The Philosopher's Enigma: God, Body and Soul [Hardcover]

Richard A. Watson is a well-known scholar of Descartes and Cartesianism. Among other books, he has publishedThe Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics, Representational Ideas from Plato to Patricia Churchland, Cogito Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes, andDescartes’s Ballet: His Doctrine of the Will and His Political Philosophy(St. Augustine’s Press). He has also published three philosophical novels, most notably Niagara.

Prelude
Chapter 1. God
Chapter 2. Free Will and the Mind-Body Problem
Chapter 3. The Soul
Chapter 4. Angels and Ghosts
Chapter 5. The Powers of the Mind
Chapter 6. The Mind and the Brain
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

The atheists Daniel Dennett inBreaking the Spelland Richard Dawkins inThe God Delusiontalk down to believers. Sam Harris inThe End of FaithandLetter to a Christian Nationinsults believers outright. All three assume that believers are not very bright. Their approach is not productive of much understanding.

            InThe Philosopher’s Enigma, Richard Watson explains to believers in temperate and readable prose why he and many others are not believers. His discussion is based on strict Augustinianism, the foundation of seriously argued Christianity. God is hidden – that is, the concept of God is unintelligible – as discussed at length by Leszek Kolakowski in hisReligion If There Is No God(St. Augustine’s Press) – in the sense that there are no known rational arguments for God’s existence. Moreover, Augustine argues that finite human beings cannot understand God’s infinite perfections.

            Augustine concludes that God has omniscient knowledge of every human being’s behavior, which after all, is predetermined by God priorló+