RELI 233 - Philosophy of Religion

The United States is, by all accounts, a God-fearing nation: sessions of congress are opened with a prayer, and "In God We Trust" is printed on the money. On the other hand, we are a pluralistic nation, with no official religion and almost a quarter of citizens not believing in a Judeo-Christian God. Both views have long and respectable intellectual histories. In this course we will examine these intellectual histories from the perspective of philosophy. In the first part of the course, we consider the traditional arguments for theism; in the second part, we consider traditional arguments against theism. Finally, we turn to an evaluation of this way of proceeding: Do we need to be able to prove or disprove God's existence in or to be justified in believing or disbelieving?