The Philosophy of Religion - Exploring Philosophy - The Open University - A222

Name: The Philosophy of Religion - Exploring Philosophy - The Open University - A222
Brand: The Open University
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By Timothy Chappell

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Description

In this book we turn from the self to God. We turn from questions about personal identity, and what it is to be someone, to the area of philosophy called the philosophy of religion. We will begin by asking what the words ‘God’ and ‘religion’ mean, and what it means to ask philosophical questions about them; then we shall consider the familiar claim that there can be no argument about faith. We will look at a variety of arguments for God’s existence. These will include the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Second Way’, which is an argument about causes and effects, and the ‘argument from design’ – the argument that deduces God’s existence from the apparent presence of design in the world. Our detailed discussion of design arguments will lead us to the problem of evil – the question why, if there is a good and all-powerful God, there is so much evil in the world. We will then conclude by raising some questions about miracles and religious experience. Along the way, a number of issues about good and bad, right and wrong, benevolence and evil will come up (most obviously, perhaps, with the problem of evil). So this book will set the stage for our discussion of ethics in Book 3. The set book, John Cottingham’s Western Philosophy, is the source for most of the readings in this book, and has a lot of other useful material in it which is relevant to the philosophy of religion, especially in Part VI, ‘God and Religion’, and Part XII, ‘Human Life and its Meaning’. You should keep it handy while you are studying this book. On the Exploring philosophy website, you will find audio recordings involving a number of experts on some of the most important issues raised in this book. These discussions provide an easy way in to some of the questions, so make sure you take full advantage of them! On the website, you will also find a quiz for each chapter. One other resource worth mentioning is the glossary, in which most of the key terms in the philosophy of religion are explained. You can find this at the back of this book (entries are also included in the glossary on the website). Glossed terms are emboldened at their first (or at least an early) use in the text.

Product details

Binding:: Paperback
Publisher:: The Open University
ISBN10:: 1848733100

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