(Palgrave Philosophy Today) Chad Meister (Auth.) - Philosophy of Religion-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2014)

PALGRAVE PHILOSOPHY TODAY
Philosophy
of Religion
Chad Meister
Philosophy of Religion
Palgrave Philosophy Today
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Philosophy of Religion
Chad Meister
Director of Philosophy, Bethel College
Palgrave
macmillan
© Chad Meister 2014
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Religious Diversity 3
2 Concepts of God/Ultimate Reality 19
3 Arguments about the Existence of God 38
4 Problems of Evil and Suffering 60
5 Religion, Science, and Miracles 79
6 Death and the Afterlife 96
7 Continental Philosophy of Religion 113
8 Feminist Philosophy of Religion 127
Notes 140
Index 153
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Vittorio Bufacchi, the general editor of this Palgrave

Macmillan philosophy series, for inviting me to write this book. It has
been particularly gratifying to articulate the ruminations of my own
thinking on key issues in philosophy of religion. I am also thankful
for the wonderful support and encouragement of Brendan George,
Senior Commissioning Editor at Palgrave Macmillan, and the entire
editorial team. They have been a joy to work with.
I dedicate this book to three paragons of philosophical insight,
intellectual ingenuity, and imaginative creativity: Charles Taliaferro,
Keith Ward, and Paul Moser. They are exceptionally fine scholars and
an inspiration to me and countless others in philosophy and the phi-
losophy of religion.
ix
Introduction
The philosophy of religion, simply defined, is the philosophical study

of religious ideas. As it is widely practiced today, the field is broad
and diverse and tackles such questions and issues as these: whether
there exists a transcendent reality beyond the physical world and, if
so, what that reality is like; whether there is a personal God and, if
so, what experiencing God might entail; how a transcendent reality
could influence the physical world, or whether such a question is
even coherent; whether the existence of the vast amount of evil in
the world is compatible with belief in an omnibenevolent and wise
deity; whether religion is reasonable or rooted in fantasy and delu-
sion; how the various religions of the world relate to one another, if
at all; whether interreligious dialogue is truly possible and, if so, what
dimensions of discourse this might take; what bearing the study of
religion has on belief in an afterlife, and whether such belief is ten-
able. These are some of the primary sorts of issues that are addressed
in the field of philosophy of religion, particularly as it is practiced in
Anglo-American analytic philosophy (that is, academic philosophy
as it has been practiced in various regions, primarily in Great Britain
and the United States, over the last century or so; more will be said
about this later in the book).
The first six chapters address these kinds of questions and issues.
But I will argue that there are other sides to the field, beyond the
Anglo-American approach, that should also be taken into considera-
tion by those practicing or studying philosophy of religion. The last
two chapters deal with these other sides—with Continental philoso-
phy of religion and with a recent area that, primarily, evolved out of
the Continental approach—namely, feminist philosophy of religion.
Here, too, as we will see, there is much available to expand the hori-
zons of the field.
I have spent most of my adult life studying and working as a phi-
losopher, and in my estimation the philosophy of religion is one of
the most exciting areas of philosophy in which to engage. At its best
it not only interacts with virtually all other areas of philosophy (such
1
2 Philosophy of Religion
as epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of science), but also with

the latest work in a variety of fields beyond its own purview, includ-
ing physics, biology, neuroscience, history, and religion and religious
studies spanning the major religions of the world.
The central aim in writing this book is to offer an account of the
current state of play in philosophy of religion, focusing on several
key issues at the forefront and offering an analysis of them. I have
attempted to avoid technical language as much as possible, without
losing the requisite depth of the points and arguments. As you read
through the pages of this book, my hope is that you will see the
various points and perspectives, arguments and counterarguments,
as ideas to engage with, rather than positions to merely affirm or dis-
affirm. For advanced readers, this will be obvious. But for neophyte
philosophers, sometimes this point needs to be emphasized.
As a work of philosophy, then, this book follows the general way of
doing philosophy as it has been practiced in the West since Plato—
one of dialectic and critical thinking rather than rote learning and
memorization. If, after reading through the various chapters, you
have not been engrossed in arguing with them, muttering reflec-
tive expressions to yourself such as “that can’t be right,” or “I never
thought about it that way before; could it be . . .,” or perhaps writ-
ing rebuttals in the margins, or, even better, discussing some of the
ideas and arguments with interlocutors or friends, then you have not
really read the book as it was intended. If all goes well, through this
dialectical process you will find yourself deeply absorbed in the kind
of philosophical reflection on religious ideas that some of the greatest
minds across the globe and through the centuries have spent their
lives contemplating. In this way you will join the resplendent chorus
of philosophical virtuosos who have created the intellectual music
that is called philosophy of religion.
1
Religious Diversity
The religions of the world are multifarious. As the awareness of the

plurality and diversity of religious beliefs expands on a global scale,
the importance of philosophical reflection on them—regarding both
their own unique belief structures and the relationships among the
religions—increases. The rise of comparative religion and compara-
tive theology has brought about a deeper understanding of and
appreciation for the different religious traditions, and this in turn has
made it more difficult to be dismissive of those from traditions other
than one’s own, or of religion altogether. But it has also brought to
the fore recognition of the many ways the varying traditions are in
conflict, sometimes at the deepest levels, with respect to the nature
of Ultimate Reality and our relation to it. How are we to think about
this diversity and disagreement? Before exploring various options, it
is important to elucidate how the term “religion” will be used in this
context.
Attempting to define religion in a way that captures what are com-
monly taken to be the religions of the world is notoriously difficult.
As we will see, the way the religions view Ultimate Reality, the nature
of the self, salvation/liberation,1 and so on is manifold. Neverthe-
less, several elements seem to be fundamental to at least the major
religions of the world. A religion tends to be a broad system of beliefs
and practices, including the belief in a transcendent (non-physical)
reality that is ultimate and with which one may attain a unitive rela-
tion that provides ultimate meaning and purpose to life.2 Whether
one is considering the spiritual beliefs and practices of the early pri-
mal religions, or the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, or the Indian traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism,
or the East Asian traditions of Confucianism and Daoism, they gener-
ally manifest these core elements.
3
Religion has a long and momentous history and can be traced

back as far as written history goes. It is also a universal phenomenon,
with religious beliefs and practices spanning the globe. It seems that
interpreting the world religiously is written into the very DNA of the
human person.3 Not everyone adheres to a religion or has religious
beliefs, of course, but roughly 85 percent of the human population
currently is religious in some significant sense, and the percentage of
religious adherents has always been very high.4
While the existence of religious diversity also has a long history,
the widespread awareness and intermingling of the many unique and
sometimes very dissimilar traditions is relatively recent. It was not
so very long ago that adherents to a particular religion would com-
monly live their entire lives without ever having contact with some-
one of another religious tradition. But for most people, those days
are virtually extinct. We now live in a global village, a small world of
neighboring faiths. This diversity has often generated a deeper under-
standing of and appreciation for the different religious traditions, but
it has also brought to the fore an awareness of the many apparently
conflicting beliefs among them. How should we understand this plu-
rality of religions, a pluralism that entails not only diversity but disa-
greement and potential conflict?
In this chapter I sketch four possible responses to this religious
diversity and disagreement: atheism, exclusivism, pluralism, and
inclusivism. While I have sincere respect for each of these responses
and believe that representatives of each of them offer valuable insights
into the human condition and our place in the world, I will argue
for a version of inclusivism that takes seriously each of the major
religious traditions and that also seems to avoid some of the philo-
sophical pitfalls of the other three. We begin with atheism, the view
that seems least plausible to me given what most human beings actu-
ally believe, and then move systematically from there to the most
plausible—inclusivism.
Atheism
For the atheist, religious diversity is based on a false assumption about

the way the world is at a fundamental level. For if there is no God, the
variety of religious traditions that affirm the reality of a divine being
would be affirming certain central beliefs that turn out to be false. Of
Religious Diversity 5
course not all religions do affirm the reality of a God. Daoism, Confu-
cianism, and forms of Buddhism do not include the notion of a God
or gods at all. So in a certain sense one could be an atheist and also
a Buddhist or a Daoist or a Confucian. But all of the religions, or at
least all of the major world religions, including those just mentioned,
do affirm a fundamental reality that transcends the physical world,
and they see the ultimate goal of life as striving toward and becoming
unified with this reality. For Buddhists it is Nirvana; for Daoists, it is
the Dao; for theists, it is God (Allah or Yahweh in the case of Muslims
or Christians). Most atheists would be uncomfortable with affirming
the existence of a reality that transcends the physical universe. That
is to say, most atheists are also naturalists. They believe that there
are no supernatural entities; everything that exists does so in time
and space, and everything that exists is in some sense physical or
material. For most atheists, then, all religions are centrally about a
reality—whether personal or impersonal—that does not really exist.
So for most atheists, a central problem with religious diversity is that
the entire religious enterprise is wrongheaded; it is fundamentally
about a transcendent realty that is unreal.
Atheism is, for the most part, a newcomer to the philosophical
scene. No doubt there have been atheists (philosophers and others)
throughout human history, but it has generally been a rather minor-
ity position, both among intellectuals and those less educated. Ideal-
ism, on the other hand, defined here as the view that God, or some
sort of non-material transcendent reality, exists beyond the physical
universe, has been widely held by most people throughout recorded
history. Indeed, not only have the founders of the major world reli-
gions and most of their adherents affirmed this, but the vast majority
of philosophers in the East and the West have also been idealists in
this sense.
In the early twentieth century, idealism, and theism in particular,
declined, especially among western philosophers. By the third dec-
ade of the twentieth century, logical positivism was a prevailing view
of the philosophers, a leading school in the philosophy of science,
and a prominent view held by many in the sciences and other fields.
Logical positivists used a principle of verifiability to reject as mean-
ingless all non-empirical claims; only the tautologies of mathematics
and logic, along with statements containing empirical observations
or inferences, were considered meaningful. As it turns out, many
idealist claims are neither tautological nor empirically verifiable,

so the positivists took the concept of idealism, and especially the-
ism, to be cognitively meaningless. In one fell swoop, Platonism,
Kantianism, Hegelianism, theism, and pantheism were eliminated
as viable philosophical viewpoints. Incidentally, so were objective
notions of ethics, aesthetics, and non-material views of the afterlife.
Positivistic influences were so widespread that by the 1950s many of
the leading Anglophone philosophers were either atheists or agnos-
tics. These influences significantly impacted the western religious
traditions of the time as well, and the “death of God” movement
became especially popular among American religious philosophers
and theologians. In fact, given the widespread influence of logical
positivism and atheism in the mid-twentieth century, one might
have surmised the imminent and complete demise of idealism and
philosophical theism.
In the latter half of that century, however, the philosophical tide
began to turn. Many philosophers arrived at the conclusion that
the positivists’ radical empiricist claims and verificationist criteria
of meaning were inadequate, problematic, and even self-stultifying.
Because of the work of such philosophical luminaries as Karl Pop-
per and W. V. O. Quine, who challenged some of the central claims
of logical positivism, it soon began to wane. In addition, a number
of analytic theistic philosophers, including Basil Mitchell, H. H.
Farmer, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and John Hick, were
engaging in first-rate work in philosophical theism and philosophy
of religion. By the early 1970s discussions of God and morality, along
with other religious and metaphysical issues, were reinvigorated and
soon became accepted arenas of philosophical discourse once again.
Within a decade the positivists’ verificationism had completely col-
lapsed, and philosophical views that had been ignored or repudiated
were once again lively topics of discussion. The collapse of verifica-
tionism, perhaps the most significant philosophical shift of the twen-
tieth century, along with other important developments in the social
sciences and politics, were pivotal to the way the twenty-first century
began—with philosophical theism and religious discourse back in
play. While it is still the case that a majority of philosophers accept
atheism over theism,5 it is also true that “God is not ‘dead’ in aca-
demia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well
in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.”6
Unlike in previous centuries, much of the contemporary philo-

sophical discussion regarding God and religion has to do with reli-
gious diversity. While atheism is one response, there are a variety of
others. Perhaps the most widespread of them, at least among those
who adhere to a particular religious tradition, is religious exclusivism.
Exclusivism
The history of religion is one in which religious adherents have, by and

large, believed that the central tenets of the tradition to which they
adhere are true, objectively and exclusively so.7 The central beliefs of
religious others are taken to be wrong (and sometimes culpably so), and
disagreements have at times involved intolerance and even violence
toward those who affirm a different religion. Some of the conflicting
truth claims among the religions are rather minor, but many are at a
foundational level. Consider these claims from four world religions:
t Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta): Ultimate Reality is Brahman—the
all-encompassing non-personal reality; there are no individual
selves apart from Brahman, for all is Brahman; liberation or mok-
sha (awareness of union with Brahman) is needed to overcome
the primary human predicament—ignorance—and is achieved
through enlightenment by following one of the three central
paths of Karma Yoga (the Path of Action), Bhakti Yoga (the Path of
Devotion), or Jnana Yoga (the Path of Knowledge).
t Buddhism (Theravada Buddhism): Ultimate Reality is Nirvana—
pure enlightenment, ultimate impersonal goodness and bliss;
human beings are not individual substances but rather fleeting
experiences; liberation (Nirvana) is needed to overcome ignorance
and is achieved through enlightenment by following the Four
Noble Truths.
t Christianity: Ultimate Reality is Yahweh—a tri-personal God
who created the universe as ontologically distinct from God;
human beings are personal individuals created in the image
of God; salvation (removal of sin and entrance into heaven) is
achieved by the grace of God through faith in Christ (how faith
works is understood in sundry ways by Orthodox, Catholic, and
various Protestant Christians).
t Islam: Ultimate Reality is Allah—a uni-personal God who cre-
ated the universe as ontologically distinct from God; human
beings are personal individuals created by God; salvation (divine

clemency and entrance into paradise) is achieved by the hand
and grace of Allah through faithfully following the Five Pillars
of Islam.
In these examples, various claims about God/Ultimate Reality,
the nature of human persons, and salvation/liberation are at odds
with one another. In fact, in some instances they contradict each
other. And as every first-year logic student knows, if two claims are
contradictory, they cannot both be true. Ultimate Reality cannot be
both personal and non-personal; human persons cannot be both cre-
ated individuals and uncreated fleeting experiences; salvation can-
not be both awareness of union with Brahman, who is identical with
the self, and entrance into a paradise whereby God and the self are
ontologically distinct realities. Religious exclusivists maintain that,
because such central religious claims contradict one another, they
cannot all be true; if one claim is true, the others that contradict it
are false. For the exclusivist, his or her beliefs are taken to be the cor-
rect ones. Exclusivists usually add that a central goal of the religious
person is to adhere to and follow those beliefs that are the correct
ones.8 In fact, for many exclusivists, one’s eternal destiny hangs in
the balance; adherence to a correct set of beliefs is a necessary condi-
tion of salvation.
Exclusivists commonly claim that salvation/liberation is attained
through believing (which generally includes certain practices) the
central truth claims of the one true religion. In Christianity, for
example, one finds the following words attributed to Jesus in the
New Testament book of John, which are often taken to affirm one of
those central truth claims: “I [Jesus] am the way, and the truth and
the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Exclusivists generally interpret this passage as one in which Jesus is
claiming that a person must know about him (know who he is as the
Son of God, Savior of the world), and believe in him (affirm that he
is who he is), in order to achieve salvation. In medieval Islam, the
phrase “no salvation outside Islam” was an Islamic shibboleth, and
many contemporary Muslims affirm this form of exclusivism. The
Qur’an states that there is a “right” religion: “So [Prophet] as a man of
pure faith, stand firm and true in your devotion to the religion. This
is the natural devotion to the religion. This is the natural disposition
God instilled in mankind—there is no altering God’s creation—and

this is the right religion, though most people do not realize it.” (30:30;
italics added) Most Buddhists and Hindus have also maintained that
their understanding of Ultimate Reality and the path they affirm to
salvation/liberation is the true one—the one that must ultimately be
followed.9
So exclusivism is about both truth and salvation/liberation.10 While
it has been a popular position among religious adherents, both histori-
cally and in our own day, it is nonetheless fraught with difficulties. One
epistemological problem has been dubbed the “myth of neutrality.” The
difficulty is that there seems to be no religiously neutral or objective cri-
teria by which to determine which religious claims are true and which
are false. How are we to decide whether God is three persons with one
nature (the classical, Christian view of God), or one person with one
nature (the classical Islamic and Jewish view of God), or whether Ulti-
mate Reality is impersonal (the classical Advaita Vedanta Hindu view
of Brahman)? How is one to determine whether salvation/liberation
comes through faith in Christ and the Christian sacraments or the five
pillars of Islam or meditation on the Hindu or Buddhist sacred teach-
ings? What objective, nonsectarian criteria could be utilized to deter-
mine which claims match the facts? None appear to be obtainable.
Furthermore, people don’t generally choose their religion—especially
among a set of different traditions. They are born into a religious
tradition, or a culture in which the tradition exists and is open and
available to them. Their “choice,” as it were, is to decide whether or
not to participate in the community in which they have been raised.
So the view that one set of religious claims is true, and that one reli-
gion offers the only way of salvation/liberation, and that all people
are responsible to believe and adhere to such claims, is considered
by many to be an inappropriate, if not morally reprehensible, under-
standing of the matter. Billions of people in human history have never
heard about the religious beliefs of traditions other than their own,
and for one’s salvation/liberation to be dependent upon knowledge
that is wholly inaccessible seems highly unjust. This is sometimes
referred to as the scandal of particularity. The problem is multifaceted
but, simply put, it seems scandalous and unfair for there to be only
one path to salvation/liberation offered to humanity—especially given
that this path (from whichever religious tradition one is referring to)
might be unfamiliar to large segments of the human population. It is

simply not a live option for large portions of the world.
Consider exclusivism within the largest of the Abrahamic faiths:
Christianity. Many Christian exclusivists maintain that those who
have not heard the gospel—the good news that Jesus Christ has come
to provide forgiveness and salvation to the world—are doomed to
eternal destruction in hell. In this case, individuals are held morally
culpable for religious knowledge of which they are not even aware. It
seems unjust, the argument goes, that God would condemn count-
less people to eternal perdition when, if they only had the requisite
knowledge for salvation, many would respond to it. Surely there are
good, sincere, honest, and compassionate individuals in all of the
major world religions who would respond to God’s loving offer of
forgiving grace if it were made known to them.
As such, exclusivism is simply too morally distressing and contrary
to the notion of a loving, compassionate God for many to accept as a
feasible option for understanding religious diversity.
Pluralism
A third way of understanding religious diversity affirms an Ultimate

Reality beyond the physical world (contrary to atheism), but denies
that there is one religious tradition that holds the exclusive truth
about Ultimate Reality or offers the only path to salvation/libera-
tion (contrary to exclusivism). According to this pluralistic approach,
while there are unique responses to the Divine Reality among the
various major world religions, each one provides a viable path of
salvation/liberation. John Hick, one of pluralism’s leading propo-
nents,11 puts the view concisely: “[Religious pluralism] sees the great
world faiths as very different but (so far as we can tell) equally valid
ways of conceiving, experiencing, and responding in life to the ulti-
mate reality.”12 These “great post-axial traditions,” he goes on to say,
“are directed towards a transformation of human existence from
self-centeredness to a re-centering in what in our inadequate human
terms we speak of as God, or as Ultimate Reality, or the Transcend-
ent, or the Real.”13 Hick uses various analogies to describe the diverse
experiences of what he generally calls “Ultimate Reality” or “the
Real” in the different traditions. One of the most interesting is the
duck-rabbit picture that Ludwig Wittgenstein used in his influential
work, Philosophical Investigations.14 A culture that has plenty of ducks

but no familiarity with rabbits would see the ambiguous diagram as
being an image of a duck. Persons in this culture would not even be
aware of the ambiguity. So too with the culture that has plenty of
rabbits but no familiarity with ducks. Persons in this culture would
see it as a rabbit. Hick’s analogy is that Ultimate Reality, the “ineffable
Real,” is capable of being experienced—authentically experienced—
in the different religions as Yahweh, or as Allah, or as Vishnu, and
so on, depending on one’s religious and cultural concepts through
which the individual experiences occur.
One objection to religious pluralism is that, as exclusivists note
and as is pointed out above, the major world religions have incom-
patible views of at least several central beliefs, including the nature
of Ultimate Reality, the human self and the human predicament,
and the means and meaning of salvation/liberation. Since there are
incompatible and exclusive beliefs, does not this contradict the plu-
ralist’s view that the religions offer equally valid ways of conceiving,
experiencing, and responding in life to the Ultimate Reality? Utiliz-
ing Immanuel Kant’s ontological distinctions of noumena (things
as they really are in themselves) and phenomena (things as they are
experienced by us given the categories of our minds), Hick argues that
one’s religious experiences and descriptions depend on the interpre-
tive concepts through which one sees and structures them. Thus,
while some experience and understand Ultimate Reality in a per-
sonal, theistic manner (e.g., as God or Allah), others may do so in
an impersonal, pantheistic way (e.g., as Nirguna Brahman), or in a
non-personal cosmic way (e.g., as Nirvana or the Tao). The Hindu
parable of the blind men and the elephant poignantly reflects this
idea, whereby God is analogous to a large elephant surrounded by
several blind people. One person touches the elephant’s tail and says
the elephant is like rope. Another touches its trunk and says it is like a
snake. Another touches the elephant’s leg and says the elephant is like
a tree. Yet another touches the elephant’s side and says it is like a wall.
They are all experiencing the same elephant but in very different ways.
The same goes for Ultimate Reality and the various religions. While
each of the experiences is true in a sense, nevertheless each one is
referring to only one feature of this reality, utilizing various analogies
or metaphors provided by one’s culture and experiences. Our interpre-
tations, that is to say, are constricted by our enculturated concepts.15
But this leads to another criticism. If religious truth claims are
contextually limited, and concern the phenomena only and not
the noumena, this seems to lead to a serious epistemic limitation
regarding one’s understanding of Ultimate Reality.16 If Ultimate
Reality is beyond conceptualization, then using attributes in depict-
ing it, such as being loving, perfectly powerful, compassionate, the
ground of being, Trinity, and so on, would not provide accurate
depictions of that Reality. What would such depictions be, in that
case? Psychological projections? Wish fulfillments? Relative cul-
tural ascriptions? Is there any reality beyond such ascriptions? Why
would we think so on this account? I find no solid reply. It turns
out, then, that on the pluralist view no religion is providing an
accurate account of Ultimate Reality. So the adherents in the world
religions all turn out to have completely false beliefs! That is a stag-
gering claim, to say the least.
One might wonder on what grounds Hick chooses the major reli-
gions as paragons of the path toward salvation/liberation. Why are
they to be held in high esteem? Religious doctrines and dogmas are
important for Hick, but what is fundamental in religion is the per-
sonal transformation that occurs within the traditions. As he puts
it, “within each of [the major world religions] the transformation of
human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness—
from non-saints to saints—is taking place.”17 In contrast to some
recent cults, say (such as the Heaven’s Gate group in southern Cali-
fornia in which all of the adherents were encouraged by their leader
to commit suicide), the major world religions have withstood the test
of time because of their success, primarily in terms of personal moral
transformation. They emphasize selflessness, charity, mercy, and
compassion, and they have produced such widely recognized saints
as Francis of Assisi, Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai
Lama. We can see the fruits of these traditions and make an assess-
ment about the religions’ general veracity based on them.
This is a great insight Hick has proffered. But again, if the Real is
ineffable, on what basis can one claim that selflessness and compas-
sion are reflections of the Real? Perhaps they are simply the outcomes
of a devoted religious adherent and the Real is merely a figment of
wild-eyed religious imagination. How could we know? For the plural-
ist, one seems ineluctably caught in the skeptic’s net.
Inclusivism
A fourth response to religious diversity can be understood to be a type

of rapprochement of, or via media between, exclusivism and plural-
ism. As we have seen, on the one side, exclusivism affirms that there is
one unique path to salvation/liberation, that religious truths are more
fully manifested in that one tradition, and that other traditions are,
for the most part, offering false claims about them. On the other end
of the spectrum, pluralism affirms that Ultimate Reality is ineffable,
but that nevertheless salvation/liberation can be achieved in all of the
major religious traditions; they offer equally valid paths to ultimate
and eternal fulfillment. For the inclusivist, there is an objective fun-
damental reality to which religious truth claims point, and there is
a final truth about the nature of salvation/liberation. Where the reli-
gions disagree about these matters, one religion is closer to the truth
than the others. Here the inclusivist is in basic agreement with the
exclusivist. However, while inclusivists and exclusivists agree that the
different traditions contain incompatible truth claims, they generally
disagree about whether those religions outside their own also contain
fundamental truths (truths about Ultimate Reality, for example), and
whether adherents of religions other than their own can also obtain
salvation/liberation. In other words, while inclusivists maintain that
one religion has, to some extent, privileged access to certain central
and salvific truths, they affirm that other religions also contain truths
about important, and even fundamental, spiritual matters. Inclusivists
also generally affirm that salvation/liberation is available to all seekers
of truth and the good, regardless of whether they are consciously aware
of the teachings or doctrines of the religion the inclusivist affirms.
Perhaps an example would be enlightening. I will use the Chris-
tian tradition for illustration purposes, as that is my own background
and therefore I have the most familiarity with it. A Christian inclu-
sivist could affirm, along with a Christian exclusivist, that Ultimate
Reality is a personal and perfect God—a God who has purposes and
intentions and will, and who is the foundation of moral value and
goodness. They could also agree with the exclusivist that salvation/
liberation is available because of the love and grace of God, and that
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings about reconcili-
ation between God and human beings.18 But the inclusivist would
disagree with the exclusivist about the importance of knowing these
truths and about the means of this reconciliation.
Unlike the inclusivist, for the exclusivist, at least for many exclusiv-
ists since the late Middle Ages, the justice of God generally takes prec-
edence, a justice that is primarily punitive: it demands recompense
or satisfaction for sin.19 All human beings are guilty before God, so
all human beings are separated from God and in need of salvation/
liberation. God has made available a way back to Godself, and this
salvation/liberation is given through Jesus Christ. All those who hear
about Christ and respond in faith will be saved. But for all those
who do not hear about Christ, or who hear and reject Christ, there is
(eternal) perdition. It follows that God has ordained that most of the
world will be condemned since the greater part of humanity has lived
outside the domain of Christianity and so most people have never
heard about Christ.
For the inclusivist, the love of God generally takes precedence, and
such love would not allow the eternal suffering of individuals if it
could be prevented. The inclusivist in this case sees the exclusivist’s
view as one in which moral culpability is infelicitously connected to
a lack of knowledge. But salvation/liberation is not fundamentally
about having access to information. Rather, as for the pluralist, it is
primarily about reconciliation with God/Ultimate Reality and with
moral and spiritual transformation. Christ is thus the Savior of the
world, on the Christian inclusivist account, but one need not hear
about Christ or know about Christ to achieve salvation.
So a non-Christian, a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Daoist, say, or even
an atheist, may well be following the true and the good (Christ, the
divine logos20), and yet be unaware that one is doing so. While one
may volitionally, de re, yield to God’s unconditional love in Christ,
there may nevertheless be no acknowledgment de dicto of God or
Christ. The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner held such a view and
referred to those who were unknowingly following Christ as “anony-

mous Christians.”21 The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Cath-
olic Church came to the same conclusion. The published statement
from the Council reads: “Those who through no fault of their own
are still ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church yet sin-
cerely seek God and, with the help of divine grace, strive to do his
will as known to them through the voice of their conscience, those
men can attain eternal salvation.”22 Now this view might sound
rather condescending to those outside of the inclusivist’s tradition
(Christianity in this case), but it need not be so. For the inclusivist
could also humbly affirm that he or she may well be wrong about the
nature of God and eternal life, and freely admit that the Buddhist
or the Hindu or the Daoist might be right after all. Similarly, the
inclusivist Buddhist or Hindu or Daoist could affirm the same. On
this view, all persons would have the opportunity to experience sal-
vation/liberation, regardless of where or when they live or what they
actually know about religious or doctrinal matters. For the inclusiv-
ist, one’s heart is more important than one’s head when it comes to
salvation/liberation.23
C. S. Lewis is another example of a Christian exclusivist. In the
final book of his Chronicles of Narnia series, The Last Battle, the char-
acter of Emeth is portrayed by Lewis as an honest and good person,
even though he is from the enemy territory Calormen (a large coun-
try southeast of Narnia). In the book, Emeth is concerned about the
Calormene plan to sneak surreptitiously into Narnia disguised as a
merchant, for he views this to be dishonest. He is distressed by the fact
that neither Shift the Ape nor Tarkaan (the leader of the Calormenes)
believes in either Tash (patron god of the ruling class of Calormen) or
Aslan. He himself believes in Tash, but once in Narnia, he finds him-
self in the midst of Aslan, not Tash. He thinks to himself, “Surely this
is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will
know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it
is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live
and not to have seen him.”24 To his surprise, however, Aslan welcomes
him and explains, “I take to me the services which thou hast done to
him. For he and I are of such different kinds that no service which is
vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to
him.” Emeth does not understand how he could be in Narnia because
he has been seeking Tash all of his life. But Aslan replies, “Unless thy
desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so
truly. For all find what they truly seek.” The takeaway is that while
Emeth believed he was seeking and following truth and goodness in
Tash, in fact he was seeking and following Aslan, who is truth and
goodness. This is illustrative of religious inclusivism.25
One advantage of inclusivism over pluralism is that the former
remains faithful to the core of what most religious adherents actu-
ally believe. Most religious adherents take the central claims of their
tradition to be an accurate reflection of the way things really are;
they are religious realists. For the Christian, Jesus is the Incarnation
of the divine logos; for the Muslim, Jesus is not. For the Muslim, God
is real and there is only one God, Allah. For most Buddhists, that
claim is false, and so on. As noted earlier, the pluralist would claim
that none of these conflicting religious claims is an accurate depic-
tion of Ultimate Reality, or at least we cannot know it to be, given
our epistemic limitations. So one lands in the quagmire of religious
skepticism. For the inclusivist, on the other hand, one can affirm
that one’s beliefs are true. While there are religious differences, they
need not lead to the conclusion that those who disagree are morally
reprobate or hell-bound.
All of this, however, is not to deny important insights offered by reli-
gious pluralists such as Hick. On the interpretation of Kant that Hick
adopts, the phenomenal world is the noumenal world as experienced
by human beings. Ultimate Reality is thus imaged variously by the dif-
ferent traditions—as God or Vishnu or Nirvana or the Dao. There are
deep interpretive proclivities within human beings of all cultures that
help form the various ideas and experiences of Ultimate Reality that are
manifest in the religious traditions. This is no doubt true. But it does
not follow from this that such frameworks nullify one’s understand-
ing of the way things are. In fact, just the opposite is often the case.
If one did not have the cultural construct of cause and effect in one’s
mental repertoire, for example, life would be unnavigable. But with it,
surely we have a better depiction of the way things are than we would
without it. Countless other examples could be cited. So too in religion.
Conclusion
As a philosopher I strive for objectivity, and I tend to be skeptical

about many aspects of religion (including my own). But I am also a
religious believer. Like most human beings, I consider my beliefs to

be true (though I take many of them as tentative). In fact, that is what
“belief” means. If I believe something, I take it to be true; if I do not
believe it, I do not take it to be true. And I do expect others to disagree
with me. Disagreement is beneficial, as it helps us to hone our own
thinking and understanding, and sometimes causes us to modify or
change our beliefs. So I expect the Buddhist or the Daoist or the athe-
ist, who sincerely does not believe there is a God, to disagree with me
and other theists who sincerely believe there is a God. And I expect
the Jew or the Muslim, who sincerely believes that God is one and
that Christ was not an Incarnation of the divine logos, to disagree
with me and other Christians who sincerely believe otherwise.
Such disagreements need not lead to hatred or conflict or war.
Instead, they can and should lead to mutual respect, to an open-
mindedness in which we take others’ views seriously, and to a spirit
of listening to others and learning from them—even if that means
changing our own views or visions. So, contrary to the claims of
some critics of religion, I believe there can be broad religious unity,
agreement, and respect among those affirming even very diverse and
contradictory viewpoints. While it is true that fundamentalists and
extremists among the religions are some of the worst offenders of jus-
tice and tolerance, religion can and has also produced much good in
the world.26 Moderates, whether exclusivists, pluralists, or inclusivists
from within the various traditions, and atheists and agnostics should
lead the way in propounding respect, peace, and harmony among
those with whom we disagree. As religious organizations are often
the most influential non-governmental institutions, local interfaith
groups can play a significant role in creating a consensus on these
matters—keeping the various divisions of the community in dialogue
and working toward mutual understanding and cooperative support.
It seems to me that within religion, inclusivism offers the best hope
for such fruitful dialogue and mutual understanding and respect. But
that is my own viewpoint. One certainly need not be an inclusivist to
affirm and practice tolerance, acceptance, and mutual respect.
If there is a transcendent Real, a spiritual Ultimate Reality of com-
passion, goodness, and bliss (which all of the major religious tradi-
tions maintain), then surely seeking such a reality should involve
striving ever more to be spiritually transformed into its image. If all
religious adherents were so striving and practicing the core religious
teachings of mercy, compassion, charity, and kindness, our world

would certainly be changed for the better.27 In many ways it has,
but there are also formidable opposing forces within and without the
religions. What the future holds, only heaven may know.
For Further Reading
Paul Griffiths, Problems of Religious Diversity. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion. 2nd ed. Yale University Press, 2004.
Paul Knitter, ed., The Myth of Religious Superiority: A Multifaith Exploration.
Orbis, 2005.
Chad Meister, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity. Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2010.
Harold Netland, Dissonant Voices. Eerdmans, 1991.
2
Concepts of God/Ultimate Reality
There is a wide diversity of beliefs among the great faith traditions

of the world. For centuries, philosophers have reflected on and ana-
lyzed the variety of religious concepts and symbols among the reli-
gions, and the concept of God or Ultimate Reality has been one of
the most dominant. The differing beliefs about God/Ultimate Reality
are expressed in unique and divergent conceptual schemes, symbols,
metaphors, and models. Within these expressions various questions
arise concerning the nature and existence of this transcendent real-
ity. Is there an objective reality to which the language corresponds or
points, or are the terms and descriptions merely the reifications of the
believing communities expressed in the various linguistic forms of a
given culture? The next chapter will examine reasons and evidences
for and against the existence of a transcendent reality. Before investi-
gating that question, however, it is important to have in mind some
idea of what one means when considering that reality. This chapter
will explore several conceptions of God/Ultimate Reality. Contrary to
much popular belief, it may be that a fundamental and universal con-
cept can be found at the heart of at least several of the major religious
traditions about which they can agree.
Concepts of God in the Abrahamic Faiths
Philosophical reflection on the nature of God, what is sometimes

dubbed philosophical theology, has been part and parcel of Western
philosophy for many centuries. Reflection on the nature and activities
of God or the gods in human life has a very long heritage, spanning
the history of the religious traditions of the East and the West. The
Hebrew prophets, for example, wrote about God, and some of these
writings have been preserved in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old
19
Testament). For them, God is intentional and purposive, the creator

of the world, the moral judge and rewarder of those who do what
is right and good. In the New Testament God is called “Father,” a
term that is intended to reflect these general characteristics. Some of
the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle,
Seneca, and Epictetus, wrote about God, though their descriptions
are quite varied. In later centuries, philosophers within Western reli-
gions utilized the work of these earlier philosophers in their attempts
to formulate a coherent description of the nature and attributes of
God within their own traditions. By the term “God” these philos-
ophers of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)
meant a being that is maximally great, having certain properties, or
attributes, setting God apart from all created things and by which
God is understood to be worthy of wholehearted worship.
This understanding of God, now often dubbed perfect being theol-
ogy, is the traditional or classical view of God in Western thought. A
view akin to this is also held within various streams in non-Western
religious traditions, most notably Hinduism. For example, the
thirteenth century South Indian philosopher Sri Madhvacarya (or
simply Madhva) advanced a school of Hindu philosophy referred to
as Dvaita Vedanta, a dualistic view in which there exist two categories
of Ultimate Reality: God or Brahman is the highest form of perfec-
tion conceivable, an Absolute Reality, and is called by various names
(Vishnu, for example); individual selves and material objects are rela-
tive realities, distinct from one another and God but yet dependent
on God.1
In the West, one of the most articulate and influential expounders
of perfect being theology was the Christian philosopher and monk
Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109 C.E.). He famously described God
this way:
What art thou, then, Lord God, than whom nothing greater can
be conceived? But what art thou, except that which, as the high-
est of all beings, alone exists through itself, and creates all other
things from nothing? For, whatever is not this is less than a thing
which can be conceived of. But this cannot be conceived of thee.
What good, therefore, does the supreme Good lack, through
which every good is? Therefore, thou art just, truthful, blessed,
and whatever it is better to be than not to be.2
Concepts of God/Ultimate Reality 21
On the classical concept of God in the West, God is described as max-

imally great and unsurpassably excellent. But what are the additional
attributes of a reality of maximal greatness and unsurpassable excel-
lence? Philosophers and theologians have expended much energy on
this question, and most classical theists have arrived at a common
set of attributes of God. Some attributes are more central than others,
and there is not universal agreement on the precise number of them.
We will focus in this chapter on several central ones.
Before exploring these attributes, however, it is important to exam-
ine a phrase that is sometimes used when referring to God as maxi-
mally excellent; namely, that God is a maximally great person. The
connotation of the term “person” has a long history, and what it
means in contemporary English is not identical to what it meant as it
was being used in the patristic and medieval eras of Christian history.
In contemporary parlance, the qualities of consciousness, intention
and will, purpose, and self-actualization and determination are gen-
erally entailed in usages of the term “person.” But other qualities are
also often included in the term that raise difficulties with referring to
God as a person. For one, they tend to conjure up images of human
persons, including such qualities as finitude, limitation, imperfection,
and temporal and spatial restriction. But surely God, if God exists as
maximally great, cannot adequately be described in these ways.
The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas maintained that God is
more than a person. He referred to God as ipsum esse subsistens, which
in actual translation is grammatically nonsensical, but is sometimes
translated as “being itself by His own essence” or “subsistent being
itself.”3 On this view God is not a person, per se, nor is God a sub-
stance of any sort. God is not a thing, but rather is the fundamen-
tal Ultimate Reality, that which underlies all substances and other
things, pure being itself. Rather than being a maximally great person,
then, perhaps “maximally great being” better captures the property
at hand, for “being” might connote something more fundamental
than “person.” Yet there is something in the term “person” that is
lost when replaced with “being.” A being could be impersonal, non-
conscious, lacking any purpose or intention or will. So perhaps keep-
ing the person nomenclature is warranted after all, if one understands
this non-anthropologically.
In the Indian traditions God, or Brahman, is described as sat-
chit-ananda, which translated means “fundamental reality, absolute
consciousness, and eternal bliss.” We will explore this notion in

more detail later, and one related issue we will consider is whether
these various descriptions of the divine in the East and West are
congruent. In any case, while most theists agree that a maximally
great reality must be a maximally great person in some sense, they
sometimes disagree over what other attributes are included in the
concept of maximal greatness. The following are attributes that most
theists affirm, though there are disagreements over how they should
be understood.
One property of God in classical theism is necessary existence.
God, that is to say, does not depend on anything or anyone to exist;
God is self-existent (the Latin term is a se, by itself, so it is said
that God possesses the attribute of aseity, self-existence). Neces-
sary existence is contrasted with contingent existence. A being that
exists contingently is a being that might not exist, and its exist-
ence is dependent on something else; it is not self-existent. Upon
examination of the world, we find that it is apparently filled with
contingent things. Whether considering the very small, such as the
particle world of quarks and gluons, or the very large, such as plan-
ets, stars, and galaxies, or things in between, such as plants, pandas,
and people, everything we find is contingent.
God, on the other hand, is conceived to be of a different category
of reality, for God’s existence is not contingent. There are different
ways of understanding God’s existence as being necessary. Some phi-
losophers argue for God’s factual necessity. On this view, given God’s
existence, God could not have come into existence and can never
cease to exist. But there is another way of understanding God’s exist-
ence as necessary, namely that God’s existence is logically necessary.
If a proposition is logically necessary, then it is impossible for it to be
false, and it is true in every possible world. If God’s existence is logi-
cally necessary, then it is true in every possible world that God exists,
and it is logically impossible for God not to exist. Just as it is logically
impossible for the number three to be an even number, so too would
it be logically impossible for God not to exist.
Some philosophers have held that God’s existence is logically neces-
sary, but others have disagreed. Immanuel Kant, for example, claimed
that there are no logically necessary propositions that include exist-
ence.4 But a number of responses have been offered to Kant’s objec-
tion, and in recent decades the belief that God’s existence is logically
necessary has acquired some well-known adherents. We will return to

necessity and contingency in the next chapter.
Another property attributed to the God of classical theism is
omnipotence. This is the property of being perfect in power. But
what does it mean to be perfect in power? Philosophers and theolo-
gians throughout the ages have struggled with this question. Thomas
Aquinas, for example, lamented that while “all confess that God is
omnipotent . . . it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence
precisely consists.”5 Even so, affirming the omnipotence of God has
been ubiquitous among thinkers in the Abrahamic religious tradi-
tions, and in the sacred texts of these traditions we find support for
this divine attribute.6
A common understanding of omnipotence is that an omnipotent
being is one who can do anything whatsoever. God, being omnipo-
tent, can create a world; God can perform miracles; God can raise
someone from the dead. But can God do anything? What about creat-
ing square circles or married bachelors? What about existing and not
existing simultaneously? Can God do that? What about committing
evil acts? Can God do evil? Can God create evil? A few philosophers
have thought that there are no limits on God’s power. René Descartes
(1596–1650), for example, maintained that God is not limited by
anything, including the laws of logic and mathematics. For Descartes,
God could make it true that some object P both exists and does not
exist at the same time, or that two plus two equals five.
Most philosophers, however, have not agreed with Descartes on
this point and have qualified the claim that “God can do anything
whatsoever” with a nuanced position such as “God can do anything
that is logically possible” or “God possesses every power that it is logi-
cally possible to possess.”7 Something is logically possible if it does
not violate the basic laws of logic, such as the law of noncontradic-
tion (which is that a proposition and its opposite cannot both be
true simultaneously). Richard Swinburne, for example, argues that
“A logically impossible action is not an action. It is what is described
by a form of words which purport to describe an action, but do not
describe anything which it is coherent to suppose could be done.”8
So to object to the coherence of the meaning of divine omnipotence
because God cannot do the logically impossible (such as make a
square circle) is to make no coherent objection at all. Furthermore, if
God could perform logically contradictory actions, moral difficulties
would seem to follow. For example, God could break promises, or lie,
or do any evil action whatsoever. Such a view of God runs contrary
to God’s being perfect, or so it would seem. In any case, most theists
are reticent to affirm that God can perform immoral or evil actions.
Since, then, there are certain actions that God cannot perform (such
as immoral and logically impossible ones), many contemporary the-
ists maintain that omnipotence means perfect power rather than abso-
lute power. It is no perfect power, they maintain, to commit evil acts.
So even though God cannot perform them, this is no blight on God’s
omnipotence.
An attribute that has received much attention in recent years is
omniscience, having complete or maximal knowledge. If there is a
God of maximal perfection, then the range of God’s knowledge is
comprehensive; God knows every truth. But this raises some impor-
tant questions. Future contingent events are events that have not
yet occurred and are contingent—they are not true by logical neces-
sity. If human beings have contra-causal freedom (libertarian free
will, as it is commonly called), then the free choices they make
in the future are future contingents. But if there are future con-
tingents, then theological difficulties arise. One difficulty is how
future contingents can be compatible with divine foreknowledge.
Consider this example. I am at this moment typing on a laptop
computer (let us call this t). I could have chosen any number of
activities instead, such as taking a walk. If God is omniscient, then
God infallibly knew last year that I would be typing at this moment
rather than taking a walk (let us call this k). If God infallibly knew
that I would be typing at this moment, then it was impossible that
I was not typing at this moment; the event was a necessary one. In
other words,
1 Necessarily, if k then t.
2 Necessarily, k.
3 Therefore, necessarily t.
The problem is that if I am typing necessarily, then I have no choice
about it. There is no way that it is false that I am typing; in fact, it
is logically impossible that it is false. So if God has foreknowledge, it
seems that I do not have contra-causal free will after all.
There are several ways to respond to this argument. First, one could
simply agree with it; there is no contra-causal free will. Even so, one
could still affirm a compatibilist version of free will, for that view of
free will is compatible with the deterministic conclusion of the argu-

ment. But this is not a satisfying conclusion for me and other libertar-
ians. I do believe that I have the contra-causal power to either type
on this computer or go for a walk. If so, one of the premises of the
argument must be false. A second reply to the argument is to deny
the second premise. One way of doing this is to deny the modality of
the premise; necessity is not a necessary feature of pastness. In other
words, even though God knew last year what I would do now, what
I do now could have been different from what it is that I am doing.
In that case, God would have known that I was doing that instead.
There is no inherent necessity in God’s having this or that knowl-
edge, so the event is not a necessary one but, rather, a contingent
one. Premise two, then, is false. A third reply to the argument is that
God does not have knowledge of future contingents, that God does
not know the future. This was not a view held by classical theists, but
many contemporary theists hold it.
A second major difficulty with the notion of future contingents is
how it possible for God to know them. To borrow an example from
Aristotle, consider the claim that there will be a sea battle tomorrow.
Since it hasn’t happened yet, and since various (presumably free)
human decisions will be involved that have not yet occurred, can
God know that there will be a sea battle tomorrow? On what basis
could God know this or any future contingent event? One major
reason many philosophers maintain that God cannot know future
contingents is that there is no basis for such knowledge. If God is
in time rather than outside of time (and we will explore this matter
below), the future is not available to God; it hasn’t happened yet; it
does not exist. Nor can God’s knowledge of the future be grounded
on inferences from the past and present because future contingents
are not necessitated by the past. They cannot be deterministically
inferred. It could be argued that God’s knowledge of the future needs
no grounding. Perhaps God just knows such things. In any case, logi-
cal and metaphysical difficulties arising from the reality of future
contingents have led many contemporary philosophers who affirm
divine omniscience to reject divine foreknowledge.9
Another divine attribute that has been widely affirmed by classi-
cal theists is eternity, that God has neither beginning nor end, that
God exists eternally. There are, though, different ways of under-
standing what it means for God to exist eternally.10 God could exist
timelessly, having no temporal location. Conversely, God could

exist omnitemporally, having everlasting temporal duration. The
first view was held by most of the great classical Christian thinkers,
such as Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas, and it has con-
temporary adherents as well.11 One of the most persuasive reasons
for affirming divine atemporality has to do with the transiency of
temporal life. If God is a most perfect being, then God would have
the most perfect mode of existence. Intuitively, it seems that a per-
fect mode of existence would be a timeless one rather than a tempo-
ral one. For example, if God is temporal, there are episodes of God’s
life that are gone, lost forever—retrievable only in the memory of
God. But a most perfect being would not have to rely on memories
of persons and events, for even a very great memory is something
much less than a present reality.12
While there are theological benefits to the doctrine of divine atem-
porality, a number of criticisms have been raised against it. One
important criticism is that timelessness would restrict God’s knowl-
edge to merely timeless truths, such as “two plus two equals four” or
“President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.”
As timeless, God’s knowledge would not involve before and after, for
that type of knowledge places the knower (God in this case) in rela-
tion to the present. So for the timelessness view, God didn’t foreknow
that Kennedy was going to be assassinated, then perceive the assas-
sination on the twenty-second, and then remember the assassination
after that date. God does not know that I am now typing this sen-
tence, for there is no temporal now for a timeless being. But for God
to lack tensed facts is problematic, for surely God, as a most perfect
being, does not know less than we mere mortals do, including what
time it is right now! Indeed, to deny such knowledge of God would
seem to undercut divine omniscience.
Another objection to divine timelessness for religious adherents is
that it appears to contradict the straightforward scriptural teachings
of the major religions. The narratives of the Hindu scriptures, the
Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an all point to God’s
having a history in which God acts relative to the temporal world.
God did create the world (Genesis 1:19; Acts 4:24; Sura 35:1; Vishnu
Paruna, book 1, chapter 2); God is sustaining the world (Psalm 65:9–
13; Colossians 1:17; Sura 29.60; Bhagavad Gita, chapter 10); God
will judge the world (Isaiah 2:4; II Corinthians 5:10; Sura 22:17). If
God acts in these temporal ways, as the traditions teach, then God is
engaging in temporal activity. So God must be in time.
A second view of God’s relation to time, then, affirms that while
God has neither beginning nor end, God is nevertheless temporally
extended. God exists forever in time on this view. The term “everlast-
ing” is used of God’s being temporally extended. This view avoids the
difficulties of timelessness noted above, including that it is consistent
with the narratives of the sacred scriptures of the theistic religions in
which God is actively involved in the world, temporally interacting
with others and the creation.13 But what about the problem of tem-
poral transiency noted above? Perhaps that is the inescapable price to
be paid for having temporal relations, even for a most perfect being.
It may just be the case that for God to be relationally connected to
the created order, God must be temporal. Furthermore, the memories
of God would no doubt be much more vivid than the fading memo-
ries of human beings, so perhaps the criticism of temporal transiency
is not as great as critics propose.
A third view of God’s relation to time is a rapprochement of the
previous two, for on this account God existed without temporal dura-
tion without the existence of the universe, but at the creation of the
space-time universe God entered into temporal relations with it. This
is not a widely held position among philosophers and theologians,
but it does seem to be a reasonable one. If the universe did come into
existence (and according to the standard Big Bang account, it did),
then it seems plausible to think that God, the creator of universe,
entered into real relations with it. To put it concisely, given a tem-
poral universe, if God relates to that universe, then God must be
temporally related to it.14
One objection to this timeless/temporal view of God’s relation to
time is that it is incoherent.15 God could not have been timeless and
then entered into time, the objection goes, for in that case there
would have been a time when God was timeless, and then a time—
the beginning of time—when God entered into temporal relations.
One cannot think of a timeless period “before” the existence of time,
for to do so is to smuggle in temporal language in an attempt to
deny it.
I am not convinced by this objection. It does not seem incoher-
ent to think that without the existence of the space-time universe
there would have been no intervals of time, no temporal becoming.
Indeed, what seems incoherent is to suggest that there existed a time

before the existence of the space-time universe. It is reasonable to
think that at the moment of the creation of the universe the timeless,
changeless state of reality ceased to exist and a temporal, becoming
state of reality began to exist.
If God is temporal, then God is not immutable, at least regarding
extrinsic change (relational change involving some thing external to
God), for the relations of before and after that God experiences would
entail changes with respect to them. This leads to the final attribute
of the God of classical theism that will be explored in this chapter:
immutability. The traditional doctrine of divine immutability, that
God does not change, has strong and weak versions. On the stronger
view, there is no intrinsic change in God. A leading proponent of this
view was Thomas Aquinas, who stated that God is “altogether immu-
table . . . it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable.”16
For Aquinas and many other traditional theologians, God does not
change at all. God doesn’t change by gaining or losing properties, or
by acquiring new experiences or new information, or in any way that
involves being one way and then another.
One reason many have affirmed divine immutability is that it
seems to be supported by various scriptural passages (again, among
each of the five major world religions raised in this chapter). Theo-
logically, within the Christian tradition, the view was affirmed in the
early church councils, which maintained that in the Incarnation the
Logos (the Second Person of the Trinity) did not change when taking
on a human nature. The first ecumenical council, which occurred in
Nicaea in 325 C.E., included the following pronouncement:
And those who say “there once was when he was not”, and “before
he was begotten he was not”, and that he came to be from things
that were not, or from another hypostasis or substance, affirming
that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration—these the
catholic and apostolic church anathematizes.17
A philosophical reason many have affirmed divine immutability is that

it seems to be an entailment of divine perfection. Rooted in the ancient
Greek view of change, the idea was that if God is perfect, then a God
could not change for the better, for perfection could not improve. Nor
could a perfect being change for the worse, for then it would not be
perfect anymore. Since the Enlightenment era, however, many have

seen change itself as a kind of perfection—even for God. For example,
for God to change in knowing each day which day of the week it is
seems not to be an imperfection. To gain new knowledge about God’s
creatures given their free actions seems not to be an imperfection.18
A weaker view of divine immutability, then, affirms that God’s
character is stable, and that God remains forever faithful to God’s
promises, but God may change in other ways, both extrinsically and
intrinsically. It seems evident that God is not extrinsically change-
less, as noted earlier. But the real issue is whether God changes
intrinsically. Some recent Christian and Jewish philosophers have
argued that intrinsic changes lie at the very core of God’s being. For
these thinkers, God is not a substance, as traditionally held, but is
involved within the spatiotemporal world as an active participant—
a process that is at work both in and beyond the universe. Charles
Hartshorne (1897–2000) and other process philosophers argue that
God is not a static being, but divine becoming. They also affirm
that God is dipolar, including both an abstract and static pole on
the one hand, and a dynamic and developing pole on the other.
While the abstract qualities of God, such as goodness and wisdom,
are immutable, there is a dynamic aspect of God that is changeable
and progresses as the world does. God grows in experiencing new
joys, in acquiring new knowledge of real developing events, and
in experiencing the values created over time by free agents in the
world. On this view, God would also have a timeless and a temporal
pole, the static pole being timeless and the dynamic pole being tem-
poral. Whatever the ontological makeup of God (substance, process,
or something other), the notion that God is dipolar, having both
immutable qualities but also experiencing intrinsic change, seems a
reasonable position, one that is in concord with much recent work
in philosophy and science.19
Other divine attributes could be explored as well, including sim-
plicity, incorporeality, omnipresence, and impassibility. But those
described above provide a sketch of some of the discussions occur-
ring in contemporary philosophical theology involving the nature
and attributes of God from the perspective of classical theism. In
the next section we will explore other perspectives of the nature
of Ultimate Reality, noting that the differences between them and
theism may not be as sharply defined as often thought.
Concepts of Ultimate Reality in Hinduism and Buddhism
Unlike the sacred writings of the Abrahamic faiths, which lack any
developed philosophical reflection on the nature of God, the sacred
texts of the Indian traditions are quite philosophical in nature. The
Vedas, the fundamental sacred writings of orthodox Hinduism, are
filled with explicitly philosophical musings and meditations regard-
ing Ultimate Reality (which is referred to as “Brahman”). As we will
see, they do not offer a clear and straightforward view of what that
reality is, though revered interpreters of these texts have presented
multiple interpretations throughout the centuries. There are other
Indian traditions, generally referred to as heterodox, that do not take
the Vedas as scripturally authoritative. One tradition, Buddhism, has
its own authoritative texts. In both cases, however, the sacred writ-
ings are the point de départ; they are understood to be fundamental
revealed truths on which further philosophical reflection is based (as
the Bible is for many Jewish and Christian philosophers). We begin
with Hinduism.
Hinduism
Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in recorded history, dat-
ing back more than five thousand years. To think of Hinduism as a
monolithic belief system would be a misunderstanding. In fact, to
refer to Hinduism as “a religion” is in some sense a misnomer, for
what is incorporated in the concept “Hinduism” engulfs many dis-
tinct belief systems, sacred practices, and worldviews. There are, for
example, theistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic forms
of Hinduism. As already noted, there are orthodox and heterodox
forms (in fact, many Hindus consider Buddhism to be a heterodox
form of Hinduism). Given this rich diversity, it is impossible to accu-
rately summarize Hindu thought on any particular matter, includ-
ing the nature of Ultimate Reality. For purposes of this chapter, we
will hone in on two schools of philosophical Hinduism that are fre-
quently discussed in philosophy of religion literature, both of which
fall within the Vedanta school of Indian thought, one of the six main
classical philosophical systems of the Indian traditions. Vedantists
are committed to the view that the Vedas are sacred, revealed, and
authoritative scriptures. They are also committed to the view that
Ultimate Reality, or Brahman, is in some sense identical with the
universe—indeed, with all of reality. At first glance it seems that

this understanding of Ultimate Reality is antithetical to the West-
ern view of God, for on the traditional Western view God and the
universe are completely separate and ontologically distinct realities.
Western philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas held that an effect is
both different from and similar to its cause. Since God is the cause of
the world, he argued, it must be different from God with respect to
that of which it is made (the world is material; God is immaterial or
spiritual). Yet Aquinas also affirmed an analogia entis, an analogy of
being between God and the world. Furthermore, the world consists
of causal powers, as does God. So the world is both analogous to God
and yet distinct from God. By contrast, many Indian philosophers
have held that the cause contains all of its effects; the effects are the
unfolding of what was already there in the cause. Since matter arises
from Brahman (matter eternally arises, Vedantists maintain), matter
must exist within the very being of Brahman.20 There are interpreta-
tive differences among Vedantins about what follows from this, and
we will now examine two major interpretations.
According to the Advaita Vedānta philosophical school of Hindu
thought, Ultimate Reality, indeed all of reality, is Brahman and
Brahman alone. While technically the Sanskrit term “Brahman” is
untranslatable into English, etymologically its root refers to growth,
expansion, breath, and a host of other related notions. It is gener-
ally utilized as a term for the ultimate, impersonal Absolute Real-
ity. A key figure espousing Advaita Vedānta was the eighth-century
Indian philosopher Sankara (c. 788–820 C.E.). “Brahman is,” he says,
“the reality—the one existence, absolutely independent of human
thought or idea. Because of the ignorance of our human minds,
the universe seems to be composed of diverse forms. It is Brahman
alone.”21 This is a form of Hindu Absolutism—the view that Ultimate
Reality is the undifferentiated Absolute. It is also a form of monism
in which there is only one reality, Brahman, that includes no defin-
able attributes and no internal diversity. Brahman is identical with all
that is. If Brahman is identical with all, and if this all has no plural-
ity or division within it, then Brahman is an undifferentiated whole.
The universe, then, and the various apparent distinctions of persons
and places, experiences and events, is consequently unreal. All appar-
ent characteristics within Brahman and between Brahman and the
world are ultimately illusory. This is true even of what appear to be
individual selves, such as you and me. An important Vedic passage

states that “Atman [the truest self] is Brahman.” Our deepest, truest
self is identical with Brahman. This is what the Advaitin believes.
Individuals, and indeed all apparently distinct objects, are under-
stood to be analogous to disrupted droplets of water in an eternal and
boundless ocean. In reality, all is one, and all is Brahman.22
While it is estimated that three-fourths of Hindu intellectuals
affirm an Absolutist view of Ultimate Reality, and this view has been
influential in the history of Hindu thought, it has never been widely
popular among the general population of Hindus.23 More com-
monly, the orthodox Hindu populace interprets the Vedas as affirm-
ing monotheism or polytheism. There are also prominent orthodox
Hindu scholars who have rejected the Advaitin view. These scholars
have asked such questions as: “Why are we not experiencing this
alleged undifferentiated unity with Brahman? Why do we believe so
strongly that we are separate, unique, individual entities, and that
the distinctions we experience between self and the other are real?
The Advaitin reply is that we begin in an unenlightened state due
to the deleterious effects of avidya, or ignorance, from which we are
infected by karma. Nevertheless, the Advaitin continues, the grand
illusion (maya) of duality that we experience, and the recurrences
of samsara (the cycle of death and rebirth), can be overcome by
advancing to an enlightened state whereby all apparent distinctions
between the individual self (and all else) and Brahman are expunged.
How is this enlightenment achieved? By moving beyond the rational
mind through following various paths, or Yogas.24 By engaging in the
right physical and mental yogic practices, one can escape the illusory
power of maya and achieve moksha, the enlightened realization that
reality is one, multiplicity is illusion, and only the undifferentiated
Absolute is true and real. Enlightenment may not be achieved in this
lifetime, though. Indeed, it may take many rebirths (reincarnations)
before the power of maya and the negative influences of avidya and
karma are fully expunged.
As with all systems of thought, there are apparent problems with
the Advaitin view. Perhaps most perplexingly, in what sense can the
atman, the “I,” one’s deepest self, be freed from anything if this self
is actually the unvarying, permanent Absolute? In what sense has
the atman escaped avidya and become enlightenment? Has the atman
changed in becoming enlightened? If so, how was it the unchanging
Absolute Brahman? Furthermore, if there are no distinctions in Brah-

man, then avidya is Brahman. If Brahman is real, then avidya is real.
But how can avidya be real if it is identical to Brahman and Brahman
is not ignorant? There seem to be deep incoherencies here.
These sorts of objections have been raised by a number of Vedantin
philosophers, perhaps most notably by one who affirmed another clas-
sical philosophical interpretation of the Hindu scriptures. Ramanuja
(1017–1137 C.E.) is one of the most influential philosophers from
the Indian subcontinent. He is the founder of a philosophical school
of Hindu thought known as qualified non-dualism (vishistadvaita).
Ramanuja rejected the monistic view of Sankara, using arguments
like those above to conclude that it is incoherent. He also argued that
denying all distinctions entails denying the role of the Vedas and
Upanishads. If there are no distinctions, then language itself is mean-
ingless, for it includes many distinctions (grammatical, semantical,
syntactical). But the sacred Hindu scriptures consist of language—
language that makes distinctions in its affirmations, including dis-
tinctions between the real and the unreal. Thus the Advaitin cannot
consistently appeal to the sacred scriptures as a guide to truth while
also affirming a view that denies their validity, their reality.
Unlike Sankara’s monism, then, Ramanuja’s view is a qualified non-
dualism. Brahman exists, and the world (matter and souls) also exists.
Brahman is not identical with the world, as Sankara maintained, but
yet Brahman is not ontologically separate from the world either, as
classical theists maintain. Brahman, the Supreme Self, is intimately
related to the world, but yet sovereignly stands above and beyond
the world. In an attempt to clarify his position, Ramanuja used the
metaphor of the world as the body of Brahman. A body is a thing that
is under the absolute control of soul, on his account; a body is utterly
dependent on the soul for its being and its becoming. The body-soul
relation is thus similar to the God-world relation for Ramanuja. So
rather than being a theistic view (in the traditional sense), or a pan-
theistic view (in the orthodox Hindu sense), it is more accurate to
describe Ramanuja’s view as panentheism.
There have been many non-Hindu panentheists, including Ploti-
nus, G. W. F. Hegel, and Meister Eckhart. It is difficult to provide a
concise definition of panentheism that captures the different con-
cepts regarded as “panentheistic” by such thinkers, but a common
element among them is that God is in all things but yet beyond them.
(“panentheism” is from the Greek pan + en + theos: “everything in

God.”) For Ramanuja, the universe is the body of Brahman in that it is
the material expression of Brahman. He is not claiming that Brahman
is limited by or bound to the world as we are limited by and bound
to our physical bodies. Brahman is transcendent, perfect, and without
limitations. Rather, the world is dependent on Brahman, and Brahman
accomplishes his purposes through the world, just as (he believed) the
human body is dependent on the self, and the self accomplishes its
purposes through the body. As he puts it:
This is the fundamental relationship between the Supreme and

the universe of individual selves and physical entities. It is the
relationship of soul and body, the inseparable relationship of
the supporter and the supported, that of the controller and the
controlled, and that of the principal entity and the subsidiary
entity. That which takes possession of another entity entirely as
the latter’s support, controller and principal, is called the soul of
that latter entity. That which, in its entirety, depends upon, is
controlled by and subserves another and is therefore its insepa-
rable mode, is called the body of the latter. Such is the relation
between the individual self and its body. Such being the rela-
tionship, the supreme Self, having all as its body, is denoted by
all terms.25
Consistent with traditional Vedantin thought, Ramanuja affirms that

Brahman is sat-chit-ananda: fundamental reality, absolute conscious-
ness, and eternal bliss. But unlike Sankara, Ramanuja holds that
Ultimate Reality is one in which Brahman is not identical to Atman;
Brahman is a personal Reality, the supreme person (paramatman), who
“is denoted the Supreme Consciousness, who is by inherent nature
free from all imperfections and possesses hosts of auspicious qualities
which are countless and of matchless excellence.”26 For Ramanuja
God is, in a sense, dipolar, for there is on the one hand the Supreme
Self, which is perfect and unchanging, and there is on the other hand
the material manifestations of God vis-à-vis the material universe (or
universes) and all that is contained within it.
In sum, Advaitins and theistic (or panentheistic) Vedantins agree
that God (Brahman) is the greatest possible reality, and they agree
that the Vedas are the authoritative revelations of Brahman. But they
disagree on precisely how to understand that reality. These differ-

ences are grounded in philosophical disagreements and variations in
scriptural hermeneutics. Sankara’s Advaitin view of Ultimate Reality
is arguably worlds apart from the classical theism of the Abrahamic
faiths. But Ramanuja’s vishishtadvaitin view is not radically dissimilar
to those theists, or panentheists, who affirm that God has two aspects
or poles—that God is in some respects eternal, omniscient, omnipo-
tent, and immutable, and that God is also in some respects temporal,
growing in knowledge, limited in power, and mutable.
Buddhism
Buddhism emerged from within the Hindu tradition in northern
India in roughly the fifth century B.C.E., tracing its origin to Siddhar-
tha Gautama, the Buddha. As already noted, it is viewed by many
Hindus as heterodox Hinduism. Unlike orthodox Hinduism, Ulti-
mate Reality in Buddhism, at least in one major school developed
by Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 C.E.) and referred to as Madhyamika (the
school of the “Middle Way”), is neither the unchanging Absolute of
Advaita Vedanta, nor the panentheistic reality of Vishishtadvaita, nor
the personal God of classical theism. Rather, it is sunyata, which is
often translated as “emptiness” or “the void.”27
It may seem that emptiness and Ultimate Realty are contradictory
concepts, for how can emptiness be something, let alone Ultimate
Reality? But Buddhists of this school affirm a relational ontology. All
that exists does so only in relation to other things, and all things orig-
inate out of a self-sustaining causal nexus in which each link arises
from another. This is the Buddhist doctrine of inter-dependent aris-
ing (pratitya-sumutpada), and it is an important element of Buddhist
metaphysics. Everything is dependent on and connected to other
things. Nothing in the nexus is independent, and nothing comes
from nowhere; everything arises from something else. A daughter, for
example, exists only in relation to her mother, and a mother to her
daughter. And the daughter comes from the mother (and the father,
of course), who herself arose from her mother. On this Buddhist view,
there is no thing or substance that has independent existence.28 All
apparent things—galaxies, mountains, trees, animals, people—may
seem to be independent substances, but they are not. Rather, they are
abstractions of events or processes that are dependent on other events
or processes. Indeed, the notion of a substantial self is completely
illusory. Anatta (or anatman) is the term used to denote the doctrine
of no-self.
So why the illusion? Because of ignorance (avidya), we continue
to experience the deleterious effects of karma, which keep us within
the cycle of cause and effect, death and rebirth, and illusion. For
Nagarjuna, the way to escape the illusory world of substantial per-
manence and rebirth is to recognize sunyata and to understand that
there are no finite or infinite substances. Doing so is to break through
the illusion of the phenomenal world, escaping the cycle of rebirth
and experiencing nirvana, the blowing out or extinguishing of the
egoistic self and false desires, annihilating all karma, and entering the
indescribable state of ultimate bliss. The path to understanding and
enlightenment, for Nagarjuna and the Madhyamikans (and indeed
for all Buddhists), is the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.
For Nagarjuna, and for many forms of Buddhism, belief in God
is not overtly held. In some cases, the existence of God is patently
denied. And there is ongoing debate among Buddhist scholars about
the meaning of nirvana, whether it is absolute cessation or an inef-
fable transcendental state. But there is, nonetheless, the widely held
affirmation that nirvana, while ultimately beyond human thought, is
real and has the nature of wisdom, compassion, and bliss. And there
is the goal of realizing and attaining this nirvanic state. So Ultimate
Reality for the Madhyamikan is not nothing. Indeed, it is something
worth spending one’s life (or many lives) attaining. Furthermore, hav-
ing the nature of wisdom, compassion, and bliss, it is not so dissimilar
to the sat-chit-ananda of the Vedantins, and in some ways to God.
So once again, while at first glance the Buddhist notion of Ultimate
Reality seems essentially different from the Abrahamic and Hindu
views, upon further inspection it turns out to be not so dissimilar.
Conclusion
In this chapter we examined several different concepts of God/Ultimate

Reality. At first glance there seemed to be a wide chasm between
Eastern and Western notions. But, it was argued, there may well exist
a unifying conception among some forms of them of a fundamental
reality that, while transcending the material world, is also immanent
with that world and not wholly ontologically distinct from it. It is
a reality that is maximally great, absolute consciousness, without
beginning or end, and whose fundamental nature does not change.

But it is also a reality that in some sense manifests itself, or makes
itself present, in and through the material world, underlying all that
is, and yet existing beyond it. Different terms are used in reference
to it, and different metaphors are offered to describe it: maximally
perfect being; sat-chit-ananda; wisdom, compassion, bliss. Considered
in this manner some of the major differences appear to collapse and a
conceptual convergence begins to emerge.
The question that naturally follows is whether there are reasons to
believe that such a reality, in and beyond the material world, actually
exists. That is the focus of the next chapter.
For Further Reading
Arvind Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta. Pennsylvania

State University Press, 1995.
Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. Clarendon Press, 1993.
Keith Ward, Concepts of God Oneworld, 1998.
Edward Wierenga, The Nature of God: An Enquiry into Divine Attributes. Cornell
University Press, 1989.
Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. Routledge,
1989.
3
Arguments about the Existence
of God
Historically many people (religious and non-religious) have believed

in the existence of God. Or, if not God, they have believed in an Ulti-
mate Reality of some sort that transcends the material universe. Even
with the incredible advances of science and technology over the past
few hundred years, there is still widespread belief in the existence
of a transcendent reality. In fact, recent advances in science—most
notably in physics and cosmology—have infused new life into this
ancient topic. Traditional arguments for the existence of God have
been rethought, and some of them have evolved from antiquated rel-
ics to contemporary defenses of the rationality of belief in God. In
this chapter, two of these arguments will be explored. But it is not
only arguments for the existence of God that have experienced revival;
arguments against the reasonableness of belief in a transcendent real-
ity, in particular the God of theism, are also on the rise. To one of
these arguments—the argument from evil—an entire chapter in this
book has been devoted. Two additional arguments will be examined
in this chapter.
Arguments for God
Not all theists agree that God’s existence can be demonstrated

through such means, and some even affirm that no rational account
of God’s existence should even be attempted. Some theists, however,
have gone in the other direction, maintaining that there are rational
means for proving that God exists. Still others assert that God’s exist-
ence can be plausibly argued for, but not proven.
I believe that theists and atheists alike can be epistemically justi-
fied in their beliefs about God. That is, the theist can be reasonable
38
Arguments about the Existence of God 39
in affirming theism, and the atheist can be reasonable in affirm-

ing atheism. The world in which we live is religiously (theistically)
ambiguous. Most agree that God’s existence, if there is a God, is not
as obvious as it could be. If there is a God, God’s reality remains rela-
tively hidden. Believers and unbelievers generally agree. The biblical
psalmist, for example, laments: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1); “Rouse
yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off for-
ever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction
and oppression?” (Psalm 44:23–24). It is not that the psalmist is ques-
tioning the reality of God, but rather bemoaning the fact that God
is often silent and hidden. This is not an uncommon complaint for
believers; even Mother Teresa experienced what she described as the
absence of God.1
Nonbelievers have gone further, arguing that the lack of a manifest
God provides evidence that there is no God. Atheist philosopher Frie-
drich Nietzsche articulated the point:
A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even
make sure his creatures understand his intentions – could that be
a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to
persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of man-
kind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds
out frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature
of truth? Would he not be a cruel god if he possessed the truth
and could behold mankind miserably tormenting itself over the
truth?
A hidden God, Nietzsche believed, would be most cruel. His conclu-

sion, of course, was that there is no such God.2
The phrase “hiddenness of God” has a number of meanings. It could
refer to the absence of meaningful awareness of God and God’s revela-
tion in the world or in one’s life, as both the Psalmist and Nietzsche
seemed to demur, though with different conclusions. But it might
also refer specifically to a lack of objective evidence for the reality of
God; if God exists, it seems that God’s presence should be reasonably
evident to anyone searching for God. Both of these uses of the phrase
raise uniquely important concerns worthy of further consideration,
but it is to the latter that this chapter is specifically directed.
Teleological Argument
In his Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant made the follow-
ing statement: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increas-
ing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect
upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within
me.”3 Kant is not alone in being awe-inspired by the “starry heav-
ens” above (or the moral law within). But why are they so inspiring
after all? Is it the orderliness that creates wonderment? Is it the
beauty, the magnificence? Is it a lucky accident that human beings,
conscious agents that we are, experience the world in this discrimi-
nating and resplendent manner—where ideas themselves somehow
match the external world as it is? Or does it point to something
beyond? A number of philosophers in the ancient and medieval
periods of Western history believed that the natural world does
point to a reality beyond—to an intelligent, wise, majestic, pur-
poseful creator who brought this cosmos into being and who did
so with intention, purpose, and planning. Some even crafted argu-
ments utilizing various properties of the natural world as evidence
for such a purposive and intelligent designer. One such argument
can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, primarily to several works
of Plato. I am referring to the design, or teleological, argument—
the term being derived from the Greek words telos (purpose, end,
or goal) and logos (reason or rational account). This form of argu-
ment has a variety of iterations, but the common theme among
most of them is the attempt to identify some feature of the natural
world that provides evidence of purpose or design, and from these
features to conclude that the existence of God provides the best
explanation of them.
While the argument type has a long history, undoubtedly its most
famous defender is the English philosopher William Paley (1743–
1805) and his book, Natural Theology. In his version of the argument,
Paley utilizes the analogy of a watch and argues that just as a watch
implies a watchmaker, so the world (being like a watch) implies a
worldmaker. The evidence from the natural world that Paley primar-
ily cited had to do with the complex structures of plants and animals.
The argument sounded persuasive at the time, but it was soon rebut-
ted by the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution. While there
are still advocates of the teleological argument who use biology as
evidence for a designer, these thinkers (most of whom are adherents
of the intelligent design, or ID, movement) are fairly small in num-

ber, and the wider scientific community generally repudiates one of
the central elements commonly utilized in their design argument:
irreducible complexity.
Nevertheless, a very different version of the teleological argument
has gained wider acceptance. This version of the argument is based
on recent work in physics and cosmology that seems to point to the
universe being finely tuned for conscious life. The question then
raised becomes, “Why is the universe the way it is, with parameters
that appear to be finely tuned for life?” In response to this question,
there are three basic explanatory options: chance, necessity, and pur-
posive design. Given this trichotomous matrix, a contemporary tele-
ological argument for the existence of God can be presented in the
following syllogism:
1 The apparent fine-tuning of the universe either happened by
chance, necessity, or purposive design.
2 The apparent fine-tuning of the universe did not happen by
chance or necessity.
3 Therefore, the fine-tuning of the universe happened by purposive
design.
According to one version of this argument, it is noted that the fun-
damental laws and parameters of physics and the initial conditions
of the universe are extraordinarily balanced, or “finely tuned,” to the
right conditions for life to occur and flourish on this planet, and per-
haps elsewhere in the universe. It is then argued that it is reasonable
to affirm that such conditions and parameters were established by an
intelligent and purposive designer. Robin Collins, one such defender
of this fine-tuning teleological argument, asserts that “the initial
conditions of the universe are balanced on a ‘razor’s edge’” for the
existence of life in the universe. He concludes that this offers strong
evidence for belief in a designer of the universe.4 Dozens of examples
of such conditions have been proposed by adherents of this argu-
ment. For example, according to the calculations of one leading the-
oretical physicist, if gravity had been stronger or weaker by one part
in 1040, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This
would make carbon-based life impossible.5 Others have noted that if
the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would
be impossible for a variety of reasons.6 Still others have pointed out
that if the initial expansion of the Big Bang had differed in strength
by as little as one part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly
collapsed back on itself or expanded too rapidly for stars to form.
In either case, all forms of life would likely be impossible. (As John
Jefferson Davis points out, an accuracy of one part in 1060 can be
compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of
the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting
that target.)7 The various constants, including those just mentioned,
are apparently independent of one another. Specifically, one does
not entail the other, adding even more improbability regarding the
existence of life into the equation. To put it concisely, contempo-
rary physics has demonstrated that life in this universe seems very
improbable.
It is sometimes argued that positing a purposive creator to explain
the apparently fine-tuned universe is an unwarranted move, for it
simply shifts the debate back one step. For if we place God as the
answer to the origin and makeup of the universe, we can then ask for
an explanation of the origin and makeup of God. David Hume raised
this sort of objection:
How shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the cause of that Being

whom you suppose the Author of Nature . . . ? Have we not the
same reason to trace that ideal world into another ideal world or
new intelligent principle? But if we stop and go no farther, why
go so far? Why not stop at the material world? How can we sat-
isfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what
satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remem-
ber the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. [The
Indian philosopher said that the world was resting on the back of
an elephant, and the elephant was resting on the back of a great
tortoise, and the tortoise on the back of he knew not what.] It
was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the pre-
sent world rests upon some ideal world, this ideal world must rest
upon some other, and so on without end. It were better, therefore,
never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it
to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it
to be God; and the sooner we arrive at the Divine Being, so much
the better. When you get one step beyond the mundane system,
you only excite an inquisitive humor which it is impossible ever
to satisfy.8
More recently, Richard Dawkins raises a related objection:
The theist says that God, when setting up the universe, tuned the
fundamental constants of the universe so that each one lay in its
Goldilocks Zone [that zone which is just right for permitting and
yielding life] for the production of life. It is as though God had . . .
knobs that he could twiddle, and he carefully tuned each knob to
its Goldilocks value. As ever, the theists’ answer is deeply unsatis-
fying, because it leaves the existence of God unexplained.9
In other words, even if we explain the apparent fine-tuning of the

world as the product of an intelligent and purposive creator, that is no
answer because we are still left with something unexplained—namely,
God. If we enter the fray of needing an explanation for apparent
design in the universe, this process will continue on indefinitely. So
why add hypotheses unnecessarily? Why not simply utilize Ockham’s
razor and cut the explanatory process of the universe as it is?
This rebuttal to the design argument does not seem particularly prof-
itable. While it may be that in positing a God as an explanation for
the universe there is further need to seek an explanation for God, that
does not answer the question at hand. The question at hand is this:
“What explains the apparent fine-tuning of this universe?” The answer
is that God—a transcendent reality that is intelligent, purposive, and
so on—does provide an explanation, whether or not God is in need of
explanation. Consider this analogy. Suppose a person is spelunking,
or cave diving, in the underwater caverns of the Yucatán Peninsula in
Mexico. The caves in this region of the world are extremely complex
with anastomotic interconnected passages. Suppose she finds in one of
these passages what appear to be circular holes carved into some of the
stalagmites that run up into and beyond the cave ceiling. As she peers
into the holes, she sees ducts running up the stalagmites, and in some
of them she can see light from the sky outside the cave. After carefully
examining the holes and ducts, she concludes that some sort of carv-
ing tools were used to construct them. Now, suppose she exits the cave
and shares her findings with a friend. She concludes that someone con-
structed these chambers for some purpose, perhaps to create an air pas-
sage for cave dwellers at an earlier time. Now suppose her friend replies
in the following manner: “Don’t be silly. It is not a valid conclusion to
suggest that someone intentionally created these apparent aqueducts.
For in order to believe that, you would need to explain how such per-
sons themselves were purposely created. But then you would need to
explain how that happened, and so on ad infinitum.” The problem
with this reply is that surely one does not need to explain how a person
who carved the ducts was herself designed before one can legitimately
conclude that there was such a person who carved them. So the notion
that the best explanation of the existence of the universe is a purposive
designer is not an unreasonable one on this count.
Besides the existence of a divine designer, what are the other
explanatory options for why our universe exists as it does? One alter-
native is that there simply is no explanation. The universe just sprang
into existence by chance (if it did indeed spring into existence, as
the standard Big Bang model seems to indicate) without any cause
whatsoever; there is no reason or purpose or explanation for it, and
there is no need to posit a reason or explanation. Bertrand Russell
held such a view. He argued that while it is reasonable to seek causes
for events within the universe, it is not so with respect to the cause of
the universe itself. It just is, and is in no further need of explanation.
While this answer is a possible one, it seems to me to be giving up too
early on the search for explanation. Indeed, such a proposal appears to
undermine the very practice of science. While chance as a part of any
scientific theory is not always out of bounds, it generally is not given
serious scientific consideration. In the practice of science, whatever
exists needs a cause for its existence. Even in evolutionary theory, “ran-
dom” variation based on mutation is not understood to entail abso-
lute chance. Rather, mutations are random in the sense that whether a
given mutation occurs or not is generally unrelated to how useful that
mutation would be to the organism. Mutations arise in strict conform-
ity with more fundamental laws of nature. Even with the Bohr/Heisen-
berg thesis (whereby some quantum events happen without a cause),
which seems at first glance to support the view that certain events occur
without a reason and by chance, on deeper inspection one finds that
there are specifiable laws of probability that describe these occurrences.
A second alternative is that the universe exists by necessity. The
physicist Steven Weinberg seems to hold such a view.10 One iteration
of this position is that there is only one set of quantum laws that is
logically consistent, and thus only one set that could possibly exist. So
our universe is necessary in that it is the only one possible. The laws
of physics, and the constants and initial conditions of the universe,
exist as they are necessarily; they could be no other way for a universe
to exist. On this account there is no further explanation for why they
are necessarily as they are, but no further explanation than necessity
itself is needed. One could add the further point, sometimes referred
to as the Anthropic Principle, that if another universe did exist but
did not have the properties requisite for consciousness, no conscious
beings (such as us) would be there to know about it. Since we are here
and conscious of our existence and the existence of the universe, it
must have had the right conditions and parameters necessary for life.
This is certainly an imaginable explanation of the existence of our
universe. But it does seem that other universes could possibly exist—
ones that have conditions and parameters very different from ours.
In fact, it is currently fashionable in cosmology to posit a multiverse
theory. If there are many universes, perhaps a very large number of
them, then the probability of one of them being just right for life
is increased. In any case, there is currently some support in physics
for string theory and inflationary cosmology—both of which are rel-
evant to the many-universes hypotheses—though there is currently
no hard experimental evidence in support of those hypotheses. They
are at this time provisional and highly speculative.11
But even if there are many universes, the probability of the exist-
ence of a universe like ours is quite low (Roger Penrose suggests that
it is 1 in 10123), and its existence is due either to chance (in which
case we are back to a chance account), purpose, or to a necessity
within fundamental quantum laws. But this type of necessity regard-
ing fundamental laws raises further questions. For example, what is
the nature of these laws? Are they physical realities, and, if so, where
exactly are they? Are they more akin to non-spatial mathematical
laws? If they are, one wonders how non-spatial, quasi-mathematical
laws could usher into being spatial, physical universes. Have we now
moved beyond scientific questions into metaphysical ones? It seems
that we have.
To sum up what’s been covered so far, there are three basic options
to account for the existence of our universe: chance, necessity, and
purposive design. Unfortunately, there is no hard scientific or philo-
sophical proof for either of them. But to the surprise of many scien-
tists and philosophers, cutting-edge work in physics and cosmology
has not brought about the demise of the teleological argument. To
the contrary, it has breathed new life into it.
Cosmological Argument
A second major argument for the existence of God is cosmological
in nature. Derived from the Greek terms cosmos (world or universe)
and logos (reason or rational account), this form of argument has
also been propounded by philosophers for centuries. There are vari-
ous versions of the cosmological argument spanning the centuries,
but they all have a common theme: they begin by focusing on some
empirical fact about the universe from which it (allegedly) follows
that something outside the universe must have brought it into being.
The universe needs a cause or reason or explanation for its existence.
The person who is probably best known in the West for offering
a cosmological type argument is the medieval Catholic monk and
scholar, Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274 C.E.). In his work the Summa
Theologiae, Aquinas offers five concise arguments for God’s exist-
ence, four of which are cosmological in nature. He did not himself
invent the cosmological argument; it too goes back at least as far
as the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (c. 428–c. 348 B.C.E.),12 and
was more fully developed by medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
thinkers. In Aquinas’s Summa we find his cosmological arguments
delineated quite concisely; in fact, they are all found in less than two
pages.13 One of these arguments, generally known as the “third way”
(since it is the third of his five arguments) or the “argument from
contingency,” is spelled out by Aquinas in one paragraph:
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs
thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not
to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and
consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is
impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible
not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is pos-
sible not to be, then at one time there could have been noth-
ing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would
be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only
begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one
time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible
for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now noth-
ing would be in existence—which is absurd. Therefore, not all
beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the
existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either
has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible

to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their neces-
sity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to
efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence
of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving
it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This
all men speak of as God.14
The basic argument can be rephrased and presented in the following

three steps:15
1 There are contingent things in the world; that is, there are things
in the world that begin to exist at some point, are caused to exist
by some other thing, could cease to exist at some point, and could
have never existed at all.
2 But not all things can be contingent things, for in that case noth-
ing would now exist since what begins to exist does so through
what already exists (i.e., nothing cannot cause something to
exist).
3 Since contingent things do exist, there must be some non-
contingent, or necessary, thing, that exists. That is, there must be
some thing (or being) that did not begin to exist at some point, is
not caused to exist by some other thing, will not cease to exist at
some point, could not have not existed, and that caused all con-
tingent things to exist. We call this necessary thing (or being) God.
There is a clear logical flow to the argument. Let us then examine
each of the steps.
The first premise is widely held by philosophers and physicists
today. Most agree that the universe consists of contingent things
(though the term “contingent” is out of fashion). Consider this
example. The computer with which this chapter is being written is a
contingent thing. It began to exist, was caused to exist by some other
thing (many other things, in this case), will eventually cease to exist,
and could have never existed (suppose prior to the production of this
computer the factory in which it was being constructed burned to
the ground). There are many such things in the world, so there are
contingent things in the world. The first premise, then, seems reason-
able enough.
But what about the second premise? Is it the case that not all
things can be contingent things? Aquinas argues that if all things are
contingent, then nothing could have come to exist since there would
have been no originating cause by which to bring about the existence
of anything. Arguing further, since contingent things are things that
might not exist, then they are not necessary things; their existence
is a possible existence, not a necessary one. But not all existence can
be possible existence, for what is merely possible does not account
for what is actual. For example, if some thing z was caused by some
thing y, and thing y was caused by thing x, and thing x was caused by
thing w, and so on, it seems that the series itself is a dependent one,
regardless of how far back the causal chain goes. In other words, if all
of the things in a series are contingent things (i.e., things dependent
on other things), it seems that the sum total of the series is also con-
tingent. The following, then, is a legitimate question to ask: If every
thing in a series of contingent things needs a cause for its existence,
how can the series taken as a whole not also need a cause?
Thus, as the conclusion of the argument states, an outside cause
of the contingent series—one that is itself uncaused and grounds the
contingent series—is needed to explain the existence of the series.
The diagram below is intended to highlight this point.
Horizontal causal series (contingent

. . . →a→b→c→d→e→f→g→ . . .
things)
Vertical ground (uncaused cause;

A
necessary thing):
Defenders of the argument from contingency maintain that this

uncaused ground of the contingent causal series is what is referred to
when we use the word “God.” Therefore, God exists.
Does the argument prove that God exists? It certainly does not prove
that God exists if by “prove” one means that it indubitably demon-
strates the existence of God. There are no proofs of this kind for the
existence of God. But is it a good argument? That is, does it provide
a reasonable case that there is a God? One rejoinder to the argument
is that the causal series simply does not need an explanation; it just
is. Bertrand Russell argued this way. He maintained that we derive
our understanding of a cause from our observations of what happens
in the world. To then posit a necessary cause is to unjustifiably go
beyond those observations. As he put it: “I see no reason whatsoever

to suppose that the total has any cause whatsoever . . . I should say
that the universe is just there, and that’s all.”16
Now one could reply to this rejoinder by claiming that since each
event in the series needs a cause, the series as a whole must also need
cause, for the series is nothing more than the total summation of its
constituent (contingent) parts. But isn’t this committing the fallacy
of composition—the error of assuming that what is true of a member
of a group is true for the group as a whole? Consider this example.
Though each of the grains of sand on a beach is tiny, it does not fol-
low that the beach is tiny. So, too, the reply goes, while each of the
parts that make up the universe is contingent, it does not follow that
the whole is contingent.
Does this sandy beach analogy apply? Consider this further exam-
ple. Since each of the grains of sand on a beach is sand, the beach is
a sand beach. That is, since all of the individual parts that make up
this beach are sand, the beach as a whole is sand. So too with the uni-
verse; since each of the parts that make it up is contingent, the whole
must be contingent as well. Which analogy is more appropriate to
the argument? It seems to me that the latter is the more applicable
analogy. Even if every contingent thing in the universe is caused by
some other thing, and even if this contingent series has no begin-
ning, the series as a whole is a contingent one. The question at hand
is not, “Why does this thing or that thing exist?” but rather, “Why is
there a series of contingent things at all?” The causes involved here
are all members of the series itself, and as such they are merely ele-
ments of what needs to be explained.
In his celebrated work, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David
Hume (1711–1776) argued that the uniting of parts into a whole
explains the whole. He offers the example of several countries unit-
ing into one kingdom. This uniting, he argues, is accomplished by
the arbitrary act of the mind.
But the whole, you say, wants a cause. I answer that the uniting of
these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct coun-
tries into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body,
is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no
influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the particu-
lar causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of
matter, I should think it very unreasonable should you afterwards

ask me what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently
explained in explaining the parts.17
It is true that sometimes an explanation of the parts of a thing explains

the whole of which the parts consist. As his example demonstrates,
an explanation for “Why is this a kingdom?” can be “Because several
countries united.” Yet at a deeper level this reply is incomplete. It
seems reasonable to seek the causes for why the countries were, in
fact, united together to make the kingdom in the first instance, for
kingdoms are the types of things that involve the uniting of coun-
tries for specified reasons. So Hume’s analogy of kingdoms, as well
as the one about the members of a body, do not appear to provide
the comprehensive answer to the cosmological argument that Hume
thought. To conclude that the universe as a whole doesn’t need a
cause but rather explains itself, it seems that one would have to
affirm that the contingent individuals of which the series consists
also do not need causes, but rather that they explain themselves. But
this is to affirm that they are not contingent after all. The contingent
series, as a contingent series, needs an explanation that is not itself
contingent, but necessary.
Another important criticism of this third way argument was offered
by Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, given our epistemic limita-
tions, anything could turn out to be necessary. So there is no reason
to conclude that God—the all-perfect being ascribed by the theis-
tic religions—is the thing that is necessary. To come to this conclu-
sion, Kant argued, one would need to add the ontological argument.
And this argument, he maintained, has its own set of intractable and
insoluble difficulties.18
The conclusion of this version of the cosmological argument is
that God is the cause—God is the necessary being. But is Kant right?
Why must the necessary thing be God? The term “God” entails many
attributes that do not follow from the conclusion of this argument
about necessity. Maybe the necessary being is more akin to Aristotle’s
unmoved mover—an impersonal reality of pure actuality. Or per-
haps it is more akin to Brahman—Ultimate Reality as understood in
the Hindu traditions. Or maybe it is more like pure energy, in some
form of which we are not currently familiar, and thus not an imma-
terial or spiritual reality that transcends the material universe after
all (remember that e = mc2). Such views of a necessary being are quite
removed from the personal, loving, interactive God proffered by the
major theistic religions.
I think this is a plausible objection. So the third way argument, even
if successful, should not conclude with “God exists,” if by “God” one
means the God of the theistic religions. Nevertheless, if successful it
does point to a reality beyond what is commonly understood to be
the material universe, and certainly beyond the contingent physical
world as we know it.
Finally, Stephen Hawking has offered another objection to the
claim that God is needed to explain the existence of the universe. “So
long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a crea-
tor. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no
boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would
simply be. What place, then, for a creator?”19 Now the problem here
is that the version of the cosmological argument presented above,
unlike its cousin the kalam cosmological argument, has nothing to do
with the beginning of the universe. In fact, Aquinas thought that one
could not prove philosophically that the universe had a beginning.
Aquinas did believe the universe had a beginning, but he based that
belief on biblical revelation and on theological reasons, not philo-
sophical ones. This form of cosmological argument is about the need
for explaining the nature and existence of the contingent universe as
a whole, not about whether there was a beginning to space-time. So
Hawking’s objection is not applicable to it.
To sum up, the third way cosmological argument is often taken to
be an antiquated relic. But while its origin does stretch back many
centuries, and while it certainly is no proof for the existence of God,
this version of it, at least, remains an enthralling if not formidable
piece of reasoning for a reality beyond the physical universe as we
understand it today.
Arguments against Theism
So far we have examined two of the major arguments for the exist-
ence of God. But what about arguments against the existence of God?
Besides the problems for theism raised by the reality of evil (which
will be explored in the next chapter), and rebuttals to the arguments
for God examined above, there are further arguments against theism
and for atheism. We will explore two of them in this chapter, the
first having to do with whether theism is logically coherent, and
the second offering scientific evidence that God, as understood in
the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, does not exist.
The Incoherence of Theism

A central philosophical challenge to theism is the claim that the very
concept of God is incoherent—that the attributes ascribed to God
are logically inconsistent when taken collectively, or that individu-
ally various attributes entail logical contradictions. Much of this criti-
cism has focused on God as understood in Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, but it is also relevant to theistic strands found within forms
of Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and African and
Native American religions. As noted earlier, not all theistic philoso-
phers have maintained that theism can be rationally understood or
justified. Fideists, such as Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), hold that
religious faith does not need rational justification or the support of
rational arguments. For some fideists, in fact, attempting to prove
or justify one’s religious faith may even be an indication of a lack of
faith. But for many philosophers, including me, demonstrating the
coherence and rationality of one’s religious beliefs is an important
matter, especially regarding such fundamental beliefs as the nature of
Ultimate Reality. If it can be shown that one’s understanding of God
is incoherent, then such a belief should be rejected, for if there are
reasons to believe that theism is incoherent then theistic belief is in a
significant sense undermined.
To narrow the scope, we will focus on classical theism—in this con-
text, as delineated in the last chapter, the view that God is metaphysi-
cally ultimate and transcendent (that all else depends on God but
God depends on nothing), and that God is omniscient, omnipotent,
and perfectly good. The logical consistency of the divine attributes
of classical theism has been challenged by both adherents and non-
adherents of theism. We will focus on two in this chapter: omnisci-
ence and omnipotence (a third attribute, God’s being perfectly good,
will be addressed in the chapter on evil). First, then, consider the
divine attribute of omniscience that we encountered in the previous
chapter. According to classical theism, God has complete or maxi-
mal knowledge. But as we saw, a philosophical problem arises when
considering future contingents. If God knows what one will freely do
in the future, tomorrow say, then it is the case now that the person
will indeed do that thing tomorrow. But how can one be free not to
do that thing tomorrow if it is true now that he will in fact do that
thing tomorrow? And how can God know future free events? There
are various replies to the puzzles raised by future contingents, and we
examined several of them. For those theists who affirm a compatibil-
ist view of free will, there is no problem here. But some philosophers
(myself among them) affirm a libertarian view of free will whereby
free will is incompatible with determinism. In fact, as we will see in
the next chapter, incompatibilism is one of the primary positions uti-
lized to defend theism given the reality of evil. Furthermore, theistic
compatibilism raises other thorny problems, such as how a perfectly
good God could be the efficient cause of all the evil in the world. But
in affirming incompatibilism, it becomes more difficult to endorse
divine omniscience in the traditional sense, for how could God know
an undetermined and emergent future?
The criticisms of the classical understanding of omniscience are
formidable, and they have driven many theists to reject this attrib-
ute of classical theism. Nevertheless, an understanding of maximal
knowledge need not include exhaustive knowledge of future contin-
gents. If one makes this move, theism is thus saved from incoherence
by rethinking what being omniscient actually means.20 While this is
not a major victory for atheism, it certainly is a reproof of the clas-
sical concept of God, and one that theists should carefully consider.
Next is the divine attribute of omnipotence. Many have argued that
omnipotence and moral perfection are contradictory attributes. For
example, if God is omnipotent and morally perfect, then evil should
not exist. But evil does exist, so God, if God exists, must either be
morally imperfect or not omnipotent. Since we will discuss God and
evil in a later chapter, it will not be addressed here. Another recurrent
objection, though, is referred to as the Stone Paradox (or the Paradox
of Omnipotence). The argument is straightforward. An omnipotent
being, as traditionally understood, is one that can bring about any-
thing. But if such a being is not limited in what it could create, then
it could generate a stone that could not be lifted. But in that case, the
allegedly omnipotent being could not lift it, so the being would not
be omnipotent. On the other hand, if the allegedly omnipotent being
could not make such a stone, then it would not be omnipotent either,
for there would be something it could not do. To state the problem
differently, (1) Either God (if God exists) can create a stone that he
cannot lift, or God cannot create a stone that he cannot lift. (2) If
God can create a stone that he cannot lift, God is not omnipotent.
(3) If God cannot create a stone that he cannot lift, then God is not
omnipotent. (4) Therefore, God (if God exists) is not omnipotent.21
A number of replies can be offered to this paradox. As we saw in
the previous chapter, René Descartes bit the bullet, as it were, and
maintained that God could do anything. He even affirmed that “God
could have brought it about . . . that it was not true that twice four
make eight.”22 On Descartes’s view, the Stone Paradox vanishes, but at
what price? If an omnipotent being could make contradictory claims
be true, then an omnipotent being could make it the case that it both
exists and does not exist, that it could be both infinitely good and
infinitely evil simultaneously, and so on. Surely this is an incoherent
view if ever there was one! No wonder virtually all philosophers and
theologians in the history of Western thought have rejected it.
Some philosophers have argued that the paradox assumes an incor-
rect definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, they maintain, does
not mean that God can do anything. Rather, God can do anything
that is possible according to God’s nature. God cannot perform logical
impossibilities because God is a logical being; God cannot perform
evil acts because God is a morally perfect being; and so one. Con-
trary to Descartes, then, God cannot perform logical or mathematical
absurdities. God is limited by God’s own nature, but this does not
contradict God’s being omnipotent.
Still others have concluded that the notion of omnipotence as tra-
ditionally defined is flawed and must be redefined if the concept of
God is to remain reasonable. One especially robust case against the
classical view of omnipotence was provided by the process philoso-
pher and theologian Charles Hartshorne, whom we met in a previ-
ous chapter.23 Some of his criticisms, it seems to me, are insightful
and warranted. One example is that the classical notion of omnipo-
tence entailed a tyrannical God. God was understood to decide and
totally determine every detail of the world. This left no room for
the free actions of persons other than God. It was absolute power,
and it was tyrannical power. Quoting Alfred North Whitehead,
classical theologians “gave unto God the properties that belonged
unto Caesar.”24 This was no loving God to worship, but a despot to
be feared. The world God created, on this account, was not one of
freedom, opportunity, dynamism, decision-making, and soul devel-

opment. Rather, it was a static, cold, deterministic place in which
all events and things are absolutely controlled. Hartshorne aptly
responds to this view: “No worse falsehood was ever perpetrated
than the traditional concept of omnipotence. It is a piece of uncon-
scious blasphemy, condemning God to a dead world, probably not
distinguishable from no world at all.”25 Given this and other argu-
ments that Hartshorne and others have propounded, I concur that
the classical meaning of omnipotence must be revised if it is to be a
coherent and believable concept.
As we saw in the previous chapter, arguments for the incoherence
of other attributes of classical theism have also been developed. Some
of those arguments are quite persuasive (most notably, perhaps, those
regarding immutability, impassibility, and simplicity), and theism as
classically understood must continue to be rethought in the light of
philosophical, theological, and scientific developments. Neverthe-
less, even if much of theism classically defined cannot withstand
scrutiny, it does not follow that a divine transcendent reality does not
exist. But it does follow that certain conceptions of God are no longer
reasonable to believe. In any case, there is much lively discussion cur-
rently underway by philosophers of religion regarding the attributes
of God and the coherence of theism.
A Cosmological Argument for Atheism

An intriguing argument against the existence of God has been crafted
by atheist philosopher Quentin Smith. Professor Smith has published
a number of articles and books on metaphysics, cosmology, and the
nature of time. He has also written extensively on arguments about
the existence of God. One of his arguments focuses on the unpre-
dictable and chaotic state of the Big Bang singularity. According to
Smith, these properties are incompatible with the God of the theistic
religions. The argument can be put in the following manner:
1 The Big Bang singularity (the beginning point of the universe
where the curvature of space becomes, theoretically at least, infi-
nite) is the earliest state of the universe.
2 The earliest state of the universe is inanimate (2 follows from 1
since the singularity involves the life-hostile conditions of infinite
temperature, infinite curvature, and infinite density).
3 No law governs the Big Bang singularity and consequently there

is no guarantee that it will emit a configuration of particles that
will evolve into an animate universe (based on Stephen Hawking’s
principle of ignorance, in which the singularity is inherently chaotic
and unpredictable).
4 The earliest state of the universe is not guaranteed to evolve into
an animate state of the universe (entailed by premises 1–3).
5 Premise 4 is inconsistent with the hypothesis that God—the classi-
cal Judeo-Christian-Islamic view of God as creator of the universe—
created the earliest state of the universe since it is true that if God
created the earliest state of the universe, then God would have
ensured that the earliest state of the universe evolved into an ani-
mate state of the universe.
6 Therefore, the classical Judeo-Christian-Islamic God does not exist
(entailed by premises 4–5).
As stated, the argument is logically valid. If the premises are true,
the God of the Semitic religions does not exist. So are the premises
true?
Central to the argument is the nature of the Big Bang singularity.
The Big Bang singularity is a hypothesized point in space-time where
the laws of physics allegedly break down and the density of the uni-
verse and the curvature of space-time become infinite. On most Big
bang models of the universe, this is the point where time itself began.
One way of rebutting the argument is to claim that the first premise
is false, for while the Big Bang expansion is an actual event, the sin-
gularity is a theoretical fiction, and as such it is not the earliest state
of the universe. The singularity “event,” that is, is not ontologically
real. For some physicists who maintain that the singularity has zero
dimensionality and that it existed for no duration in time, it turns out
to be a mathematical point—ontologically equivalent to nothing. As
such, to refer to it as an actual event is to reify a mere mathematical
construct.26 Other physicists agree with Smith and maintain that the
singularity is the real terminus of the converging past-directed space-
time paths.
There is current debate among physicists about the nature of the
singularity, and at this time it falls under the rubric of speculative
cosmology. There is no hard evidence either way. The first premise,
then, rests on a fair amount of speculation, so the argument itself
rests on shaky ground. But it may well be true, so let us grant that
it is. What about the following premises? Premise number two fol-
lows from the first one, so let us grant it as well. The third premise
is about the principle of ignorance; namely, that the singularity is
inherently chaotic and unpredictable. As such, the predictability of
cosmic evolution is quite limited due to the breakdown in physical
theory that occurred at the Big Bang singularity. So God would not be
able to ensure that a universe like ours would evolve. But this claim
is not as strong as one might like it to be. First, it could be the case
that God intended to intervene in the early stages of the universe
in order to ensure that living organisms, including human beings,
would eventually evolve. It is not, necessarily, a sign of poor or irra-
tional planning on God’s part to do so. It could be that, unlike the
clockmaker universe posited by the deists, God is creatively involved
in the universe at different stages of its development. While this may
not be the most efficient way to create a universe, the God of the
theistic religions is not primarily concerned with creative efficiency.
God is not concerned with running out of energy. Or it may be that,
as many traditional theists such as Thomas Aquinas affirmed, God
is creator and sustainer of the universe at all temporal moments. As
such, God is continually involved in guiding the evolution of the
cosmos, moving it toward God’s ultimate purposes for it. How God
might accomplish this is not clear, nor would it be testable by sci-
ence since science itself has to do with purely natural explanations
for events. But if such a transcendent reality does exist, then it seems
likely that it would have a purpose for the universe, and that it would
be able to accomplish this purpose with or without the utilization of
natural laws.
Second, imagine that rather than a single universe, God has created
a vast array of universes, and suppose the means God used to accom-
plish this was to create a mechanism that naturally spins out uni-
verses following some deeper natural laws. In such a scenario, many
of these universes (perhaps most) may be uninhabitable. But eventu-
ally, at least one of them will be just right for life. It so happens that
we live in that universe. On a scenario like this, while the third and
fourth premises would be true, the fifth premise would be false. For
given enough time, God could ensure that eventually some universe
existed that had the right conditions to evolve animate life. Further-
more, it may be that Smith (and Hawking) have it wrong, and that
the singularity is not a “violent, terrifying caldron of lawlessness.”27
Perhaps there are deeper laws governing the singularity—laws that

will demonstrate that the principle of ignorance is false.
So the argument does not prove that God does not exist. Neverthe-
less, there is a deeper point to the argument, an intuition of sorts,
that this world is not as it should be if there does exist a God who
is perfectly good and omnipotent. Wouldn’t a creator make a much
better world than this one? This leads us, once again, back to the
problem of evil.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have examined two major arguments for the

existence of God and two against. Where does this leave us? How
we answer that question will have much to do with our background
beliefs, general assumptions and presuppositions, and personal
experiences. It seems obvious enough that even though we have
examined four primary arguments about the existence of the God
of theism, there are no knockdown arguments presented here either
for or against the claim that such a reality exists. The two arguments
against theism, while interesting and important, are not persuasive,
at least for me, though they are for some philosophers. A more seri-
ous objection, one that has continued to present itself, is the problem
of evil. We will have to reevaluate the matter once we have covered
that knotty ground.
The design and cosmological arguments do provide some posi-
tive support for the reality of a transcendent, intelligent, purposive
creator. While I may be somewhat out of fashion with respect to a
number of contemporary philosophers of religion on this subject, I
find these two arguments to be plausible. Although they are certainly
not demonstrative proofs for the existence of God, they are worthy
of consideration and even reasonable pointers toward a reality that
transcends the material universe. Even so, to consider this a victory
for the claim that God exists would be premature, for a number of
atheist philosophers have agreed with this conclusion, but have then
gone on to argue that other more persuasive evidences point to the
non-existence of God. When we bring into the discussion the very
serious challenges raised by the reality of pain and suffering, the issue
becomes even more perplexing.
For Further Reading
William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang
Cosmology. Oxford University Press, 1993.
John Leslie, Universes. Routledge, 1989.
Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Temple University Press,
1990.
Paul Moser, The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Graham Oppy, Arguing About Gods. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God. Clarendon Press, 1979.
Keith Ward, Why There Almost Certainly is a God. Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2008.
4
Problems of Evil and Suffering
For centuries it has been widely recognized that there are philosophi-
cal problems for the theist who affirms the existence of an omnipo-
tent and omnibenevolent God on the one hand and the reality of
evil on the other. In this chapter we will tackle several of the main
problems of evil confronting the theist, including logical and eviden-
tial ones. In addition, we will examine several theodicies, which are
attempts to explain why God permits evil. The theist is not alone in
needing to provide an account of evil and suffering, however. Two
of the central Indian traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism, have their
own approaches to addressing the subject. Finally, what about athe-
ism? Is it off the hook when it comes to evil? We shall see.
What is Evil?
Evil is ubiquitous in our world. No matter where we find ourselves,

whether in the farming communities of the “majority world,” or
the inner cities of more industrialized nations, whether in the soggy
swamps of South American rainforests or in the towering skyscrapers
of central Shanghai, the experience of evil is pervasive and perni-
cious. There are many forms of evil, and they include such notions
as pain (understood as a physical state where one desires that circum-
stances be otherwise), suffering (understood as a mental state where
one desires that circumstances be otherwise), and injustice (under-
stood as unfairness, the violation of the rights of others, and uncor-
rected abuse, neglect, or malfeasance).
A typical classification of evil divides it into two broad types: moral
and natural. Evils of the first type are dubbed moral evils because
they are the result of an agent, a person (or group of persons), who
is morally culpable for the evil that occurs. In such cases there was
60
Problems of Evil and Suffering 61
intention behind the event, and an agent’s free will was involved.
Some moral evils are great, and include child abuse, genocide, tor-
ture, and other terrors inflicted on humans by humans. There are also
less severe types of moral evils, such as cheating, stealing, or slander-
ing someone. Certain defects in one’s character are also classified as
moral evils, including such vices as greed, gluttony, vanity, and dis-
honesty. The second type of evil has to do with naturally occurring
events or disasters rather than with moral agents. Examples of these
natural evils include floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fam-
ine, disease, physical and mental disabilities, and other tragic events
that do harm to humans and other living creatures but for which no
agent is involved as a cause.
The term “evil” in standard English generally denotes some hor-
rific moral evil of one sort or another, rather than something that
was merely bad, such as losing one’s wallet or purse, or to some
naturally occurring event in which only property is damaged, such
as in a tornado. So a question raised by many is this: Why? Why
is there so much pain, suffering, and sorrow in the world? Why is
calamity, corruption, and horror such a sweeping dimension of the
human condition? The problem is especially acute for theists, those
who believe in a personal, powerful, benevolent God. Most forms of
Hinduism and Buddhism have no creator God, so they don’t have the
same problems of evil that theists do, though as we will see they do
have issues regarding evil that need to be addressed. In the Chinese
religious traditions of Confucianism and Daoism, neither of which
affirm a creator God, evil is generally understood to be a disharmony
in nature or a disruption in the balance of things that causes suffer-
ing. For atheists, of course, there is no transcendent reality—no gods
or spirits—so atheists also do not have the problem that theists do.
So what precisely is the problem or set of problems that arise from
evil and suffering? In order to understand the problems for theists, it
is important to elucidate those attributes of theism that generate the
difficulties raised by evil.
Theism and Evil
Within the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—God

has traditionally been understood to be a reality who is ultimate (the
source and ground of all other things), personal (possessing desires,
will, and intentions), actively involved in the world but not identical
to it (creator and sustainer), and worthy of worship (being wholly
good, having inherent moral perfection, and excelling in power). The
Jewish prophets exalted God throughout their writings: “Give thanks
to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (Psalm 107:1).
Writers of the Christian New Testament also proclaimed the goodness
of God as creator of every good thing: “Every good and perfect gift
is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,
who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). The Islamic
holy book, the Qur’an, offers similar depictions of God: “He is the
One God; the Creator, the Initiator, the Designer. To Him belong the
most beautiful names. Glorifying Him is everything in the heavens
and the earth. He is the Almighty, Most Wise” (Surah 59:24). This
traditional theistic concept of God includes an additional cluster of
properties attributed to God, some of which we examined back in
chapter two, that are especially relevant to the problems raised by
evil. First, it has generally been taken by theists that God is the Crea-
tor and sustainer of the world. Synchronically, God brought the uni-
verse into existence at a moment, and diachronically God sustains
it in existence through time. The existence of the universe and all
things of which it is constituted can ultimately be traced back to the
creative power of God. All energies, or causal powers, come from God
as well, so no thing could act without being supplied each moment
in some sense by the energies of God.
Furthermore, God is omnipotent. As we saw earlier, a useful defi-
nition might be that God’s being omnipotent means that God has
perfect power. God is also omniscient. This attribute has also been
widely debated, and we already covered that territory. One widely
held view is that an omniscient being knows all true propositions and
never believes anything that is false. Finally, the attribute of being
maximally great has historically been understood to be an essential
property of God within the Abrahamic faiths, some even arguing that
it is the central attribute of God. This property of God’s being maxi-
mally great has, within the theistic religions, generally included the
notion that God is perfectly just and all-loving.
This set of properties of God, especially when considered together,
is problematic for theism given the existence of evil. The difficulty,
referred to as the problem of evil, has taken many forms, so it is perhaps
better to refer to problems of evil as there are various conundrums

confronting the theist given the existence of evil. The major issue is
that there appears to be an inconsistency between God’s nature (as
omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect good) and the existence of evil.
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) stated the
general problem quite concisely:
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does
not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can,
but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and
God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?1
The central issue raised by evil’s existence for theists is whether the
world contains certain unsavory states of affairs that can be utilized
in developing an argument for the unreasonableness of belief in the
existence of God. We will examine two such arguments.
Problems of Evil for Theism
Logical Arguments from Evil

Once again, it is important to note that there is not just one problem
of evil, so it is perhaps better to refer to types of problems of evil.
One problem type is referred to as the logical argument from evil, in
which there is an alleged logical incompatibility between the follow-
ing two claims:
1 God (an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being)
exists; and
2 Evil exists.
If two statements contradict one another, one of them must be false.
So the argument goes, if 1 and 2 are in fact contradictions, one of
the claims must be false. Since we know that 2 is true, 1 must be
false: God does not exist. I won’t rehearse the details of the devel-
opment of this argument and the various rebuttals to it except to
note the following. It is not immediately clear that these two claims
are logically contradictory. In fact, most philosophers now agree
that all such forms of the logical argument are deeply flawed, if not
fully fallacious.2 Briefly, one central problem with logical arguments
from evil is that they presuppose a view of omnipotence that most
theists have not generally affirmed. As noted earlier, most theists

have long agreed that there are some things that even an omnipo-
tent being cannot do, including making logical impossibilities true
(e.g., making a square circle or creating a being more powerful than
itself). But it is also at least possible that an omnipotent being can-
not create an agent with free will of a certain sort—libertarian free
will—who freely chooses to do only good. And it is possible that
libertarian free will is itself a very great good. It may be that finite
creatures capable of producing moral good and reflecting certain
virtues must have and actualize libertarian free will. Furthermore,
it could be that a world containing creatures with libertarian free
will is more valuable than a world without such creatures. If all of
this is possible, and it certainly seems to be, then God may have
a morally sufficient reason for not preventing evil; evil may be an
unavoidable consequence of a very good world with free creatures.
So claims 1 and 2 are not logically incompatible after all, and the
argument fails. This is a defense, an attempt to offer a logically pos-
sible reason for why God might have allowed evil. In this particular
case, it is the free will defense.3
While not everyone agrees that this defense, this response to the
logical argument, actually succeeds in rebutting the argument, never-
theless, most do agree that the logical argument in its various forms
is not successful. However, even if the argument has been rebutted,
that is not the end of the difficulties for theists regarding evil. The
logical problem is not the only type of problem of evil, and serious
challenges to the reasonability of belief in the existence of God, given
evil, persist in other forms.
Since the mid-1980s, the challenges regarding evil have for the
most part shifted from the strong conclusion made by the logical
argument that theism is necessarily false to the more reserved conclu-
sion that theism (at least theism traditionally understood as defined
above) is probably false. This type of argument, often referred to as
the evidential or inductive or probabilistic argument from evil, does not
attempt to demonstrate that claims 1 and 2 are logically incompat-
ible. Rather, it attempts to demonstrate that it is more reasonable to
deny 1 given 2 than to affirm it. So the central discussions of evil
have moved from the claim that God cannot exist to the more mod-
est claim that God probably does not exist given the reality and mag-
nitude of evil.
Evidential Arguments from Evil

Unlike logical arguments from evil, then, evidential arguments
attempt to demonstrate that the existence of evil in the world counts
as inductive evidence against the claim that God exists. Although
their conclusion is not one of deductive certainty, evidential argu-
ments offer inductively derived conclusions that many find very
persuasive. One version of the evidential argument is based on the
assumption, generally agreed upon by theists and non-theists alike,
that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being would prevent
the existence of evil unless there was some overriding reason not to
prevent it. Since there does seem to exist significant amounts of evil,
and since therefore there does not seem to be any overriding reason
for allowing it, God probably does not exist.
A leading proponent of the evidential approach is William Rowe
(1931–). Professor Rowe has argued that many evils, such as the slow
and agonizing death of a fawn burned in a forest fire, are gratui-
tous evils. He presents a version of this argument in the following
manner:
a There exist instances of intense suffering that an omnipotent,
omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing
some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
b An omnipotent, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence
of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without
thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally
bad or worse.
c Therefore, there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly
good being.4
This is a probabilistic argument since Rowe maintains that premise
(i) is probably true, though not decisive. If the first premise is prob-
ably true, since premise (ii) is true by definition (most theists and
atheists accept it), it follows that the conclusion is probably true: God
does not exist.
There are several responses a theist could make to such an argu-
ment. First, she could argue that there is, after all, a reason for allow-
ing all of the seemingly pointless evils, even if we do not know what
those reasons are. The theistic traditions have, historically, held to the
inscrutability of God. It is from within this context that the response
of “skeptical theism” has arisen. Skeptical theism is not the view that
one is skeptical about theism; it is a technical term that has to do
with what we can know about God and the ways of God. The central
point of skeptical theism is that, given human cognitive limitations,
we are unable to judge as improbable the claim that God lacks mor-
ally sufficient reasons for allowing the evils in the world. One theistic
philosopher argues the point this way:
I want to argue that we’re just not in a good position to assess

the probability of whether God lacks morally sufficient reasons for
permitting the evils that occur. Take an analogy from chaos the-
ory. In chaos theory, scientists tell us that even the flutter of a but-
terfly’s wings could produce forces that would set in motion causes
that would produce a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean. And yet
looking at that butterfly palpitating on a branch, it is impossible
in principle to predict such an outcome. Similarly, an evil in the
world, say, a child’s dying of cancer or a brutal murder of a man,
could set a ripple effect in history going, such that God’s morally
sufficient reason for permitting it might not emerge until centu-
ries later or maybe in another country. We’re just not in a position
to be able to make these kinds of probability judgments.5
Rowe himself has offered responses to the skeptical theist reply, one
being that on this view a person could never have any reason for
doubting God’s existence given evil, no matter how horrific the evil
in question. The skeptical theist creates a chasm between human and
divine knowledge far beyond what theism has traditionally affirmed,
and this should be alarming to theists.
It seems reasonable that, as human beings with very limited cogni-
tive abilities, there is much about the mind and purposes of God that
would be inscrutable to us if God exists as the infinite reality that
theists maintain. But Rowe also raises an excellent point that, for the
theist, the mere rejoinder of inscrutability to the evidential problems
raised by evil is quite inadequate. As a response to evil, it is a will-o’-
the-wisp—a delusive hope that somehow the answer to the problem
lies in the vast sea of God’s infinite knowledge.
Paul Draper has advanced another version of the evidential argu-
ment. In an abbreviated manner, the argument runs this way. The
world, with its distribution of pains and pleasures, is more likely given
a “hypothesis of indifference” than given theism. On this hypothesis,
the existence of sentient beings (including their pleasures and pains)
is not the result of either a benevolent or a malevolent nonhuman

person. If a supernatural being exists, its being indifferent to pains
and pleasures better explains the existence of suffering than does the-
ism. Contrast this with the theistic account in which, given the real-
ity of a perfect nonhuman being (God), there must be morally good
reasons for allowing biologically useless pain, and there must be mor-
ally good reasons for producing pleasures even if such pleasures are
not biologically useful. According to the argument, then, given our
observations of the pains and pleasures experienced by sentient crea-
tures, including biologically gratuitous ones (such as those brought
about by biological evolution), the hypothesis of indifference pro-
vides a more reasonable account than the theistic one.
Assessing arguments of this sort is a difficult endeavor. But in attempt-
ing to do so, there are some relevant questions to consider. What, for
example, is the hypothesis probable or improbable with respect to?
And what is the relevant background information with respect to it?
The plausibility of the claim that “God’s existence is improbable with
respect to the evil in the world,” considered alone, apart from other
hypotheses, beliefs, and experiences, is quite different from the plau-
sibility of the claim “God’s existence is improbable with respect to the
evil in the world” when considered in conjunction with, say, one or
more of the arguments for God’s existence, or an individual’s (alleged)
experience with God. An additional hypothesis that the theist might
offer that would raise the probability of evil given God’s existence
would be one in which (as the major theistic traditions affirm) God’s
purposes are not restricted to this earthly life, but extend into an after-
life as well. In this case, there is further opportunity for God to bring
moral good out of the many kinds and varieties of evil that occurred
in this life. Thus the full scope of the considerations and evidences
for and against theism would raise the probability of God’s existence
above that of taking into account only a part. Though how probable
each of those additional hypotheses are is another matter.
In any case, the evidential problem of evil remains a central argu-
ment type against the plausibility of theism. These replies to the evi-
dential argument from evil, like the free will defense response to the
logical argument from evil, are also defenses—attempts to rebut argu-
ments against the existence of God given evil. Next we will examine
theodicy which, unlike a defense, takes on the burden of attempting
to vindicate God by providing a plausible explanation for evil.
Theodicy
A theodicy involves establishing that it is reasonable to believe that
the evil in the world is justified given the existence of God, and that
God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing the evils that exist. In
general, a theodicy takes the following broad form:
1 God, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being, will
prevent/eliminate evil unless there is a good reason or set of rea-
sons for not doing so.
2 There is evil in the world.
3 Therefore God, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent
being, must have a good reason or set of reasons for not prevent-
ing/eliminating evil.
Various attempts are then offered to demonstrate what that good
reason is, or what those good reasons are, for God’s allowing evil to
exist. Some theists maintain that there are no good theodicies. Alvin
Plantinga, for example, remarks: “. . . we cannot see why our world,
with all its ills, would be better than others we think we can imagine,
or what, in any detail, is God’s reason for permitting a given specific
and appalling evil. Not only can we not see this, we can’t think of
any very good possibilities. And here I must say that most attempts
to explain why God permits evil—theodicies, as we may call them—
strike me as tepid, shallow and ultimately frivolous.”6 Others disagree
and maintain that there are good reasons for why God would permit
(and in some cases perhaps even cause) the evils that exist. Two note-
worthy types of theodicy are those that appeal to the significance
and value of free will, and those that appeal to the significance and
value of acquiring virtuous traits of character in the midst of suf-
fering. Other types of theodicy have also been advanced, and after
exploring the first two I will advance what I shall call a theodicy of
eschatological fulfillment.
One of the earliest theodicies in the Christian tradition was crafted
by Augustine in his On the Free Choice of the Will. For Augustine, the
goodness of God is perfect, and the universe, which is a creation of
God ex nihilo (out of nothing), is also good and exists for God’s benev-
olent purpose or purposes. Since the creation is intrinsically good,
evil must not represent the positive reality of any substantial thing.
Evil, then, turns out to be a privatio boni, a metaphysical privation of
goodness, or the going wrong of something that is inherently good.
On Augustine’s view, both moral and natural evil arose out of the
wrongful use of free will. Since human beings are finite and mutable,
they have the capacity to choose evil, which they have often done.
In doing so they have corrupted their wills, and they have corrupted
the natural world through their wills. Thus, while the creation of God
is good, through the use of free will these agents have ushered into
the world that which is contrary to God and the good. Augustine’s
theodicy concludes with cosmic justice at the culmination of history:
God will, in the eschaton, bring all who repent of sin and evil into
the eternal bliss of heaven, and God will consign to eternal perdition
all those who have rejected God’s offer of salvation. In the end, all
will be put to rights.
This theodicy held sway for many centuries in the Christian West.
There have been several worthy developments of it in recent decades.
But it seems to me that the general approach is fraught with difficul-
ties. For example, both Augustine’s version and some of the more
recent developments include a fall of human beings from a morally
perfect or innocent state to a sinful one. This fall is responsible for the
moral and natural evils that exist. But given a contemporary scientific
understanding of the world, how can one reasonably affirm that the
evils occurring in natural events, such as diseases and natural disas-
ters, are due to the free choices of moral creatures? Very few scholars
today, whether philosophers or scientists, believe that there were two
actual human beings—an original first pair—who were created in a
perfect state of moral innocence and whose fall from grace ushered in
all of the death, pain, and suffering that occurs in nature. It seems far-
cical to maintain in the modern world that mosquito-borne malaria,
AIDS, cancer, carnivores, and all the rest are the result of Adam and
Eve wrongfully eating a piece of fruit. It also seems unreasonable to
explain natural evil on the basis of activities of devils or demons, as
some free will theodicists have done. This theodicy was crafted in a
prescientific age, and as such it is devoid of a scientific and evolution-
ary view of the development of flora and fauna—a view universally
held by the scientific community. The free will theodicy, as proposed
by Augustine and developed by others in recent times, is thus inef-
fectual as a solution to evidential problems of evil.
A second type of theodicy focuses not so much on free will and
the origin of evil as on the value of evil in the lives of human beings,
and on the ways in which evil occurrences can benefit human per-
sons and other animals. A soul-making (or person-making) theodicy
was developed by John Hick in the late twentieth century, utilizing

inchoate ideas from the early Christian thinker Irenaeus, Bishop of
Lugdunum in Gaul (c. 130–c. 202 C.E.). On this theodicy as devel-
oped by Hick, God created the world as a good but less than idyllic
place for developing morally and spiritually mature beings. Through
natural and evolutionary processes, events that often include pain,
hardship, and struggle, God is bringing about individual persons with
the freedom and capacity to mature in moral and spiritual goodness.
Rather than creating a perfect paradise where there existed no pain,
God’s purpose was to create a place of “soul-making,” where free indi-
viduals, struggling with the various challenges of their environment,
could grow and mature in virtue. Thus through adversity, struggle,
and hardship, human beings are developing into “children of God.”
On this view, evil is the result of both the creation of a person-making
environment and of the human choices to act against what is right
and good. While evil does exist, the trajectory of the world is toward
the good, and God will continue to work co-operatively with human
beings, both in this life and in the next as necessary, to bring about a
future in which all persons will finally be brought to a place of moral
and spiritual perfection.
Some have objected that there are many evils in the world seem-
ing to have nothing to do with character development; many evils
are gratuitous, and many persons appear to make no moral progress
after experiencing much pain and suffering. In fact, some suffer-
ing persons seem to be in a worse moral condition by the end of
their earthly lives. But perhaps matters are not as bad as they appear.
The compassion that is evoked from seemingly indiscriminate and
unfair miseries, for example, might turn out to be a great good—a
good that would not arise without the miseries appearing as unfair
and indiscriminate. Consider this example. Recently, several dozen
pilot whales became stranded in Florida’s Everglades National Park.
A number of them died, unable to escape the shallow beach area and
sandbar flats during low tide. It was a tragic event. In the process
of this tragedy, however, many people became involved in various
rescue attempts. Thankfully, many whales were saved by the heroic
efforts of individuals and rescue groups. Many of those who were
giving of their time and energy were manifesting and perhaps even
developing or maturing in the virtues of compassion, mercy, kind-
ness, selflessness, and a host of other good qualities. Some of these
virtues, such as compassion and mercy, could not be manifest and,

arguably, developed and matured in individuals without the occur-
rence of such calamitous events. So calamities may be necessary evils
for bringing about greater goods. While it may be that God did not
intend or need any particular evils for person-making purposes, it
is possible that God did need to create an environment where such
evils were a real possibility. So while each individual instance of evil
may not be justified by a particular greater good (as in the case of the
whales), the existence of a world where evil is possible might well be
necessary for a world where soul-making can take place.
This seems to me a helpful approach to theodicy. But I think there
is a crucial missing element. I suggest that God would not bring about
a world in which sentient creatures experience evil, suffering, and
death for purposes of mere expediency. It would be highly anthropo-
centric to maintain that the natural world, with its suffering, preda-
tion, and death, exists only for the development of human moral
perfection—as mere preparation for the development of moral and
spiritual virtue among humans or even some more advanced race of
persons. If something akin to theism is true, that is, if there exists a
transcendent reality of perfect being, fundamental consciousness and
purpose, and eternal bliss who wills the good for all beings, then it
would seem to follow that all creatures have value, and all creatures,
at least all sentient ones, should have the opportunity to experience
what could be called eschatological fulfillment. That is to say, every
sentient creature should have the opportunity to experience its own
flourishing and fulfillment. Clearly many creatures’ lives end pre-
maturely; perhaps all of them do. In such cases, theodicy demands
some form of resurrection or continuation and renewal, some way in
which those creatures can experience their lives fulfilled.
This notion of eschatological redemption is consistent with the
scriptural teachings of many religious traditions. In Hinduism and
Buddhism, as we saw in chapter two, a central belief is rebirth, and
this includes the reincarnation or transmigration of all living crea-
tures. In the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible, it describes a future
scenario in which the wolf will live with the lion, the lion will eat
straw like an ox, and the young child will not be harmed by the viper;
a time when humans and animals will experience life redeemed (Isa.
11:6–9). While this passage is generally understood symbolically to
be about a general apocalyptic hope of a future peace, still many
commentators see it as reinterpreting ancient mythological imagery,

and this may well include animals in paradise where, under God, even
predators are tamed and all are well-fed and flourishing. One Chris-
tian thinker, John Wesley, maintained that “They [sentient animals]
will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which
they had in paradise [Eden], but to a degree of it as much higher than
that, as the understanding of an elephant is beyond that of a worm.”7
In Islam, as in each of the Abrahamic faiths, opinions differ regarding
what happens to non-human animals when they die, but an impor-
tant commentary on the Qur’an, written by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi,
maintains that “animals and beings with spirits who perish while per-
forming the dominical duties peculiar to their natures and in obey-
ing the Divine commands, and who suffer severe distress,—it is not
unlikely that there should be for them in the inexhaustible treasur-
ies of His mercy a sort of spiritual reward and kind of wage suitable
to their capacities, and that they should not be unduly troubled at
departing this world, indeed, that they should be pleased.”8
If God exists as the omnibenevolent, all-powerful, creator God
depicted in the Abrahamic and some Indian traditions, it makes sense
for God to set the world to rights—to provide the opportunity for
the ultimate redemption of all sentient beings. This could be accom-
plished by bringing them into a flourishing state in a life beyond
death where they will receive what was unavailable to them in this
life—ultimate fulfillment of their unique natures. Conceiving such
a heavenly state may well be beyond the ability of human imagina-
tion. Indeed, artistic depictions of an afterlife are generally less than
enlightening on the matter. Nevertheless, if God does exist, it is not
unreasonable to hope for an eschatological fulfilment for sentient
creatures, one that far surpasses human imagination in goodness,
beauty, and blessedness.
Hindu and Buddhist Accounts of Evil and Suffering
Problems of evil are not limited to theism. Non-theistic religions

have also offered accounts of evil, including its nature and existence,
specifically with respect to pain and suffering. For the Hindu and
Buddhist traditions, these considerations are rooted in the doctrines
of karma and rebirth. Within these traditions rebirth is generally
understood to be the view that the conscious self transmigrates from
one physical body to the next after death. Each human being has
existed in an earlier physical form, perhaps as another human being
or as another kind of animal or organism. Rebirth is linked to karma,
the precise meaning of which is “deed” or “action.” One’s karma is
what one does, whether good or evil. It can also mean one’s intention
or motivation for a given action, or what happens to an individual
based on previous actions. Its broader meaning, sometimes referred
to as the “doctrine of karma” or the “law of karma,” is a universal law
of moral causation, including the results of one’s actions on one’s
life. It is, in effect, the view that an individual reaps the good and bad
consequences of her or his actions, actions in one’s current life and
in previous ones.
At first glance, rebirth and karma seem to offer a more reasonable
account of evil and suffering than theism in terms of justice and fair-
ness. It seems exceedingly unfair, for example, that one child is born
healthy into a loving, solid, wealthy family, whereas another child is
born sickly into a cruel, abusive, and poor environment. How can we
make sense of the existence of a perfectly good God who is ultimately
responsible for these two very different and unequal scenarios? If,
however, the two children are reaping the consequences of actions
they performed in previous lives, this provides a moral justification
for the inequalities. There is no arbitrariness in the inequalities of
the human situation. There is pure cause and effect. As one Hindu
philosopher writes:
The law of karma along with the doctrine of rebirth has the merit
of solving one great problem of philosophy and religion, a prob-
lem which is a headache to the western religions and which finds
no satisfactory solution in them. The problem is: How is it that
different persons are born with an infinite diversity regarding their
fortunes in spite of the fact that God is equally good to all? It would
be nothing short of denying God to say that he is whimsical. If
God is All-Goodness and also All-Powerful, how is it that there is
so much evil and inequality in the world? Indian religions relieve
God of this responsibility and make our karmas responsible.9
Even so, objections can be raised. According to the karmic law of

cause and effect, a person’s present circumstances are explained by
her actions in a previous life, and her circumstances in that life are
explained by her circumstances in a life previous to that one, and so

on. The solution to the inequality problem never seems to come to
an end, so how is that explanatorily helpful? Furthermore, on most
accounts of karma and rebirth, when a person who has lived a long
life dies and is reincarnated, she must start all over again as an infant
with her maturity, life experiences, wisdom, and memories com-
pletely erased. But does this seem fair and just?
A second problem for the karma/rebirth account of suffering has to
do with free will and culpability. An initial advantage of this account
is that real moral agency seems to be preserved. Indeed, moral agency
is central to the karma/rebirth view. One’s moral decisions self-
determine one’s future experiences, making each person responsible
for his or her own destiny. However, consider the example of an indi-
vidual contemplating robbing and murdering someone. Suppose this
person has robbed and murdered before and was never caught. He is
rethinking his life and pondering the possibility of turning himself
in to the authorities, knowing full well that by doing so he would
receive the consequences of his actions—legal punishment. As he is
reflecting on this matter an innocent passerby strolls past him, and
his desire for money, power, and prestige begin to fill his mind once
again. At this point he has the choice: he can either continue down
the path of crime or end it here and now and turn himself in.
Now here is the rub with the karmic view. If he does attack the
person, then according to karmic justice this apparently innocent
passerby was not so innocent after all; she is paying the price for
her bad karma accrued because of her former evil actions. The one
who attacked her is not truly free to act as he does, for he is sim-
ply following the mechanistic effects of karmic justice. He is merely
the instrument for meting out the justice requisite for this person’s
previous moral failures. If, on the other hand, the passerby does
not deserve such moral recompense, even despite the desires of the
attacker karmic justice would ensure that she is not attacked. But in
that case, the potential perpetrator would be unable to engage in the
evil deed.
The central problem has to do with locating moral freedom and
culpability in the karmic system. If the potential attacker is deter-
ministically meting out justice on his “victim,” then it seems that
he is not truly a free moral agent; he is simply a cog in the karmic
justice vehicle. But it is rather unsettling to affirm a moral system in
which harmed victims are themselves culpable for the evil inflicted
on them. If, on the other hand, the attacker is free to assail the pas-
serby, and does so even though she is not deserving of such an act,
then this would seem to be a violation of karmic justice whereby pain
and suffering occur because of one’s previous evil actions.
Despite these objections, the karmic view does seem to provide
a better moral account of the way one advances morally than the
widely held Christian view that one is morally perfected by an imme-
diate act of God in a postmortem instant. On this latter view, which
is held by many Protestant Christians, sanctification (or moral and
spiritual perfection) occurs as a sudden spiritual revolution in a per-
son immediately after death by a direct act of God. But if God can
simply and suddenly transform one into a morally and spiritually
mature and perfect person, why does God wait until the moment
after death? Why not earlier? Why not now, before more pain and
suffering ensue? The world would certainly be a much better place if
human beings were perfected instantaneously in the here and now.
It seems more reasonable to believe that moral and spiritual growth
occur over long periods of time through the various actions and
decisions of free creatures, and that God is perfecting finite persons
through those many choices and events. While some of the main
traditional Indian accounts hold that karma and rebirth are imper-
sonal laws and forces acting on individuals, and as such exclude the
role of a personal God in one’s moral development, the insights they
provide need not do so. Perhaps the merging of this Indian insight
with a conception of a transcendent reality that is intentional and
purposeful offers an instructive way forward in formulating a plausi-
ble theodicy of redemption—one that could be affirmed by adherents
of various religious traditions. In any case, as with theistic replies to
the problems of evil, karmic solutions are helpful at some level, but
they nevertheless leave one with less than complete answers to the
variety of problems raised by evil and suffering.
Atheism and Evil
While the religious believer, rather than the atheist, is usually the
one attempting to respond to evil (as he should, for the problems
are indeed serious), it is also important to note that the atheolo-
gian is not off the hook in providing an account of the evil in the
world. For every worldview should be able to provide an account

of what evil is, why it exists, and what to do about it. Furthermore,
theism and the Indian views of Ultimate Reality are in no worse a
position than atheism in providing an account of evil. Consider this.
If evil does exist—what we could call “objective evil”—then objec-
tive moral values exist (that is, moral values that are binding on all
people, whether they acknowledge them as such or not). If racism,
discrimination, torture, child abuse, government-sanctioned geno-
cide, and so on are objectively evil, one must ask why this is so. What
makes them in fact evil, rather than simply matters of individual
preference or dislike? The philosophical problem here is that one
cannot consistently affirm, on the one hand, that there are no objec-
tive moral values, and, on the other, that rape, torture, and murder
are objectively morally evil. If there are objective moral values, then
it seems that there must be some basis, some metaphysical ground,
for their being so. The issue for the atheist is whether he or she has
any such ground, for on atheism the cosmos is not intrinsically mor-
ally good, nor is there any transcendent morally good reality that
could bring objective goodness out of evil. As the atheist Richard
Dawkins has claimed, “The universe that we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” Good
and evil would seem to be, on this account, human inventions, and
thus merely subjective.10
Also, for the theist evil is an aberration. It is not willed by God; in
fact, it is something repugnant to the very nature and purpose of the
world. On an atheistic framework, on the other hand, what we refer
to as “evil” is built into the very fabric of reality. This is not to sug-
gest that an atheist has no reasons for identifying, knowing about,
or fighting evil. Indeed, she need not embrace evil in the sense of
welcoming it as one among other necessary aspects of reality. But
there remains for the atheist a philosophical accommodation of evil
that does not occur in the religious traditions that recognize not just
our need and calling to overturn evil, but that understand that evil
to be contrary to how the world ought to be and where it is headed.
For the theist, there is a transcendent God who desires the end of
evil and will bring about its demise in the eschaton. For the Hindu
and Buddhist, there is the future hope of overcoming the deleterious
effects of karma, of experiencing the demise of suffering, and of find-

ing ultimate bliss. For the atheist, there is only cosmic silence.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have examined the subject of evil and whether it

offers evidence against the claim that a transcendent reality of good-
ness and other auspicious qualities exist. It was first argued that evil
does pose a serious problem for belief in the God of theism, but that
it does not disprove theism. Whether the evidences from evil make
it more reasonable to affirm theism or atheism is a highly disputed
matter, and a dogmatic answer seems unwarranted.
We also saw that the theist is not the only one with problems
raised by evil. Whatever one’s worldview, evil rears its ugly head.
Hindu and Buddhist views offer karma and rebirth as attempts to
address the issue of justice in a world where pain, suffering, and
other nefarious happenings occur. Here, too, there are both insights
and enigmas. Finally, the atheist seems, at first glance, to have the
least difficulty with evil, for she can claim that evil is just an intrin-
sic part of our natural universe. But as we saw, the matter is not so
simple.
In any event, perhaps we are at a philosophical impasse when it
comes to the problems of evil. Even so, one thing is certain: no mat-
ter what one’s religious tradition or worldview, the reality of evil,
pain, and suffering will continue to be a problem worthy of careful
study and deep philosophical reflection.
For Further Reading
Marilyn M. Adams, and Robert M. Adams, eds., The Problem of Evil. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990.
John Bowker, Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1970.
John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Revised ed. Harper & Row, 2007.
Daniel Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1996.
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Parts 10 and 11. Ed. H. D.
Aiken New York: Hafner Publishing, 1955.
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
Chad Meister, Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2012.
Chad Meister and Charles Taliaferro, general editors, The History of Evil in six
volumes: Evil in Antiquity (volume one); Evil in the Middle Ages (volume
two); Evil in the Early Modern Age (volume three); Evil in the 18th and 19th
Centuries (volume four); Evil in the Early 20th Century (volume five); Evil from
the Mid-20th Century to Today (volume six). Durham, United Kingdom: Acu-
men Press, forthcoming.
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. (See espe-
cially his chapter on the problem of evil.)
Michael L. Peterson., God and Evil: An Introduction to the Issues. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1998.
5
Religion, Science, and Miracles
Over the centuries there has been a knotty relationship between

science and religion. Whether referring to the ancient Ionian phi-
losophers seeking rational explanations of change in the physical
world, or Copernicus and Galileo appealing to astronomical evi-
dence for understanding the movements of the heavens, or Charles
Lyell and Charles Darwin seeking natural explanations for the origin
and development of living organisms, there have been those think-
ers who sought a logos (rational account) rather than a mythos (reli-
gious or mythical account) for explaining phenomena in the natural
world. However, there have also been those who are unsatisfied with
explaining all phenomena in the natural world in strictly naturalistic
terms. In both ancient and recent times, many have thought it neces-
sary to posit spiritual, nonscientific reasons and explanations for cer-
tain events that occur in the world. In recent decades, this issue has
been heightened in the academy as well as in the culture at large. The
creation/evolution debates in the United States are a case in point,
but other examples abound, including various claims of miracles or
of various kinds of religious experience. Many people maintain that
they have been miraculously healed or have had a religious expe-
rience of one sort or another—sensing the divine, say, or hearing
God. Yet others claim that affirming divine interaction or causality
in the world, whether small or large, to account for any phenomena
is unwarranted religious bias and that a scientific (aka, naturalistic)
explanation—even if that explanation is not yet known—is always a
more reasonable approach in our contemporary scientific age.
This chapter explores various dimensions of the relationship
between religion and science, the nature of divine action—specifi-
cally some of the central philosophical problems associated with
miracles—and the role of faith and reason in religious beliefs and
belief systems.
79
Science and Religion
Religion is ubiquitous. Over eighty-five percent of the world’s popu-

lation affirms some form of religious belief. Science is also ubiqui-
tous. You cannot go anywhere in the world without experiencing the
effects of modern scientific advancements. Yet sometimes it seems
that science and religion are at odds with each other; indeed, the
term “war” is not an uncommon descriptor when the relationship
between science and religion is discussed. The dispute between Gali-
leo and the Roman Catholic Church over Galileo’s support of Coper-
nican astronomy is often cited as an example of an unavoidable
conflict between these two domains. Nevertheless, it is also true that
many religious people are scientists, and many scientists are religious.
So how should we understand the relationship between science and
religion? Are they contradictory approaches to the way things are,
and so necessarily at odds? Or is real rapprochement possible?
In an attempt to answer such questions, it will be helpful to begin
with a description of terms. A religion, it may be recalled from chap-
ter one, tends to be a broad system of beliefs and practices that
includes a transcendent (non-physical) reality with which one may
attain a unitive relation that provides ultimate meaning and pur-
pose to life. Science, on the other hand, tends to involve the explo-
ration, description, explanation, and prediction of occurrences in
the natural world that can generally be checked and supported by
empirical evidence—evidence that is empirically testable, generally
repeatable, and typically publically observable. Described this way,
at first glance it seems that religion and science have nothing to do
with one another. Transcendent reality, meaning, and purpose are
not the sorts of things that are empirically testable, repeatable, and
publically observable. Providing explanations of occurrences in the
natural world that can be empirically tested and publically observed
is not what religion is about. This approach to religion and science,
in which the two domains are incommensurable, was articulated and
defended by the late evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Ste-
phen Jay Gould. He referred to the two domains as “non-overlapping
magisteria,” or NOMA. For Gould, science and religion cannot be
unified, but neither are they in conflict, for the natural world belongs
to science and the moral world to religion.1 As might be expected,
not everyone agrees with this approach.
Religion, Science, and Miracles 81
So if there is conflict between science and religion, where does it lie?

One type of alleged conflict has to do with scope. If what is actually
true and real is only that which can be empirically testable, repeata-
ble, and publically observable, then what religion is ultimately about
is ruled out, a priori, as being true and real before we even begin our
exploration. This view has been expressed by Richard Lewontin, an
evolutionary biologist at Harvard University:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow

compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal
world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori
adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investiga-
tion and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no
matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the
uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we can-
not allow a Divine Foot in the door.2
This is a form of scientism. Scientism is more a philosophical meth-

odology than a scientific conclusion, for there is no possible scientific
experiment that could demonstrate that what is true and real can
only be that which is testable, repeatable, and observable. If scient-
ism were to be adopted, then science and religion would clearly be
in conflict, for (1) they disagree about what constitutes that which
is fundamentally real, and (2) what religion (or at least most of reli-
gion) is about is not real on this view; the fundamental religious
claim about the nature of Ultimate Reality is false. Edward O. Wilson,
affectionately known as the father of sociobiology (a field that later
developed into evolutionary psychology), states rather concisely that
science and religion are in conflict in this manner:
[I]f history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion

and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to
believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Accept-
ance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout
prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp con-
trast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern
age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncom-
fortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible.
As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious
truth will never acquire both in full measure.3
So science (biology in this case) and religion, according to Wilson, are

factually incompatible. Is he right about this?
Christian fundamentalists maintain that the Bible gives a histori-
cally and scientifically literal and accurate account of the creation of
the world, from the creation of the universe itself to specific kinds of
plants, animals, and the first human beings—Adam and Eve. Accord-
ing to this narrative, flora and fauna were created de novo—from the
beginning in a fully formed state. Furthermore, they maintain, the
lineages of human beings can be traced back through the Bible, gen-
eration by generation, to the first human pair roughly 6,000 years
ago. Since, on this view, human beings were created at the very origin
of the universe (just a few literal days after the creation of the sun,
stars, and earth), and given the lineages provided in the Bible, the
universe itself must then be only about 6,000 years old. No doubt
this view of the origin of the world conflicts with standard scientific
accounts, from biology to geology, cosmology, and physics. This fun-
damentalist perspective is in agreement with Wilson in that religious
beliefs and the sciences are factually incompatible.
Nevertheless, this fundamentalist perspective is not the only way
of understanding and interpreting religious scriptures, in particular
the Bible. In fact, it is a rather minority position among religious
scholars today. Many theologians, Bible scholars, and religious stud-
ies specialists hold the view that the Bible should not be construed as
a scientific textbook. Its purpose is not to provide geological insight
(such as the processes involved in the formation of the earth), astro-
nomical facts (such as the age of the universe), or biological truths
(such as the mechanism of plant and animal evolution). Rather,
these sacred scriptures are meant to offer spiritual and theological
truths and insights about the nature of Ultimate Reality, the state of
the human spiritual condition (which tends toward greed, lust, and
oppression), and the way to overcome this condition and to become
united with that fundamental reality of goodness, compassion, and
bliss. To borrow a line from Galileo, God’s creation is revealed in both
“the book of nature” and “the book of scripture”—two books that are
not ultimately in conflict because their emphases are of a different
order. So, we are back to NOMA.
Yet religion does have something to say about the natural world,
and science does make claims about the religious domain. For exam-
ple, the Abrahamic faiths each affirm a creation event in which God
brought the universe into being, and they each describe God as being
actively involved in the created order, sustaining it, and performing
miracles now and again. Non-theistic religions also provide claims
relevant to the natural world. As we saw earlier, Buddhist and Hindu
notions of karma are taken to be real aspects of the world that include
physical, causal effects on living organisms. But this does not have to
mean that religion and science are irreconcilable. In fact, there are
various models than can be adopted in order for them to be coher-
ently integrated.4 While religion and science each have unique aims,
goals, and methods for providing insight about what is the case, their
findings can lead them in the same direction and even point to the
same object. Thus, as we saw in chapter three, the fine tuning of the
physical universe may point to a cosmic designer of the universe—
a designer with certain features and attributes posited by those in
the theistic religions. While there are too many variables to warrant
proofs for God, nonetheless such physical facts may demonstrate a
congruity, at least, with science and religious faith. But what about
the notion of God interacting with the world now.
Miracles
Suppose there does exist a transcendent reality of supreme good-

ness, power, and purpose—one that has intentions and goals for
the cosmos and for human beings. Could it cause events to occur
in the natural world? Could it make things happen that interrupt or
break the laws of nature? To put it differently, are miracles possible,
and is it reasonable in an age of science to believe that miracles have
occurred?
All of the major world religions record events that are claimed to
be miraculous. Krishna is said to have raised people from the dead;
Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) is said to have gotten up imme-
diately after birth, walked, and uttered several profound sentences;
Moses is said to have parted the Red Sea; Jesus is said to have risen
from the dead; Muhammad is said to have directly risen into heaven
from Jerusalem. Miraculous claims abound among the religious. But
is it reasonable to believe that such events actually happened in time
and space?
The term “miracle” (from the Latin word mirari, “to wonder”) is
commonly used in religious contexts to refer to a highly unusual
event that is not explicable by natural causes alone, but rather is the
result of supernatural or divine activity. For theists, God is the creator
and sustainer of the universe. God is the ultimate, if not the imme-
diate, cause of what occurs in and throughout the universe. Many
theists also affirm that some events in the natural world involve a
special, direct act of God, who is the sufficient cause of those events.
Events of this nature include miraculous healings and other kinds of
miracles, some of which are quite extraordinary, such as the resurrec-
tion of Jesus in the case of Christianity and the divine production of
the Qur’an in the case of Islam. If these events were miracles, does
this mean that the laws of nature were violated or suspended in some
way? Does contemporary science allow for such events? What, pre-
cisely, is a miracle?
Among philosophers, there is debate about the meaning of the
term “miracle.” David Hume defined a miracle as a “violation of the
laws of nature . . .”5 He went on to say that it is a “transgression
of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the
interposition of some invisible agent.”6 On Hume’s account, we have
a clockwork universe whereby with the laws of nature some events
are always followed by other events in a regular and deterministic
manner (of course, Hume also raised the problem of induction, but
that is another matter). The only way this would change is if some
invisible deity violated these laws—laws that, according to the reli-
gious, the deity established. By using terms such as “transgression”
and “violation,” Hume was undoubtedly pointing to the absurdity of
the notion that a deity would create a set of perfect and beautiful laws
only to violate or transgress them at will.
Now one might object that Hume has used loaded language here,
that miracles are not in fact “violations” or “transgressions” of natu-
ral laws. Indeed, most religious persons would be appalled at the idea
of God violating anything, let alone laws that God established. Must
we think of miracles as violations of natural laws? To probe into this
question, we need a clear description of the laws of nature. While
there is disagreement among physicists about the precise meaning
of the phrase “law of nature,” there is nevertheless a widespread
consensus among professional physicists that there are regularities
in the natural world as it is and that the human mind is capable of
discerning and describing them. These regularities have certain com-
mon features. For example, they seem to be universal; observation has
demonstrated over and over again that they are valid at every place
where they have been checked, and physicists assume that this can be
generalized across the universe. They are also absolute; they are stable
features that do not change over time and are not different for dif-
ferent observers. Newton’s law of universal gravitation, for example,
states that any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a
force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
No experiment has disproved this law, and every relevant experiment
has supported it.
There is some debate about whether the laws of physics have always
held, such as at the very early stages of the emergence of the universe,
and some physicists now maintain that the current laws may have
changed since the Big Bang singularity. Yet it is still the case that the
consensus is that they are now basically stable throughout the uni-
verse.7 Mathematical physicist Paul Davies elaborates on the point:
It has become fashionable in some circles to argue that science

is ultimately a sham, that we scientists read order into nature,
not out of nature, and that the laws of physics are our laws, not
nature’s. I believe this is arrant nonsense. You would be hard-
pressed to convince a physicist that Newton’s inverse square law
of gravitation is a purely cultural concoction. The laws of physics,
I submit, really exist in the world out there, and the job of the
scientist is to uncover them, not invent them. True, at any given
time, the laws you find in the textbooks are tentative and approxi-
mate, but they mirror, albeit imperfectly, a really existing order in
the physical world.8
Even so, one wonders about the nature of these laws. Are they them-
selves physical realities with a specific location in space and time? If
not, what are they? Where are they? Why do they exist, and what
makes the physical world adhere to them? Is there a necessity built
into them such that the physical world must always follow them?
These are metaphysical and perhaps scientific questions, and it may be
that some of them, at least, are unanswerable by the natural sciences.
Furthermore, Newton’s laws, which seemed to entail a closed, deter-
ministic system, were shown to be accurate but incomplete. Accord-
ing to a prominent view of quantum events, there is indeterminacy
at the subatomic level. And while there are stochastic or probabilistic

laws that govern the behavior of large groups of subatomic particles
that make them appear determined, that is probably not the case.
There is quantum unpredictability, and while these undetermined
events are very small, they can make a significant difference, as chaos
theory demonstrates.9
What does all this mean in terms of what reality is ultimately made
of? No one knows for sure. But it does seem to imply that with respect
to physics, there is no reason why outside (non-natural) factors could
not play a role in events that occur in the natural world. While these
factors may be beyond the purview of scientific study per se, it does
not follow that they do not exist. Suppose, then, that the laws of
nature are descriptive rather than prescriptive, that they describe
what will, or likely will, occur under certain specifiable conditions,
but not that they determine what must occur. Given this descriptive
notion of natural laws, divine action in the world would be a non-
natural, supernatural event, but as such it would not be a violation or
transgression of any known law.
So let us move forward without the Humean, loaded language. We
are still confronted with the issue of whether it is ever reasonable to
believe that an exception to the usual processes in the natural world
has occurred, and also whether it can be established that a divine
agent has purposively acted in the world. Hume does not attempt
to demonstrate that miracles are a metaphysical impossibility. His
approach is an epistemic one: to show that there is never sufficient
evidence to warrant belief in a miracle. It would never be reasonable
to believe a report that a violation of a law of nature has occurred,
argues Hume, for the evidence used to support the claim of a miracu-
lous event is always the testimony of a few witnesses at a specific
moment (and usually a moment in the distant past by very unedu-
cated people). But the establishment of a natural law was based on
the uniform experience of many persons over a very long time. To
quote Hume again: “[A]s a firm and unalterable experience has estab-
lished these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature
of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possi-
bly be imagined.”10 The testimony necessary to establish a miracle
would need to be greater than that which established the natural law
in the first instance. Since this sort of testimony never happens, no
evidence is sufficient to establish that a violation of a natural law has
occurred. So it is always unreasonable to believe that a miracle has

actually happened.
Is Hume correct that there is always an insufficiency of evidence
for belief in miracles? It is certainly true that many alleged miracles
are obvious fabrications by individuals with creative imaginations. It
is also true that miracle narratives tend to become increasingly spec-
tacular over time, and that extraordinary legends develop as the dec-
ades and centuries pass by. The accounts of the miraculous among
the religious traditions are sometimes cockamamie and oftentimes
contradict one another. So more than a modicum of skepticism is cer-
tainly in order when considering miraculous claims. So how should
one proceed?
Determining the probability or likelihood of an event is a rather
complex undertaking, and simply utilizing the frequency of an occur-
rence to determine its probability, as Hume does, simply won’t do.
There are many events that have occurred that were highly unlikely.
Winning a national lottery is highly unlikely; winning it twice is
virtually impossible. Yet it has happened. The probability of some-
one walking on water or rising from the dead or being taken from
the earth directly into some other place is highly unlikely, but not
absolutely impossible, given quantum indeterminacy. If there exists
a transcendent reality with purposes and intentions and a reason
for causing such events, as religious theists affirm, the probability
goes up. Establishing the precise probability of a miracle, without the
background information of the existence of a transcendent reality of
power and purpose, the nature of that reality, and the purposes and
plans of that reality, is impossible. If one had such knowledge, a par-
ticular miracle may turn out to be highly probable. So whether mira-
cles are reasonable to believe is going to depend partly on whether
it is reasonable to believe that God exists and, if so, what that divine
reality is like.
For those who believe in a transcendent reality of power and pur-
pose, miracles are metaphysically possible and may even be occur-
rences to be expected. Many people do believe that miracles have
occurred. In fact, in the United States of America nearly eighty per-
cent of adults believe that miracles still occur today.11 Why they are
not more frequent is a serious difficulty for such believers, though,
especially given the vast amounts of evil in the world. If God exists
as the omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent reality that most
religious theists describe, why does God not perform (more) mira-
cles to ameliorate pain and suffering? This question, of course, leads
us back to the issues discussed in the previous chapter. We will not
rehearse them here except to note again that what seems reasonable
to an individual in one context may seem unreasonable to another in
a different context. Two highly intelligent and educated persons may
and often do disagree about issues concerning Ultimate Reality and
related matters of religious concern. So deciding whether a particular
claim of miracle is reasonable to believe depends largely on these
other factors. But the religious also claim that faith plays a significant
role in what one takes to be true. What role, then, should faith and
reason play in such matters?
Reason and Faith
There are different ways one might understand the role of reason in
religion and religious belief. For example, reason has always played
an important role in the major religious traditions in offering instruc-
tion to children and converts about the religion, in particular with
respect to rationally comprehending and faithfully adhering to the
core teachings. Furthermore, there have also been religious apolo-
gists—those who argue for the tradition of which they are a part and
attempt to both strengthen the faith of the faithful and to persuade
those outside the faith of its truthfulness. But should reason play a
role in validating or attempting to demonstrate that the core beliefs
within a given religion or religious tradition are actually true?
One reply to this question is a resounding “yes.” For a religious
belief or belief system to be accepted as true and reasonable, there
should be evidence available that validates its truthfulness such that
any reasonable person confronted with this evidence should be con-
vinced. We can call views of this sort rational validation views. In a
famous essay entitled “The Ethics of Belief,” British mathematician
and philosopher W. K. Clifford (1845–1879) argued that believing
something without sufficient evidence is immoral. He begins the
essay with an example. Suppose a ship owner realizes that his emi-
grant ship might need some repair before setting sail to a distant land,
but he convinces himself otherwise. He remembers that the ship had
many successful voyages and that he believes in providence and the
providential care of human persons. After further contemplation, he
is able to remove any doubt he might have about those involved in

the original construction of the ship, and comforts himself with the
thought that they surely built his vessel well. Tragically, soon after its
voyage begins, the ship sinks and all perish.
Clifford argues that the ship owner is morally responsible for this
catastrophe because his beliefs were not based on solid evidence.
Wishful thinking or mere hope is not enough; solid evidence is nec-
essary for belief. Clifford then offers this general conclusion: “It is
wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.”12 On Clifford’s account, which is sometimes
referred to as evidentialism, believing has moral implications: it is
immoral to believe without sufficient evidence. The thrust of Clif-
ford’s argument was probably aimed at religious belief, for toward
the end of his article he quotes Coleridge: “He who begins by loving
Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect
or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better
than all.”
In another important essay, entitled “The Will to Believe,” philoso-
pher and psychologist William James (1842–1910) argued that there
are occasions in which we are forced to make a decision to believe
even if solid evidence is lacking, and that in appropriate circum-
stances this decision to believe is more appropriate than not believ-
ing. James thus argued against Clifford and for the view that there
are occasions when having beliefs in the absence of evidence is fitting
and proper. There are times in life, James maintains, when we need to
choose to believe even when there is little, if any, evidence available
on which to base our decisions. He gives the example of climbing in
the Alps. Given that most people have never climbed the Alps, it is
unlikely that many can relate to his example. So I shall change the
example but will attempt to make the same point at which he is driv-
ing. Suppose you are a single college student and have fallen in love
with a visiting Scandinavian student named Andren (a unisex name).
Andren, who is engaged to be married, is only in your country for
another week. You believe that Andren loves you, too, but you’re not
quite sure. It is more than a hunch, but solid evidence is lacking. You
want Andren to want you, but it could be wishful thinking on your
part. Andren’s wedding is scheduled for two weeks from now. What
do you do? If you wait much longer, it will be too late. If you tell
Andren of your love, and the feeling is not mutual, embarrassment
and humiliation will likely ensue. If you don’t tell Andren of your
love, deep sadness and regret awaits your future. James’s advice
(though keep in mind that the scenario has been completely altered)
is this:
In this case (and it is one of an immense class) the part of wis-

dom clearly is to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of
the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its
object. There are then cases where faith creates its own verifica-
tion. Believe, and you shall be right, for you shall save yourself
[that is, you shall have your lover, if the love is mutual]; doubt,
and you shall again be right, for you shall perish [that is, you shall
lose your lover, even if the love is mutual]. The only difference is
that to believe is greatly to your advantage.13
For James, there are practical or pragmatic consequences to our

beliefs. And as the example above indicates, sometimes it is beneficial
to act even where evidence is lacking.
James calls deciding between hypotheses an “option,” and a genu-
ine option for an individual is one that is living, forced, and momen-
tous. Arguably, the example of Andren above is a genuine option.
Religious belief, James maintains, is a genuine option for some peo-
ple. When confronted with a genuine option, even given a lack of
evidence, taking a leap of faith may be the best decision. Since indu-
bitable evidence is lacking in these “forced” decision-making situa-
tions, he maintains, in making this choice we must use what he calls
our non-intellectual or “passional” nature: “Our passional nature not
only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions,
whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided
on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstance, ‘Do not
decide, but leave the question open,’ is itself a passional decision—
just like deciding yes or no—and is attended with the same risk of
losing the truth.”14
With respect to religious beliefs and belief systems, he maintains,
the stakes are sometimes so great that the risk of losing truth is worth
it, even though error is a real possibility. Following Clifford’s approach
to believing only when solid evidence is available and certain would
cause our lives to be impoverished in many ways and bereft of the
fullness we could otherwise experience.15
There are risks with both Clifford’s and James’s approaches. If we

follow Clifford, while we may avoid believing what is false, we risk
believing what is true and useful and beautiful. If we follow James,
we risk falling into error; and only fools rush in. Yet for James, it is
often worth it, for “If religion be true and the evidence for it still be
insufficient, I do not wish . . . to forfeit my sole chance in life of get-
ting upon the winning side.”16 If we follow James on the matter, the
answer to our driving question of whether reason should play a role
in attempting to demonstrate the truth or plausibility of religious
beliefs or belief systems may well be a resounding “no.” This is the
second view of faith and reason, and we can call positions of this
sort non-validation views. Those who adhere to non-validation views
do not necessarily deny that reason is requisite for understanding reli-
gious beliefs or for practicing religious faith, but they do deny that
properly accepting religious beliefs or belief systems is dependent
upon rational evaluation. This general approach is often referred to as
fideism (from the Latin term fides, which means “faith”). Faith entails
no rational justification or critical evaluation, fideists maintain, and
attempting to rationally demonstrate one’s religious beliefs may even
be an indication of a lack of real faith.
While not a fideist in the full sense, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) pre-
sented a pragmatic gamble for religious belief, sometimes referred to
as “the wager.”17 Using a cost-benefit analysis of the reasonableness
of belief in God, and based on a type of early decision and probabil-
ity theory, Pascal argued that believing in God is a better bet than
not believing.18 The wager, which Pascal develops in his work Pen-
sées, can be described as choosing between four basic possibilities.
First, believe in God, and it turns out that God does exist. Second,
believe in God and it turns out that God does not exist. Third, do not
believe in God and it turns out that God does exist. And fourth, do
not believe in God and it turns out that God does not exist. Our best
gamble, Pascal maintains, is to believe in God. Here is why: If you
choose to believe in God and God does exist, you have great gain. If
you choose to believe in God and God does not exist, you have not
lost much (if anything). If you choose to disbelieve in God and God
does exist, you have no great gain (and you may have great loss). If
you choose to disbelieve in God and God does not exist, you again
have no great gain. So, even with little or no evidence, one has good
reason to believe in God. What if one still finds herself incapable of
believing? Begin by “acting as if you believe,” says Pascal, “taking

holy water, having masses said, and so forth. Even this will naturally
make you believe.”19
Is this a plausible approach to religious belief? Probably not in the
pluralistic, global community in which most of us live today. For one,
how is a person to decide which religion, among the plethora of reli-
gions that exist and flourish, he or she should wager on? Why wager
on the Christian God, as Pascal suggests? Why not bet on Krishna,
or Allah? Why bet on a God at all? Why not bet on Nirvana? After
all, on most Buddhist accounts, until right belief has been achieved,
there are many more lifetimes of suffering ahead. Given the many
different and unique religious options available, how then is one
to wager? Pascal provides little criteria for making an informed bet
given the pluralistic milieu that now encompasses large portions
of our planet. Furthermore, even if one did come to religious faith
through this calculating wager, is that an appropriate method for
acquiring authentic religious faith? It seems rather unlikely that the
God of the theistic religions, if such a God exists, would be pleased
that adherents came to faith through a calculated bet. Neither do
the right beliefs necessary for Buddhist enlightenment entail escha-
tological wagering. When it comes to religion, all bets are off. Even
William James was troubled by this line of thinking. As he put it, with
this approach it is difficult to avoid feeling “that when religious faith
expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming-table, it is put to
its last trumps.”20
While Pascal was not a true fideist (for the wager itself is appeal-
ing to one’s reasoning faculties in deciding for or against belief in
God), the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) seems
to have been one. Kierkegaard lived in Christian Denmark, where
the philosophical work of the German idealist philosopher G. F. W.
Hegel (1770–1831) was culturally influential and widespread. For
Hegel, world history unfolds according to divine reason and logic,
and the Christian religion is a mythological representation of this
divine, rational evolution.
For Kierkegaard, Hegelian influences on his society led to a Chris-
tianity that was no longer focused on the individual experience of
choosing to live an inward life of devotion and passion. Rather,
rather Christianity had become identified with a set of abstract cul-
tural beliefs and rational arguments involving a mere regurgitation of
the right answers. Christianity had lost the passion that is more akin
to an intimate relationship between two young lovers. True lovers are
not interested in cold, calculating certainty. So too for religious faith.
“Certainty,” Kierkegaard maintained, “lurks at the door of faith and
threatens to devour it.”21 What is more, uncertainty, and perhaps
even absurdity, is actually required for faith.
Suppose a man who wishes to acquire faith; let the comedy begin.
He wishes to have faith, but he wishes also to safeguard himself by
means of an objective inquiry. . . . What happens? . . . [T]he absurd
becomes something different; it becomes probable, it becomes
increasingly probable, it becomes extremely and emphatically
probable. . . . Now he is ready to believe it; and lo, now it has
become precisely impossible to believe it. Anything that is almost
probable, or probable, or extremely and emphatically probable, is
something he can almost know, or as good as know, or extremely
and emphatically almost know—but it is impossible to believe.
For the absurd is the object of faith, and the only object that can
be believed.22
Choosing faith involves suspending reason; it involves, Kierkegaard

maintains, a leap. It entails affirming something higher than rea-
son and making a life commitment to that which is beyond under-
standing. This affirmation and commitment comes about through
the existential choices an individual must make on a regular basis.23
Kierkegaard and James are, for all intents and purposes, in agreement.
Thus far in this section we have looked at several examples of non-
validation views. As we have seen, a central question for such views,
especially in a pluralistic culture, is how one is to decide to which
religious beliefs or belief system one should commit? One reply is
that since evidences offered for any particular religious belief are diffi-
cult, if not impossible, to assess from the “outside,” one must simply
make a choice and then, from the “inside,” one will be able to see
the reasonableness of the belief or belief system. This, I think, is how
James would see the matter. Another reply, one that Kierkegaard him-
self proffered, is that reason provides only cool, calculated, indefinite
conclusions, while faith offers personal passion and subjective cer-
tainty.24 This passionate certainty, he maintained, better captures the
essence of religious faith.
At this point you may be unimpressed with any of the options we

have examined. If so, you are not alone. Fortunately, there is a third
approach to faith and reason. This third way, which I shall call the
rational evaluative view, disagrees with both of the former views in
that: (1) it denies that, in order for a religious belief or belief system to
be accepted as true or reasonable, there should be evidence available
that validates its truthfulness such that any reasonable person con-
fronted with this evidence should be convinced, but yet (2) it affirms
that rational assessment of a religious belief or belief system is pos-
sible. So, to consider one example, a person holding this third view
may, after evaluating the evidences, conclude that belief in miracles is
no longer reasonable. Suppose one were raised in a traditional Chris-
tian home, say, and believed that the miracle narratives in the Bible
were historically and literally true. But now, given her understanding
of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, and her philosophical
understanding of causation, she may conclude that a literal inter-
pretation of the miracle accounts in the Bible is implausible. That
would certainly have an effect on her Christian belief system as a
whole. Or, to consider a different example, one may conclude that
the various problems raised by evil make it unreasonable to affirm
the reality of God as depicted in classical theism. So either her under-
standing of the nature of God must change, or her belief in God must
be expunged altogether. Examples could be multiplied, but the main
point is that, for the rational evaluative view, it is possible to assess,
evaluate, and be critical of religious beliefs and belief systems—both
one’s own and those of others.
In previous chapters we have examined different kinds of argu-
ments and evidences that can and have been used to evaluate reli-
gious beliefs and systems. Well-educated, intelligent, and reasonable
people disagree on where the evidences and arguments point. For bet-
ter or worse, that is the human condition. So where do the philosoph-
ical arguments and scientific evidences point with respect to religion?
What role should faith play in making decisions about fundamental
matters of life and death? As James would say, we are forced to choose.
Conclusion
In this chapter we first examined various ways of relating science and

religion. It was noted that while many claim that science and religion
are at war, a feudal relationship need not be the case. One can take
both science and religion seriously, whether understood as non-over-
lapping magisteria or as different orders of reality that may overlap
on occasion. One way overlap might occur is through the event of
a divine act or miracle. A miracle event need not be understood as a
violation of natural laws, for there are spaces, such as within quan-
tum indeterminacy and unpredictability, that allow for the possibil-
ity of non-natural or supernatural involvement in the natural world.
So miracles are possible. And if there exists a transcendent reality,
such as that affirmed by the major world religions, miracles may even
be likely. The central difficulty with miracles turns out to be an epis-
temic or doxastic one: knowing when (if ever) one is warranted in
believing that a miracle has occurred. This will involve many factors,
not the least of which is the way faith and reason are understood and
integrated into one’s overall view of the world.
For Further Reading
Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science. Harper & Row, 1990.

Alister McGrath, The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion. Blackwell,
1998.
Arthur Peacocke, Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion.
University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
John Polkinghorne, Faith, Science and Understanding. Yale University Press,
2000.
Keith Ward, Divine Action: Examining God’s Role in an Open and Emergent Uni-
verse. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2007.
T. C. Williams, The Idea of the Miraculous: The Challenge of Science and Religion.
St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
6
Death and the Afterlife
There is one matter about which all human beings can be assured:
physical death is inevitable. Regardless of whether one is a religious
devotee or an ardent atheist, and regardless of one’s conception of
what constitutes the human person, mortality confronts us all. Our
physical bodies will die and decay. But is that the end? Does con-
sciousness cease to exist when the body, or at least the brain, dies? Or
do we, in some sense, survive physical death? Does the soul, if there
exists such a thing, continue beyond the cessation of the body? It is
not uncommon to desire to live forever, but is such a longing mere
wishful thinking—a hope unfulfilled? Among the major world reli-
gions, physical death is not the end. There is hope for continuation,
though for some traditions what such a “continuation” after death
is like far transcends anything we can now conceive or imagine. But
hope for some form of continuation beyond the grave is not limited
to religious adherents. Atheists too may wish that consciousness con-
tinues after physical death. If so, as we will see, such hope may not be
a mere flight of fancy.
The possibility of an afterlife raises many questions of its own. Is
there any hard evidence of conscious existence after the death of the
brain? If so, what does this evidence consist in? How would conscious
existence after death be experienced by a human being, one whose
conscious experiences before death were unalterably connected with
the activity of the brain? Further, if there is conscious survival after
death, will the survivor be identical with his or her current self or
be something completely different? Most people have thought about
questions like these, though probably not many have explored them
philosophically. If and when they do, the manner in which they are
answered will, to a great extent, be influenced by the worldview or
religious tradition to which they adhere. For the way we understand
96
Death and the Afterlife 97
ourselves and the nature of God/Ultimate Reality inclines the matri-

ces of thought about whether life after death is a live option and what
such an afterlife would mean.
In order to examine the feasibility and nature of postmortem exist-
ence, it is helpful to begin by examining the prior philosophical issue
of personal identity and of what the self consists.
I. Personal Identity and Conceptions of the Self
There are various conceptions of the nature of the self, four central
ones being what shall be called in this chapter monistic materialism,
double aspect theory, monistic pantheism, and the Buddhist view of
anatman. Each of these views provides a unique expression of what
the self is, and each of them, I will argue, at least allows for the pos-
sibility of continued existence after physical death. We begin with a
view of the self that historically has been a minority position, though
in recent times it has gained a considerable number of adherents.
Currently, the fastest growing association of professional scientists
in all of experimental biology is the Society of Neuroscience.1 Neuro-
science is an interdisciplinary science that includes the collaboration
of a number of fields, such as biology, medicine, psychology, and phi-
losophy, among others. A revolution of thought occurred when, back
in the 1970s, scientists realized that this interdisciplinary approach to
brain studies could yield a more adequate understanding of the way
the mind, or more specifically the brain, actually works. As the field
has advanced, the view of the mind has been increasingly understood
to be the functioning of a material system, rather than something
beyond or emergent from the physical processes of the brain.
These advances in brain science, along with a widespread rejection
of Cartesianism—the view that the human self is a combination of
two substances, body and soul—and the commonsense experiences
of changes in brain chemistry affecting changes in thoughts and per-
ception (drinking too much alcohol causes one to become less coher-
ent, for example), have led many to affirm a reductive materialist
view of the self whereby the essence of the individual human person
is understood to be purely material. The evolutionary account of life
has provided further support for materialism, for it seems to provide
a purely physical explanation of all aspects of human development,
including “mental” events such as thoughts and feelings. There is a
deep dependency relation between the brain and the mind. British
philosopher Colin McGinn describes it this way:
What we call mind is in fact made up of a great number of subca-

pacities, and each of these depends upon the functioning of the
brain. [Neuroscience] compellingly demonstrates . . . that every-
thing about the mind, from the sensory-motor periphery to the
inner sense, is minutely controlled by the brain: if your brain lacks
certain chemicals or gets locally damaged, your mind is apt to fall
apart at the seams. . . . If parts of the mind depend for their exist-
ence upon parts of the brain, then the whole of the mind must so
depend too.2
But does dependence entail identity? There are various materialist

accounts of the mind, one being reductive materialism, which is also
referred to as type-type identity theory. On this account, mental states
and processes are identical to physical brain states and processes. The
mind, then, just is the activity of the brain. The mental experiences
one has, such as feeling a pain, seeing a color patch, or hearing a
particular sound, are not non-physical events that are correlated with
physical brain events; they are identical to brain events. Support for
this view includes historical parallels. For example, we know that
sound is just a series of compression waves traveling through the air;
warmth is just the energy of molecules in motion; light is just elec-
tromagnetic waves. What at an earlier time seemed to be more than
physical reality turned out, upon further scientific investigation, to
be reducible to just the physical. So, too, argue reductive materialists,
with the mind. Support also includes the apparent neural depend-
ency of mental phenomena on physical states of the brain and central
nervous system. Alcohol, narcotics, and brain disease affect mental
abilities. With a lack of oxygen, or under the influence of soporific
drugs, one quickly loses conscious awareness. Reductive materialists
argue that neural dependency follows if the mind just is the activity
of the brain. There is no need to posit a further mystical entity, a non-
material mind, over and above the brain.
While the identity theory still has strong adherents, it is not as pop-
ular among materialist philosophers as in previous decades. One rea-
son for the decline is the seeming dissimilitude between brain states
and mental events. To quote McGinn again, himself a materialist:
The property of consciousness itself (or specific conscious states)

is not an observable or perceptible property of the brain. You can
stare into a living conscious brain, your own or someone else’s,
and see there a wide variety of instantiated properties—its shape,
color, texture, etc.—but you will not thereby see what the subject
is experiencing, the conscious state itself.3
Another reason for the decline of reductionism is the rise of function-

alism—probably the dominant view currently among philosophers
of the mind. Contrary to identity theorists, functionalists argue that
it is impossible to identify particular mental states with particular
brain states. It is possible, though, to characterize mental states by
reference to functional states. On functionalism, what makes some-
thing a particular type of mental state depends not on what mate-
rial of which it is constituted, but rather on the way it functions in
the overall system. Whereas reductionists maintained that all mental
events are reducible to types of brain events, that consciousness itself
is nothing but a brain event, functionalists argue that this is akin
to mental chauvinism. Surely, they argue, it is theoretically possible
that other sorts of creatures besides those with human brains could
have conscious mental states. Gleaning the insights of early Greek
philosophers, most notably Aristotle, they insist that matter does not
define a thing. A statue of Socrates could be made of clay or marble
or countless other stuffs. This notion of multiple realizability, they
maintain, can be applied to mental events as well.
Furthermore, the mind is like a black box in that while we may
not be fully aware of its internal material makeup, such information
is not required for knowledge of function. What is important is that
given certain physical inputs, certain physical outputs follow. Identi-
cal functions can occur in different media. The earliest computers,
for example, were constituted by materials that are quite different
from what they are made of today, but they could perform many of
the same computations as modern computers. With human beings,
functionalists argue, mental processes are probably fully realized in
material structures, as they are in computers, but what precisely those
materials are is not the fundamental issue. What is fundamental to
a mental state, such as feeling a pain, is its functional role. This pain
is whatever causes the face to grimace, say, when being stuck with a
pin. On the functionalist account, if an alien from the Alpha Centauri
System behaved in a way identical to the way human beings behave

when being stuck with a pin, for all intents and purposes the inner
states of the creature that caused its behavior would be the same as
ours. In any case, no additional non-material entities (such as a mind
or soul) need be posited to explain mental events or consciousness.
It is commonly held among materialists of all stripes that there is
likely no survival after death. Once the brain dies, the individual per-
son perishes. But does this conclusion necessarily follow? It may well
be that future developments in neuroscience or cryobiology (or some
science not yet developed) will reveal ways in which consciousness
can be preserved into the future or reanimated at some future time.
Or it may be that developments in robotics technology will result
in human persons being more or less transformed into cyborgs such
that they can continue to exist and have a mental life for an extended
period of time after the various physical organs die—perhaps even
indefinitely. Or it may be that at some future time mental states or
consciousness will be transferrable into a different material medium,
one not so prone to decomposition and decay. If one’s mental states
could be reinstalled in another physical system after death, as a musi-
cal piece can be reinstalled in a different digital format, some argue
that the person could then survive the death of the brain and body.
While this is speculative philosophy and currently science fiction, it
does seem theoretically possible for human persons to survive indefi-
nitely even on a naturalistic, materialist account of the self. Material-
ists who are theists (a small but formidable group) might further add
that God could simply raise human persons back to life after death
by resurrecting their bodies, including one’s thoughts and feelings
and memories; perhaps no onerous problem for a divine agent with
immense power and knowledge.
While there are many today who adhere to the view that a proper
account of human mental activity and its causes should include
only physical events, entities, and causes, historically this has been
a minority position. In past centuries, dualism has been a view more
commonly held than materialism. The term “dualism” has a variety
of meanings in the history of Western philosophy, but the gist of it
is that human persons are constituted by two substances or aspects.
Many of the major philosophers in the Western tradition have held
to some form of dualism, including Plato, Augustine, Thomas Aqui-
nas, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Reid, to name a
few. Most religious adherents within the Abrahamic faiths have also
been dualists, as the central scriptures of these faiths seem to affirm
the reality of both body and soul. This is also the case in the major
Indian faiths, where a distinction is often made between the indi-
vidual soul (atman) and the physical matter (prakriti) of which the
human person is constituted.
Plato and Descartes are perhaps the best-known defenders of dual-
ism. Plato argued for a view of the soul in which life after death is a
natural consequence, given the soul’s nature. But it is Descartes’s view
of substance dualism that is more widely discussed today, and it is his
view (or what many take to be his view) that is most widely challenged
and debunked. Cartesianism (the alleged view of Descartes) is widely
understood to be the view that the soul is an unextended, non-spa-
tial, non-physical substance, whereas the body is an extended, spatial,
physical substance. There exist, then, two very different substances
that are somehow conjoined into one human person; this is a ghost
in the machine, as Gilbert Ryle first despairingly used the phrase. This
dualist view raises innumerable difficulties, not the least of which is
how two separate substances, one material and one immaterial, can
be united to form one entity. And how can an immaterial soul (or
mind) exert a force on physical matter (the body)? The body, in this
case, seems an add-on, an unnecessary hunk of physical reality the
likes of which we would be better off without! This was how Plato saw
things: the body is made up of many parts and as such is corruptible
and mortal, whereas the soul is simple, incorruptible, and immortal.
But this is not how Descartes saw the matter. He is often misunder-
stood here. For Descartes, human beings are psycho-physical unities.
As he clearly states in the sixth of his Meditations on First Philosophy:
“I am not present in my body merely as a pilot is present in a ship;
I am most tightly bound to it, and as it were mixed up with it, so that
I and it form a unit.” One form of “dualism,” one in which the soul is
understood to be more deeply integrated and unified with the body
than what is commonly taken to be the Cartesian view of a “ghost
in a machine,” is attributed to the work of Aristotle. According to
Aristotle, the soul is the form of the body; it is what animates, unifies,
and develops the biological functions of the physical body. Aristotle’s
hylemorphic view was adopted by the Christian theologian and
philosopher Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages. For Aquinas, the
soul is a unity of inseparable aspects, including mental states (such as
feelings, thoughts, and sensations), capacities, and powers. The soul

is the essence of a person; it is an individual’s ordering principle and
source of life. For Aristotle, when the body dies the soul (or form)
ceases to exist. For Aquinas, when the body dies the soul would natu-
rally cease to exist as well, for it is not a separable substance. How-
ever, on Aquinas’s view, God intervenes and keeps the soul—which
he understood to be a partial or incomplete substance—in existence
until the future resurrection state when the souls of the (physically)
dead will once again animate their bodies.
Most who hold to dualism also affirm life after death. For some this
involves an embodied state, such as on the Jewish, Christian, and
Islamic views of the resurrection of the body. For others, including
virtually all of those in the Indian traditions as we have already seen,
life after death involves a rebirth in another embodied existence until
one ultimately escapes embodiment completely in a fully enlight-
ened and blissful state. In any case, for many dualists, the notion of
continued existence after the death of the body is at least philosophi-
cally plausible.
The hylemorphic view has some advantages over functionalism, at
least functionalism as generally understood. One of the most compel-
ling is that as one introspects and reflects on her thoughts, feelings,
desires, intentions, and other mental experiences, there does seem
to be an inner aspect of one’s material self—one’s subjective inner
life, as it were—that is of a different sort than the objective material
stuff of one’s brain, body, and central nervous system. This inner
self contains privately accessed data, thoughts, feelings, and so on,
that are only accessible by the individual self. They are experienced
from a first-person perspective; they are my thoughts, my feelings,
my desires. I am a subject of experiences and intentions, one who
chooses, acts, and is acted upon. It is not that this inner self must be
a detachable substance that can naturally exist apart, separated from
my brain and body, hovering over the matter and cogitating. But
this inner self does seem to be different than, or emergent from, the
material brain.
Perhaps an example would be helpful at this point. Consider the
most abundant substance on the earth’s surface: water. Water is a
chemical compound with the formula H2O. A molecule of water
contains one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms connected by
covalent bonds. When this molecule is formed, a property emerges

from it that we call wetness. Wetness, then, is an emergent property
of a particular type of matter arranged in a certain manner. Arguably
so too for the inner self, or what is generally called consciousness. It
is emergent from the very complex material structures, matrices, and
processes that are the human brain and central nervous system.
Furthermore, while it does seem evident that consciousness, spe-
cifically human consciousness, has emerged from an advanced state
of brain development, and so is dependent on the brain, it does seem
at least logically possible that consciousness could exist without a
brain. There is much disagreement about this among philosophers
and neuroscientists, but it does seem a reasonable hypothesis that
consciousness, if emergent and thus a different aspect of the self than
the material brain, could exist apart—granting, that is, some power
capable of sustaining it as such. While this would be an unnatural
state of consciousness, if there is a divine mind, as Aquinas held, then
it seems that such a power could sustain the existence of human con-
sciousness, as unnatural as that may be. To put it rather differently,
if there is a transcendent reality of great power and wisdom, as most
of the traditions affirm, sustaining human consciousness after death
seems not be to an overly difficult problem.
It is worth briefly mentioning two more views of the self, which,
though not common in the West, are quite prevalent among Eastern
thinkers. First, there is what I shall call monistic pantheism, a view
held by those in the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy
that we explored earlier. As we saw back in chapter two, according to
this philosophical school, Ultimate Reality is infinite being, undiffer-
entiated consciousness, and eternal bliss (sat-chit-ananda). Referred to
as “Brahman,” this unitary reality is what is ultimately and only real.
All appearances of duality, including the many apparent aspects of
the physical universe, are illusory. The apparent individual self is also
illusory, for the true self, the atman, is actually identical to Brahman
on this view. As the Advaitan philosopher Shankara put it: Brahman
is “unchangeable, infinite, imperishable. It is beyond Maya [illusion]
and her effects. It is eternal, undying bliss. It is pure. Such is Brah-
man, and ‘That art Thou.’”4
For Shankara and those who affirm this form of monistic pantheism,
ultimate fulfillment occurs when one reaches full enlightenment, or
moksha, whereby one escapes the myriad cycles of death and rebirth
and is re-identified as the undifferentiated Brahman. Achieving mok-
sha is an arduous task and involves a succession of rebirths, but what
is relevant to this chapter is that on this view of the self, survival is
attainable, though individual existence in a future state is not what
adherents of monistic pantheism have in mind. Instead, it is absolute
union with That which Is.
A fourth view of the self is held primarily by those within the Bud-
dhist traditions. Early on in Buddhist thought there was a rejection
of the dualist, materialist, and monistic views of the self espoused in
Hinduism. This fourth view, likely dating back to Siddhartha Gau-
tama himself, is that there is no self—no permanent, substantial, indi-
vidual soul or ego. This is the doctrine of anatta or anatman (often
translated as “no-self”) mentioned in chapter two. According to tra-
ditional Buddhist teaching, to be unaware of this view of the self is
to ensure that suffering continues as an element of transitory exist-
ence. Through the enlightening vision of understanding the imper-
manence of what is taken as the self, along with other insights and
practices, one can ultimately break free from the deleterious effects of
karma and experience nirvana (blowing out of self and the indescrib-
able state of ultimate peace and bliss).
Thus on most Buddhist accounts there is survival of a certain sort,
but not the continuation of a substantial individual self, as pro-
pounded by those in the theistic religions. Progression beyond this
life of suffering can be achieved, and ultimate bliss can be accom-
plished, but such achievement entails overcoming ignorance and
illusion, following the proper path of thought and action, and real-
izing the knowledge that leads to deliverance. In this case, as with
monistic pantheism, final liberation may well require working off the
pernicious effects of karma, and this will likely involve myriad rein-
carnations. Nonetheless, there is the hope for advancement beyond
the grave.
These last two views have been considered, even though they
are likely not live options for many readers of this book, primarily
because I think it is important to be aware of the fact that how one
views the nature of the self will, to a great extent, be dependent upon
the worldview in which one is ensconced. For theists and atheists,
dualism or double aspect theory or some form of materialism are
likely within the realm of possible belief, whereas for a Buddhist or a
Hindu, a very different view of the self is generally in play. Perhaps

awareness and study of the different options can be of assistance as
we ponder this subject.
It is also the case that how one views the nature of the self will to
a great extent determine whether the notion of an afterlife is even a
reasonable belief. As we have seen, for each of the four central views
of the self discussed in this chapter, some form of continuation is
minimally theoretically possible.
There are also some important arguments against survival, how-
ever, especially given current developments in the sciences. It is to
these arguments that we now turn.
II. Problems with Survival
One argument against continuation after death is that life eternal

would not be a great good, nor should it even be desirable. So even on
a theistic account of the world in which God exists and could, if God
desired, cause human beings to live on after physical death in a heav-
enly hereafter, God—being omnibenevolent—would not do so. Post-
mortem existence, that is to say, would be bad; it would be boring or
tedious or even dreadful. Grace Jantzen puts the point this way:
A paradise of sensuous delights would become boring, it would

in the long run be pointless and utterly unfulfilling. We can per-
haps imagine ways of making a very long feast meaningful; we do,
after all, cope with lengthy terrestrial social occasions by choosing
interesting conversational partners, and making the dinner occa-
sions not merely for food and drink but also for stimulating dis-
cussion and for giving and receiving friendship the value of which
extends beyond the termination of the dinner. But if the feasting
literally never came to an end, if there were no progress possible
from the sensuous enjoyment of paradise to anything more mean-
ingful, then we might well wish, like Elina Macropolis, to termi-
nate the whole business and destroy the elixir of youth.5
For Jantzen, it seems, heaven would be a kind of hell. Eternity, even

eternal sensuous delights, would not be great goods.
This is an important objection. Simply because something is eter-
nal does not make it a great good, and it may turn out to be a great
evil. And simply because something ceases to exist does not make it
less beautiful, or worthwhile, or good. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 is
beautiful, worthwhile, and good, and no doubt even more so because
it does come to an end. If it continued on indefinitely it would cer-
tainly lose one’s appreciation. So too with most things we experience.
So perhaps an individual’s life would be more significant, meaning-
ful, and beautiful if it had a finite duration, and especially if there was
a grand consciousness (i.e., God) who could retain it in memory and
recall it at will.
It is also true, however, that most human beings experience a
deep longing for longevity; a desire to dwell and flourish into the
future—forever. Dostoyevsky said that “If you were to destroy in
mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living
force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.”6
That seems an overstatement. But this longing is a powerful force,
one that advertisers and marketing firms utilize to significant profit.
We do seem to care about a future existence, and we do seem to be
repelled by the thought of the cessation of our existence—or even
of the diminution of the effects of our lives after we pass from this
earthly life. While this is no argument for immortality, it is a genu-
ine description of the general human condition. If there is no con-
tinuation after death, humans seem nonetheless to be hard-wired to
believe the contrary.
Another argument against immortality is connected to the claim
that the existence of a physical organ, the brain, is necessary for
consciousness. No physical brain, no consciousness. Since the brain
exists temporally, so too conscious experience. It was already noted
that since various drugs and brain diseases affect mental capacities,
including consciousness, this provides empirical evidence that brain
activity (including consciousness itself) depends on brain function,
or is identical to the activities of the brain. It is also the case that
mental abilities are locatable in the brain. For example, the frontal
lobe of the cerebral cortex is the area of the brain associated with
the operations of reasoning, planning, and emotions. The occipital
lobe is associated with visual processing, and the temporal lobe is
associated with perception, memory, and speech. Those in the field
of neuroscience have isolated these associated mental functions in
the physical brain itself, and not in some immaterial soul or mind or
mysterium tremendum. This fact offers strong empirical support, it is
argued, for the claim that consciousness (at least human conscious-
ness), like all cognitive activities, requires an operational, physical
brain.
But with the exception of the identity theory, even for the mate-
rialist it seems possible for there to be replacements of the various
parts of the brain. Perhaps at some point in the future all parts of the
brain could be replaced with other components that last, or could
themselves be replaced, indefinitely. So even for most materialists,
the argument against continuation is not strong.
Yet another argument against immortality is that even granting the
possibility of an individual person existing in a disembodied state,
there are no good evidences for the disembodied continuation of
a non-material soul. The argument might go this way. Suppose the
immaterial soul (considered here to be consciousness and the mental
life) is emergent from matter as wetness is emergent from H2O, or
as a magnetic field is emergent from a magnet. Would not the soul
in this case simply cease to exist with the death of the body? Just
as a magnetic field disappears upon the destruction of the magnet,
and wetness disappears with the destruction of the covalent bonds of
hydrogen and oxygen, so too if the soul is emergent from the body it
would also seem to be destroyed with the annihilation of the body.
For the theist this would not be a problem, for on theism it seems
reasonable to believe that God could sustain the soul with or with-
out a body. For the non-theist it becomes more difficult. Once again,
one’s worldview is relevant in assessing the plausibility of continua-
tion after death.
III. Evidence for Survival
There are various arguments that may support survival after bodily
death. It must be admitted that most of them seem dubious at best, so
I will focus on three that, while neither demonstrative nor individu-
ally very compelling, together seem to offer more than a smidgen of
hope for continued existence beyond the grave.
First, near-death experiences (NDEs) are a type of empirically based
evidence for life after death. NDEs are common patterns of events
associated with impending death. As generally understood, they
may include any of the following elements: out-of-body experience/
separation of consciousness from the physical body; passing into or
through a tunnel; review of one’s life; encountering otherworldly

(“heavenly”) realms; facing a mystical or bright light; a heightened
spiritual awareness; leaving the body and looking down on one’s
body; and meeting other persons or supernatural beings.
Many of those who have had an NDE have come to the conclu-
sion that there is life after death based on what they saw or experi-
enced. One of the most interesting accounts is provided by Dr. Eben
Alexander III. Educated at Duke University School of Medicine, a
member of the American Medical Association, and an academic neu-
rosurgeon, Dr. Alexander’s brain was infected by meningitis, which
caused him to go into a coma for several days. During this period, his
brain underwent cortical inactivity; that is, his neocortex was inca-
pacitated and virtually shut down. As he describes it, immediately
after regaining consciousness he remembered his NDE vividly and
clearly, and the experiences he had while his brain was inactive led
him to change his belief about the afterlife and to affirm the continu-
ation of life after death.7
Atheist philosopher A. J. Ayer was another person who had a rather
extraordinary and memorable near-death experience. After this expe-
rience, he was shaken in his belief that death was the end: “My recent
[near-death] experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that
my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me,
though I continue to hope that it will be.”8 Countless others, both
religious believers and nonbelievers, have had NDEs. The question is
how to explain them. Some have argued that they are illusions, or hal-
lucinations, or even delusions—the physiological effects of changes in
brain conditions. However, the following common elements of NDEs
tend to lend support to their veracity: (1) they are widely experienced
by persons from diverse backgrounds and belief systems, (2) there are
common characteristics to the experiences, as noted above, and (3)
the experiences are sometimes quite specific, with information other-
wise apparently unavailable to the person (such as locating objects in
the room during surgery that were not present while the patient was
alive/awake; describing an event in another location that occurred
during surgery; and so on.). They are certainly not conclusive proof of
life after death, but a careful examination of the evidence does seem
to provide some corroboration of continuation.9
Another type of argument that has been employed in attempting
to make a case for postmortem survival is of a metaphysical nature,
and it goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Plato argued
for immortality based on the indestructible nature of the soul. In his
book Phaedo he argued that if we practice philosophy in the right
way, we can be cheerful in the face of death, for the soul of the one
who rightly practices philosophy is immortal since it is pure, simple
(that is, has no parts), and divine-like. As such, it cannot be scat-
tered or destroyed.10 In medieval times, this argument was utilized by
Thomas Aquinas to argue for the immortality of the soul. One Catholic
theologian concisely states Aquinas’s version of the argument:
A spiritual soul cannot be corrupted, since it possesses no matter; it

cannot be disintegrated, since it has no substantial parts; it cannot
lose its individual unity, since it is self-subsisting, nor its internal
energy, since it contains within itself all the sources of its energies.
The human soul cannot die. Once it exists, it cannot disappear;
it will necessarily exist forever, endure without end. Thus, philo-
sophic reason, put to work by a great metaphysician like Thomas
Aquinas, is able to prove the immortality of the human soul in a
demonstrative manner.11
J. M. E. McTaggart offered a similar argument for the immortality of the

soul.12 He contended that the soul is probably immortal since (1) it is
not constituted by separable parts and so cannot be destroyed through
a separation of its parts (as material objects are destroyed), and (2) it
probably cannot be annihilated since there is no evidence that any-
thing is ever annihilated (even material objects don’t just cease to exist).
Perhaps surprisingly, this metaphysical discussion is ongoing. Wil-
liam Hasker, for example, has recently argued that consciousness
cannot be based solely in matter or physical stuff because of what
he calls “the unity of consciousness.” Since matter is always in flux,
and recent research in string theory lends support to the notion
of the constant flux of physical particles and energy strings, strict
materialism leads to the conclusion that a person is in fact a series
of individuals—each one being the result of the continual alteration
of the physical constituents of the brain. But we know ourselves to
be a single individual. Given this and other relevant factors (e.g., the
nature of free will, which arguably requires a diachronic, unified,
individual self), minds or souls must be unitary subjects, not com-
plexes of physical parts.
Let’s develop this point of unitary subjects a bit further. Consider

an ordinary physical object, such as the cell phone that you have (if
you do have one, which is likely), and imagine several counterfac-
tual scenarios. In scenario number one, this cell phone might have
been made of bread; in scenario number two, this cell phone might
have been made of some other metals and synthetic materials; and
in scenario number three, this cell phone might have been made up
mostly of the materials it actually was made from in addition to some
other metals and synthetic materials. It seems obvious that number
one is impossible and thus false; this cell phone that you have could
not have been made of bread. But as we consider options two and
three, it becomes less clear that they are obviously impossible and
false. Whether it would be the same cell phone given these scenarios
does not have a clear and obvious answer. But when we consider a
conscious being, it seems the situation is quite different. For when a
person considers her own consciousness, it does not seem to come in
parts or degrees, like cell phones do. While it is conceivable to con-
sider a possible world in which my present body was constituted by,
at least in a partial way, other material bits, it seems nonsensical to
consider a possible world in which my consciousness is partially mine
(a bit of it here and a bit of it there). My consciousness seems to be
either fully mine or not mine at all. Now much weight is being placed
here on the role of imagination and conceivability, and this renders
the conclusion less than certain. Nevertheless, it is an argument wor-
thy of consideration. If the argument is sound, then one conclusion
that can be drawn is that while material objects are complex objects,
consciousness is a unitary subject, one not constituted by parts. So
maybe Plato was on to something after all.
One final argument for continuation after death is that if God actu-
ally exists, as theists affirm, then surely it would be possible for God
to sustain one’s existence in an afterlife. And it seems that God would
desire to do so. Those in the Abrahamic traditions maintain that our
physical bodies will, in the eschaton, be resurrected from the dead.
In Christianity, for example, the belief in the resurrection of Jesus is
of central significance. Easter is a Christian celebration of this alleged
unique, historical event. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul uti-
lizes Jesus’ resurrection as evidence for our own future bodily resur-
rection (I Corinthians 15:12–23). If Christ was raised, then so too
can the rest of us be raised; God will make it so. In fact, whatever
one’s particular religious view, if one believes in a God who is infi-

nitely good, wise, loving, merciful, and compassionate, then whether
through resurrection of the body or some other means of continu-
ation, it would not be unreasonable to affirm that life beyond the
grave is not only feasible but likely. For if you truly love someone,
you would not want that person to cease to exist. Rather, you would
want to experience his or her presence for as long as possible; and if
you had the power, forever.
Conclusion
As we have seen, on four widely held views of the self the notion
of individual survival is at least within the realm of theoretical pos-
sibility. Whichever view of the self one affirms, whether one of the
four described above or another, the evidence for survival is thought-
provoking, if certainly not conclusive. Depending on the worldview
one affirms, life after death may be highly likely or merely wishful
thinking.
If there is survival, the manner in which one experiences con-
tinuation after death will probably be very different from life as we
know it now. For unlike human-embodied existence, in a future state
beyond the grave persons would likely be akin to computer programs
in some future material machine or medium, or resurrected bodies
quite different from our current ones, or disembodied somethings
we know not what, or spiritual realities in union with Brahman or
nirvana. Who knows? For now, we can only hypothesize, conjecture,
and examine arguments and evidences. But when considering the
most recent advances in neuroscience, engineering, and other rele-
vant fields, there is no less hope now for the future regarding human
immortality than there was for those living in ancient and medieval
times.
For Further Reading

P. and L. Badham, eds. Death and Immortality in the Religions of the World. New
York: Paragon House, 1987.
M. and D. Oleary Beauregard, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the
Existence of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
P. M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the
Philosophy of Mind, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992.
P. Edwards, ed. Immortality. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1997.

J. Hick, Death and Eternal Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. Reissued by
Macmillan.
R. Moody, Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily
Death. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2001.
Plato ([c. 386–380 BCE] 1997). Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1997.
Shankara. The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press,
1975.
C. Taliaferro, C., Consciousness and the Mind of God. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994.
University of Virginia School of Medicine. http://www.healthsystem.virginia
.edu/internet/personalitystudies/case_types.cfm
K. Ward, Religion and Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
7
Continental Philosophy of
Religion
The field of philosophy of religion is not static but is flourishing

and evolving in new and exciting directions. One such arena that is
receiving attention among Anglo-American philosophers of religion
is Continental philosophy. It is not that thinkers on the European
continent have not been reflecting philosophically on religious ideas
for some time; indeed they have. But their approach has been and
is quite different in certain respects from the analytic approach to
philosophy of religion that is the mainstream in the Anglo-American
tradition. For those of us coming from the analytic side, much of the
Continental work is novel, if not unusual, and the language and style
are unfamiliar and curious.
The term “Continental philosophy” is one used primarily by phi-
losophers who are not actually doing philosophy on the European
continent. Rather, it is used primarily by analytic philosophers who
contrast their own work with the type of philosophy that is done
on the continent or by others with the same general “Continental”
approach. It is not widely agreed upon that there is a well-defined
sub-discipline in philosophy called “Continental philosophy,” let
alone “Continental philosophy of religion.” Nonetheless, there
is a general approach to addressing a broad set of issues that has
been common among many of those thinkers on the European
continent.
Two central concerns among Continental philosophers that relate
to philosophy of religion are the relation of faith and reason and the
phenomenology of religious experience. This chapter explores these
concerns as well as other consequential contributions made by sev-
eral leading Continental thinkers. We begin at the beginning.
113
Historical Context
There are many ways to delineate the origin of Continental philoso-

phy. One approach that seems especially relevant to the philosophy
of religion is to begin with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the German
philosopher who is universally considered to be a central thinker of
the modern period and perhaps the pivotal thinker for the emergence
of both analytic and Continental philosophy. Much ink has been
spilled (and more recently many keyboards worn out) over attempt-
ing to interpret the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Yet one of
the central questions with respect to philosophy of religion is what
role reason plays regarding religious faith in the Kantian corpus.
In his work The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant declared that “I have . . .
found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for
faith.”1 So faith appears to play a central role; in fact, in denying
knowledge it seems that reason must surrender to faith. However, in
his later work, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, he makes it
clear that it is faith that must yield to the dictates of reason. Are these
claims consistent? There certainly appears to be a tension here. One
attempt at synthesis is that Kant is not claiming that reason must be
prohibited from all pursuits with respect to matters of faith. Rather,
once reason has been properly directed away from metaphysical spec-
ulation, we are ready to use reason in a practical/moral sense with
respect to religious matters (notably God and the afterlife). In any
case, reason does seem to have the upper hand, for reason decides
what ultimately can be accepted as plausible religious belief, or can
be the reasonable domain for that kind of belief.
So practical reason, for Kant, is an ally to faith. But there remains
a tension between faith and reason—reason as it is theoretically
utilized. This tension between faith and reason is one that runs
throughout much of Continental thought after Kant and has greatly
influenced its trajectory.
A second and related point of Kant’s critical philosophy is that as a
part of his overall project, Kant was reacting to the rationalists who
had maintained that the human mind was capable of understanding
the nature of Ultimate Reality. Against this, Kant insisted that human
knowledge is limited in scope to the domain of experiences, and it
is limited by the way our faculties of perception and thought organ-
ize those experiences. When we experience something, such as the
Continental Philosophy of Religion 115
page on which this sentence is printed, we perceive it through the

filters of our a priori categories of thought. Since we cannot have an
experience of a non-sensorial perception, we cannot “get at” the real-
ity beyond those experiences. What we can get at is what the mind
imposes on the manifold experiences that are derived from the world
as it truly is in itself.
This epistemological approach leads to a non-traversable chasm
between the phenomenal realm of our experiences on the one hand
and the noumenal realm of things as they are in themselves (ding an
sich in German) on the other. Our knowledge is thus limited to what
appears to us as it is categorically organized and coherently struc-
tured by our minds. This is Kant’s Copernican Revolution in a nut-
shell: instead of our minds conforming to the world, it is the world
(or at least our experience of it) that conforms to our minds.
One relevant philosophical response to this Kantian bifurcation of
the thing in itself and the thing that is experienced was provided by the
German idealists who followed Kant, including Johann Gottlieb Fichte
(1762–1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), and
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), who recognized contradictory elements in
Kant’s approach. For example, how can we know that something exists
as noumenal and yet know absolutely nothing about it? For Kant, the
noumenal realm exists, yet we can have no knowledge of it, including,
according to his critical philosophy, that it exists, for existence itself
is a category of the human mind. Furthermore, for Kant, noumenal
reality is imposing itself on the senses and the mind, causing the sen-
sations that we experience. But causality is also a category of the mind
on Kant’s view, so how can he claim that noumenal reality is the cause
of anything, including sensation or experience? Other tensions loom.
The German idealists noted above rejected the noumenal/
phenomenal distinction as Kant had posited it. While they had their
disagreements with each other, they agreed with Kant that the mind
imposes its categories on one’s experiences. But against Kant they
maintained that every object of experience, including the world as a
whole, is a mental construct. Contrary to Kant, then, for these idealists
both the content of our knowledge and the form of it is produced by
the mind itself. Only the mind produces the objects of knowledge. We
do have many and varied experiences of a world external to ourselves,
they maintained, and we acknowledge that there are things independ-
ent of us. Yet, for these idealists, what exists is fundamentally mental.
Hegel, the most influential of the German idealists after Kant,

argued that the categories of thought are an objective reality beyond
our individual minds; they are real, yet they are strictly mental. Their
being is located in what Hegel referred to as the Absolute (or Absolute
Mind or Spirit), the agent and subject of history and the collective
mind of humanity, and a center of consciousness that is prior to any
individual experiences. Ultimate Reality is thus mind-like rather than
matter-like, and those things experienced are themselves also mind-
like. On Hegel’s idealism, history is the unfolding of this Absolute
Spirit toward self-consciousness. In contrast to the naturalism promi-
nent among some of the Enlightenment thinkers, by the latter part
of the nineteenth century much of continental Europe was taken in
by Hegelian idealism.
Continental Philosophy and the Phenomenology of

Religion
So far we have traced a philosophical thread that many early Conti-

nental thinkers can be seen as inheriting from Kant’s critical philoso-
phy. Twentieth century Continental philosophy is incomprehensible
without the pioneering work of the German philosopher who is
no exception to this Kantian legacy: Edmund Husserl (1859–1938).
Husserl understood Kant’s philosophy to be a crucial element in the
emergence of his own transcendental phenomenology.
For Husserl, Western culture was moving toward a state of crisis—
one that he personally experienced as a Jew living in Nazi Germany.
The crisis, as he saw it, was rooted in a naturalistic worldview that
maintained that all of reality was explicable by the natural sciences.
This epistemic scientism, which he maintained had its roots in the
Enlightenment, was an attempt to objectively seek knowledge about
the world. But it is self-forgetful, Husserl argued, for those doing sci-
ence are human beings, centers of subjective experience engaging in
the observational and theoretical practices of science.
While opposed to a scientism form of naturalism, Husserl was not
dismissive or deprecatory of science per se. Rather, he thought that
what science provides is an idealized reality—a construct structured
by individual subjects of consciousness. Contrary to Descartes, how-
ever, Husserl argued that when we examine our own consciousness
we do not find a simple substance—a non-material thing. But neither
do we discover a mere Humean stream of sensations. Instead, we dis-

cover by immediate experience a series of acts of awareness that are
connected to an object, an experiencing subject and an experienced
object. We discover, that is, “phenomena.”
As Husserl continued to write, his work became increasingly
focused on the role of consciousness in experience. In his later works,
objects themselves turn out to be elements of consciousness. Some
interpreters take the view that Husserl affirmed an idealism in which
all things depend for their existence on consciousness. But it may be
that he meant that it is only through consciousness that objects are
given to us as meaningful. In any case, Husserl ignited a movement
of Phenomenalism that had widespread influence, not only among
philosophers but among those in the social sciences as well. After
Husserl, many began to see subjective experience and the knowing
subject as integral to both philosophical insight and to acquiring fur-
ther knowledge in those sciences. While Husserl did not write much
about God or religion in general, one of his most precocious students,
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), took up that challenge.
Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work has been highly
influential in Continental philosophy. In recent times there has been
suspicion about his life and work given his membership (albeit brief)
to the Nazi Party.2 In any case, Heidegger acknowledged the influ-
ence of Husserl on his own philosophy. As with Husserl, he wanted
to investigate and reflect on our understanding of our existence and
experiences as human beings in our finitude and mortality.
Within the major corpus of Western philosophy, things, or sub-
stances, were commonly defined by a set of necessary and accidental
properties or attributes of which a thing (or being) was constituted.
Human beings, said Aristotle, are rational animals that are consti-
tuted by a set of essential and accidental properties (being rational
is essential, being bald or six feet tall are accidental). Continuing
the Aristotelian tradition, Descartes also understood human beings
in terms of substances and attributes, consisting essentially of the
unity of the two substances of mind and body. For Heidegger, this
was a faulty approach. Rather than viewing human beings as a set of
necessary and accidental attributes, he maintained that the essence
of being human is self-reflectivity—of being aware of being human.
As a human being, one can be aware of who one is, and of who one
can become. One can also be aware of one’s own demise, and as such
may experience anxiety and fear, such as fear of loss or fear of death.
In such reflections, a person becomes aware of his or her own being,
of what it means to be, of not being, and ultimately of Being itself.
While Husserl had focused primarily on consciousness and (per-
haps) ended up affirming a transcendental form of idealism, Heidegger
concluded that pure consciousness is a fiction. Instead of center-
ing his attention on consciousness, Heidegger focused on the world
itself—on what is. In other words, Heidegger was practicing a form
of ontology, the science of Being. In doing so, he made a distinction
between particular things, or beings, and Being—what is given in any-
thing that exists. Being is not itself a being, one other thing among
the manifold of existents.
Everything that we experience, Heidegger maintained, is an exem-
plification of Being. In doing ontology, then, our sample is vast; in
fact, it is too immense. To aid in our discovery of true Being, he sug-
gested that we hone our attention on a particular exemplification
of Being that will help us to best apprehend it; namely, our own
existence. Thus in studying the nature of Being, one is exploring the
nature of human life. Heidegger co-opted a term, Dasein, to depict
what he was after. Dasein was not new to German vocabulary, for
it was a common term that meant (and still means) “being there”
or “presence” and is often translated into English as “existence.” As
human beings, we can always be depicted as “being there” in the
sense that we are always related to things, to others, and to the world,
in a manner that is unique to human beings. The uniqueness entails
possibilities that constantly confront us in ways that we must choose
to respond to. We thus choose what we will be; we choose who we
will become.
His influential work, Being and Time, is the primary work in which
Heidegger shifted phenomenology toward “existential” questions
about human freedom and anguish and death, and, in the process of
exploring being, Heidegger ended up forming a new conception of
humanity. While much emphasis is placed on Dasein in Heidegger’s
work, his primary goal, however, was not to provide a philosophical
analysis of human existence. Instead, through this analysis he was
attempting to “prepare the way for the problematic of ontology—
the question of the meaning of Being in general.”3 Thus in explor-
ing Being as the fundamental philosophical subject, Heidegger was
returning to the central subject of the ancient Greek philosophers.
Yet Heidegger maintained that philosophy since Socrates had missed

Being and had rather focused on beings and their “beingness.” What
is needed, he argued, is to “overcome metaphysics”—metaphysics,
that is, as it has been practiced in Western philosophy since Aristotle
and that focuses on things, and also as it has been practiced since
Descartes, whereby we attempt to justify our own existence. For in
doing metaphysics as such, Heidegger maintained, it created a for-
getfulness of being, and an attempt to conceive of human beings as
detached and indifferent observers.
One of the conclusions of Heidegger’s interpretation of Western
metaphysics is that it took a theological turn in which God is its
ontological foundation. Metaphysics, as it had been practiced, is
essentially theology. As he put it, “Metaphysics is theology, a state-
ment about God, because the deity enters into philosophy. Thus
the question about the onto-theological character of metaphysics is
sharpened to the question: How does the deity enter into philosophy,
not just modern philosophy, but philosophy as such?”4 As Christian
theologians and other theists in the medieval period incorporated
metaphysical work into their theology, God became the ultimate
being in a series of beings who is the first cause of all other beings.5
God thus enters into philosophical discourse under the control of
Western philosophy. God is that which can be conceived by the con-
structs of the human mind under the guidance of Greek metaphysics.
This is a philosopher’s God, argued Heidegger, to which “man can
neither pray to nor sacrifice,” nor can one “fall to his knees in awe
nor can he play music and dance before this god.”6 Religious faith
thus became subservient to reason. If one is to engage in theology
proper, it cannot be done within the purview of Being as the theo-
logical metaphysicians have done. One cannot access the true real-
ity of Being by the intermingling of ontology and theology, nor as
particular subjects seizing objects. Rather, we must encounter Being,
discerning its summons poetically. It is thus the poet for Heidegger,
not the ontologist, who is able to be attuned to the call of Being, and
to interpret that encounter as real poetic experience.7
A number of Continental philosophers and theologians influ-
enced by Heidegger attempted to address the theological issues that
arose from his work concerning whether and how religious experi-
ence is connected to Dasein and to Being and beings. For Paul Tillich
(1886–1965), God is “wholly other” and the “ground of being.”
For Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), God is the ultimate “other,”

that which is “beyond being.”8 Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) empha-
sized deconstruction (a term he likely adopted from Heidegger’s use
of “destruction” in Being and Time), which in its metaphysical usage
he primarily meant the notion that an observer can no longer be
understood to be absolutely exterior to the object/text being exam-
ined, including sacred objects and texts.9 It would be a profitable
study to engage with the works of each of these thinkers, but such an
endeavor is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, we will focus
on a major contemporary Continental figure who is engaged directly
with the philosophy of religion. He is also, as a Continentalist, influ-
enced by the trajectory of thought sketched thus far in this chapter.10
Jean-Luc Marion: A Case Study of Contemporary

Continental Philosophy of Religion
French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion (b. 1946) is the John Nuveen

Distinguished Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology
at The University of Chicago Divinity School and professor of philos-
ophy and director of the Centre d’Etudes Cartésiennes at the Univer-
sity of Paris, Sorbonne. He is a former student of Jacques Derrida, and
much of his work deals with phenomenology, often directed toward
religion and theology. Indeed, he is one of those credited with (or
perhaps accused of, depending on one’s sympathies) fostering the
theological turn in French phenomenology.11 Marion’s approach
returns to Husserl’s emphasis on the relation of subject and object,
but for Marion the relational emphasis becomes one of idol and icon.
The gods of the philosophers, what he refers to as the gods of “onto-
theology,” are nothing more than idol gods. It is Heidegger’s critique
of onto-theology that Marion utilizes, but he maintains that
Heidegger himself superseded one idolatry for another: “[B]eyond
the idolatry proper to metaphysics, there functions another idolatry,
proper to the thought of Being as such.”12
Heidegger had placed Being above God, on Marion’s view, and the
latter aims to construct a theology that frees God from all metaphysi-
cal constraints (thus the title of his book, God without Being). It is not
that God has ceased to exist as an objective reality, but in freeing
God from all metaphysical systems and impediments we can begin
to understand God’s reality as unique—not at all identical to the
existence of “beings” such as people, places, or any other “things.”

For God to be beyond being means for Marion that God is beyond
our mental constructs; we can still speak of God and about God, but
God-talk will take on a unique form of discourse.
Throughout history, humanity has attempted to envisage the
divine and in doing so has utilized various forms of idols and icons.
On Marion’s view, idols are generated to gratify our “gaze.” They
result from conceptually confining and controlling that which is
beyond conceptualization, such as God. The idol (the conceptualized
divine) becomes a mirror that reflects the human gaze back at itself:
“The idol measures the divine to the scope of the gaze of he who then
sculpts it.”13 The idol is seen as a representation of the divine, due to
the willingness of the gaze, and it suggests idolic qualities to the indi-
vidual about its (invisible) referent. Once the idol is actually encoun-
tered as the construct it is, however, the gaze ceases to function as
such, at which point further striving after the divine is mitigated, if
not completely terminated.
Various conceptualizations act as idols or icons depending on the
intention and gaze. In subordinating God to Being, in a way that
God’s reality requires Being, one gazes upon Being as an idol. Icons,
by contrast, encourage an individual’s gaze to transcend the visible
icon, and point one’s gaze toward that which is invisible, toward that
which is constructed.14 Marion utilizes the New Testament passage of
Colossians 1:15 where the Apostle Paul refers to Christ as the “‘icon’
of the invisible God.” Christ is the paragon icon for Marion. Though
Christ is a visible icon, as icon he is a trace of the invisible, unenvis-
ageable God, eliciting one to move toward the presence of the actual
God beyond. With such an icon, the invisible “saturates” the visible,
though the icon is not the fully present divine reality that can be
subjugated by the gaze.15 The true iconic gaze points beyond that
which is present, finite, and visible toward that which is transcend-
ent, infinite, and invisible. The iconic gaze thus moves one beyond
limited concepts to that which is beyond all conceptualizations, and
while it threatens the adequacy of our conceptualizations, it does not
eliminate the role of conceptualizing:
But, as the idol can exercise its measure of the divine by concept,
since the gaze as well can invisibly reflect its own aim and in it dis-
miss the invisible, the icon also can proceed conceptually, provided
at least that the concept renounce comprehending the incompre-

hensible to attempt to conceive it, hence also to receive it, in its
own excessiveness.16
The icon can also become an idol, however. It does so when the gaze
is content with what it experiences, when it is gratified with the vis-
ible. In so doing, it permits nothing beyond the visible, it allows no
transcendence, it becomes the gauge and determiner of the divine. It
becomes an idol, and the iconic gaze becomes a form of self-idolatry.
To experience the visible as a true icon means that one is drawn
beyond the icon; unsatisfied with the visible, one is ever led toward
the invisible.
Marion uses the phrase “saturated phenomena” to encompass a
large category of phenomena elicited by the icon. This larger domain
cannot be subjugated by our gaze; it is beyond the limits of what is
given to us in the phenomena. It is more than we can bear. Neverthe-
less, we are drawn up into its excess, and this leads not to unhappi-
ness but to joy and fulfillment.17 Thus the experience of saturated
phenomena turns one beyond the self, beyond one’s own concep-
tualizations, to that which is beyond all else. This reconceptualizing
reorients phenomenology, allowing theology its own pride of place,
and thus creates a theology no longer mastered by the domain of
philosophy. Thus metaphysics cannot master the divine. Faith need
not be subservient to reason.
With respect to our earlier ruminations on Kant, with Marion we
have gone full circle. While many of the Continental philosophers
after Kant, including Marion, have opposed his rationalist philoso-
phy, many have embraced his general approach to the role of prac-
tical reason in matters of faith and have followed his explorations
into the structure of the self and of the nature of consciousness and
phenomenological experience.
Learning from Continental Philosophers
The overall approach of this book has been analytic in style rather
than Continental. What does this mean? The divide between Conti-
nental and analytic philosophers may appear artificial, as it contrasts
a geographical region (the European continent, notably France and
Germany) with a particular approach (an analysis of terms, concepts,
and arguments). This seeming artificiality is even more apparent

when it is noted that key early figures of the analytic approach to
philosophy were European philosophers (such as August Comte and
Gottlob Frege), and that a number of analytic philosophers have
interests in subjects that are generally considered to be Continental
in nature.
Nevertheless, there are real differences. A central difference in meth-
odology between the way much of analytic and Continental philoso-
phy is practiced can be concisely expressed as follows: Continental
philosophers tend to focus on large questions and address them in
an integrative manner—subsuming the minutia and particulars into
larger and unifying wholes. To some extent we have seen this above,
both in the historical overview and in the work of Marion. Analytic
philosophers, on the other hand, tend to try to address philosophical
problems by reducing them to their basic constituent elements and
to the relations in which these elements stand. They also tend to seek
to clarify concepts and the grammar of concepts having to do with
particular philosophical topics germane to Anglo-American philoso-
phers. Analytic philosophers of religion are also generally concerned
with legitimizing religious beliefs and tend to focus on specific argu-
ments and evidences for God, or to addressing problems raised by
evil, to mention two prominent examples. Continental philosophers
of religion, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on the nature
and phenomenology of religious belief and with speaking about and
relating to God.18 They privilege our experience of knowing over the
analytic process of parsing propositions and concepts. This is perhaps
oversimplifying the matter, yet many would agree that the central
methodological difference between analytic and Continental philos-
ophy is between specific analysis and broad synthesis, and between
legitimization and existential encounter.
Several other tendencies seem to differentiate analytic from Conti-
nental, and these are reflected in common charges made against them.
For one, the Continentalists tend to be much more literary. Bertrand
Russell expressed this sentiment when, in reference to Nietzsche, he
said that he “was a literary rather than an academic philosopher. He
invented no new technical theories in ontology or epistemology.”19
Another charge levelled against Continental philosophers by their
analytic counterparts is that they are far too influenced by the nihil-
ism of Nietzsche and the deconstruction of Derrida.
There are charges from the Continentalist side against analytic phi-
losophy as well. Perhaps most significantly is that the latter are entirely
disengaged from relevant and related fields and absolutely isolated
from history and culture—thus being relevant to no one other than
themselves. Julian Young put it this way: “The Continental tradition
contains most of the great, truly synoptic, European thought of the
past 200 years. That is why . . . whereas analytic philosophy has proved
of little or no interest to the humanities other than itself, the impact
of Continental philosophy has been enormous.” Yet he also acknowl-
edges the unclarity that is sometimes manifest among the Continen-
talists: “But there is also a great deal of (mostly French) humbug in the
Continental tradition. This is why there is a powerful need for phi-
losophers equipped with analytic methodology to work within . . . the
Continental tradition—to sort the gold from the humbug.”20
As one trained in analytic philosophy, it seems obvious to me that
there is great benefit in philosophers from both streams studying and
learning from the other, and that both have valuable insights to offer.
Perhaps one of the most important matters for those of the analytic
tradition to learn from our Continental peers is how to effectively
engage with other disciplines in the humanities, such as literature
(notably literary criticism) and history, and with the broader culture.
Another important element to be gleaned from the Continentalist
approach is to see a central activity of reason to be one of intellectual
imagination rather than strictly logical systematization and analysis.
Continentalists such as Foucault and Derrida have argued that the
approach of analytic philosophers of merely analyzing arguments
and explicating that which is implicit in concepts misses the mark
of the philosopher’s task, which is to think and imagine beneath
and beyond such structures and concepts. Again, the dissimilarities
between Continental and analytic philosophy are often exaggerated,
but there are real differences. Clarity and concision are almost always
beneficial, but addressing the big issues of existence and experience,
of subjectivity and our place in the world, and of phenomenological
encounter are matters of timeless and widespread interest.
Conclusion
This chapter is admittedly overly compressed, and much that is signif-

icant to the development and contemporary practice of Continental
philosophy of religion unfortunately had to be ignored. For example,

in tracing the history of Continental philosophy of religion, empha-
sis was made on Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl. But another
way of tracing the history would be to begin with Kierkegaard or
Nietzsche. Indeed, this is not an uncommon way of writing such a
history. Furthermore, we could have followed the phenomenologist
stream from Husserl and Heidegger through John-Paul Sartre, Albert
Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir. Further still, we could have cov-
ered the important work of Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, and Michel
Foucault—each of whom has important insights to offer the philoso-
phy of religion. But all of their works are so rich and complex that
attempting inclusion here would only bring lack of concision and
probably plenty of confusion—a quality, as we have seen, that has
been levelled too much already against Continental philosophy.21
Instead, this chapter traced a philosophical thread weaving through
Continental philosophy, specifically as it relates to philosophy of reli-
gion, beginning with Kant. It noted that a central issue within the
Kantian corpus has to do with the role reason plays in matters of
religious faith. It noted a second and related issue, which was Kant’s
insistence that human knowledge is limited in scope to the domain
of experience. Much of Continental philosophy after Kant has been,
directly or indirectly, focused on addressing Kant’s critical philoso-
phy with respect to these particular issues.
So what is the role of reason with respect to religious faith? What
do our experiences tell us about what exists? What do they tell us
about the nature of the self? About Being? Such questions lie at the
heart of humanity, and these are the sorts of questions with which
many Continental philosophers of religion are engaged.
I am hopeful that a renaissance of awareness and respect for one
another by analytic and Continental philosophers of religion is under
way. Perhaps the inclusion of this chapter in an analytically oriented
philosophy of religion text will, in some small way, contribute to
that end.
For Further Reading
Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba, eds., Words of Life: New Theological
Turns in French Phenomenology. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.
John Caputo, On Religion. London: Routledge, 2001.
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. [1843] Cambridge University Press,

2006.
Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being. University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Modern Library Edition, trans.
Walter Kaufmann Modern Library, 2000.
C. D. Prado, A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy.
Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2003.
Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian
Faith. Fordham University Press, 2001.
8
Feminist Philosophy of Religion
Feminist philosophy of religion is another significant and vibrant

area that has developed fairly recently in the field. Feminist philoso-
phers have argued that, among other things, the way philosophy of
religion is written and practiced is suffused with gender bias.1 But
their work is not only critical. They have also argued that, among
other things, social location and personal commitment significantly
affect one’s actions and beliefs, including one’s understanding of reli-
gion and of the divine, and that one’s conceptions of the divine also
affect her or his ideas and attitudes about human beings and their
place in the world, in particular with respect to gender.
This chapter engages the works and insights of several leading fem-
inist philosophers of religion, noting challenges and concerns they
raise, and, while offering some critique, advocates for the overall
fecundity of their efforts.
Some Central Aims of Feminist Philosophy of Religion
It will be helpful to begin this chapter by offering a definition of

terms (a typical analytic philosopher’s move). The difficulty, how-
ever, as with most complex matters, is that there is no universally
held or mutually accepted definition of feminism, or philosophy,
or religion. Rita Gross, in her book Feminism and Religion, offers this
laconic gloss on the term “feminism”: “Feminism is the conviction
that women really do inhabit the human realm and are not ‘other,’
not a separate species.”2 With such a broad and inclusive tongue-in-
cheek depiction, it seems that everyone would be a feminist! Sadly,
radical forms of patriarchy still exist, viewing women as inferior to
men, and, unfortunately, some of the worst offenders are and have
been religious adherents. A widely held general characterization of
127
feminism is one that acknowledges this situation and affirms both

that women are oppressed or disadvantaged in comparison with men
and that this situation is illegitimate and should be ameliorated.
As a philosophy of religion enterprise, it is philosophical reflection on
and engagement with religious ideas. As such, the sacred scriptures of
the religions can be studied and analyzed, but they cannot be taken
as the central source of knowledge, unquestionably divinely revealed
and self-authenticating. Nor can the enterprise be limited to one par-
ticular religious tradition, even though much feminist philosophy of
religion has been rooted in, or has responded to, Christian theology
and praxis. Broadly construed, then, feminist philosophy of religion
focuses on specific feminist concerns, including religious misogyny
and exclusively masculinist expressions of faith, as they relate to the
philosophical reflection on religion.
Feminist philosophy began in the 1970s and, early on, was gen-
erally focused on gender bias and particular matters of concern to
feminists at the time, such as the nature of sexism and essentialism
(the theory that there is an underlying essence that all men, or all
women, have in common). Feminist philosophy of religion came on
the philosophical scene in the 1990s with the emergence of Hypatia,
a journal dedicated to feminist philosophy. Two monographs were
also central in the formation of feminist philosophy of religion, both
of which appeared in 1998: Pamela Sue Anderson’s A Feminist Philoso-
phy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief and Grace
Jantzen’s Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion.
We will explore below some of the main points of these works as
well as the ideas and insights of several other feminist philosophers
of religion. Two primary foci will be emphasized: (1) recognizing reli-
gious concepts and models of God that have been biased toward the
masculine and even denigratory toward women; and (2) re-visioning
religious epistemologies that develop a more extensive understand-
ing of reason and the role values play in the practice of philosophy,
and that recast the divine in concepts more fecund to human flour-
ishing. Before examining these two points, a compendious history of
religious misogyny is in order.
Raising Concern: A Brief Sketch of Religious Misogyny

Feminist philosophers of religion have pointed out the overwhelm-
ing masculinist imagery that runs throughout the Abrahamic faiths
Feminist Philosophy of Religion 129
(Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Other world religions are not

exempt, either. For example, terms such as King, Mighty Warrior,
Father, and Judge frequent the pages of the sacred Hindu writings of
the Bhagavad-Gita as they do the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and the
Islamic Qur’an. While the Hindu scriptures at least include feminine
deities, the central gods (most notably Vishnu and *his* incarnations)
are described primarily with male attributes and use male images and
metaphors. Patriarchy and androcentrism are also ubiquitous in the
writings and practices of Buddhism, Sikhism, Daoism, and Confucian-
ism. It cannot be denied that most religions, historically, in both the
East and the West, have been dominated by the male imaginary.
It is also the case that the world religions, rooted as they are in
ancient history, arose in milieus that were predominately patriar-
chal. Even a cursory read of ancient cultures reveals environments
in which women are seen as non-citizens, inferior to men, subject to
men, and sometimes taken to be less than fully human (i.e., less than
fully rational). For example, Aristotle held (based on faulty biology)
that females are inferior to males in a variety of ways:
In all cases, excepting those of the bear and leopard, the female is
less spirited than the male; . . . the female is softer in disposition
than the male, is more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive,
and more attentive to the nurture of the young. . . . The fact is,
the nature of man is the most rounded off and complete, and con-
sequently in man the qualities or capacities above referred to are
found in their perfection. Hence woman is more compassionate
than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more
jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike. She is,
furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than
the man, more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech,
more deceptive, and of more retentive memory. She is also more
wakeful, more shrinking, more difficult to rouse to action, and
requires a smaller quantity of nutriment.3
Sadly, Aristotle’s influence on this matter has been extensive in the

West, shaping views of women and men among Greek, Roman,
Christian, and Islamic civilizations for many hundreds of years.
Aristotle was not the only misogynist thinker in the ancient world.
Deplorable views of women were ubiquitous. There existed some
early Christian sects, for example, that were quite blatant in their
negative sentiments of the female gender. Thus, a Christian Gnostic
penned these words: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Mary should leave
us, for females are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘See, I am going
to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a liv-
ing spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that
makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’”4 But it was
not only Gnostic sects that held such disparaging views of women.
Many of the Church Fathers (influential Christian theologians of the
early church5) followed suit. Here are two striking examples, the first
from Tertullian and the second from Augustine: “The curse God pro-
nounced on your sex still weighs on the world. . . . . You are the dev-
il’s gateway. . . . You are the first that deserted the divine laws. All too
easily you destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because you deserved
death, it was the son of God who had to die.”6 In other words, Eve
(as the first woman, and representative of all women) was guilty of
ushering sin into the world and for being the cause of the death of
Christ! And then Augustine: “I don’t see what sort of help woman
was created to provide man with, if one excludes the purpose of pro-
creation. If woman was not given to man for help in bearing chil-
dren, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help
were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man.
The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it
for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a
man and a woman cohabitate?”7 This is incredible. Women are good
for sex and child-rearing, but not much else. It is no wonder the his-
tory of Christianity has been littered with misogynistic attitudes.
It should also be noted, however, that within the pages of the New
Testament Gospels, there seems to be an elevation of the status of
women in Jewish culture through the sayings of Jesus.8 So, too, with
the founding prophet of Islam. Through Muhammad’s deeds and say-
ings, recorded in the hadith, and the words that were revealed to
him and recorded in the Qur’an, we have another founding figure
of a world religion who elevated the status of women in his culture.9
And within Hinduism, highly respected female deities and avatars
are commonplace in the literature and in religious ritual. Other sig-
nificant historical instances of religious leaders and authorities and
sacred writings promoting and elevating the status of women could
be cited throughout the major world religions. Yet, despite some
salient examples, it is undeniable that much of religious history does

not favor the female. It is a sad fact of the past, in religion and in
societies in general, that women have been subjugated, demeaned,
denigrated, and dismissed at all levels. Appallingly, misogynistic ten-
dencies influenced both the theology and the practices of religion
across the board, and the sludge of this offense has oftentimes flowed
down cultures from century to century.
Relatedly, the god(s) of the religions oftentimes have been made in
the image of men, and obeisance is regularly offered to these andro-
centric religious constructs. On this note Dorothee Soelle’s words are
piercing: “As a woman I have to ask why it is that human beings
honor a God whose most important attribute is power, whose prime
need is to subjugate, whose greatest fear is equality. . . . Why should
we honor and love a being that does not transcend but only reaffirms
the moral level of our present male dominated culture? Why should
we honor and love this being . . . if this being is in fact no more than
an outsized man?”10
Masculinist imagery has not only dominated the core of much reli-
gious belief and practice, but, as Grace Jantzen and other feminists
have argued, it has also influenced the discourse of Anglo-American
analytic philosophy of religion. While this stream of philosophy has
been flourishing in recent decades, feminist philosophers maintain
that it has not addressed the issues raised by feminists, including the
sexist, androcentric, and misogynistic elements of traditional reli-
gion. Leading analytic philosophers of religion, feminists contend,
have developed sophisticated arguments for God and the coherence
of theism, for example, but the theism argued for is either overtly or
covertly patriarchal and ideological.
Jantzen’s response is that a dismantling of the entire enterprise is
in order: “Without a doubt, the dismantling of the master’s house of
traditional philosophy of religion is long overdue. The agenda and
method of philosophy of religion is heavily male-dominant, and as
in other such discourses, serves the interests of the traditional white
male elite. With a few notable exceptions, it has ignored feminism
almost entirely, and has proceeded with business as usual. . . .”11 She
goes on to list such “masculinist topics” as defending the existence
of God and the coherence of theism, religious truth, faith and belief,
and so on (topics, by the way, that are discussed in this book!). She
continues, “For the most part, all these philosophers of religion have
written with scant reference to issues of gender, race, or sexuality,

assuming a universalising tone which is meant to indicate that what
they have to say applies equally to all human beings, typically des-
ignated as ‘rational agents,’ irrespective of their social location.”12
What is needed, she maintains, is a total reworking of rationality and
religious epistemology.
Pamela Sue Anderson, another thought leader of feminist philoso-
phy of religion, has also argued that a reworking of philosophy of
religion is in order.13 But the language she uses is not one of dis-
mantling or demolishing the master’s house (i.e., reason, rationality,
and religious epistemology as historically understood). Rather, she
suggests a re-visioning—an expanding of philosophical methodology
that includes issues of gender, race, and ethnicity. What might such
re-visioning entail? And how might that change the way philosophy
of religion is practiced?
Re-visioning Rationality and Religious Epistemology

Re-visioning philosophy of religion for Anderson includes examin-
ing the historical traditions and “seeing with new eyes,” viewing the
ideas and practices from a new critical and feminist perspective.14
This entails examining and critiquing past assumptions about women
and men with the hope that we can now move beyond the perverted
past of sexist and misogynistic perspectives and structures. In this
re-visioning of philosophy of religion, especially as presented in A
Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Anderson proposes that philosophers
reflect critically on the way social location and personal commitment
shape one’s beliefs, attitudes, and actions. It also includes reflection
on one’s own social locatedness and striving to view matters from
the perspective of the underprivileged. Drawing on the insights of
Continental philosophers, including French feminists Julia Kristeva
and Luce Irigaray, and utilizing feminist standpoint epistemology,
Anderson puts forward the notion that gender, as a dimension of our
specific locatedness, has formed our conceptions of the divine. Those
in the past have generally failed to recognize this and the intrinsic
“maleness” within the beliefs and practices of the religions, and this
has brought about masculinist beliefs about the divine and even an
objectification of women.15
Unlike some feminist philosophers, however, Anderson is com-
mitted to historic notions of epistemology, realism, and rationality,
denying that they are inherently male. But she argues for an expanded
understanding of them and of the practice of philosophy of religion
more broadly. While she rejects some of the principles that philos-
ophers of religion (especially those of the Anglo-American analytic
tradition) see as fundamental, such as notions of objectivity that sup-
port “the rationality of religious belief as advocated by empirical real-
ist forms of theism,” she promotes what she calls “strong objectivity.”
In fact, this is pivotal:
One of my central aims in proposing feminist philosophy of reli-

gion is to study both feminist objectivity and female desire as
essential concepts for achieving less partial and less biased beliefs
than presently found in dominant forms of theism. I use femi-
nist (so-called ‘strong’) objectivity to unite theoretical to practical
reason in figuring myth and mimesis as forms of transformative
praxis.16
Strong objectivity takes into consideration various standpoints

beyond the privileged, including the very marginalized. “To be objec-
tive is to be able to think one’s claim from the perspective of another
and to reinvent oneself as other.”17
Building on the work of Michéle Le Doeuff and her philosophical
imaginary, which sees the philosophical enterprise as shaped by lan-
guage and the political unconscious, Anderson probes the potential
and power of imagery. She notes that gender bias, while not always
conspicuous and clearly identifiable, does exist in the religious sto-
ries, myths, and imagery. With respect to certain topics discussed and
debated in contemporary philosophy of religion, Anderson pointedly
asks whether “‘clear-headed’ thinking can avoid gender bias . . . when
such terms as person, action and love, along with adjectives like per-
sonal, incorporeal, loving and the pronouns he, his and him are all
applied to God.”18
While Anderson proposes an expanded understanding of rational-
ity, Grace Jantzen, as noted above, suggests its replacement. Jantzen
was professor of religion, culture, and gender at Manchester Univer-
sity and, like Anderson, she was trained in Anglo-American philoso-
phy of religion. Also like Anderson, Jantzen was influenced by the
work of Continental philosophers, especially the works of Hannah
Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and
Luce Irigaray. She was also influenced by French psychoanalytic and

poststructuralist ideas. Jantzen argues that issues of truth and the
epistemic justification of religious belief are themselves species of
the male symbolic. She proposes a new imaginary of religion—a new
symbolic structure that recognizes sexual differences.
In developing a feminist symbolic, she summarizes what is needed
as “a creative intervention in the western symbolic by developing a
feminist imaginary of natality.”19 In contrast to the preoccupation
of Anglo-American philosophy of religion with “violence, sacrifice,
and death,” Jantzen suggests beginning with “birth, and with the
hope and wonder implicit in it.”20 She asks the following probing
question: “[What] if we were to treat natality and the emergence of
this life and this world with the same philosophical seriousness and
respect which had traditionally been paid to mortality and the striv-
ing for other worlds?”21 She suggests that, in response to the sexist
and misogynistic elements in religion, women should construct con-
cepts of the feminine divine that would challenge the violent, death-
obsessed narratives of traditional theology. The masculinist imagery
of death, which Jantzen maintains has been part and parcel of much
of analytic philosophy of religion, needs to be conjoined with, if not
replaced by, a symbolic of “natality and flourishing”—what she refers
to as the “symbolic of becoming divine.” This is, in fact, the central
aim of feminist philosophy of religion, says Jantzen: to advance the
task of becoming divine.
Recasting Conceptions of the Divine

Topics having to do with God, including those that include male or
male-like attributes, are commonplace in the philosophy of religion.
The notion of a male God, predominant in religion, is widely seen
by feminist philosophers as being repressive and idolatrous. Some
philosophers and theologians have responded by proposing that the
concept of God should be conceived of as genderless. Yet, what often
follows is a mere removal of male pronouns, all the while continuing
on with narratives and images and metaphors that are cast in mas-
culine garb. Feminist philosopher Nancy Frankenberry perspicuously
presents this deeper problem:
The dominance of male signifiers for deity is only part of the

problem of classical theism. Like a prism which refracts all the
surrounding light, the gendering of God has skewed the way in

which other problems in philosophy of religion have been tradi-
tionally constructed. The problem of religious language, for exam-
ple, is frequently cast in terms of the meaning and use of metaphors
and models, involving questions of reference and truth. But the
metaphors and models employed by mainstream philosophers
of religion often trade uncritically on intrinsically hierarchical
patterns of relations. Metaphors such as father, king, lord, bride-
groom, husband and God-“He” go unmarked. If an occasional
female model or metaphor intrudes into this homosocial circle, it
is immediately re-marked upon. Introducing female pronouns for
God-“she” produces nervous laughter in most classrooms.22
Some feminist philosophers of religion strive to work within the lim-

its of traditional religious traditions, though sometimes very broadly
construed, and generally with a goal of reorienting traditional (male-
centered) concepts of the divine and discourses within the tradi-
tion. Others seek to move beyond the traditions (notably the Semitic
ones), or to openly reject them, recasting the divine in symbols and
metaphors that reflect new icons of transcendence and immanence,
including various forms of pantheism and panentheism. One femi-
nist who is working within the tradition is Sarah Coakley, the Norris-
Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. According
to Coakley, “what is palpably missing” in philosophical and theo-
logical reflections about the divine “is a sustained or positive reflec-
tion on the nurturing and all-encompassing dimensions of divine
love—gendered metaphors that have well-known instantiations in
the history of Christian theology and spirituality (e.g., Anselm, Julian
of Norwich) but do not characteristically leap to the forefront of the
analytic philosopher’s imagination.”23
Both Jantzen and Anderson maintain that moving beyond tra-
ditional notions of theism is necessary (for Jantzen, the divine is
understood in a pantheistic sense). Both of them maintain that the
exclusive use of reason, as it has been historically passed down in
Western theology and philosophy, has led to a privileging of male
images and attributes with respect to the divine. In the Semitic tra-
ditions, for example, God is understood to be “Father” (male) and
God’s most valuable qualities are omniscience (reason) and omnipo-
tence (power). Their insights on the subject have drawn from the
works of Luce Irigaray as already noted. Irigaray maintains that God

the Father is a projection of the masculine identity, asserting one of
the most quoted statements regarding women and the divine: “The
only diabolical thing about women is their lack of a God.”24 This
claim calls into question the traditional versions of theism that have
elevated men and devalued women, and Anderson interprets it to
assume that “God has been no more than an ego-ideal for the male
subject. In other words, theism as a conception of an omniscient,
omnipotent, omni-benevolent, omnipresent, eternal and everlasting
God who has aseity is—according to the psychologist and the anthro-
pologist—merely a projection of an exclusive male ideal.”25
Irigaray’s critique of theism, specifically Christian theism, has
exposed male supremacy in its formulation of God the Father. Adopt-
ing a Feuerbachian projection theory that God has been created in
the image of man, Irigaray does not disparage such belief as illusion.
Rather, she sees divine constructs as invitations to “make believe.” Iri-
garay’s conclusion is that patriarchal constructs of the divine should
be deconstructed in order that female subjectivity might develop
more fully and freely. As such, women should pursue a relation to
a God of their own gender. They should, that is, create the female
divine as a condition of female subjectivity. Anderson does not go so
far, and she points out that this could in fact be a part of the problem
at issue; namely, that gender did function this way with men and
their construct of God to the very detriment of women. Jantzen, on
the other hand, agrees with Irigaray; a new imaginary of religion is
needed, a feminist symbolic of becoming divine.
Some Brief Observations
In light of these feminist criticisms and insights, I offer a few reflec-

tions. First, as Charles Taliaferro has noted, a fair amount of work
done by traditional and modern philosophy of religion has focused
on the good and the just and not only on divine power and knowl-
edge, as some feminists have claimed. He points to the Cambridge
Platonists, such as Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and Anne Conway,
as thinkers who were especially interested in the nature of goodness,
both political and philosophical, rather than in sheer power and
knowledge.26
Nevertheless, it does seem that the feminist insight about tradi-

tional conceptions of God is on the mark: they have indeed been
overly androcentric. Reconceiving God given this awareness could
prove helpful in many contexts. This need not, however, as some
feminists have suggested, entail a rejection of all elements of tradi-
tional religious concepts, metaphors, and images. Rosemary Radford
Ruether, a pioneer in feminist theology, proposes expanding the tra-
ditional theological imagery rather than expunging it. As she con-
ceives of the matter, God is both male and female and neither male
nor female. This is not a contradiction if “all language for God/ess is
analogy,” which, on her view, it is.27
Ruether insightfully proposes utilizing more inclusive language in
conceptualizing the divine. Thus male images and metaphors of the
divine must lose their privileged place in religious discourse. “Inclu-
siveness can happen,” she maintains, “only by naming God/ess in
female as well as male metaphors.”28 Inclusive images of God/ess,
therefore, must: “include female roles and experiences;” “draw from
the activities of peasants and working people, people at the bottom
of society;” “be transformative, pointing us back to our authentic
potential and forward to new redeemed possibilities;” and they “can-
not validate roles of men or women in stereotypic ways that justify
male dominance and female subordination.”29
Sallie McFague, another important feminist who is re-visioning the-
ological images, takes issue with traditional Christian formulations
of the divine that are too transcendent, too androcentric, and too
hierarchical.30 She suggests unseating monarchical religious language
and proposes alternative feminist theological models of God crafted
in panentheistic, embodied terms in which the world is conceived as
God’s body, and God is modeled as Mother, lover, and friend. Such
an embodied reconception would tend to promote an ethics of envi-
ronmental and world care and responsibility since the world would
be conceived as intrinsically sacred. It would also emphasize divine
immanence, a notion generally lost on the classical conception of
theism. Imaging God as Mother, lover, and friend emphasizes divine
nurturing, deep relationship, and a mutuality of love. Again, such
attributes are deficient, if not completely absent, in classical concep-
tions of the divine.31 While affirming all that she proposes may be
creating models and conceptions of God that surpass those which
many theists could accept, nevertheless she offers rich insights that
even ardent traditionalists could affirm.
A final thought. Religion is a fundamental facet of human life and
flourishing, regardless of gender or social location. In fact, roughly
84 percent of the world’s population is religiously affiliated.32 To
ignore or dismiss the puissant place and role of religion as a factor
in the lives of women (and men) is not only unhelpful, but coun-
terproductive to the practice of and philosophizing about religion.
Furthermore, conceptualizing religion as irrational, fanatical, or evil
superstition (though it certainly can be), or maintaining that belief
in God is intrinsically and necessarily patriarchal (though it often has
been), as some feminists thinkers have done, raises doubts about the
understanding one has of the nature of religion. Religion has been
and will be around for a long time. Rather than disparaging it tout
court, it is perhaps better to seek to improve it, for women and for
men, as difficult as that task may be.
Conclusion
In Anglo-American philosophy of religion there has been a wide-

spread suspicion of feminist work in general and feminist philosophy
of religion in particular. This is not dissimilar to the suspicion of ana-
lytic philosophers to Continental philosophy of religion (and vice
versa) noted in the previous chapter. The same is true from the other
direction; feminist philosophers of religion have been suspicious of
Anglo-American analytic philosophers. Indeed, there is a hermeneu-
tics of suspicion, as it were, coming from all sides. There is certainly a
place for suspicion in philosophy of religion. Yet, after one carefully
examines these different approaches, it should be rather obvious that
each side has much to learn from the other.
Feminist philosophy of religion is in its infancy, and there will
no doubt be growing pains at is evolves and expands its horizons in
the field and beyond. As Pamela Sue Anderson, Grace Jantzen, Sarah
Coakley, and a number of other feminist philosophers have done, I
hope that many more female philosophers and theologians will free
themselves from the ideas of their uninformed male mentors and
intellectual overseers in order to be cognitively unencumbered from
them and thus open to develop their own authentic insights, discern-
ments, and directions.
The pyramids of patriarchy in philosophy and philosophy of reli-

gion are crumbling, and in their stead new vistas of social located-
ness, gender, embodiment, and other feminist intuitions are forming
and flourishing. Philosophers of religion cannot afford to ignore the
assessments and wisdom of this vital, dynamic, creative movement.
For Further Reading
Pamela Sue Anderson, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Blackwell, 1998.

Pamela Sue Anderson and Beverley Clack, eds, Feminist Philosophy of Religion:
Critical Readings. London: Routledge, 2004.
Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.
Rita M. Gross, Feminism and Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Grace M. Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion.
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadel-
phia: Fortress Press, 1987.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Notes
Chapter 1
1 I am using the term “salvation/liberation” to denote the soteriological
goal of the major religious traditions rather than spelling out the various
descriptors (e.g., enlightenment, awakening, etc.).
2 There are many definitions of religion in the literature, perhaps as many
as there are books written about them. For a helpful collection and
overview of meanings of religion, see John F. Haught, What is Religion?
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990); Charles Taliaferro, Contemporary Phi-
losophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 21–24; and Keith Ward, The
Case for Religion (Oxford: Oneworld, 2004), 9–25.
3 For recent evidence that human beings tend to be religious from birth, see
Justin Barrett, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Beliefs (New
York: Free Press, 2012).
4 For more on this, see ibid., and Keith Ward, Is Religion Dangerous? (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).
5 According to Philpapers, an online philosophy index, 62% of philosophers
affirm atheism: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Target+faculty&
areas0=0&areas_max=1&grain=fine, accessed 16 February 2014.
6 Quentin Smith, an atheist philosopher, writing in “The Metaphilosophy
of Naturalism,” Philo 4, no. 2 (2001): 3–4.
7 I will use the term “true” in this context in the following manner: claims
are true if they match the facts—if they correspond to what is. They are
false if they do not match the facts. Religions, as such, are not true or
false, but many of the claims within religion are true or false. For more on
the subject of truth in religion, see Mortimer Adler, Truth in Religion: The
Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth (New York: Collier Books, 1990),
and John Hick, ed., Truth and Dialogue in World Religions: Conflicting Truth
Claims (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1974).
8 Harold Netland notes different aspects of exclusivism in “Inclusivism and
Exclusivism,” in Chad Meister and Paul Copan, eds., The Routledge Com-
panion to Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge, 2007), 226–236.
9 It should be noted, however, that for Buddhists and Hindus rebirth is
also in play. So even if one does not have the proper knowledge in this
life, there are many possible future lives where such information could be
acquired.
10 For an excellent discussion of religious diversity and the aspects of truth
and salvation, see Robert McKim, On Religious Diversity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012).
11 John Hick (1922–2012) was Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of
Religion, Emeritus, at Claremont Graduate University. He is one of the
140
Notes 141
leading contemporary philosophers of religion and theologians, and the

most prominent advocate of religious pluralism. He published several
widely influential books, including An Interpretation of Religion, God Has
Many Names, and The Myth of God Incarnate.
12 John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions (Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1995), ix.
13 Ibid., 18. In his monumental work, An Interpretation of Religion, Hick
maintains “that there is an ultimate reality, which I refer to as the Real . . .
which is in itself transcategorial (ineffable), beyond the range of our con-
ceptual systems, but whose universal presence is humanly experienced
in the various forms made possible by our conceptual-linguistic systems
and spiritual practices.” John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human
Responses to the Transcendent, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004), xix.
14 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed. (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973).
15 For another version of pluralism referred to as “aspectual pluralism,” see
Peter Byrne, Prolegomena to Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1995),
153.
16 See Gavin D’ Costa, “John Hick and Religious Pluralism,” in Harold
Hewitt, ed., Problems in the Philosophy of Religion: Critical Studies of the Work
of John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1991).
17 John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1985), 36–37.
18 There are disagreements among Christians about the means of Christ’s
Atonement, but there is widespread agreement that Christ is the one who
brings reconciliation (at-one-ment) between God and human beings.
19 The satisfaction theory of the Atonement was developed by Anselm in his
famous work, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man). This view of offer-
ing satisfaction for sin is commonly connected with a view of original sin
in which sin and guilt were imputed to all human persons due to the Fall
of Adam and Eve. For a helpful explanation of several important theories
of Atonement, see James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, eds., The Nature of the
Atonement: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006).
20 Jesus is referred to as the divine logos in John 1:1–14.
21 See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of
Christianity, translated by William V. Dych (New York: The Seabury Press,
1976).
22 Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Art. 16.
23 The role of the heart over the head is nicely depicted by Jesus in the par-
able of the sheep and the goats in the New Testament book of Matthew,
chapter 25, verses 31–46.
24 C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, chapter 15 (many translations).
25 Lewis also intimates this inclusivist view in Mere Christianity: “There are
people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who
are so strongly attracted to Him that they are His in a much deeper sense
than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who
142 Notes
are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of

their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus
belong to Christ without knowing it.” (208–09)
26 For more on this, see Arvind Sharma, ed., Part of the Problem, Part of the
Solution: Religion Today and Tomorrow (London: Praeger, 2008), and Keith
Ward, Is Religion Dangerous? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).
27 For a helpful book that shows how similar the world religions are regard-
ing core issues, see C. David Lundberg, Unifying Truths of the World’s Reli-
gions (New Fairfield, CT: Heavenlight Press, 2010).
Chapter 2
1 See B. N. K. Sharma, The Philosophy of Sri Madhvacarya (Bombay: Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan, 1962).
2 Anselm, Proslogian, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings (La Salle, IL: Open Court,
1962), chapter five, 56–57.
3 Now, since God is being itself by His own essence, created being must be
his proper effect. . . . Therefore, as long as a thing has being, so long must
God be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is inner-
most in each thing and most fundamentally present within all things. . . .
Hence it must be that God is in all things and innermostly. (Summa
Theologea 1a,8,1.)
4 See Immanuel Kant, “The Ideal of Pure Reason,” in Critique of Pure Reason,
trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), 487–507.
5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. The Father of the English
Dominican Province, vol. 1 (New York: Benziger Bros, 1947), 137.
6 Hebrew Bible: “Ah, the Lord! Behold, Thou has made the heavens and the
earth by Thy great power and by Thine outstretched arm! Nothing is too
difficult for Thee! (Jeremiah 32:17)
New Testament: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)
Qur’an: “Say: ‘O God, Master of the Kingdom, Thou givest the Kingdom to
whom Thou wilt, and seizest the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt, Thou
exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy
hand is the good; Thou art powerful over everything.” (Sura 3:26)
7 Peter van Inwagen argues that the phrase “logical impossibility” is not a
meaningful notion. See his The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 22–23.
8 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1977), 149.
9 For more on this, see William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
10 A very helpful presentation of differing positions (along with responses to
objections) can be found in Gregory E. Ganssle, ed., God and Time: Four
Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001).
11 For a contemporary defense, see Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Notes 143
12 Ibid. See also William Lane Craig, “Timelessness and Omnitemporality,”

in Gregory E. Ganssle, ed., God and Time: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press), 132–136.
13 Duns Scotus and William of Ockham rejected the doctrine of divine time-
lessness. Recent philosophers defending God’s being everlasting include
Nicholas Wolterstorff and Richard Swinburne. See, for example, Swin-
burne’s The Coherence of Theism, revised ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993), 217–229. For a defense of God’s being everlasting, see Nicholas
Wolterstorff, “Unqualified Divine Temporality” and William Lane Craig,
“Timelessness and Omnitemporality,” both in Gregory E. Ganssle, ed.,
God and Time: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press), 187–213
and 129–160, respectively.
14 For an elaborate defense of the view of God as timeless/temporal, see
William Lane Craig, Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity (Springer, 2001).
15 See, for example, Alan Padgett, “Eternity,” in Chad Meister and Paul
Copan, eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion (London:
Routledge, 2007), 292–294; see also Padgett, God, Eternity, and the Nature
of Time (London: Macmillan, 1992), 12–17 and 147–148.
16 Summa Theologica, the First Part, Question nine, Article one, the response.
Quoted from the translation at newadvent.org.
17 Norman Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Franklin: Sheed &
Ward, 1990), 5. Note that this is the end of the original Nicene Creed
and not the more familiar Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed commonly
utilized in liturgies today.
18 For a defense of this view of God, see Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence
and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984).
19 For more on this point, see Keith Ward, The Big Questions in Science and
Religion (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2008).
20 See Keith Ward, “The World as the Body of God: A Panentheistic Meta-
phor,” in Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, eds., In Whom We Live and
Move and Have our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a
Scientific World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 62–72.
21 Shankara, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, as quoted in Chad
Meister, ed., The Philosophy of Religion Reader (London: Routledge, 2007).
22 The Advaita Vedanta school does distinguish nirguna Brahman from
saguna Brahman—the former being Brahman without attributes and the
latter being Brahman with attributes. But the latter is the illusory Brah-
man, and is merely an aid for the unenlightened.
23 See, for example, Arvind Sharma, “Hinduism,” in Arvind Sharma, ed., Our
Religions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 14–15.
24 The four main Yogas generally recognized in Hindu literature are Karma
(work and action), Bhakti (devotion), Jnana (intellection), and Raja
(meditation).
25 Vedartha Sangraha of Sri Ramanujacarya, trans. S.S. Raghavacha, printed
by Sri Ramakrishna Ashrama Mysore, 1978, and located online at http://
www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/vedartha_sangraha_.pdf.
This quotation comes from paragraph 95.
144 Notes
26 Ramanuja, “God as Infinite, Personal, and Good,” in Chad Meister, ed.,

The Philosophy of Religion Reader (London: Routledge, 2008), 124.
27 Nagarjuna was an Indian Buddhist philosopher and perhaps the most
influential Buddhist thinker after Siddhartha Gautama—the Buddha
(c. 563–483 B.C.E.). His notion of sunyata, or emptiness, is an attempt to
unify two other central Buddhist doctrines: no-self and inter-dependent
arising. His writings, including Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way
(Mulamadhyamakakarika), the Seventy Verses on Emptiness (Sunyatasaptati),
and the Sixty Verses on Reasoning (Yuktisastika), formed the basis of the
Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Buddhism.
28 See Masao Abe, “Buddhism,” in Arvind Sharma, ed., Our Religions (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 115.
Chapter 3
1 See Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of
Calcutta, Brian Kolodiejcuk, ed. (New York: Random House, 2007).
2 More recently, John Schellenberg has offered an intriguing argument for
atheism based on the problem of divine hiddenness. For an extended ver-
sion of his argument, see Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1993).
3 5:161.33–6; tr. Guyer 1992, 1.
4 Robin Collins, “The Teleological Argument,” in Paul Copan and Chad
Meister, eds., Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 99.
5 The physicist is Brandon Carter. For more on this work, see Paul Davis,
Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1984), 242.
6 See John Leslie, “How to Draw Conclusions from a Fine-Tuned Cosmos,”
in Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, ed.
Robert Russell et al. (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Press, 1988),
299.
7 See Paul Davis, The Accidental Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), 90–91; John Jefferson Davis, “The Design Argument, Cosmic
‘Fine-tuning,’ and the Anthropic Principle,” in The International Journal of
Philosophy of Religion 22 (1987): 140. Robin Collins provides some of these
parameters in his essay, “A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God:
The Fine-Tuning Design Argument,” in Michael J. Murray, ed., Reason for
the Hope Within (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).
8 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd edition, edited
with an introduction by Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub-
lishing, 1998), Part IV, 31.
9 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006),
143.
10 Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the
Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
Notes 145
11 For a readable and interesting overview of the current state of cosmologi-

cal theories and the various hypotheses on which they depend, see Brian
Greene, The Elegant Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 2003). See also
John Gribbin, The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Every-
thing (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1998).
12 See Plato’s Laws, trans. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago, IL: University of Chi-
cago Press), Book 10, for a version of the cosmological argument.
13 Summa Theologica, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province
(Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1948), 1.2. Article 3.
14 Ibid.
15 Following Aquinas himself in his later writings, in this form of the argu-
ment we are avoiding the issue of temporal infinity and focusing on the
logical dependence of contingent things on a non-contingent (or neces-
sary) cause. I agree with those scholars who maintain that while Aquinas
does refer to time in this argument, this reference is ultimately simply a
rhetorical device and not a declaration of an actual state of affairs.
16 Ibid., 175.
17 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed., Richard H. Pop-
kin, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1998), Part IX, 56.
18 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Book 2, Chapter 3, “The Ideal of
Pure Reason,” especially sections 3–5.
19 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam Press, 1989),
141.
20 One approach to keep a traditional view of omniscience while also affirm-
ing libertarian free will is Molinism. For more on this, see Thomas Flint,
Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1998).
21 Technically, the argument is valid only for necessary omnitemporal
omnipotence. But the point will not be advanced here. For more on this,
see Richard Swinburne, “Omnipotence,” American Philosophical Quarterly
10: 231–237, 1973.
22 René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Trans. John Cot-
tingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. 3 vols.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–1991, 2:294.
23 See, for example, Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological
Mistakes (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1984).
24 Ibid., 14.
25 Ibid., 18.
26 See the discussion on this point in William Lane Craig and Quentin
Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, 224–227.
27 Ibid., 235.
Chapter 4
1 According to Lactantius (ca. 240–ca. 320 A.D.) in De Ira Dei (On the Wrath
of God).
146 Notes
2 See Nelson Pike, “Hume on Evil,” The Philosophical Review, lxxii No. 2
(1963), and Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational
Justification of Belief in God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967),
chapter five. Atheist philosopher William Rowe states the following with
respect to the logical argument: “Some philosophers have contended that
the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of the the-
istic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extrava-
gant claim. Indeed, granted incompatibilism, there is a fairly compelling
argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent
with the existence of the theistic God.” In “The Problem of Evil and
Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979);
reprinted in Chad Meister, The Philosophy of Religion Reader (London:
Routledge, 2008), 523–535, citation on page 534, note 1. Atheist philoso-
pher Michael Tooley also maintains that the logical argument from evil
does not work.
3 Alvin Plantinga has masterfully articulated the free will defense in his
book, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977).
4 William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,”
American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979); reprinted in Chad Meister, The
Philosophy of Religion Reader (London: Routledge, 2008), 527.
5 William Lane Craig, in debate with Michael Tooley, at the University of
Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United States, November 1994 (first rebut-
tal). Accessed at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/does-god-exist-the-craig-
tooley-debate#ixzz2ttBqQ8Ga on February 20, 2014.
6 Alvin Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” in James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwa-
gen, eds., Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), 35.
7 John Wesley, “The General Deliverance,” The Sermons of John
Wesley–Sermon 60, http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-
of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-60-the-general-deliverance/;
accessed February 19, 2014.
8 Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Words: On the Nature and Purposes of Man,
Life and All Things, trans. from Turkish by Sükran Vahide, from the Risale-i
Nur Collection (Turkey, 1910–1950), Seventeenth Word, 220.
9 R. K. Tripathi, Problems of Philosophy and Religion (Banaras Hindu Univer-
sity: Varanasi, 1971), 108–109, as quoted in John Hick, Death and Eternal
Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 302.
10 Richard Dawkins has argued that morality is not subjective but grounded
in evolution, in his The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
Sam Harris argues that an objective morality is grounded in human flour-
ishing, in his The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Val-
ues (New York: The Free Press, 2010). Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse
has argued that both accounts are wrong. For his own view of morality, see
his co-edited article, with Edward O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,”
in Philosophy of Biology, edited by Michael Ruse (New York: Macmillan,
1989), 313–319.
Notes 147
Chapter 5
1 See Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of
Life (New York: Random House, 1999).
2 Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” review of The
Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan, 1997,
The New York Review, p. 31, January 9, 1997.
3 Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (first ed., New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 262.
4 For a helpful presentation of such integration, see Arthur Peacocke, Crea-
tion and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1979).
5 David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. L. B. Selby-
Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1902), section 10.
6 David Hume, ibid., part 1, n.3.
7 See Paul Davies, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Mean-
ing (London: Penguin, 1992).
8 Paul Davies, “Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address,”
delivered September 11, 2008, found online at First Things: http://www.
firstthings.com/article/2008/09/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-
templeton-prize-address-24, accessed April 6, 2014.
9 For an accessible work on chaos theory, see James Gleick, Chaos: Making a
New Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1987).
10 David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 10.
11 Pew Research from 2010: http://www.pewforum.org/2010/02/17/religion-
among-the-millennials/, accessed March 15, 2014.
12 William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays (Amherst, NY: Pro-
metheus Books, 1999); repr. Chad Meister, ed., The Philosophy of Religion
Reader, 363.
13 William James, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in Essays in Pragmatism,
ed. Alburey Castell (New York: Hafner Press, 1948), 27.
14 See William James, Essays in Pragmatism, ed. Alburey Castell (New York:
Hafner Press, 1948), repr. Chad Meister, ed., The Philosophy of Religion
Reader (London: Routledge, 2008), 370.
15 James defines faith this way: “a belief in something concerning which
doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is willingness
to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the pros-
perous issue of which is not certified in advance.” William James, “The
Sentiment of Rationality,” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular
Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1897), 90.
16 James, “Will to Believe,” 106
17 See, for example, Joshua L. Golding, “The Wager Argument,” in Chad
Meister and Paul Copan, eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of
Religion (London: Routledge, 2007).
18 See Blaise Pascal, Pensées (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 2.2, 122–123.
148 Notes
19 Ibid.
20 William James, “The Will to Believe,” in The Will to Believe and Other
Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover, [1897] 1956), 6.
21 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson
and W. Lowie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 30.
22 Kierkegaard, ibid., 189.
23 Kierkegaard was a Christian, but fideists can be found in all the major
religious traditions.
24 See his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 30–33.
Chapter 6
1 Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, and Michal A. Paradiso. Neuroscience:
Exploring the Brain, 3rd edition (Pennsylvania: Lippincott Williams &
Wilkins, 2006).
2 Colin McGinn, London Review of Books (January 23, 1986), 24.
3 Collin McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness, 10–11.
4 Shankara, Crest Jewel of Discrimination, 76.
5 Grace M. Jantzen, “Do We Need Immortality? ” in Modern Theology 1:1
(1984), 34–35.
6 The Brothers Karamazov, London: Sovereign, 2012, 76.
7 See Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the After-
life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). The well-known atheist Sam Har-
ris, who recently completed a PhD in neuroscience, disputes Alexander’s
claims. See his article “This Must Be Heaven,” in Newsweek, October 12,
2012.
8 A. J. Ayer, “What I Saw When I Was Dead,” National Review, October 14,
1998.
9 For more on this, see J. Long, with P. Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The
Science of Near-Death Experiences (New York: HarperOne, 2010), and Ray-
mond Moody, Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of
Bodily Death (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2001).
10 Phaedo: 100b–107a.
11 Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1953), 60.
12 J. M. E. McTaggart, Some Dogmas of Religion (London: Edward Arnold,
1906).
Chapter 7
1 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), Bxxx, 29.
2 On this note, the recent publication of Heidegger’s philosophical jour-
nals, dubbed the “Black Notebooks,” have reaffirmed to many Heidegger
scholars that he was, indeed, not only a member of the Nazi Party but
Notes 149
strongly anti-Semitic. Some have even suggested that his entire corpus be
reexamined in this light, with a few calling for the removal of his books
from standard philosophical lists and reclassified as Nazi history or propa-
ganda. Others disagree. The debate rages.
3 Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London:
SCM Press, 1962), 227.
4 Heidegger, “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics,” in Iden-
tity and Difference, trans. J. Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2002), 55, as quoted in Bruce Ellis Benson, “Continental Philosophy
of Religion,” in Paul Copan and Chad Meister, Philosophy of Religion: Clas-
sic and Contemporary Issues (Cambridge: Blackwell, 2007), 233.
5 It should be noted, however, that the most influential Christian
philosopher/theologian of the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas, had
not defined God as a being. For him, God is ipsum esse subsistens, “self-
subsistent being.”
6 Ibid., 72, 234.
7 For more on Heidegger and theology, See John D. Caputo, “Heidegger and
Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Heidegger, ed. Charles
Guigon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 326–344.
8 Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in A. T. Peperzak, S. Critch-
ley, and R. Bernasconi, eds., Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1996), 130.
9 Other significant Continental philosophers who were influenced by
Husserl and Heidegger include Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir, who developed their own versions
of existential phenomenology, and Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur
who developed their own versions of hermeneutical phenomenology.
10 It should be noted that Continental philosopher Jean-Yves Lacoste argues
that modern Continental philosophy of religion began in 1799 with the
publication of F. D. E. Schleiermacher’s book, Speeches on Religion. See
Lacoste’s “Continental Philosophy,” in Chad Meister and Paul Copan, The
Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge,
2012), 623–632.
11 See, for example, Dominique Janicaud, The Theological Turn in French Phe-
nomenology (Bronx: NY: Fordham University Press, 2001).
12 Marion, God without Being (University of Chicago Press, 1991), 41.
13 Ibid., 21.
14 Marion puts it this way: “Contemplating the icon amounts to seeing
the visible in the very manner by which the invisible that imparts itself
therein envisages the visible—strictly, to exchange our gaze for the gaze
that iconistically envisages us.” Ibid., 21.
15 It can be argued that in this example, while Christ is the icon, and Christ
is divine (the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Christians affirm), he is
not the fully present divine reality. Christ is not the fully present Father,
for example.
16 Ibid., 22.
150 Notes
17 See Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed (Bronx: NY: Fordham
University Press, 2008), 36.
18 For more on this, see Bruce Ellis Benson, “Continental Philosophy of Reli-
gion,” in Paul Copan and Chad Meister, Philosophy of Religion: Classic and
Contemporary Issues (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 231–244.
19 Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1945), 760. This quotation was found in C. D. Prado, A House
Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Amherst, New
York: Humanity Books, 2003), 11.
20 Times Literary Supplement, July 10, 1998, 17.
21 For a brilliant and concise overview of the history of Continental philoso-
phy of religion, see Charles Taliaferro, Evidence and Faith: Philosophy and
Religion since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), chapter seven.
Chapter 8
1 For example, it is uncommon to find female authors, not to mention
feminist authors, in mainstream philosophy of religion publications and
conferences. The topics under discussion and the approaches by which
they are discussed regularly ignore or dismiss those raised by feminists.
2 Rita M. Gross, Feminism and Religion: An Introduction (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1996), 16.
3 Aristotle, The History of Animals, trans. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson,
Book IX, Part I. The Internet Classics Archive, found online at http://
classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.9.ix.html, May 29, 2014.
4 Gospel of Thomas, verse 114.
5 While there were also influential women thinkers, sadly they are not gen-
erally referred to as “Church Mothers.” For one contrary example that
seeks to highlight the theological insights of women in the history of
Christian thought, see Chad Meister and J. B. Stump, Christian Thought:
A Historical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2010), especially chapter
sixteen.
6 Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, 1.1.
7 St. Augustine, De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5–9.
8 Three examples stand out: (1) Women accompanied Jesus and his fol-
lowers as they traveled and provided for their financial needs, and many
women were with them in Jerusalem (Mark 15). Since it would have been
virtually scandalous for Jewish males and teachers to be accompanied by
females other than their wives, this seems not to have been an inven-
tion by later Christian redactors. (2) The women followers of Jesus play
a prominent role in the written accounts of his death and resurrection,
most notably being the first to find and witness his empty tomb on Easter
Sunday (Luke 24). It is somewhat of an embarrassment for Christians in a
patriarchal society to have women be the first witnesses to such an iconic
event in the formation of the Christian faith. The fact that it is recorded
Notes 151
with women playing such a central role is suggestive if not staggering.

(3) Within the Gospels, after Jesus was arrested an emphasis is made
on his male disciples fleeing, but also on his female disciples remaining
steadfast by his side during his crucifixion, at his death, and then again at
the tomb. Once again, the difference between the male and female par-
ticipants would have been stark for the early Christian believers.
9 For example, the Qur’an raised the status of women in marriage and
inheritance. Also, men and women are seen as equals in the eyes of God
(51:49) and are equally responsible for promoting the moral order of soci-
ety and in adhering to the Five Pillars of Islam (9:71–72). The Qur’an also
prohibited female infanticide and abolished women’s status as property.
Yet, despite these advances in the sacred Qur’anic scriptures, in actual
practice patriarchy has often prevailed in Islamic societies. For more on
this subject, see Yvonne Y. Haddad and John L. Esposito, Islam, Gender and
Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
10 Dorothee Soelle, The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist
Identity, trans. R. Kimker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 97, as
quoted in Charles Taliaferro, Evidence and Faith: Philosophy and Religion
Since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 333.
11 Grace M. Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Reli-
gion (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 2.
12 Ibid., 3.
13 Pamela Sue Anderson is Reader in Philosophy of Religion at the Univer-
sity of Oxford and the Dean of Regent’s Park College, Oxford. She has
published several books in feminist philosophy of religion that are widely
recognized as keystones to the field. Her primary emphasis is to expand
philosophical methods to include embodiment, gender, and social
locatedness.
14 See Pamela Sue Anderson, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Rea-
son, Love and Epistemic Locatedness (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012).
15 For a concise presentation of these points, see Pamela Sue Anderson,
“Feminist Philosophy of Religion,” in Chad Meister, ed., The Philosophy of
Religion Reader (London: Routledge, 2008), 655–670.
16 Pamela Sue Anderson, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and
Myths of Religious Beliefs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 19.
17 Ibid., 78.
18 Anderson, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion, 176.
19 Jantzen, Becoming Divine, 57.
20 Jantzen, Becoming Divine, 2.
21 Ibid.
22 Nancy Frankenberry, Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Stanford Encyclo-
pedia of Philosophy, 2011, found at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
feminist-religion/#3, accessed on June 4 2014. For more relevant work,
see Nancy Frankenberry and Marilyn Thie, eds., Hypatia: A Journal of
Feminist Philosophy (1994), 9 (4), Special Issue on Feminist Philosophy of
Religion.
152 Notes
23 Sarah Coakley, “Feminism,” in Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Phil-

lip L. Quinn, eds., A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, second edition
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 691.
24 Luce Irigaray, “Divine Women,” Geneologies and Sexes, trans. C. G. Gill
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 64, as quoted in Pamela
Sue Anderson, “Feminism,” in Charles Taliaferro, Victoria S. Harrison,
and Stewart Goetz, The Routledge Companion to Theism (London: Routlege,
2013), 474.
25 Ibid.
26 Charles Taliaferro, Evidence and Faith: Philosophy and Religion since the Sev-
enteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 332–333.
27 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theol-
ogy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 68.
28 Ibid., 67.
29 Ibid., 69.
30 See Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).
31 Along these lines, Elizabeth Burns suggests an approach that she calls
“inclusivist” rather than feminist per se: “An inclusivist philosophy of
religion might, more clearly than other philosophies of religion, ask phil-
osophical questions about a variety of conceptions of the divine, both
gendered and non-gendered, and ensure that its discussions never lose
sight of the value of its arguments for the members of human societies in
all their diversity, remaining ever alert to the possibility that there may
be some whose concerns are poorly or unfairly represented.” Elizabeth
Burns, “Is There a Distinctively Feminist Philosophy of Religion?” Philoso-
phy Compass, 7/6 (20012), 432.
32 Pew Research, December 18, 2012. http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/
global-religious-landscape-exec/
Index
A brain, see also mind

Abrahamic faiths, 3, 10, 19–20, 23, consciousness, 106–7, 109
30, 35, 36, 56, 61–2, 72, 82–3, death, 96, 100
101, 110, 128–9 events, 98–9
Adams, Marilyn M., 77 evolution, 81
Adams, Robert M., 77 inner self, 102–3
Advaita, 7, 9, 31–5, 103 NDEs, see NDEs (near-death
afterlife, 1, 6, 67, 72, 96–111, 114 experiences)
Allah, 5, 7–8, 11, 16, 92 Buddhism, 3, 5, 7, 9, 14–17,
analytic philosophy, 113, 122–4, 30, 35–6, 52, 60–1, 71,
131, 134, 138 72–5, 76–7, 82, 92, 97, 104,
Anderson, Pamela Sue, 132–3, 129, 144
135–6, 138–9, 151 Burns, Elizabeth, 152
Anglo-American philosophy of
religion, 133–4, 138 C
Anselm, 26, 135 Caputo, John, 125
Aquinas, Thomas, 23, 26, 28, 31, chance, 41, 44–5
46–7, 51, 57, 100, 101–3, 109 chaos theory, 66, 86, 147
arguments, evidential, 65–7, 77 Christ, see Jesus Christ
Aristotle, 20, 25, 50, 99, 101–2, 117, Christianity, 3, 7–8, 10, 14–15,
119, 129, 150 20, 52, 61, 84, 89, 92–3, 110,
atheism, 4–7, 10, 14, 17, 38–9, 52–3, 129–30
55, 58, 59–60, 61, 65, 75–7, 96, classical theism, 22–5, 28–9, 33, 35,
104, 108, 140, 144–6 52–3, 55, 94, 134
atman, 32, 34, 101, 103 Clifford, W. K., 88–9, 91
Augustine, 26, 68–9, 100, 130 Coakley, Sarah, 135, 138–9
avidya, 32–3, 36 Collins, Robin, 41
compassion, 12–13, 17–18, 36–7,
B 70–1, 82
Badham, P. and L., 111 consciousness, 21, 34, 36, 45, 96,
Barbour, Ian, 95 99–100, 103, 106–7, 109–10,
belief systems, 3, 79–80, 88, 90–1, 112, 116–18, 122, 148
93–4, 108 Continental philosophy
beliefs, reasonableness of, 38, 91 feminist philosophy of religion,
Benson, Bruce Ellis, 125, 150 132–3, 138
Big Bang, 41, 55–7, 85 historical context, 114–16
bliss, 7, 17, 36–7, 82, 103–4 phenomenology of religion,
Bowker, John, 77 116–20
Brahman, 7–9, 20–1, 30–4, 50, contingents, 24–5, 52–3
103–4, 111 Copan, Paul, 140, 144
153
154 Index
cosmological argument, see God/ exclusivism, 4, 7–10, 13–14, 17

Ultimate Reality: arguments for experiences, religious, 11, 79,
cosmology, 38, 41, 45, 55, 82 113, 119
Craig, William Lane, 59
creation, 9, 27–8, 68, 70, 82 F
faith, 7–9, 14, 52, 79, 88–94, 101,
D 113–14, 122, 128, 131
Daoism, 5, 14–15, 17 female subjectivity, 136
Dasein, 118–19 feminism, 127–8, 131, 133–7, 139
Davies, Paul, 144, 147 feminist philosophy of religion
Derrida, Jacques, 120, 123–4, 125, 133 central aims, 127–32
Descartes, René, 23, 54, 101, recasting conceptions of the
116–17, 119 divine, 134–6
design argument, see teleological revisioning rationalist and
argument religious epistemology, 132–4
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, fideists, 52, 91
49, 77 fine-tuning argument, see
dipolar, 29, 34 teleological argument
divine attributes foreknowledge, see divine attributes:
atemporality, 26 foreknowledge
becoming, 29, 128 Frankenberry, Nancy, 151
feminine, 134 free will, 24, 53, 61, 64, 68–9, 74, 109
foreknowledge, 24, 25 functionalism, 99, 102, 112
hiddenness, 144
immanence, 137 G
immutability, 28–9 Galileo, 79–80, 82
omnibenevolence, 60, 63, 68, 72, Ganssle, Gregory E., 142–3
87, 105 gender, 127, 132–3, 136, 138–9
omnipotence, 23–4, 52–5, gender bias, 127–8, 133
63–4, 135 German idealists, 115–16
omniscience, 24, 25, 26, 52–3, God, attributes of, see divine
62–3, 65, 66, 68, 87, 135, attributes
136, 145 God/Ultimate Reality, 19–37
perfection, 28 Abrahamic faiths, 19–29
timelessness, 26, 143 arguments against, 51–8
dualism, 97–103 arguments for, 38–51
atheism, 75–6, 81
E Buddhism, 35–6
enlightenment, 7, 32, 36, 103, 116 Hinduism, 32–5
evil, nature of, 60–1 Griffiths, Paul, 18
evil, problems of, 60–77 Gross, Rita M., 139
atheism, 75–6
evidential arguments, 65–7, 69 H
Hindu and Buddhist accounts, Hartshorne, Charles, 55
72–5 Hegel, G. W. F., 33, 92, 100,
logical arguments, 63–4, 67 115–16, 125
theodicy, 60, 68–72 Heidegger, Martin, 117–20, 125
Index 155
Hick, John, 6, 10–13, 16, 18, 70, 77, logos, 14, 16–17, 141
112 love, 14, 77, 89–90, 106, 111, 131,
Hinduism, 7, 9, 11, 14–15, 20, 30, 133, 137
32, 35–6, 52, 60–1, 71, 76–7, 83,
104, 105, 130 M
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, 77 Mackie, J. L., 78
Hume, David, 42, 49, 77, 84, 86–7 many-universes hypotheses, 45
Husserl, Edmund, 116–18, 125 Marion, Jean-Luc, 120–3, 126
Martin, Michael, 59
I maya, 32, 103
idealism, 5–6, 115, 117–18 McFague, Sallie, 137, 139
idolatry, 120–2 McGrath, Alister, 95
ignorance, principle of, 56–8 mental events, 98–100
illusion, 32, 35–6, 103–4, 108, 136 mental states, 60, 98–100
immortality, 106–7, 109, 111–12 metaphors, 12, 19, 33, 37, 129,
incarnations, 16–17, 28, 129 134–5, 137
inclusivism, 4, 13–16 mind, 11, 19, 40, 49, 66, 74, 90,
Irigaray, Luce, 132, 134, 136, 139 97–101, 104, 106, 109, 111–12,
Islam, 3, 5, 7–9, 16–17, 20, 52, 61, 115, 117
72, 84, 129–30 miracles, 23, 79, 81, 83–8, 91, 93–5
moksha, 7, 32, 104
J monistic pantheism, see pantheism,
James, William, 89–91, 92, 93, 147 monistic
Jantzen, Grace, 105, 128, 131, moral evil, see evil, moral
133–6, 138, 139 Moser, Paul, 59
Jesus Christ, 7–10, 14–17, 83–4, 110,
121, 130 N
justice, 14, 17, 73–4, 77 Nagarjuna, 35–6, 144
natality, 134
K natural laws, 57, 84, 86, 95
Kant, Immanuel, 16, 22, 40, 50, 100, natural world, 40, 69, 71, 79–80,
114–16, 122, 125 82–4, 86, 95
karma, 32, 36, 72–5, 77, 83, 104 NDEs (near-death experiences),
karmic justice, see karma 107–8, 112
Kierkegaard, Søren, 92–3, 125, 126 near-death experiences, see NDEs
Knitter, Paul, 18 necessity, 22, 25, 41, 44–7, 50, 85
Netland, Harold, 18
L neuroscience, 2, 97–8, 100, 106, 111
language, religious, 135, 137 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 39, 123,
laws, 23, 45, 56, 58, 83–6 125, 126
Leslie, John, 59 Nirguna Brahman, 11, 143
Lewis, C. S., 15, 141 nirvana, 5, 7, 11, 16, 36, 92, 111
liberation, 7, 14 noumenal, 115
libertarian free will, see free will
logical arguments, see evil: logical O
arguments omnibenevolence, see divine
logical positivism, 5–6 attributes: omnibenevolence
156 Index
omnipotence, see divine attributes: religious faith, 52, 83, 91–3, 114,
omnipotence 119, 125
omniscience, see divine attributes: religious misogyny, 128
omniscience religious pluralism, see pluralism,
onto-theology, 120 religious
ontology, 118–19, 123 resurrection, 14, 71, 84, 102, 110–12
Oppy, Graham, 59 Rowe, William, 65–6, 146
Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 139
P Ruse, Michael, 146
pain, 58, 60–1, 66–7, 69–70, 72, 75,
77, 98–9, see also suffering S
Paley, William, 40 salvation/liberation, 3, 7–15, 10, 14,
panentheism, 33–4, 135, 137 39, 69
pantheism, 6, 30, 33, 97, 103–4, 135 Sankara, 33–4
paradise, 8, 72, 105 sat-chit-ananda, 34, 36–7, 103
Pascal, Blaise, 91–2 science and religion, 80–8
Peacocke, Arthur, 95 scientism, 81
perfect being, most, 26–7 self (conceptions of), 3, 8, 32, 34,
personal identity, see self, 96–105, 111, 122, 125
conceptions of Semitic religions, see Abrahamic
Peterson, Michael L., 78 faiths
phenomena, 11–12, 79, 117, 122 Sharma, Arvind, 37
physical death, 96–7, 105 singularity, 55–8
physical world, 1, 5, 10, 79, 85 skepticism, religious, 16
Plantinga, Alvin, 6, 68, 146 Smith, Quentin, 55–7, 59
Plato, 2, 20, 40, 101, 109–10, 112 soul, 33–4, 96–7, 100–2, 106–7, 109,
pluralism, religious, 4, 10–13, 16–17 111–12
Polkinghorne, John, 95 Stone Paradox, 53–4
Prado, C. D., 126 substances, 21, 28–9, 35, 97, 100–2,
problems of evil, see evil, problems of 116–17
suffering, 58, 60–1, 63, 65, 67–77,
Q 88, 92, 104, see also pain
qualified non-dualism, 33 sunyata, 35–6
Supreme Self, 33–4
R Swinburne, Richard, 6, 23, 37, 59, 143
Ramanuja, 33–4
rationality, 38, 52, 128, 132–3 T
rebirth, 32, 36, 71–5, 77, 102, 104 Taliaferro, Charles, 78, 112, 136, 150
reductive materialism (type-type teleological argument, 40–1, 43,
identity theory), 97–8, 112 45, 144
reincarnation, 32, 71, 112 theism, 5–6, 29, 37–8, 51–3, 55,
religious adherents, 4, 7, 9, 16, 17, 58–9, 61–7, 71–3, 76–8, 107,
26, 96, 101, 127 131, 133, 135–7
religious concepts, 19, 128, 137 theodicy, see evil, problems of:
religious diversity, 3–18 theodicy
Index 157
Tooley, Michael, 146 relation to God, 27–9

torture, 61, 76 space-time, 27
truth, religious, 12–13, 81, 131
type-type identity theory, see V
reductive materialism Vedantins, 30–1, 34, 36
Vedas, 30, 32–4
U verificationism, 6
Ultimate Reality, see God/Ultimate
Reality W
universe Ward, Keith, 37, 95, 112
contingent, 51 Wesley, John, 72
Eastern views, 30–7 Westphal, Merold, 126
fine-tuned, 40–5 Wierenga, Edward, 37
future, 68–72 Williams, Paul, 37
material, 34, 38, 50–1, 58 Williams, T. C., 95
miracles, 83–8 Wilson, Edward O., 81–2
naturalistic views, 51–8 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 143
origin, 46–51 worldview, 30, 75, 77, 96, 104,
physical, 5, 45, 51, 83, 103 107, 111

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PALGRAVE PHILOSOPHY TODAY

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2 Concepts of God/Ultimate Reality 19

3 Arguments about the Existence of God 38

4 Problems of Evil and Suffering 60

5 Religion, Science, and Miracles 79

6 Death and the Afterlife 96

7 Continental Philosophy of Religion 113

8 Feminist Philosophy of Religion 127

I am grateful to Vittorio Bufacchi, the general editor of this Palgrave

The philosophy of religion, simply defined, is the philosophical study

as epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of science), but also with

The religions of the world are multifarious. As the awareness of the

Religion has a long and momentous history and can be traced

For the atheist, religious diversity is based on a false assumption about

idealist claims are neither tautological nor empirically verifiable,

Unlike in previous centuries, much of the contemporary philo-

The history of religion is one in which religious adherents have, by and

beings are personal individuals created by God; salvation (divine

God instilled in mankind—there is no altering God’s creation—and

might be unfamiliar to large segments of the human population. It is

A third way of understanding religious diversity affirms an Ultimate

work, Philosophical Investigations.14 A culture that has plenty of ducks

A fourth response to religious diversity can be understood to be a type

referred to those who were unknowingly following Christ as “anony-

As a philosopher I strive for objectivity, and I tend to be skeptical

religious believer. Like most human beings, I consider my beliefs to

teachings of mercy, compassion, charity, and kindness, our world

For Further Reading

Paul Griffiths, Problems of Religious Diversity. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

There is a wide diversity of beliefs among the great faith traditions

Concepts of God in the Abrahamic Faiths

Philosophical reflection on the nature of God, what is sometimes

Testament). For them, God is intentional and purposive, the creator

On the classical concept of God in the West, God is described as max-

consciousness, and eternal bliss.” We will explore this notion in

necessary has acquired some well-known adherents. We will return to

free will is compatible with the deterministic conclusion of the argu-

timelessly, having no temporal location. Conversely, God could

Indeed, what seems incoherent is to suggest that there existed a time

A philosophical reason many have affirmed divine immutability is that

perfect anymore. Since the Enlightenment era, however, many have

Concepts of Ultimate Reality in Hinduism and Buddhism

universe—indeed, with all of reality. At first glance it seems that

individual selves, such as you and me. An important Vedic passage

Absolute Brahman? Furthermore, if there are no distinctions in Brah-

(“panentheism” is from the Greek pan + en + theos: “everything in

This is the fundamental relationship between the Supreme and

Consistent with traditional Vedantin thought, Ramanuja affirms that

disagree on precisely how to understand that reality. These differ-

In this chapter we examined several different concepts of God/Ultimate

beginning or end, and whose fundamental nature does not change.

For Further Reading

Arvind Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta. Pennsylvania