Philosophy of Religion

The book is a new edition of Eternal God first published in 1988, and contains four new chapters. It offers a defence of divine timeless eternity. After sketching the nature of such eternity in the first two chapters, a number of philosophical objections are considered, such as the argument from personality and from the incompatibility of divine eternity and indexical knowledge. A number of standard objections are discussed, and the account is further developed in the light of these. Among them are the nature of an eternal God's foreknowledge of what happens in time, and its relation to human choice, and how and in what manner such divine foreknowledge differs from fatalism. This leads to a consideration of foreknowledge and human responsibility, the sense in which timeless divine choice is free, and how it is possible to refer to an eternal God. The first of the final four new chapters explores the view of W. L. Craig that God is timeless sans creation but temporal thereafter. This leads to a consideration of timelessness and causation, in connection with creation, and then the importance of the distinction between a timeless God's perspective on his creation and those of agents in time. Assuming that God is triune, the final chapter discusses the relation between the three persons of the divine, first if God is considered to be in time, and then if he is eternal.

A fundamental question in the field of religious epistemology asks whether religious belief must be based on evidence in order to be properly held. In recent years two prominent positions on this issue have been staked out: evidentialism, which claims that proper religious belief requires evidence; and Reformed epistemology, which claims that it does not. This book contains eleven chapters by prominent philosophers which push the discussion in new directions. The book has three parts. Chapters in the first part explore the demand for evidence: some object to it while others seek to restate it or find space for compromise between Reformed epistemology and evidentialism. Chapters in the second part explore ways in which beliefs are related to evidence, that is, ways that what evidence for or against religious belief is available to a person can depend on that person’s background beliefs and other circumstances. The third part of the book contains chapters that discuss actual evidence for and against religious belief. Evidence for belief in God includes the so-called common consent of the human race and the way that such belief makes sense of the moral life; evidence against it includes profound puzzles about divine freedom which suggest that it is impossible for a being to be morally perfect.

This book argues that we are still at a very early stage in the possible history of intelligent life on our planet and should frame our religious attitudes accordingly. Humans tend not to notice how thin is the sliver of the deep past in which all of our religious life is contained. And the aeons that may yet see intelligent life have hardly started to come into focus. But when these things are fully internalized, our whole picture of religion will change. For then we will for the first time be in a position to ask: Might there be a form of religion appropriate to such an early stage of development as our own? Though most concerned simply to get a new discussion going, this book maintains that the answer is Yes. When our place in time is fully internalized, a new form of skepticism but also new possibilities of religious life will come into view. We will find ourselves drawn to religious attitudes that, while not foregoing the idea of a transcendent ultimate, manage to do without believing and without details. This stance we will find it possible to support by argument. Thus faith can be reconciled with reason even if traditional religious belief is rationally out of bounds. And ironically it is science that should help us see this.

This book assesses the worth of arguments for and against the existence of God. Evidence confirms (makes more probable) an explanatory hypothesis in so far as (1) given the hypothesis the evidence is to be expected, that is the hypothesis makes the evidence probable, (2) the evidence is not otherwise to be expected, (3) the hypothesis is simple, and (4) it fits with background knowledge (i.e., knowledge about how things behave in neighbouring fields of enquiry). When we are assessing hypotheses (such as theism, the hypothesis that there is a God) purporting to explain everything, there will be no background knowledge. Theism is a very simple hypothesis. If there is a God, there is some reason to expect that he will create a universe, with laws of nature, leading to the evolution of humans (bodies connected to souls), who often have experiences which seem to them experiences of God. It is most improbable that all this evidence would exist if there was no God. Taken together therefore all this evidence makes it probable that there is a God. The occurrence of evil, whether produced by humans or natural processes, does not significantly diminish that probability.

This book considers some of the ways in which particular places can acquire special religious significance, as sites for prayer or other kinds of devotional activity, and how knowledge of place provides a key to understanding the nature of religious knowledge. There are two main arguments in the book. The first proposes that there is a deep-seated analogy between knowledge of God and knowledge of place, and that knowledge of God consists partly in an integrative knowledge of the significance of particular places. This strand of the book contrasts with recent discussion in the epistemology of religion, which has tended to privilege, for instance, scientific or ordinary perceptual kinds of knowledge as analogous to religious knowledge. Taking knowledge of place as a route into the question of the nature of religious knowledge provides a way of foregrounding the practical and engaged character of religious knowledge, and its connection to our moral and aesthetic commitments. The second central strand of the book uses these findings to consider some of the ways in which particular places can acquire special religious significance. By contrast with approaches which postulate a sharp distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ spaces, and by contrast with the idea that the differentiated religious significance of space reflects some merely psychological truth, the book proposes that the religious import of a place is a function of its microcosmic significance (its capacity to represent some larger truth about the condition of human beings), its ability to conserve historical meanings (where these meanings exercise an enduring ethical claim upon those who are present at the site at later times), and its facilitation of a kind of embodied reference to God (where a person's thought is anchored in God by virtue of what they do at the site).

Different theologians give different accounts of the kind of faith that is necessary for the practice of a religion such as Christianity. For some it is simply belief that there is a God (and that he has done various actions); for others it is trust in God. This book analyses the nature of belief and trust, and considers when belief and trust are rational. It concludes that the practice of a religion requires a faith which involves both trust and belief, but a fairly weak kind of belief. The book reaches this conclusion by analysing the purposes for practising a religion — the rendering of due worship and obedience to God, and the attainment of salvation for oneself and others. Someone's religious practice is rational in so far as he or she has reason for believing that practising his or her religion is the best way to achieve these purposes, and that these purposes are greatly worthwhile.