Table of Contents
Part One: Arguments for the Existence of God Introduction
Chapter 1: The Ontological Argument
- St. Anselm and Gaunilo, “The Ontological Argument” Laura Garcia, “Ontological Arguments for God’s Existence”
Chapter 2: The Cosmological Argument
- Thomas Aquinas, “The Five Ways” Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, “On the Ultimate Origination of Things” William Lane Craig, “The Kalaam Version of the Cosmological Argument”
Chapter 3: The Argument from Design
- William Paley, “The Watch and the Watchmaker” David Hume, “Critique of the Argument from Design” Robin Collins, “A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument””
Chapter 4: Moral Arguments
- Plato, “Euthyphro” Robert Merrihew Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” Linda Zagzebski, “Does Ethics Need God?”
Chapter 5: Religious Experience
- William P. Alston, “The Experiential Basis of Theism”
Chapter 6: Naturalism Refuted?
- Alvin Plantinga, “The Self-Refutation of Naturalism”
Chapter 7: The Balance of Probabilities
- Richard Swinburne, “A Cumulative Case for the Existence of God” J.L. Mackie, “The Balance of Probabilities”
Chapter 8: Reflections on Arguments for the Existence of God
- Alvin Plantinga, “Arguing for God” William J. Wainwright, “The Nature of Reason”
Suggestions for Further Study
Part Two: Reason and Belief in God
Introduction
Chapter 9: The Need for Evidence
- W.K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief ”
Chapter 10: Reformed Epistemology
- Kelly James Clark, “Without Evidence or Argument”
Chapter 11: Wittgensteinian Fideism
- Norman Malcolm, “The Groundlessness of Belief”
Chapter 12: Pragmatic Justification of Religious Belief
- Blaise Pascal, “The Wager” William James, “The Will to Believe”
Chapter 13: Debunking Religious Belief
- Paul Bloom, “Is God an Accident?” Aku Visala and David Leach, “Naturalistic Explanations of Belief in God”
Chapter 14: Reflections on Reason and Belief in God
- Raymond J. VanArragon, “Reconciling Reason and Religious Belief”
Suggestions for Further Study
Part Three: Critiques of God
Introduction
Chapter 15: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion
- Karl Marx, “The Opium of the Masses” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Religion as Resentment” Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion”
Chapter 16: Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
- Merold Westphal, “Taking Suspicion Seriously: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism”
Suggestions for Further Study
Part Four: God and Human Suffering
Introduction
Chapter 17: The Problem of Evil
- David Hume, “God and Evil”
Chapter 18: Plantinga’s Free Will Defense
- Paul Tidman, “The Free Will Defense”
Chapter 19: Theodicy
- John Hick, “The Soul-Making Theodicy” Marilyn McCord Adams, “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God” Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Theodicy”
Chapter 20: The Evidential Problem of Evil
- William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Rowe’s Argument from Particular Horrors”
Chapter 21: Reflections on God and Human Suffering
- Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Silence of the God Who Speaks”
Suggestions for Further Study
Part Five: Divine Language and Attributes
Introduction
Chapter 22: Speaking of God
- Thomas Aquinas, “Speaking of God” Dan R. Stiver, “‘The Greatest Thing by Far’: Metaphor as the Hermeneutical Key to Hermeneutics” Elizabeth Burns, “Classical and Revisionary Theism on the Divine as Personal”
Chapter 23: Does God Suffer?
- Johannes Scotus Eriugena, “Divine Impassibility” Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love”
Chapter 24: Prayer
- Thomas Aquinas, “Whether It Is Becoming to Pray” Eleonore Stump, “Petitionary Prayer”
Chapter 25: Is There a Hell?
- Stephen T. Davis, “Universalism, Hell, and the Fate of the Ignorant” Marilyn McCord Adams, “The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil For Christians”
Chapter 26: Religious Pluralism
- John Hick, “The Philosophy of Religious Pluralism” Peter van Inwagen, “Non Est Hick” Jeanine Diller, “Multiple Religious Orientation”
Chapter 27: Feminist Theology
- Patricia Altenbernd Johnson, “Feminist Christian Philosophy?” Harriet Baber, “Why Feminist Epistemology Sells”
Chapter 28: Reflections on Divine Language & Attributes
- Stephen T. Davis, “Three Conceptions of God in Contemporary Christian Philosophy”
Suggestions for Further Study
Part Six: Chinese Philosophy of Religion
Introduction
Chapter 29: The Ancient Texts
- “The Announcement to the Prince of Kang” The Book of Rites The Book of Odes The Analects The Daode Jing of Laozi
Chapter 30: “Confucian” Religion
- Kelly James Clark and Justin Winslett, “The Evolutionary Psychology of Chinese Religion” Robert B. Louden, “‘What Does Heaven Say?’: Tian 天 in the Analects” Ronnie Littlejohn, “Confucius on Religious Experience”
Chapter 31: Reflections in the Daode Jing
- Franklin Perkins, “Divergences within the Lǎozǐ”
Chapter 32: Ritual, Religion and Naturalism
- Edward J. Machle, “Xunzi as a Religious Philosopher” Sor-Hoon Tan, “Li (Ritual/Rite) and Tian (Heaven/Nature) in the Xunzi: Does Confucian Li Need Metaphysics?”
Suggestions for Further Study
