Saints, Heretics, and Atheists : A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion

"This book offers a historical introduction to fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion. It is divided into twenty-five chapters. The first chapter discusses the nature of piety drawing on Plato's Euthyphro. The next three chapters discuss the nature of evil, free will, foreknowledge, and sin in the context of Augustine's On Free Choice of Will. Chapter Five discusses Anslem's "ontological" argument for the existence of God. Chapter Six explores Ibn Sina's account of the nature of the soul and immortality. The next two chapters explore the foundations of religious belief and mysticism in the company of al-Ghazali's The Rescuer from Error. Chapters nine through eleven discuss Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God as well as his account of God's impersonal and personal attributes. The twelfth chapter explores Marguerite Porete's account of mystical ascent as well as the doctrines of heaven and hell. Chapter Thirteen discusses Pascal's pragmatic argument for belief in the existence of God. Chapters Fourteen through Sixteen discuss Spinoza's understanding of God, our relationship to God, and the foundations of morality. Chapters Seventeen through Nineteen explore the argument from design, the existence of God, deism, and the problem of evil. Chapter Twenty investigates Mary Shepherd's defense of belief in miracles, while Chapter Twenty-One explores Mill's views on the utility of religion. Finally, chapters Twenty-Three through Twenty-Five explore the origins of modern morality and the relationship between religion and nihilism in the company of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality"-- Provided by publisher Cover Saints, Heretics, and Atheists Copyright Contents Preface Acknowledgments 1. Plato’s Euthyphro: What Is Piety? 1.1. The Setting 1.2. First Attempt: Examples of Piety 1.3. Second Attempt: What Is Dear to the Gods 1.4. Third Attempt: What All the Gods Love 1.5. Fourth Attempt: Piety Is the Part of Justice That Concerns the Gods 1.6. Fifth Attempt: The Pious Is What Is Dear to the Gods 2. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will: Where Does Evil Come From? 2.1. The Setting 2.2. What Is the Cause of Evil? 2.3. The Well-​Ordered Person 2.4. Sin and Ignorance 2.5. An Objection and Two Conclusions 2.6. Freedom and Determinism 3. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will: Why Do We Have Free Will? 3.1. Setup and Structure 3.2. How Is It Manifest That God Exists? 3.3. Do All Things, Insofar as They Are Good, Come from God? 3.4. Should Free Will Be Counted as a Good Thing That Comes from God? 3.5. Happiness and Immortality 4. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will: Why Do We Sin? 4.1. Why Do We Sin, and Who Is to Blame? 4.2. Is Libertarian Freedom Consistent with Divine Foreknowledge? 4.3. Can’t God Be Blamed for Creating Beings That He Knows Will Sin? 4.4. Is It the Case That Some of Us Must Sin? 4.5. Three Views on Divine Foreknowledge 5. Anselm’s Proslogion: Does Reason Prove That God Exists? 5.1. The Setting 5.2. Anselm’s Ontological Argument 5.3. A Perfect Island? 5.4. Two Objections 6. Ibn Sina’s The Book of Salvation: What Is the Nature of the Soul? 6.1. The Setting 6.2. What Does the Intellect Do? 6.3. Is the Soul Immaterial? 6.4. Is the Soul Immortal? 6.5. What Am I? 7. Al-​Ghazali’s The Rescuer from Error: Is Religious Belief Founded in Reason? 7.1. The Setting 7.2. Three Views on Faith and Reason 7.3. The Quest for Certainty 7.4. Three False Foundations 7.5. Is God Hidden? 8. Al-​Ghazali’s The Rescuer from Error: Is Religious Belief Founded in Experience? 8.1. Al-​Ghazali’s Turn to Mysticism 8.2. Three Accounts of Religious Experience 8.3. Is Religious Experience a Good Reason for Belief? 9. Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: Does Experience Prove That God Exists? 9.1. The Setting 9.2. Is the Existence of God Self-​Evident? 9.3. Can We Prove That God Exists? 9.4. The Argument from Motion, the First Step 9.5. The Argument from Motion, the Second Step 9.6. The Argument from Motion, the Conclusion 9.7. The Argument from Providence 10. Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: What Is the Impersonal Nature of God? 10.1. Is God Simple? 10.2. Is God Perfect? 10.3. Is God Infinite? 10.4. Is God One? 10.5. Analogical Predication 11. Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: What Is the Personal Nature of God? 11.1. Divine Knowledge 11.2. Divine Will 11.3. Divine Love 11.4. Is God Male? 12. Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls: What Is Salvation? 12.1. The Setting 12.2. Ascent and Annihilation 12.3. Heaven 12.4. Hell 13. Pascal’s The Wager: Should We Bet on God? 13.1. The Setting 13.2. A Simple Wager 13.3. Pascal’s Wager 13.4. Background Assumptions 13.5. Objections and Replies 14. Spinoza’s Ethics: Is God Nature? 14.1. The Setting 14.2. Substance Monism 14.3. The Master Argument 14.4. “Deus sive Natura” (God or Nature)? 15. Spinoza’s Ethics: Are We Modes of God? 15.1. Substance, Attributes, Modes 15.2. Human Beings 15.3. Against Libertarian Freedom 15.4. For Compatibilist Freedom 15.5. Moderating the Passions 16. Spinoza’s Ethics: Good without God? 16.1. Two Accounts of Goodness? 16.2. Beyond Egoism? 16.3. Good without God? 17. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Is the Universe Designed? 17.1. The Setting 17.2. The Limits of Reason 17.3. Cleanthes’s First Design Argument 17.4. Cleanthes’s Second Design Argument 17.5. Is the Universe Fine-​Tuned? 18. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Design without a Designer? 18.1. The Regress Objection 18.2. The Design Argument and Traditional Theism 18.3. An Immanent Designer? 18.4. No Designer at All? 18.5. Contemporary Criticisms 19. Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: True Religion? 19.1. The Causal Argument 19.2. The Problem of Evil 19.3. Consistency, Evidence, and Evil 19.4. “True Religion” 19.5. The Problem of Evil Today 20. Shepherd’s The Credibility of Miracles: May We Believe in Miracles? 20.1. The Setting 20.2. Hume’s Critique of Miracles 20.3. What Is a Miracle? 20.4. Believing in Miracles? 21. Mill’s Essays on Religion: Is Religion Useful? 21.1. The Setting 21.2. “On Nature” 21.3. Raising the Question 21.4. Is Religion Publicly Useful? 21.5. Is Religion Privately Useful? 21.6. What Is Secular Humanism? 22. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: What Do “Good,” “Bad,” and “Evil” Mean? 22.1. The Setting 22.2. Three Big Ideas 22.3. Genealogy of Values 22.4. Inversion of Values 22.5. Evaluation of Values 22.6. Debunking Religion and Morality? 23. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: Whence Conscience, Bad Conscience, and Guilt? 23.1. The Origin of Conscience 23.2. The Origin of Bad Conscience 23.3. The Origin of Moral Guilt 23.4. Should We Obey Our Conscience? 24. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: No Alternative? 24.1. What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? 24.2. The Puzzle of Ascetic Ideals 24.3. The “Vale of Tears” 24.4. “Pointless Suffering” 24.5. “The Ascetic Priest” 24.6. No Alternative? 25. James’s The Will to Believe: The Right to Believe? 25.1. The Setting 25.2. The Ethics of Belief 25.3. The Varieties of Belief 25.4. A First Argument 25.5. A Second Argument 25.6. Returning to Plato Index Does God exist? What is the nature of evil, and where does it come from? Are humans free? Responsible? Immortal? Does it matter? Saints, Heretics and Atheists offers a historical introduction to fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion. Ranging from ancient times to the twentieth century, it is divided into twenty-five succinct, chronological chapters. Individual chapters discuss philosophies from history's greatest thinkers including Plato, Augustine, al-Ghazali, Aquinas, Margarite Porete, Spinoza, Hume, Mary Shepherd, and Nietzsche. The book closes with an exploration of William James's defense of the right to believe, possible limitations of that right, and the nature of philosophical progress. Based on lectures from a popular course taught in the Program for General Education at Harvard University for over a decade, Saints, Heretics, and Atheists invites readers along for a journey that is unique in its sweeping historical approach to the philosophy of religion and the balance it strikes between traditional, non-traditional, and atheistic standpoints with respect to religion in the western tradition. Based on lectures from a popular course taught in the Program for General Education at Harvard University for over a decade, this book invites readers along for a journey that is unique in its sweeping historical approach to the philosophy of religion and the balance it strikes between traditional, non-traditional, and atheistic standpoints with respect to religion in the western tradition