Synopses & Reviews
'The most comprehensive text in its field, this anthology includes 70 articles in 10 areas of philosophy of religion: Traditional Arguments for the Existence of God; The Argument from Religious Experience; The Problem of Evil; The Attributes of God; Miracles, Death and Immortality; Faith and Reason; Science, Religion, and Evolution; Religious Pluralism; and Religion and Ethics. The articles are arranged in a coherent framework, with the presentation of each area progressing from the classical to the contemporary and treated in a dialectic (pro and con) fashion that exposes students to both sides of each issue.'
About the Author
Louis P. Pojman (1935-2005) was Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the United States Military Academy and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and a Rockefeller Fellow at Hamburg University. He received his D.Phil. in Philosophy from Oxford University in 1997.His first position was at the University of Notre Dame, after which he taught at the University of Texas at Dallas. Later, at the University of Mississippi, he served for three years as Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. In 1995, he became Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He most recently was Visiting Professor at Brigham Young University in Utah and Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Oxford University. Pojman won several research and teaching awards, including the Burlington Northern Award for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarship (1988) and the Outstanding Scholar/Teacher in the Humanities at the University of Mississippi (1994). He wrote in the areas of philosophy of religion, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy and authored or edited more than 30 books and 100 articles. Pojman passed away in 2005.Michael Rea is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught since 2001. He earned his B.A. at UCLA in 1991 and his PhD at the University of Notre Dame in 1996. He is has written or edited more than ten books and thirty articles in metaphysics and the philosophy of religion, and has given numerous lectures in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia, China, and Iran.
Table of Contents
Preface. Introduction. Part I: TRADITIONAL ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. I.A. The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God. St. Anselm: The Ontological Argument. Immanuel Kant: A Critique of the Ontological Argument. I.B. The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God. Thomas Aquinas: The Five Ways. Samuel Clarke: The Argument from Contingency. Paul Edwards: A Critique of the Cosmological Argument. William Rowe: An Examination of the Cosmological Argument. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland: The Kal?m Cosmological Argument. Paul Draper: A Critique of the Kal?m Cosmological Argument. I.C. The Teleological Argument for the Existence of God. William Paley: The Watch and the Watchmaker. David Hume: A Critique of the Design Argument. Richard Swinburne: The Argument from Design. Robin Collins: A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God. Part II: THE ARGUMENT FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Selections of Mystical Experiences. William James: Mysticism. Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion. C. D. Broad: The Argument from Religious Experience. Louis P. Pojman: A Critique of the Argument from Religious Experience. William P. Alston: Religious Experience and Religious Belief. Part III: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. David Hume: The Argument from Evil. Gottfried Leibniz: Theodicy: A Defense of Theism. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Rebellion. John Hick: Evil and Soul-Making. Edward H. Madden and Peter H. Hare: A Critique of Hick's Theodicy. J. L. Mackie: Evil and Omnipotence. Alvin Plantinga: The Free Will Defense. William Rowe: The Inductive Argument from Evil Against the Existence of God. Paul Draper: Evolution and the Problem of Evil. Part IV: THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. IV.A. Time and Eternity. Stephen T. Davis: Temporal Eternity. Hugh J. McCann: The God Beyond Time. IV.B. God's Omniscience and Human Freedom. St. Augustine: Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will. Nelson Pike: God's Foreknowledge and Human Free Will Are Incompatible. Alvin Plantinga: God's Foreknowledge and Human Free Will Are Compatible. IV.C. God's Omnipotence. St. Thomas Aquinas: Is God's Power Limited? George Mavrodes: Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence. Harry Frankfurt: The Logic of Omnipotence. Part V: MIRACLES. David Hume: Against Miracles. Peter van Inwagen: Of 'Of Miracles.' J. L. Mackie: Miracles and Testimony. Richard Swinburne: Evidence for the Resurrection. Hud Hudson: Hyperspace and Christianity. Part VI: DEATH AND IMMORTALITY. Plato: Immortality of the Soul. Bertrand Russell: The Finality of Death. John Hick: Immortality and Resurrection. Jeffrey Olen: Personal Identity and Life After Death. Prasannatma Das: A Hindu Theory of Life, Death, and Reincarnation. Part VII: FAITH AND REASON. VII.A. Pragmatic Justification of Religious Belief. Blaise Pascal: The Wager. W. K. Clifford: The Ethics of Belief. William James: The Will to Believe. VII.B. Rationality and Justified Religious Belief. John Hick: Rational Theistic Belief Without Proof. Alvin Plantinga: Religious Belief Without Evidence. Michael Martin: A Critique of Plantinga's Religious Epistemology. Louis P. Pojman: Faith, Hope, and Doubt. Part VIII: SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND EVOLUTION. VIII.A. The Relationship Between Science and Religion. Richard Dawkins: Science Versus Religion. Steven Jay Gould: Non-Overlapping Magesteria. Pope John Paul II: Faith and Science. VIII.B. Evolution, Naturalism, and Intelligent Design. William Dembski: Signs of Intelligence: A Primer on the Detection of Intelligent Design. Michael Behe: Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference. Phillip Kitcher: Born-Again Creationism. Michael Murray: Natural Providence (Or Design Trouble). Alvin Plantinga: An Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. Michael Bergmann: Commonsense Naturalism. Part IX: RELIGIOUS PLURALISM. John Hick: Religious Pluralism and Ultimate Reality. Alvin Plantinga: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism. David Basinger: Hick's Religious Pluralism and "Reformed Epistemology"? A Middle Ground. Dalai Lama: Buddhism, Christianity, and the Prospects for World Religion. Joseph Runzo: God, Commitment, and Other Faiths: Pluralism Versus Relativism. Part X: RELIGION AND ETHICS. Plato: Morality and Religion. Robert Adams: A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness. Bertrand Russell: A Free Man's Worship. George Mavrodes: Religion and the Queerness of Morality. BIBLIOGRAPHY.