Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytic Approach

Baruch Brody did a good job in bringing together a wide range of works on the philosophy of religion. He brings in the usual big names on this topic, such as Aquinas, Anselm, and Hume, but does a really good job with finding lesser-known Protestant thinkers from the 17-19th centuries, like the great Puritan preacher, Jonathan Edwards, and the Anglican William Paley, who is the grandfather of modern Intelligent Design Theory and Creationism. These men had a significant influence on our thoughts on God, and I'm gratified that Brody gave them their due.Selections are organized by topic (e.g., varying proofs for God's existence, God's omnipotence, the problem of evil, etc.) and the essays are well-picked. The first one will set the question, and the other ones critique and build on the first. The result is a very cogent collection.I do want to make a couple suggestions for a better collection: the first is that the teleological arguments for God's existence draw mostly on physical arguments for the likelihood of our Universe forming by sheer chance rather than by intelligent design (i.e., a Creator). Much of the intelligent design debate, however, has been waged in recent times by biologists, and I would like to see essays by Dennett (on the materialist side) and Dembsky (on the intelligent design side) to flesh out that dialogue.Also, Brody relies over-much on Hume to provide skeptical attacks on religious arguments, and while I would like for him to keep Hume's stuff, perhaps a few more modern skeptics may help balance the book. I'm glad that Brody has given so much room to all the robust defenses for theism that have arisen in recent times, but we should also get a better feel for what the skeptics have to say as well.On the whole, this is a very nice collection of philosophical essays.