Course title
Course code
Value
Course
convenor
6AANB025 Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Religion
6AANB025
15 Credits
Name: Professor M-R Antognazza
Room: 707 Philosophy Building
maria.rosa.antognazza@kcl.ac.uk
KCL Tel: (020 7848) 2553
Consultation: Mondays 12-1pm
Aims and learning outcomes
Aims
The aim of this course is to give students an understanding of the contemporary debate on
religious epistemology through an analytical survey of the most important answers to the
question of how, if at all, belief in God can be rationally justified. It intends to encourage
students to think critically about different approaches to this question and to show how
contemporary religious epistemology relates to traditions of philosophical thought about God
and religious truth
Learning outcomes
Generic skills
By the end of the course the student will be able to demonstrate an advanced ability:to analyse texts and arguments
to summarise and present arguments
to research, plan and present essays to specified deadlines
Course specific skills
Students should become familiar with some key thinkers in contemporary religious
epistemology; understand contemporary theories about the epistemological status of religious
belief; understand the main strengths and weaknesses of contemporary philosophical views on
the nature and justification of religious belief in the light of past philosophical traditions.
Teaching arrangements
This level 6 module is taught in Semester II with 1 hour weekly lectures and 1 hour weekly
seminars.
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Teaching Plan
The course will be taught over 10 weeks (exclusive of reading week).

Introduction: the rational justification of religious belief. Its tradition and its main
contemporary perspectives.

Natural Theology. Richard Swinburne.

The epistemology of religious experience. John Hick; Richard Swinburne; William Alston.

Reformed epistemology. The ‘proper basicality’ of religious beliefs and the notion of
‘warrant’: Alvin Plantinga.

Fideism. Wittgensteinian fideism and the groundlessness of belief.

Prudentialist approaches. Pascal’s Wager, William James’s will to believe, and contemporary
re-interpretations.
Tutorials: weekly meetings for 10 weeks (excluding reading week)
Tutorials: Reading
1) ‘Introduction’ in R. Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
R. Swinburne, The Existence of God, Second Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004, ch. 1.
Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason, Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005,
pp. v-vi; 1-3 (‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’).
2) John Hick, ‘The Rationality of Religious Belief’, ch. 22 in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology or ch. 13 in John Hick, An Interpretation
of Religion. Second edition, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, Second edition, pp. 1-17.
3) Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, ch. 13: ‘the argument from religious experience’
(esp. pp. 303-327 ‘the principle of credulity and the principle of testimony’).
Read also abstracts of all chapters of Swinburne, The Existence of God and Faith and Reason
(available on line via King’s library catalogue as electronic resources).
4) William Alston, ‘Religious Experience and Religious Belief’ in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
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5) William Alston, Perceiving God: the Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-8; pp. 194-7 (in ch. 5); ch. 8 (pp. 286-307).
6) A. Plantinga, ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’, ch. 9 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
7) Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, pp. vii-xvi (‘Preface’) and ch. 6 (pp. 167-198).
Read also abstracts of all chapters (available on line via King’s library catalogue as electronic
resources).
8) N. Kretzmann. ‘Evidence and Religious Belief’ ch. 5 in B. Davies, B. Philosophy of Religion:
a Guide and Anthology. New York - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Richard Swinburne, ‘Review of Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief’ in Religious
Studies 37 (2001): 203-214.
9) Norman Malcolm, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’, ch. 6 in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
D. Z. Phillips, ‘Faith, Skepticism, and Religious Understanding’, ch. 5 in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
10) Pascal, ‘The wager’, in Meister, The Philosophy of Religion Reader, 389-93; ‘Faith Beyond
Reason’ in Helm, Faith and Reason, pp. 182–85.
W.K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief” in Lectures and Essays, London: Macmillan, 1879. Also in
Brian, Philosophy of Religion: a Guide and Anthology, pp. 31-35; Meister (ed.) The Philosophy
of Religion Reader 359-65; in Peterson (ed.) Philosophy of Religion 104-10; in Helm (ed.) Faith
and Reason 238–40.
W. James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. In The Works of William
James. Vol. 6. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Also in Meister, The
Philosophy of Religion Reader, 366-78; in Peterson et al. (eds) Philosophy of Religion 110-18; in
Hick, Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 196–212; Helm,
Faith and Reason, pp. 240–44.
Assessment
The assessment consists of two parts:
1. summative assessment : 2 hours exam.
2. formative assessment: 2 essays of 1,000 words each.
1. Exam:
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The course will be assessed through one 2-hour unseen written examination (100% of final
grade) (Examination Period 2: Monday 9 May – Friday 3 June 2011).
2. Formative Essays:
The mark does not count toward the final grade. However, students MUST submit two
formative essays (1,000 words each) by the deadlines indicated below. Students who do not
submit their essays will fail the module. Extensions can be granted only by the course
convenor, Professor Antognazza, and only in exceptional circumstances (e.g. illness). If you
need an extension present your reasons to your teaching tutor who will contact Professor
Antognazza.
First Essay (1000 words) to be emailed to your teaching tutor by 4pm on Friday 11
February. Second Essay (1000 words) to be emailed to your teaching tutor by 4pm on
Friday 25 March.
Essay Titles
Is natural theology still a worth-while enterprise? Critically discuss with particular reference to
Richard Swinburne’s views.
OR
Critically discuss Richard Swinburne’s principle of credulity and principle of testimony and their
relevance to religious epistemology.
What, according to John Hick, are the consequences of the religious ambiguity of the universe?
Is belief in God ‘properly basic’?
OR
Critically discuss Plantinga’s notion of warrant and its relevance to Christian belief.
Critically discuss Alston’s notion of doxastic practice and its relevance to religious
epistemology.
Outline and critically discuss the view that religion is a ‘form of life’ with its own internal
criteria of meaning.
Outline and critically compare W. K. Clifford and William James’s views on the ethics of belief.
Critically discuss any one contemporary re-interpretation of Pascal’s wager.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Introductions and surveys
Brief introductions:
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/: Religion, epistemology of [by
Peter Forrest].
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (available on line: see University of London databases):
Religion and epistemology; Internalism and externalism in epistemology [by W. Alston].
Linda T. Zagzebski, Philosophy of Religion: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell,
2007 (esp. ch. 3 and 10).
Advanced:
Nicholas Wolterstorff , ‘Religious Epistemology’ (especially relevant for reformed epistemology
and Wittgensteinian fideism) in William J. Wainwright (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy
of Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. See also ch. 13: C. Stephen Evans ‘Faith
and Revelation’.
Anthologies
A number of papers which will be read during tutorials are included in R. Douglas Geivett and
Brendan Sweetman (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Brian Davies, Brian (ed.) Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Paul Helm (ed.) Faith and Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Michael Peterson, et al. (eds.) Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
J. Hick, (ed) Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, Prentice Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990.
Chad Meister (ed) The Philosophy of Religion Reader, Routledge, New York and Abingdon,
2008.
Journals
Some of the most important journals in the philosophy of religion are: International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion, Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies and Sophia. JSTOR is
particularly useful for finding journal articles.
1) Natural theology
R. Swinburne, The Existence of God, Second Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004 (esp. chaps
1-6).
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Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason, Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005
(amongst other things Swinburne engages with Plantinga and Hick’s positions).
William P. Alston, ‘Swinburne and Christian Theology.’ International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion 41/1 (1997): 35-57.
William Hasker. ‘Is Christianity Probable? Swinburne's Apologetic Programme.’ Religious
Studies 38/3 (2002): 253-264.
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion. Second edition. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan,
2004, pp. 104-110 (‘Swinburne’s probability argument’).
T. Penelhum, Problems of Religious Knowledge, London: Macmillan, 1971 (Ch. 3 ‘Not being
Able to Prove the Existence of God’).
Steven M. Cahn ‘The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophic Proofs for the Existence of God’ in
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology, ch. 17.
2) The Epistemology of Religious Experience
Hick, John. 1966, Faith and Knowledge, 2nd ed., Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
John Hick, ‘The Rationality of Religious Belief’, ch. 22 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion. First edition, 1989. Second edition, Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. (NB: the ‘Introduction to the second edition’, pp. xvii-xlii
considers/replies to various criticisms).
R. Swinburne, The Existence of God, Second Edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004 (esp. pp.
303-327).
William Alston, ‘Religious Experience and Religious Belief’ in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
William Alston, Perceiving God: the Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991.
William Alston, Epistemic Justification. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Jerome I. Gelman, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1997.
Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
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3) Reformed epistemology
A. Plantinga, ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’, ch. 9 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
A. Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
A. Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
A. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. [Electronic
Resource].
Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Is Reason Enough?’, ch. 10 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
N. Kretzmann. ‘Evidence and Religious Belief’ ch. 5 in B. Davies, B. Philosophy of Religion: a
Guide and Anthology. New York - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Richard Swinburne, ‘Review of Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief’ in Religious
Studies 37 (2001): 203-214.
Alvin Plantinga, ‘Rationality and Public Evidence: A Reply to Richard Swinburne’. Religious
Studies 37/2 (2001): 215-222.
Stewart C. Goetz, ‘Belief in God Is Not Properly Basic,’ ch. 12 in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
L. Zagzebski (ed.), Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology, Notre: Dame:
Notre Dame University Press, 1993.
Mark McLeod, Rationality and Theistic Belief: an Essay on Reformed Epistemology, Ithaca, N.
Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.
A. Plantinga and N. Wolterstorff (eds.), Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, Notre
Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1983.
4) Wittgensteinian fideism
Norman Malcolm, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’, ch. 6 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
D. Z. Phillips, ‘Faith, Skepticism, and Religious Understanding’, ch. 5 in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
D. Z. Phillips, Faith after Foundationalism. London: Routledge, 1988.
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Philosophical Investigations: The Work of D. Z. Phillips. Volume 30 Issue 3 , Pages 201 - 335
(July 2007) [electronic resource] Memorial edition devoted to the work of D. Z. Phillips (Phillips
was the editor of Philosophical Investigations for many years; he died on 25 July 2006).
D. Z. Phillips, ‘Wittgenstenianism’ in Wainwright, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of
Religion.
Kai Nielson, ‘Does Religious Skepticism Rest on a Mistake?’, ch. 8 in Geivett – Sweetman,
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
S. Schroeder, ‘The tightrope walker’, Ratio (new series) 20/4 (2007): 442-463 [electronic
resource].
C. Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
L. Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations: on Aestetics, Psychology and Religious Belief.
Edited by Cyril Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
5) Prudentialist approaches
Pascal, ‘The wager’, in Meister, The Philosophy of Religion Reader, 389-93; ‘Faith Beyond
Reason’ in Helm, Faith and Reason, pp. 182–85.
W. James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. In The Works of William
James. Vol. 6. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Also in Meister, The
Philosophy of Religion Reader, 366-78; in Peterson et al. (eds) Philosophy of Religion 110-18; in
Hick, Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 196–212; Helm,
Faith and Reason, pp. 240–44.
W.K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief” in Lectures and Essays, London: Macmillan, 1879. Also in
Brian, Philosophy of Religion: a Guide and Anthology, pp. 31-35; Meister (ed.) The Philosophy
of Religion Reader 359-65; in Peterson (ed.) Philosophy of Religion 104-10; in Helm (ed.) Faith
and Reason 238–40.
Thomas V. Morris, ‘Pascalian Wagering’, ch. 18 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
J. Jordan, ‘Pascal’s waigers and James’s will to believe’, ch. 7 in Wainwright, The Oxford
Handbook of Philosophy of Religion.
J. Jordan, Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager. Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield,
1994.
J. Jordan, ‘Pragmatic Arguments for Belief in God’, Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatic-belief-god/.
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Peter Van Inwagen, ‘‘It Is Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone, to Believe Anything
Upon Insufficient Evidence’ in Stump, E and Murray, M (eds) Philosophy of Religion: The Big
Questions, Blackwell, Oxford, 1999. pp. 273–84.
Schlesinger, George ‘A Central Theistic Argument’ in Stump and Murray (eds), Philosophy of
Religion, pp. 302–12.
Stephen T. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1997. Ch. 9.
J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1982, pp. 199–210.
Further reading
Anthony Flew ‘The Presumption of Atheism’, ch. 1 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
Scott A. Shalkowski, ‘Atheological Apologetics’, ch. 4 in Geivett – Sweetman, Contemporary
Perspectives on Religious Epistemology.
R. Swinburne, Epistemic Justification. Oxford: OUP, 2001.
Anthony Kenny, Faith and Reason, New York: Columbia University Press, 1983; Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Books on Demand, 2002.
Anthony Kenny, What is faith? Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992.
Stephen T. Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997.
Paul Helm, Faith with Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Terence Penelhum, Reason and Religious Faith. Westview Press, 1995.
Roger Trigg, Rationality and Religion: Does Faith Need Reason? Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Thomas Senor (ed.), The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1996.
INTUTE: THE BEST OF THE WEB http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/philosophy/
INTUTE: Philosophy: “Web resources for the study of ideas concerning the nature of reality, value, and
experience, as well as Philosophy's own history. … Each resource has been evaluated and categorised by
subject specialists based at UK universities.”
MANY CLASSIC TEXTS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:http://www.epistemelinks.com/Main/MainText.aspx.
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