Philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion examines the meaning and justification of religious beliefs and practices. Its classic questions concern the existence and nature of God, the arguments for and against it, the problem of evil, miracles, the soul and life after death, and the relation of faith and reason.

In the twentieth century it turned also to religious language, asking how words can apply to a transcendent reality, a question the apophatic traditions had long raised; to religious experience, and whether experiences of God can justify belief, as William Alston argued in Perceiving God (1991); and to religious diversity, as in John Hick’s pluralist hypothesis that the religions are different human responses to one ultimate Real.

Traditionally centred on Western theism, the field increasingly includes Indian, Buddhist, Chinese and Islamic philosophy, which have their own long traditions of argument about the ultimate, the self and knowledge.