You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In C. Fred Alford’s (2020) recent review of my book, Inventing God (Mills, 2017), he wrote in a biased and self-serving way, failing to address the inherent humanism of my project and hence distorting its scope and focus, and further failing to inform the reader that he is a practicing Christian. In his latest book, God Now: Christianity and Heresy, Alford (2019) begins with a section labeled, “Why I Pray,” and specifically tells the reader in his Introduction, “I believe in God and Jesus Christ” (p. xi). This omission and deception in not alerting the reader to his beliefs in the context of reviewing a book on secular spirituality is disingenuous, if not intellectually dishonest, as it soon becomes very clear that I am a heretic who is set up as a straw man to be burnt at the stake.
Why would Alford assume an assignment of reviewing a book that directly opposes his own beliefs and not inform the reader of his position, let alone declare his inherent conflict of interest, only then to provide a prejudiced review rather than debate me properly and honestly? Let me suggest that it is because his arguments are tenuous and his position is dubious, as I will set out to show. It would have been helpful if he had taken me head-on with the real issues he is troubled by, rather than presenting a very circumscribed and myopic locus that misleads readers as to what my book is truly about. First of all, the reader should know that he erroneously paints me as an “aggressive atheist,” when he fails to mention two thirds of the book’s contents, including my humanistic commitments to the pursuit of the sacred. From his account, the reader will have no idea what the project accomplishes.
What Professor Alford does not address are my very careful philosophical arguments addressing the question of the existence of God as presented in every historical tradition of monotheism, from the early Church Fathers to scholasticism and contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion. What he do