The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta: A Comparative Study in Religion and Reason.

• Author: Clooney, Francis X.

This volume aims to bridge the gap between two important intellectual discourses, and to argue for their affinity. First, there is Advaita, the non-dualist school of the Indian Vedanta, a long tradition of exegesis and systematic theology and philosophy which harkens hack to the ancient upanisads. Sharma acknowledges Samkara (8th century C.E.) as the major exponent of Advaita, but in order to make Advaita available as a contemporary system of thought, he draws heavily on twentieth-century thinkers, such as M. Hiriyanna, S. Radhakrishnan, K. C. Bhattacharya, K. Satchidananda Murty, and T. M. P. Mahadevan. This in itself is a valuable feature of the book. Second, there is the philosophy of religion, which "studies the concepts and belief systems of religion as well as the prior phenomena of religious experience and the activities of worship and contemplation on which these belief systems rest and out of which they have arisen."(1) It is not essentially philosophizing by religious people, but rather a second-order philosophizing about religion and related phenomena which can be done by believers and non-believers alike. Sharma presents the philosophy of religion according to John Hick's textbook, Philosophy of Religion,(2) the chapters of which for the most part provide the themes and sequence in Sharma's book: conceptions of God; belief and disbelief in God; the problem of evil; revelation, faith, and issues of epistemology; religious language; the problem of verification; existence, reality, and factuality; human destiny; conflicting truth claims. Under each topic, Sharma touches on the philosophy of religion position (or positions) as presented by Hick, and then responds to them from an Advaita perspective, drawing mostly on the modem Indian thinkers mentioned above.

Each chapter raises numerous relevant points for consideration. For example, chapter 1, "The Advaitic Conception of God," comments, from an Advaita perspective, on these points: God as "unique being," "infinite and self-existent," "creator," "personal," "loving," and "holy." Chapter 2, "Grounds for Belief and Disbelief in God," reviews very briefly the ontological argument, the argument from causality, Aquinas' proofs, and the moral argument for God. Chapter 3, "The Conflicting Truth Claims of Different Religions," touches in sequence on the views of W. A. Christian, W. C. Smith, and Hick (who himself addresses Vedanta), concluding to a family resemblance between Hick's...