I question the sanity of anyone who picks up this 800 page monster and reads it just for fun (including myself).

Bertrand Russell wrote this book after losing a teaching post at SUNY because he was an atheist. It has since become the standard textbook for Intro to Philosophy classes everywhere.

I studied philosophy for two years in college (the years before and after my LDS mission) but ultimately found it unsatisfying. I think this book explains why. For most of its existence, philosophy has been a little playground for people who pick a fantasy of how the world works, then spend their lives arguing about the minute specifics of that fantasy. Like so many medieval monks debating how many angles can dance on the head of a pin.

who cares????

Within Mormonism there is a scholarly organization called FARMS in the lower echelons of which I briefly spent some time before I became disillusioned with philosophy (and later Mormonism itself). They embody the Mormon equivalent of those theologian-philosophers. Arguing over and over about this or that theological implication of this or that passage in this or that book.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the LDS church and 99% of the members just don't care. Religion is so much more than its philosophy but there will always be religious philosophers who don't understand why they aren't more popular because they know so much more than the lay-person. As if the philosophical proof of God is even possible.

From Russell, on the philosopher's attempts to prove the existence of God:

I do not myself believe that philosophy can either prove or disprove the truth of religious dogmas, but ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce 'proofs' of immortality and the existence of God...In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deep-seated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions.

p. 786

Russell concludes that the only real value of philosophy was in laying the groundwork for science, which has moved the world forward much more than Plato ever could.

I Don't recommend reading it unless you want to know why you spent too long studying the dead ideas of dead people.