Nuclear deterrence requires objective ethical analysis. In providing it, the authors face realities - the Soviet threat, possible nuclear holocaust, strategic imperatives - but they also unmask moral evasions - deterrence cannot be bluff, pure counterforce, the lesser evil, or a step towards disarmament. They conclude that the deterrent is unjustifiable and examine the new question of conscience that this raises for everyone.

D. Alan Shewmon has advanced a well-documented challenge to the widely accepted total brain death criterion for death of the human being. We show that Shewmon's argument against this criterion is unsound, though he does refute the standard argument for that criterion. We advance a distinct argument for the total brain death criterion and answer likely objections. Since human beings are rational animals – sentient organisms of a specific type – the loss of the radical capacity for sentience involves a (...) substantial change, the passing away of the human organism. In human beings total brain death involves the complete loss of the radical capacity for sentience, and so in human beings total brain death is death. (shrink)

For this reason, proponents of free choice have attempted to find grounds for a refutation of determinism in the determinist position itself. Such attempts have sometimes taken the form of argumentation—by now well known—that determinism is somehow self-refuting or self-defeating.

FOLLOWING A THREE CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ON FAITH AND REASON, THE AUTHOR PRESENTS, IN TWO CHAPTERS, A COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF AN UNCAUSED ENTITY. EIGHT CHAPTERS OF CRITICISM OF ALTERNATIVES FOLLOW. THREE FOUR-CHAPTERS PARTS ON THE MEANINGFULNESS OF GOD-TALK, EXISTENTIAL OBJECTIONS TO GOD, AND THE MEANINGFULNESS OF CHRISTIAN BELIEFS CONCLUDE THE WORK. (BP).

"The purpose of this book is to set out an argument for the existence of God, to show how criticism of this argument arising from modern and contemporary philosophy can be met, to explicate how language is used to talk about God, and to show that various existential and analytic attacks upon the meaningfulness of Christian faith are not cogent." "The methodology used is novel in that scholastic and rationalistic metaphysical theories are avoided and no attempt is made to construct (...) a "science" of metaphysics. However, unlike much analytic argumentation, empiricist presuppositions are excluded."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)