ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that rejecting the rationalistic way of critically discussing religious beliefs thus opens the way for a form of philosophy of religion which, in one important sense, is a more proper extension of the Enlightenment tradition. Analytic-theistic philosophy of religion, by having laid down a fixed way of critically discussing religious beliefs, prides itself on being the legitimate heir of the bench-mark of critical thought, namely the Enlightenment tradition, but in so far as the Enlightenment tradition is such a bench-mark, this can be questioned. The kind of philosophy of religion which Alvin Plantinga's is a reaction to discusses this question by means of arguments supposed to show the existence or the non-existence of God. Pamela Sue Anderson writes that these theistic arguments assume the status quo of patriarchal beliefs. The chapter discusses that the popular empiricist methods of defending or attacking theistic beliefs confirm the status quo of patriarchy in the history of western philosophy.
