PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

18 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

good or evil, what possesses intrinsic worth, what sort of life is worth
living, and how these matters are related.^6 Philosophy of religion
combines these enterprises in offering philosophically accessible
accounts of religious traditions and assessing those traditions. Nothing
very complex is involved in offering philosophically accessible accounts
of religious traditions; the idea is simply to offer clear and literal^7
expressions of key doctrines.
A further feature of philosophy is worth highlighting. As Edmund
Gettier once remarked in conversation, in philosophy you do not
understand a position unless you understand the arguments for it.^8
Such claims as All that exists is minds and ideas, If a proposition P is
necessarily true then “P is necessarily true” is also necessarily true, or
The existence of evil is logically compatible with the existence of God,
are such that one does not understand them unless one also grasps the
reasons that can be offered on their behalf. This is why trying to teach
philosophy without discussion of arguments is like trying to teach
mathematics without reference to numbers. The reason, then, why we
will pay attention to arguments is that this is a book on philosophy.

Questions for reflection

1 Explain what “Philosophy is the construction and assessment of
categorial systems” means.
2 Explain and assess the claims that “The claim that objectivity is
impossible is self-defeating” and “Objectivity is possible.”
3 Distinguish between functional and substantial definitions of religion.
4 Offer and explain a definition of religion.
5 Offer and explain a definition of philosophy of religion.

Annotated reading

The works cited below are some of the best older studies in the philosophy of
religion; some of the best newer studies are noted at the end of Part I.

Bertocci, Peter (1951) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Covers a wide range of issues in the philosophy of
religion with a detailed discussion of the teleological argument.
Bertocci, Peter (1970) The Person God Is, London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.
Detailed presentation of theistic personalism (the view that persons are irreducible

• not a complex made up of simpler things – and (in the case of God) ultimate).
  Brightman, E. S. (1940) A Philosophy of Religion, New York: Prentice-Hall. Also
  covers a wide range of issues, arguing for the view that God is finite.