existence (or against, for that matter. He defends this by defining a “successful” argument is one that would convince any reasonable person to change their mind, an impossible standard for almost any argument to achieve.

Oppy covers a wide range of arguments, some that are silly even for most theists, and many that are proposed by some of the top theistic philosophers. For each one, Oppy’s strategy appears to be to throw the kitchen sink at everything and then see what sticks. To defend his thesis, after all, he only has to raise doubt in one reasonable person in regard to the power of arguments for theism.

Being a top shelf philosopher, this book was a brutal read for someone who has only waded into the waters as far as a few introductory books and some hours of listening to philosophical presentations and debates on these subjects on YouTube can take you. I confess that I had to simply read far too many sections without the slightest clue as to what the author was getting at, and so my evaluation of many of the arguments is probably very poor. Some sections were far more down to earth and easy to understand.

Despite this, I can say that, when I did have understanding of the arguments, I sometimes felt like Oppy did not take enough relevant data into consideration when evaluating arguments. One of the most striking examples of this was the section on miracles, which Oppy spent just a few pages on. It seems to me that the kind of miracles that are well documented and the circumstances surrounding them are immune to any argument Oppy gave against their effectiveness for arguing for God’s existence. Oppy, however, seems to content in this section and others to raise doubts without getting into the weeds of how those doubts will match up against the actual evidence. It’s easy to doubt something like the veracity of miracles, for instance, before one has actually looked at the wealth of evidence pointing to their veracity.

I also found that whenever Oppy discussed the Christian Scriptures, he was right back on the level of a Richard Dawkins in terms of understanding. For example, he raised the infamous passage where Jephthah sacrifices his own daughter to fulfill a vow to the Lord as reason to doubt the goodness of the God of the Bible, when this passage conspicuously lacks any commendation from God in the context (a fact that is not hard to find if one were to look for it.) Here is where I wonder if Oppy’s “kitchen sink” approach causes him to throw out objections that not even himself buys into but which may raise doubts in a reasonable, however uninformed, person.

Oppy also raises the possibility that Jesus never existed as a serious objection to raise doubts in Christians, yet this is not defended by virtually any Jesus scholar, Christian, Atheist, or otherwise. Again, this left me feeling like Oppy has good philosophy, but may simply lack relevant information to plug into his philosophy.

I wouldn’t recommend reading this book straight through unless you have training in philosophy. Instead, find an argument you’ve heard about or are interested in and read that section. Utilize AI to explain difficult concepts to you more simply. The value in this book, I think, will be to return to it as I come across arguments that I want to do a deep-dive on and hear the best objections for, that way I have more time to slow down and digest the material.

[Nathan Ormond · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great expounding of contemporary atheism and theological views of natural theology. The book itself contains valuable insights into Oppy's thinking about the nature and purpose of arguments and holistic worldview comparison. My only criticism would be that in some places highly technical criticism is covered in a dense paragraph or so. That being said Oppy covers hundreds of responses to arguments so can, perhaps, be forgiven if some of his responses are a little short and expository.

[The Great Asπ e · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oppy is the Christian's favorite atheist and the most challenging opponent of theism. Oppy goes through many big names in history and addresses their arguments for and against the existence of God. Oppy continuously shows that none of the arguments on either side of the debate are all that convincing.

[David Diaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent thoughts from Oppy. He is very detailed and points out many flaws. In fact, perhaps too many. He makes his standard for accepting arguments as "good" so high that perhaps nobody could reach it. Difficult and repetitive reading but still recommended.

[Rangganur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bahasanya monoton sekali. Isinya kurang seru.