Reviews for Philosophies of Religion

The average rating for Philosophies of Religion based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-03 00:00:00 Chris Snowdon The reason for the two stars (now removed) is because I cringed at the racist language, such as "savage races" have spoken out with freedom, and: "Gods of the lowest races", and "The Australians [...] seemed the misrablest people in the world, without houses, agriculture, metals or domesticated animals. In this condition, they remain, when not under European influence", etc. No wonder, the book was first published in 1913. The book is interesting enough when taking that into account, but I'd prefer to keep to abstaining from a rating in spite of, or rather because of? the fact that the book is obviously a product of its period. I suspect that his book was, in its time, seen as an Anthropology textbook, with quite a wide scope, giving us mythology from the Australias through the America's to Egypt, India, Greece and a bit of Europe; and indeed, were it not for it's datedness, it could even have been a cite-able source currently, because Andrew Lang certainly uses an academic approach and cites all his own sources, which are sadly all from within the 1800's, so it's pretty old, and of course that explains the racist language. In actual fact, the book itself is a piece of history, I guess. Because of its age and it's value as an artifact I'd rather not give it a star rating at all. Be warned, also, that it's not comfortable reading, not just because of the racism, but because of other factors such as all the speculation and the namedropping, for instance, which along with the dated language just doesn't flow and doesn't give a a clear, concise, succinct picture of the subject matter. Andrew Lang is (was?) a respected name in folkloric circles, (ha! I couldn't resist that)); he was the compiler of the Red, Blue Yellow and Pink Fairy books, so let's not write him off completely.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-06-18 00:00:00 Declan Butler Great idea but it is so wrong.