Notes
Preface
1 The nonsense line was most famously defended by A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and
Logic (New York: Dover, 1952). Cf. the critique in Alvin Plantinga, “Verificationism and
Other Theologia,” in God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).
The famous or infamous “University Discussion” between Antony Flew, R. M. Hare,
and Basil Mitchell (“Theology and Falsification,” in Antony Flew and Alistair McIntyre
(eds), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Macmillan, 1957)) and “An
Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief”) in John Hick (ed.), The Existence of
God (New York: Macmillan, 1964) express positions near to Ayer’s account. Frederick
Ferré responded to this sort of perspective in Language, Logic, and God (New York:
Harper Torchbooks, 1967), as did the present author in Basic Issues in the Philosophy of
Religion (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971). A wider range of issues is dealt with very
nicely in William Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical
Theology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
2 Sometimes this line rests on appeal to some version of relativism; at other times, it rests
on the alleged impossibility of cogent argumentation across religious traditions. Cf. the
present author’s “Some Varieties of Relativism,” International Journal for Philosophy
of Religion, Vol. 19, pp. 61–85, 1986, and Paul J. Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991).1 Introduction
1 Philosophy of religion is metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics applied to religion.
Philosophy, of course also includes logic, history of philosophy (which includes history
of philosophy of religion), aesthetics, political philosophy, and so on. My concern here is
with philosophy as it relates most closely to philosophy of religion.
2 As well as what there isn’t, what isn’t known, and what is not good.
3 Nirvana aside.
4 What appears to be an enduring thing is a series of momentary things.
5 This claim, of course, is controversial. So are the varieties of claims that evil is evidence
against the existence of God.
6 Advaita Vedanta also appeals to Hindu Scripture.2 What is philosophy? What is religion? What is philosophy of
religion?
1 Everett Hall, Philosophical Systems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958) offers
what I take to be the best book ever written on the nature of philosophy, though the final
chapter disappoints.