• Metaphysics: Understanding what exists and how things relate.
• Epistemology: Defining knowledge, reasonable belief, and their identification.
• Ethics: Exploring moral value and what is considered good.

• Judaism, Christianity, and Islam view sin as the main problem and seek divine forgiveness and renewal.
• Advaita Vedanta (a Hindu tradition) sees ignorance of one’s identity with Brahman as the problem.
• Theravada Buddhism identifies the problem as mistaken self-identification and proposes recognizing the self as momentary states.
• Jainism views the problem as dependence and limited knowledge, advocating for self-recognition as independent and knowledgeable.

Part II explores the philosophical content of various religious traditions:

• Monotheism: Believes in a single, independently existing creator God. There are different varieties:
  • Advaita Vedanta: Views Brahman as the qualityless ultimate reality.
  • Jainism: Regards persons and physical elements as ultimate realities, denying the existence of God.
  • Theravada Buddhism: Sees the world’s basic elements as co-dependent and transitory.
• Monotheism Variations:
  • God can be viewed as having temporal properties or as existing outside of time.
  • Purely philosophical monotheism: The world depends on God for existence without God actively creating.
  • Religious monotheism: God’s creation of the world is a matter of choice, which may involve the creation of time or occur after some time.
  • God may be seen as providential, actively involved in history, or as having necessary existence, without being caused to exist or dependent on anything else.
  • Advaita Vedanta: Asserts that all existence is a qualityless being, rejecting traditional views of God.
• Jainism vs. Theravada Buddhism on persons:
  • Jainism: Views persons as permanent, enduring, and indestructible self-conscious beings.
  • Theravada Buddhism: Sees persons as impermanent, composed of momentary states, with personal identity not retained in ultimate enlightenment.
• Buddhist View: Everything is impermanent, and change is seen as a matter of gaining or losing qualities rather than enduring entities.
• Jain View: Accepts change but maintains that personal identity persists into enlightenment.

Part III addresses the philosophical issues surrounding monotheistic belief:

• Problem of Evil: The existence of evil (wrong choices, disease, war, suffering) is a major challenge to the existence of God.
  • Questions arise about whether it is logically possible for a world created by God to contain such evils.
  • The existence of these evils may be viewed as evidence against God’s existence.
  • Some argue that the problem of evil does not necessarily undermine monotheism, especially if human persons are seen as having great worth, such as being created in the image of God.
  • Nonmonotheistic views may not attribute the same worth to persons, potentially reducing the force of the problem of evil in those contexts.

Various features of the world have been explained by reference to God:

• There are things that exist which might not have existed, such as material things and finite minds. Their existence might be explained by God.
• The world is orderly and accessible to human intelligence, which allows for science and planning. This order might be attributed to God.
• Moral standards exist that were not invented by humans, and actions and persons are assessed according to these standards. The existence of these standards might be explained by God.
• Arguments for God’s existence often appeal to these facts, and experiences in different cultures claiming encounters with God are considered evidence for God’s existence.

Nonmonotheistic traditions offer different views:

• Advaita Vedanta defends the idea that only qualityless Brahman exists and that each person is identical to Brahman, supported by esoteric religious experiences.
• Jainism argues that self-conscious, enduring minds have independent existence, with persons being enduring and self-conscious, supported by Jain arguments and experiences.
• Theravada Buddhism posits that everything is impermanent and co-dependent, with persons being momentary elements or series of elements, defended by Buddhist arguments and enlightenment experiences.

Religion and morality are related in various ways, especially regarding whether ultimate religious values include moral values.

• The relationship between faith (belief or acceptance of propositions) and reason (rational assessment) is explored, particularly in monotheism where faith often includes trust in God.

Additional issues include human freedom and the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

• The text addresses a range of topics in the Philosophy of Religion using methods applicable to other issues, and does not cover every issue.

Philosophy involves a tradition of texts, ideas, arguments, and worldviews and includes the assessment of these elements.

• “Old” does not necessarily mean “outdated” or “false,” and “new” is not necessarily “better” or “true.”
• Introducing someone to philosophy involves exposure to various ideas and engagement in rational assessment.
• Effective philosophy education requires sustained assessment of competing claims and arguments, and the book aims to provide material for learning both the content and practice of philosophy.