ABSTRACT
Recognizing difficulties in one's position is especially challenging in religious matters, this chapter discusses the aspects of the philosophy of religion. The routine approach is to present and assess the three traditional arguments for the existence of God. Then the focus shifts to the problem of evil, after which the unit on God's existence ends. The chapter suggests that this discussion often takes place within a set of misleading assumptions that may be shared by students and faculty members. One of these assumptions is that if God's existence were disproved, then religious commitment would have been shown to be unreasonable. The one historical book in philosophy of religion that is found in abbreviated form in almost every introductory anthology is David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Yet because the main points of this masterpiece can be elusive, the chapter offers a few suggestions on guiding students in approaching the work.
