Metaphysics.

In his book _Metaphysics_ (2009), Peter van Inwagen presents several interesting points.  First, he contrasts the medieval understanding of the nature of the world and reality (which amounted to the world revealed by God) with the nineteenth century understanding of the nature of the world and reality (which was a hard materialism seeing the world as composed of nothing but matter and empty space).  The twentieth century seems to have uprooted this nineteenth century understanding and to have made possible a modern synthesis.  One interesting case presented by the author is that the claim is made for example that all educated people deny the existence of immortal souls.  The author shows how this may be false in the sense that at one time all educated people adhered to the theories of Freud or Marx which have since been proven to be fallacious.  Thus, the appeal to authority here need not reflect the reality.  The author maintains that the medieval perspective is essentially correct and contrasts this to monism and dualism.  In the case of monism, the author maintains that one of the claims made by monists is that they have actually experienced a state of consciousness in which it is revealed to them that everything is One.  This claim is made by monists instead of an argument frequently and provides an interesting study in the nature of revelation and consciousness.

The author also considers the question as to "why is there a world at all" or "why is there something rather than nothing".  In answer to this question, the author wonders why this question has occured only to philosophers.  The author maintains that it is only under the influence of philosophical speculation that religion has offered answers to this question at all, in the form of "creation myths" and then gives several examples of "creation myths" including the biblical account in Genesis.