Questions About God: A Guide for Students

This text provides an overview of all the areas required by courses involving philosophy of religion and should be helpful for A/AS level students. Written by an experienced author and practised examiner, the book establishes four main areas of importance for student understanding: the existence and nature of God; God and science; God and experience; and God and language. Within each area the major issues, themes and critical thinking are identified as well as an explanation of the arguments of key theorists. Helpful features include detailed advice on answering examination questions, "focus panels" which present issues and ideas in a visual form and test questions for students to consider themselves.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 The existence and nature of God: the study of God - natural theology, revealed theology, the idea of God in Christian theology, the truths of revelation, a new understanding of revelation, faith, the attributes of God, other divine attributes; arguments for God's existence - Anselm - the ontological argument, criticisms of the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the five ways of St Thomas Aquinas, the cosmological argument - other thinkers, the teleological argument, the Enlightenment critique of natural theology, the moral argument for God's existence, Kant's moral argument, updating the arguments, the cumulative case argument. Part 2 God and science: the growing influence of science - the Medieval world view, Copernicus and Galileo, Isaac Newton (1642-1727), implications for natural theology; the challenge of modern science - the theory of evolution, evolution and the Bible, reactions to Darwin, positive responses to evolution, the challenge of cosmology, the science of history, negative responses to modern science; science and religion - can they be reconciled? - some preliminary issues - different causalities, the responses of modern theologians, differing perspectives, changes in the scientific landscape - quantum physics, advances in science - what theology has learned, theology since evolution. Part 3 God and experience: religious experience - direct and indirect - conversion experiences, mystical experience, assessment of religious experience, problems of religious experience, indirect religious experience, miracles; interpreting experience - theism or atheism - F.D.E. Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), the influence of Feuerbach; the problem of evil - the Augustinian theodicy, the Irenaean theodicy, New Testament theodicy, the choice - faith or atheism, a summary of the problem. Part 4 God and language: speaking about God - the way of analogy, symbolic language, myth, justifying religious language; the challenge of logical positivism - verification and falsification, responses to logical positivism, the roots of religious language - the mystical, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), religion as cognitive; new ideas of God - Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), John Macquarrie, Paul Tillich (1896-1965), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Don Cupitt, process theology.