Experience, Explanation and Faith by Anthony O'hear

Experience, Explanation and Faith by Anthony O'hear

In this book Anthony O'Hear examines the reasons that are given for religious faith. His approach is firmly within the classical tradition of natural theology, but an underlying theme is the differences between the personal Creator of the Bible or the Koran and a God conceived of as the indeterminate ground of everything determinate.

Drawing on several religious traditions and on the resources of contemporary philosophy, specific chapters analyse the nature of religious faith and of religious experience. They examine connections between religion and morality, and religion and human knowledge - the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments, process thought, and the problem that evil presents for religion. The final chapter returns to the inherently dogmatic nature of religious faith and concludes that rational people should look beyond religion for the fulfilment of their spiritual needs.

Anthony O'Hear is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham, UK. From 1994-2019 he was Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and Editor of Philosophy, its academic journal. He is the author of many books and articles on philosophy, including Karl Popper (1980), What Philosophy Is (1984), The Element of Fire (1988), Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (1989), Beyond Evolution (1997), Philosophy in the New Century (2001) and The Landscape of Humanity (2008). Picturing the Apocalypse (2015), co-authored with Natasha O'Hear, won the ACE/Mercers prize in 2017 as the best book internationally on art and religion. Anthony O'Hear was appointed OBE in 2018.