Our main textbook is Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (second edition), edited by Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger. This is a collection of readings from both religious and anti-religious perspectives, mostly from contemporary sources.Current state of philosophy of religionThis exercise is on the book's short Introduction (pages 1-3), which discusses the current state of philosophy of religion.
These computerized exercise materials are copyrighted (c) 2002 by Harry J. Gensler; but they may be distributed freely.
Philosophers for many centuries have had an intense interest in philosophy of religion -- and especially in the existence and nature of God. But philosophy of religion fell on lean times early in the twentieth century, when many philosophers (except those in the Roman Catholic tradition) took science to be the only way of knowing. Many positivist philosophers argued that "God exists" is nonsensical (not literally true or false), because there's no way to verify by sense experience whether the claim is true.Recently there's been a big change. The last few decades have witnessed a great rebirth of interest in philosophy of religion -- and a great increase in the number of top philosophers who accept some sort of religious faith. There's much high-quality philosophy going on in the area of philosophy of religion. Accordingly, this is an exciting time for philosophy of religion.