Abstract
Some naturalists feel an affinity with some religions, or with a particular religion. They may have previously belonged to it, and/or been raised in it, and/or be close to people who belong to it, and/or simply feel attracted to its practices, texts and traditions. This raises the question of whether and to what extent a naturalist can lead the life of a religious believer. The sparse literature on this topic focuses on (a position recognizable as) religious fictionalism. I also frame the debate in these terms. I ask what religious fictionalism might amount to, reject some possible versions of it and endorse a different one. I then examine the existing proposals, by Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Lipton, Andrew Eshleman and Howard Wettstein, and show that even on my version of religious fictionalism, much of what has been described by these authors is still possible.
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Notes
It’s an interesting question whether descriptive fictionalism is defensible for some religious communities, and if so for which. Of course, if the doubts about non-doxastic acceptance I’ll express below are justified, this version of descriptive (religious) fictionalism can’t be correct. But a descriptive version of religious fictionalism as outlined in the section “Religious make-believe” below may well be, for (some members of) some communities.
See e.g. Miller (2012) for a discussion of these positions for the case of religion.
The following two paragraphs outline concerns raised in Szabó (2011).
This reply is in line with some of Howard Wettstein’s commitments (see below).
I owe this example to Christopher Jay, who (I think) mentioned it in a talk on this topic.
Of course, other things of value may be gained. Le Poidevin suggests that if theism is false, then the effect of theistic belief on one’s spiritual life may in part be a negative one (Le Poidevin 1996, p. 120).
Le Poidevin sometimes claims that theistic discourse isn’t truth-apt (cf Harrison 2010). Jay notes that this isn’t in line with what other religious fictionalists, and fictionalists in other areas think, and suggests it may be due to conflating not being truth-normed with not being truth-apt (or assuming an entailment from the former to the latter) (Jay 2014, p. 209).
Some passages suggest that what’s hardly articulable isn’t the nature of God, but rather that of the state one aspires to when imitating God: ‘This aspiration does not require that God exist, but it does require a conception of God, i.e. a representation of a perfected state of being.’ (Eshleman 2005, p. 192) But this ‘i.e.’ is problematic if, like Eshleman, one takes ordinary talk of God to be about a purported divine being.
He sometimes describes these as expressivist functions, but I don’t think expressivism is what’s at issue, either as a descriptive or a prescriptive view.
See footnote 1.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.
(Le Poidevin 1996, p. 120).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this objection.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Notre Dame Center for Philosophy of Religion, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and all who commented on earlier drafts, including Arif Ahmed, Alison Fernandez, Mike Rea, Evan Fales, and Robert Audi.
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Deng, N. Religion for naturalists. Int J Philos Relig 78, 195–214 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9529-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9529-y