Philosophy of Religion by John Harwood Hick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was advised about reading “Philosophy of Religion” by an uncle of mine as a response to another post. I had put it on my reading list and even got myself a copy but the dry schoolbook-like text had put me off the task of reading it for quite a while. Eventually I did get to it.
The book starts of in a rather dry fashion, but you need to remember that this is primarily an academic text. The author goes into great detail about the concept of God as seen in the Judaic-Christian way. Then he expounds on multiple theories that have been proposed to support and to deny the existence of such a being. It was on limited interest to me because I belonged to a household of different faith before turning agnostic. But it did shed some very interesting light on the way that human beings tend to see God. Towards the end the book did get more interesting when it got to the concept of religion and the various contradictory claims by the many religions in the world.
The book is in no way exhaustive and I do not suppose any book can ever be comprehensive on such a varied and evolving subject. But I felt that the book was primarily designed for the followers of Christian faith in order to understand their religion and God better. In parts it was interesting but overall a rather dry book. Perhaps it’s use is limited to the academia.
