Philosophy Religion and Theology

Philosophy of Religion

Arguments, Belief, Doubt, and the Rational Study of Ultimate Questions

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Quick Course Facts
20
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
20
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
7.0
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Philosophy of Religion Course

Philosophy of Religion is a thoughtful introduction to faith, reason, evidence, and ultimate reality. This course helps students examine Arguments, Belief, Doubt, and the Rational Study of Ultimate Questions with clarity, intellectual honesty, and practical reflection.

Examine Philosophy Of Religion With Reasoned Confidence

  • Study major Arguments for God, including cosmological, teleological, ontological, and moral approaches.
  • Learn how faith, reason, evidence, religious experience, and testimony shape Belief.
  • Explore serious challenges such as evil, divine hiddenness, atheism, agnosticism, and Doubt.
  • Build a philosophically responsible view of religion, ethics, meaning, death, and the good life.

This Philosophy course offers a structured study of religious Belief, skepticism, evidence, and ultimate questions.

Through 20 focused lessons, students move from foundational methods to advanced debates in Philosophy of Religion. The course explains how philosophers ask questions about God, ultimate reality, miracles, religious language, pluralism, immortality, and moral life.

Students will compare classic Arguments for theism with skeptical challenges, learning how to evaluate claims carefully instead of relying on assumption or reaction. Topics such as Pascal, pragmatism, mysticism, science, naturalism, and religious diversity help connect abstract ideas to real human concerns.

By the end of the course, students will be better prepared to think clearly about Belief and Doubt, discuss Philosophy of Religion with nuance, and form a more reflective view of life’s ultimate questions.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations and Methods

3 lessons

This opening lesson introduces philosophy of religion as a disciplined inquiry into questions about God or ultimate reality, religious experience, faith, reason, evil, evidence, and meaning. It distin…

Lesson 2: Faith, Reason, and Evidence

20 min
This lesson introduces the working relationship between faith, reason, and evidence in philosophy of religion. Rather than treating faith as blind acceptance or reason as hostility to religion, it cla…

Lesson 3: Concepts of God and Ultimate Reality

21 min
This lesson introduces the main ways philosophers of religion define and compare concepts of God and ultimate reality. Rather than assuming that all traditions mean the same thing by “God,” students l…

Arguments for God

4 lessons

Lesson 4: The Cosmological Argument

22 min
This lesson examines the cosmological argument: the family of arguments that reason from the existence, contingency, beginning, or causal structure of the universe to a first cause, necessary being, o…

Lesson 5: The Teleological Argument and Design

22 min
This lesson examines the teleological argument: the claim that order, purpose, complexity, or fine-tuned conditions in the world point toward an intelligent designer. We distinguish older design argum…

Lesson 6: The Ontological Argument

20 min
This lesson examines the ontological argument, one of the most famous attempts to argue for God’s existence from reason alone. Unlike cosmological or design arguments, it does not begin with observati…

Lesson 7: Moral Arguments for God

21 min
This lesson examines moral arguments for God: arguments that begin from features of moral life, such as obligation, conscience, moral knowledge, or objective value, and ask whether they are best expla…

Belief, Risk, and Commitment

1 lesson

Lesson 8: Pascal, Pragmatism, and the Will to Believe

19 min
This lesson examines two influential attempts to connect religious belief with practical commitment: Pascal's wager and William James's defense of the will to believe . Rather than treating faith only…

Experience and Revelation

2 lessons

Lesson 9: Religious Experience and Mysticism

22 min
This lesson examines religious experience as a possible source of knowledge, justification, and revelation. We distinguish ordinary experiences interpreted religiously from mystical experiences that c…

Lesson 10: Miracles and Testimony

21 min
This lesson examines miracles as a central test case for the rational assessment of religious testimony. It introduces major philosophical issues: what counts as a miracle, how testimony can justify b…

Challenges to Theism

4 lessons

Lesson 11: The Logical Problem of Evil

23 min
This lesson examines the logical problem of evil , the claim that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God. We focus on th…

Lesson 12: The Evidential Problem of Evil

23 min
This lesson examines the evidential problem of evil : the argument that the quantity, intensity, and apparent pointlessness of suffering in the world make the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing…

Lesson 13: Divine Hiddenness and Reasonable Nonbelief

21 min
This lesson examines the challenge of divine hiddenness : if a perfectly loving God exists, why do some sincere, reflective people fail to believe in God? We focus on J. L. Schellenberg’s argument fro…

Lesson 14: Atheism, Agnosticism, and Skeptical Arguments

20 min
This lesson examines atheism, agnosticism, and skeptical arguments as serious philosophical challenges to theism rather than as mere attitudes of disbelief. Students distinguish between different form…

Religion and Modern Knowledge

1 lesson

Lesson 15: Science, Naturalism, and Religious Explanation

22 min
This lesson examines how modern science, naturalism, and religious explanation relate to one another. It distinguishes scientific explanation from broader metaphysical claims, especially the differenc…

Meaning and Interpretation

1 lesson

Lesson 16: Religious Language, Analogy, and Symbol

21 min
This lesson examines how religious traditions use language to speak about realities that are often described as transcendent, infinite, or beyond ordinary experience. Students will distinguish literal…

Religion in a Diverse World

1 lesson

Lesson 17: Religious Diversity and Pluralism

22 min
This lesson examines religious diversity as a philosophical problem rather than merely a social fact. Students learn how philosophers distinguish exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, and why disag…

Human Destiny and Meaning

1 lesson

Lesson 18: Death, Immortality, and the Afterlife

20 min
This lesson examines death, immortality, and the afterlife as philosophical problems rather than merely religious doctrines. It distinguishes survival of the body, survival of the soul, resurrection, …

Application and Reflection

2 lessons

Lesson 19: Religion, Ethics, and the Good Life

21 min
This lesson examines how religious traditions and philosophical ethics approach the question of the good life. Rather than treating religion only as a set of doctrines, we consider how religious belie…

Lesson 20: Building a Philosophically Responsible View

18 min
This lesson brings the course into a final practical register: how to form, revise, and present a philosophically responsible view about religion. Rather than asking for certainty or personal disclosu…
About Your Instructor
Professor Samuel Reed

Professor Samuel Reed

Professor Samuel Reed guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.