Hi Derek,

Sorry, it was not that you gave the wrong impression, my reply just did not take up the issues to do with the authors you mentioned – I primarily focused on what I thought were the limitations of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, but thought it would be proper to say something about Continental philosophy as well and just gave some general thoughts. I agree that there are many authors out there that have a good sense for religion, its just that most of them are not philosophers (or evolutionary biologists). While I am sure that there are many Christian analytic philosophers that feel that contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is doing a fine job the fact remains that most mainstream analytic philosophers find it repugnant or irrelevant or both.

The omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God stuff is quite funny. Clearly there are those that have held to such a conception of God, and clearly a clever person who cornered an unreflective believer could get them to agree that this is their conception of God, but even within Christianity this is limited conception. Some say it’s the philosophers God, a clear conceptual articulation of God – which is the only sort of God that a ‘philosopher’ could be interested in. Clearly such people have a very limited understanding of what a philosopher is, never mind their limitations in regard to God. Such people often go on to show that the philosophers God is conceptually incoherent. Great, philosophy does not have a conceptually coherent conception of God. In any case I am not really interested in the ‘Philosophy of Theism’ – which is what contemporary philosophy of religion is. We are subject to an Etikettenschwindel, the philosophy of theism is packaged as the philosophy of religion and nobody really registers that this is the case – God, God, God… Not that I am saying an interest in God is illegitimate, of course its legitimate, its just that it allows the part to define the whole, the philosophy of theism is to philosophy of religion, what philosophy of religion is to philosophy itself. The answer to the limited focus – the focus on the ‘tri-omni-God’ is not just to keep on articulating different conceptions of God, although that is important so that we can see how diverse and interesting engagements with the subject are (far more diverse than much philosophy of religion allows) – the answer is really to look beyond God to religion and to avoid allowing the Western experience of religion to define that subject. We have to reject the Etikettenschwindel, we need truth in labeling so we do not distort our topic and deceive those who come to it.

Your comment on the Egyptian ‘Gods’ is interesting. Many cultures are like this – for many cultures there is continuity between living people or beings, their dead ancestors and spirits. The spirits and ancestors are not seen to live in another world, nor are they worshiped, respected yes, but not really worshiped. But we still treat this as simple ‘animism’ a mere stage on the way to ‘higher’ religion, a ‘primitive’ religion – we still think under the shadow of J.G. Frazer! This is the case with many different cultures. Australian Aboriginal traditions, as diverse as they are, do not really have Gods either, indeed scholar of Aboriginal religions T. Swain, argues that the tradition is a non-dualistic geo-centric tradition. The narratives of the dream time do not depict the acts of Gods at all, the beings there are not ‘worshiped’, they orientate those who hear the stories on geographical features, they help imbue the land with normative significance due to the connection between aboriginal people and the land this provides normative orientation at the anthropological level. The beings of the dreamtime do not inhabit another world, a super nature over and beyond this one, they are beings of another time who acted in this world on this land. To just strike on something interesting from Australian Aboriginal religion: according to Swain it is a religious tradition that is geo-centric. This is interesting. We generally see religion as being theocentric (orientated on God or Gods), we see one of the great moves of secular modernity as the move to an anthropocentric orientation (with humanism mediating the move). The debate between the theists and the atheists could be seen as a debate between a theocentric and an anthropocentric outlook, a debate about where we ought to take our primary normative orientation from. But what would a geocentric outlook offer us? What would it be to be geocentric? What would it be to take our normative orientation from our environment rather than from either God or ourselves.

I agree that there must be analytic philosophers who are aware of these details, but I am not sure whether the analytic philosophers who are aware it are interested in religion. Further the theistic analytic philosophers who might be aware of it just think it is error and so don’t bother with it. It does not matter what the Egyptians thought about their Gods, their traditions have the status of fairy stories to many contemporary theistic analytic philosophers of religion. You can just map this back onto the analytic attitude to the history of philosophy. The history of philosophy is the history of error, there is not much use in studying the mistakes, so don’t study history of philosophy. Likewise, the history of religions is predominantly a history of error (with the exception of 'my' tradition), why study error. What is the point of problem solving within a tradition that is mistaken anyway? Do not lose sight of the fact that for many contemporary theistic philosophers there is a presumption that they have are in possession of the truth and everyone who denies their truth is wrong, this presumption is just as strong as the naturalist presumption that naturalism is true. The work then just becomes about problem solving, its just about applying philosophical tools to the problems that arise within a framework that is presumed to be true. Even if we don’t have all the detail there is a faith that it will all work itself out in the long-run and that what we presume to be true is just true.

About my book: the book is orientated by an inclusive criterion, we have theists and atheists, we have analytic and continental philosophers. We did not want to lead those who read it by the nose towards the view that we hold about politics and religion rather we aimed to gather interesting articles about the subject that would stimulate readers to think about the subject. The latter idea was very important to us – we think that the best thing for a collection to do is to stimulate people to think for themselves about the topic at hand, not to create converts to this or that view. As such we allowed each author to present their view. The chapters by Slezak, Levine, Crittenden, Bubbio and Quadrio are all relevant to the contemporary practice of philosophy of religion. So, of 13 chapters there are 5 that are important for those who are interested in the nature and practice of philosophy of religion – and it’s the political implications of that practice. You can get it through Sydney University Press website : http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/sup/9781920899318

Philip