Two Positive Reviews of The Realist Guide

Two positive reviews, one by Dr Jason Morgan and one by Mr Brian Welter, appeared in the January-March 2019 edition of the journal Studia Gilsoniana.

Here are some excerpts from what Dr Morgan wrote in his review:

Paul Robinson’s The Realist Guide to Religion and Science is [] a very welcome addition to the growing, and increasingly activist, remnant of truth-seekers who want to do more than fritter away their intellectual dhimmitude on the margins of post-modern and Marxian anti-scholarship. More than a call to action, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science is a plan for it, as well as a rallying cry to go on offense in taking back the academy for purposes higher than identity politics.

Divided into three parts—Reason, Religion, and Science—Robinson’s book is a double-hearted adventure. On the one hand, Robinson, a Kentucky native and Catholic priest currently teaching in Australia, patiently and methodically rebuilds our capacity for knowing and loving truth by returning to Aristotelian and Thomistic principles and in-sights, showing how realism—Robinson’s term of art and the keystone of this book, on which more below—is the approach needed for the human mind to look for, know, and delight in what is objectively true. On the other hand, The Realist Guide is a ruthless dismantling of the various false edifices and untenable ideologies that thicket the modern academy. Going down the list from pagan pantheism and Protestant biblicism to the thoroughly unscientific claims of Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and Daniel Dennett, Robinson does not attempt to find common ground with the enemies of truth. His objective is to annihilate their falsehoods forever. The Realist Guide is a bracing frontal attack on every idol of the age, and in section after section Robinson picks apart the enemies’ defenses with all the confidence of a seasoned combat veteran.

Like the soldier fighting for love of country, Robinson’s cut and thrust blossoms forth from a very simple notion, namely, that truth exists, and that the human mind was made to know it. From this starting point, Robinson’s thinking, and his book, follow.

To read the rest of Dr Morgan's review, go here.

Mr Welter's review starts off as follows:

What makes The Realist Guide to Religion and Science both accessible and sensible is Father Paul Robinson’s illustration of Thomist philosophy’s coherence, starting from a basis in philosophy of being. This congruity contrasts with the incoherence and falsehoods that abound in idealism and empiricism, the latter followed by most scientists today. After outlining the strengths and weaknesses of Aristotelian philosophy, the author argues that the medieval Christian worldview enabled repair of these flaws. The resulting unified, multifaceted philosophy guided science (and other endeavors) yet kept science from swaying into metaphysical terrain. This helps readers comprehend modern science’s wrong turns and possible corrections. Anyone unsettled by modern science’s hubris will find this engaging reading. Robinson’s book is above all a work of apologetics, as it addresses why the Catholic faith provides the most logical belief system, and why seemingly sophisticated attacks on the Church and its beliefs by seemingly rational philosophers and scientists are not only erroneous, but actually irrational. Counterarguments can be easily evoked.

Robinson argues convincingly that philosophical realism enabled the experimental method and mindset to develop in the Middle Ages sufficiently so that the later Age of Science and its aftermath survived realism’s waning. In the “Foreword,” Paul Michael Haffner notes, “Realism affirms the existence of universals against nominalism. Against positivism, realism proposes that reality extends beyond that which the natural sciences can measure.” Throughout the book readers see realism compared to idealism and empiricism on a scale, with concrete examples illustrating why certain thinking harms both scientific and religious worldviews.

To read the rest of the review, go here.

Fr Robinson would like to thank Dr Morgan and Mr Welter for kindly taking time to read his book and write these positive reviews.