Material Detail

This Philosophy of Western Religions textbook was developed as an Open Textbook (OER, Open Educational Resource) for use in a lower-level Philosophy course at Golden West College (a California Community College) as part of a sabbatical project in Spring 2019. This work is effectively an anthology of contemporary issues in the philosophy of religions as well as classic arguments and foundational texts in the subject of Western religions. Many of the articles were crowdsourced from talented philosophers and the rest are classic historical readings in the public domain. It is released under a CC-BY license, which means all of the works within it contain licenses that allow them to be used and distributed freely and openly and may be printed (even for commercial purposes). Please contact the editor for comments, feedback, or suggestions. It meets accessibility requirements as well. The Table of Contents is listed below:

UNIT ONE: THE BASICS OF RELIGIONS AND THE NATURE OF BELIEF 1 Philosophy of Religion, God, and Theology (Noah Levin) 2 Cults, Extremism, and Fundamentalism (Noah Levin) 3 Science and Theology (Kenneth Cauthen) 4 What Makes a Religion Special? (Noah Levin) 5 The Ethics of Belief (W.K. Clifford) 6 The Will to Believe (William James) 7 What Does it Mean to Believe in God? (Baron d’Holbach)

UNIT TWO: THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 8 The Ontological Argument & The Lost Island Objection (St. Anselm & Gaunilo of Marmoutiers) 9 The Cosmological Argument (St. Thomas Aquinas) 10 Objections to the Cosmological Argument (Fred Curry) 11 The Teleological Argument (William Paley) 12 Objections to the Teleological Argument (David Hume) 13 Argument from Design (Noah Levin) 14 Criticisms of the Argument from Design (Noah Levin) 15 The Wager (Blaise Pascal)

UNIT THREE: ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 16 The Various Traits of God (Tom Metcalf) 17 What Type of God is it Rational to Believe in? (Noah Levin) 18 Can God do the Impossible? (Tom Metcalf) 19 The Problem of Evil (David Hume) 20 Theodicies as a Response to the Problem of Evil (Tom Metcalf) 21 Free Will and the Traits of God (Noah Levin)

UNIT FOUR: THE EVOLUTION OF WESTERN THEISTIC BELIEFS 22 Selections from the Gospel of Mark (Gospel of Mark) 23 The Gospels, “Q”, Jesus, and the Early Church (J. K. Miles) 24 Maimonides and Jewish Philosophy (Maimonides) 25 Selections from The Quran (The Quran)

UNIT FIVE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE MORAL, AND SOCIETY 26 What do we do About Religious Disagreements? (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 Is it Good to “Have Faith”? (Noah Levin) 28 Morality and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 29 Tolerance in a Global Society (Noah Levin) 30 Religion, the After-Life, and Immortality (Noah Levin)

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again