Good and simply put. I had to read this for a class and it was better than I thought it would be. Some parts it was hard to understand what they were talking about, so I had to re-read some sections to make sure that I understood.
Fair philosophical evaluation My assumption is that most of the people reading this review are purchasing this book for a college/seminary level into to philosophy class. This book is certainly a textbook, but do not count it as non-useful outside of the classroom. If you are looking into the book to obtain an understanding of Philosophy this will definitely help. At the beginning of every chapter, a short overview of the chapter is defined, followed by how it will be outlined. This is nice since it allows the reader to see where the author is taking them before just jumping into the topic.
Each philosophical thought is explained and evaluated from an evangelical perspective. One of the major benefits of this textbook is its structure. If you were only interested in a topic such as "The problem of evil", you could easily jump to that section of the book, prior to reading the previous sections. The five major sections of the book are as follows..
1. Introduction to Philosophy 2. What is knowledge? 3. What is reality? 4. What is ultimate? 5. What is good or right?
If any of you are wondering, the authors do not present their personal perspective on predestination in this book. They present hard determinism, soft determinism, indeterminism and libertarianism with an explanation of each. They said that topic was "purposely omitted." If you would like something a little lighter / more of an introduction, I would recommend "The Consequences of Ideas" by RC Sproul. If this is a must read for school, you will find it is organized in an easy to learn fashion.
fair game this book is basically a medium level intro to western philosophy from a conservative christian viewpoint. Philosophy is always done from some sort of bias to some degree or another, this is just human. Despite the obvious "christian slant" in this work, it is still pretty good to get your philosophical gears turning.
Very useful text 4.8/5 I liked this text a lot. First, there are not so many Introductory Philosophy courses with Christian perspective on different issues. Geisler's text is very good. He's not just presents available options without giving you a clue what fits into Christian Scheme of thought, but he explains which philosophical concepts fit perfectly into Christian Worldview and why. Second, it's pretty exhaustive volume. Even though it is introductory, still it covers a lot. One negative thing is - format and layout. Whoever published this volume should make it prettier :D to read. Content is good but the outlook is quite like an antique... :D Anyways, book is great. Buy it and read it. (as the matter of fact, anything by Geisler is good. Especially his Intro to Ethics and Christian Aplogetics)
good Norm Geisler never dissapoints. Expect to be a little confused by some of his extremely deep and tough-to-comprehend philosophy. It might be hard for beginners to understand, but not then again not everything is easy to learn in the beginning.
I have to add that the most recent review before this one didn't really make much sense to mean. The reviewer complained that this book on Christian philosophy ignored eastern philosophy and Islamic logic (had to say it because it rhymed). Let's think about this. It isn't a book on philosophy in general, or even on religious philosophy, but on Christian philosophy. The author wrote from the Christian perspective because this book is about Christian philosophy, nothing outside of that. Note the title of the book, "Introduction to Philosophy: A CHRISTIAN perspective". No offense to you. I just thought that was a little unfair to give it a bad rating because you would prefer a different subject for the author to discuss.
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
