Philosophy of Religion

A Contemporary Introduction

Keith E. Yandell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317384557
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie de la philosophie

Keith Yandell's Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction was one of the first textbooks to explore the philosophy of religion with reference to religions other than Christianity. This new, revised edition explores the logical validity and truth claims of several world religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—with updated, streamlined discussions on important topics in philosophy of religion such as:

• Religious pluralism
• Freedom and responsibility
• Evidentialist Moral Theism
• Reformed Epistemology
• Doxastic Practice Epistemology
• The problem of evil
• Ontological and cosmological arguments

Other new features include updated Questions for Reflection, and new Annotated Bibliographies for each chapter, as well as an updated Glossary. This exciting new edition, much like its classic predecessor, is sure to be a classroom staple for undergraduate students studying philosophy of religion, as well as a comprehensive introductory read for anyone interested in the subject.

1
Introduction

There are a great many religions being practiced as you read this sentence. Each has its ways of interpreting and responding to the world. Expressed in rites and rituals, institutions and practices, each has a view of what there is—of the cosmos as a whole and of the role and status of persons in it. Taken seriously, these views have implications for most if not all of life. Some practice withdrawing from the world, looking internally into oneself for answers to questions as to what one is and how one may flourish. Others look to a community for such answers. Many if not all treat verbal traditions or oral texts, or both, as being at least helpful and more likely authoritative in terms of discerning a proper path in life. Among these religions, we will consider four examples. Each includes a view of what there is (metaphysics), of how it may be known (epistemology), and of what has deep value (value theory, including ethics). Our choices are cross-cultural and intended to be representative of two diverse sorts of religious tradition. No disrespect is intended to any religious tradition in this selection. The field is too vast to cover in one volume, and one cannot help being selective. The idea is to provide very diverse samples. One type is monotheistic, centering on God. The other is nonmonotheistic, centering on the individual. The former considers how one may be rightly related to a personal God, the other how we may become rightly related to an impersonal ultimate reality. Within these broad categories, there are further differences. Within monotheism (among other alternatives) there are philosophical sources in Plato and Aristotle; the Semitic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and two Hindu varieties developed by Ramanuja and Madhva. Among these we will largely consider Christianity in the sense of what seems the most generally agreed-upon central doctrines without entering into denominational disputes. A similar practice will be followed with respect to our other examples. Hindu thought also contains a religious tradition Advaita Vedanta, with ‘Vedanta’ referring to the teaching of the Vedas, ancient Hindu sacred texts. ‘Advaita’ means non-dual. It is Advaita’s view that persons, physical objects, and God are appearances, and what is real is an impersonal, qualityless Brahman. Developed classically by Shankara, this view is probably best presented in comparison and contrast to the relentless monotheism of the later Ramanuja, though the emphasis will be on the perspective of Advaita Vedanta as an example of a type of religious tradition distinct from our other three. A quite different approach is taken by Jainism, another Indian religious tradition. It holds that there are two fundamentally distinct sorts of existents, immaterial souls or minds and material particles of which physical objects are composed. Neither are viewed as created, both are held to be beginningless and endless, and the view is atheistic. Jainism is basically doctrinally homogenous in contrast to the varieties of Vedantic religion. Indian thought also offers our fourth example of a distinct religious tradition, namely Theravada Buddhism. Known as “The Tradition of the Elders” (the early followers of the Buddha) this tradition contrasts sharply to Jainism. For Jainism, the ultimate constituents of the world are things or substances, things that endure over time and throughout change. Crucially, on this view, minds are indestructible. Theravada view the cosmos (nirvana aside) to be entirely composed of conscious states and physical states, each of which is momentary, lasting barely long enough to exist at all. A mind on this view is a causally linked bundle of conscious states at a time and another entirely new bundle at the next time, the new bundle being caused by the old. The series is nothing more than the individual bundles. A physical object is analogously structured, with non-conscious states as its constituents. Later Buddhist traditions often drop out the reference to non-conscious states.

The goal of our religions is salvation in the case of monotheism and enlightenment in the case of our nonmonotheistic traditions. The former involves sinners, persons who have acted in ways that are against God’s will, repenting of those sins and asking God’s forgiveness. Assuming the repentance is genuine, God will forgive and grant the repentant sinner everlasting life with God and other believers. This is, of course, a very brief account of the matter, but perhaps it will serve to make clear how different the monotheistic view is in this regard from the nonmonotheistic views. The typical term for the goal of our other religions, as noted, is ‘enlightenment.’ The conceptual background to this idea contains reference to reincarnation and karma. The basic idea of reincarnation is that each person beginninglessly and, without becoming enlightened, endlessly is in a cycle of birth and rebirth into one new life after another. The law of karma can be thought of as a mindless rule book that states the penalties to be exacted for wrong actions and rewards for good actions. Then it is the nature of the universe that these penalties be exacted to their full limit, no merciful exceptions allowed. Only if a person has an enlightenment experience in which the truth of the Jain (in one case) or the Buddhist (in another case) is existentially seen can one become enlightened. This can occur only in a lifetime in which all remaining karmic credits and debits can be paid out. Only by coming to existentially believe a true doctrine can enlightenment be achieved, so getting the doctrine right matters. This gives us a taste of some of the views discussed in what follows.

Suggested Readings

Christianity

Davis, Stephen T. (2006) Christian Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press). A good example of work at the crossroads of philosophy and theology.

Gilson, Etienne (1955) History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House). Survey of a highly significant period of Christianity by a renowned historian of philosophy.

McGrath, Alister (2010) Christian Theology: An Introduction (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell). Nicely covers Christian thought from the church fathers to modern times.

——— (2012) The Christian Theology Reader (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell). Fine companion to the above.

Osborn, Eric (2009) The Beginning of Christian Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A good historical introduction to earliest Christian philosophy.

Hindu Vedanta

Dasgupta, Surendranath (2000) A History of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass). In five volumes, detailed and balanced; arguably the successor to Radhakrishnan.

Deutsch, Eliot and Dalvi, Rohit (2004) The Essential Vedanta: A New Sourcebook of Advaita Vedanta (Ilford, Essex, UK: Wisdom Books). Good collection of Advaita texts.

Ganeri, Martin (2015) Indian Thought and Western Theism: The Vedanta of Ramanuja (New York: Routledge). Compares “qualified non-dualistic” Vedanta with Western scholastic theism.

Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli (2009) History of Indian Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). From Rig Veda to Ramanuja, in two volumes, views Advaita as the consummation of Indian philosophy; has become a classic.

Sarma, Deepak (2003) An Introduction to Madhva Vedanta (Farnham, Sussex, UK: Ash-gate). Good general introduction to dualistic Vedanta.

Jainism

Dundas, Paul (2002) The Jains (New York: Routledge). Brief account of historical Jainism including scripture and tradition.

Jacobi, Hermann (2005) Jaina Sutras (London: Forgotten Books). Jain sacred scriptures.

Jaini, Padmanabh (1998) The Jaina Path of Purification (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass). The Jain route to enlightenment.

Paniker, Agustin (2012) Jainism: History, Society, Philosophy, and Practice (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass). A rounded view of the roles of the tradition.

Sharma, Arvind (2001) A Jaina Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass). Book by an accomplished interpreter of Indian philosophy.

Buddhism

Bodhi, Bhikkhu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2005) In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Ilford, Essex, UK: Wisdom Books). A good introduction to Theravada scripture.

Emmanuel, Steven (2013) A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). Covers a broad range of topics, including conceptual foundations, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

King, Richard (1999) Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Washington, DC: Georgetown). Brief and yet comprehensive.

Siderits, Mark (2007) Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett). An introduction to Buddhist philosophy with relevant texts.

Warder, A. K. (2008) Indian Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass). A careful scholarly account that focuses on social implications but also gives an account of how Buddhist traditions developed.

Williams, Paul, Tribe, Anthony and Wynne, Alexander (2013) Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition (New York: Routledge). As excellent as it is ambitious.

Part I
Philosophy and Religion

2
What Is Philosophy? What Is Religion? What Is Philosophy of Religion?

Philosophy

What Is Philosophy?

No non-controversial answer is possible, and this is not a book about what philosophy is. So I will just say what I take philosophy to be, and go on to do philosophy.¹ Philosophy is the enterprise of constructing and assessing categorial systems. The tasks necessary to this enterprise are philosophical tasks, and the requisite skills are philosophical skills. The tasks in question, and the skills, need not be restricted to only philosophical ones. The obvious example of cases in which not only philosophical tasks and questions are necessary is in the “philosophy of” disciplines—philosophy of the arts, mathematics, logic, physics, biology, history, or religion, for example.² A categorial system is, not surprisingly, a system of categories. A category is a basic concept, primitive in the sense that it is not analyzable in terms of other concepts. The categories of a full-blown philosophical system will be concepts of things or entities (in the broadest sense of ‘thing’ or ‘entity’), thoughts, or values.³ Philosophy is the enterprise of constructing and assessing categorial systems. Much of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern philosophy was deliberately pursued systematically. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant all constructed complex systems of philosophy. Their intent was, as a later philosopher put it, “to see things, and see them whole”—to develop an integrated account of (say) things, knowledge, and values. Much of contemporary philosophy has been suspicious of any such large-scale endeavors and has tended to stick to particular problems. Nonetheless, in dealing with particular problems, these philosophers too accepted general claims that placed constraints on what they could consistently accept elsewhere; even philosophy concerned only with particular problems is implicitly general.

I take religious claims to be neither more nor less open to rational assessment than any other sorts of claims. Any difference there is concerns difficulty, not possibility. Nor do I see any reason to think that offering rational assessment of religious claims is in principle harder than, say, assessing attempts to offer a unified theory for all of physics, or to solve the problems of the foundations of modal logic. Contrary to the preferences of some philosophers, some Religious Studies professors, and even some religious thinkers themselves, religious traditions do partly consist of literal propositions, belief in which constitutes being a member of the tradition, the falsehood of which is inconsistent with the tradition being a means to salvation or enlightenment. These traditions are anything remotely like what they claim to be only if what they say is true. I shall offer respect to the diversity of religious traditions by taking those claims seriously enough to try to see what can be said for and against them.

One can easily ask How can you tell whether a religious belief is true or not?, try to think of some general way in which this could be done, and give up. That question is a paralysis question. There is no single answer to it; religious claims are made about quite a diversity of things, and some must be assessed in one way and others in other ways. The only sensible way to proceed is on a claim-by-claim, case-by-case basis; given enough cases, one may then be able to generalize. In what follows, I will try to understand, and then assess, a variety of religious beliefs. The sorts of assessments offered will typically be relevant to other, similar claims not mentioned here. There are simply too many religions to deal with all of them in one book, even if one knew enough to do that. If you like to think in terms of books having agendas, my major agenda is to show, by detailed argument, that it is possible to rationally assess religious beliefs. In this respect, it runs against a belief that is very popu...