Customer Reviews

Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology

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I am an undergraduate, and I have to say, a found this to be an excellent collection of essays. It covers theism and atheism, and the breadth of philosophers it covers is almost overwhelming. It has works from Plato, Kierkegaard and more recent philosophers such as Mackie.
I did think that Pojman's comments and essays were well done and very useful, both for study and otherwise. From a student who is genuinely concerned with the question of religeon, I would like to thank Pojman for this book.

Pojman covers all the essential arguments from both theist and atheists. He covers the traditional arguments in great detail, the argument from religious experience, the problem of evil, the attributes of God, miracles and revelation, death and immorality, faith and reason, and religion and ethics. Essays are used from all the great minds in the history of philosophy - Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, Plato, Hume, Kant, Plantinga, Leibniz, Hick, Swineburne, Mackie, Russell, Flew, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Pascal, etc. If you are a serious student of the Philosophy of Religion then you should NOT be without this volume. It would be a great addition to anyones philosophical collection.

This IS a wonderful anthology...but for the amount of money you would pay for it in hardbound edition, it would probably be a better investment to find another anthology or locate volumes on philosophers separately. Pojman does a masterful job selecting essays for each section and summarizing their arguments, but his own arguments which are interspersed throughout the anthology do little more than paraphrase arguments which have already been given. My advice: get a couple of collections of works by John Hick, Alvin Plantinga, and William Rowe, as well as a collection of essays by Augustine and Aquinas, and go it on your own...or seek out a more reasonably priced anthology. This one is better suited for a college student as an alternative to a pricey bundle of books. A wonderful introduction to the field of philosophy of religion in the end, however.

Most people think that at first it is a book comparing various Religions philosophies, this is a misconception. It is a book which discusses the reasons for belief, or disbelief, of various aspects of Religious Thought. Such subjects include: the existence of the big G, the immortality of the human soul, the problem of evil, cosmological arguments, and other various point-counterpoints. To tell you the truth, whether you are a believer or disbeliever a person should be aware of these arguments by reason so they may be more clear as to what they really believe. If you have a class with this book I reccomend looking more into the text than the teacher even assigns, this is one that I myself will keep.