The Problem of Contingency for Religious Belief

Faith and Philosophy 30 (4):371-392 (2013)
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Abstract

In this paper, I hope to solve a problem that’s as old as the hills: the problem of contingency for religious belief. Paradigmatic examples of this argument begin with a counterfactual premise: had we been born at a different time or in a difference place, we easily could have held different beliefs on religious topics. Ultimately, and perhaps by additional steps, we’re meant to reach the skeptical conclusion that very many of our religious beliefs do not amount to knowledge. I survey some historical examples of this argument, and I try to fill the gap between the counterfactual premise and the skeptical conclusion as forcefully as possible. I consider the following possibilities: there are no additional steps in the argument; or there are and they concern the alleged safety condition on knowledge, or the alleged non-accidentality condition on knowledge, or the unclarity produced by disagreement. On every possibility, the argument from the counterfactual premise to the conclusion of widespread skepticism is invalid. It seems, then, that there is no serious problem of contingency for religious belief.

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Tomas Bogardus
Pepperdine University

Citations of this work

Problems of Religious Luck: Assessing the Limits of Reasonable Religious Disagreement.Guy Axtell - 2019 - Lanham, MD, USA & London, UK: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield.
Religious Disagreement.Helen De Cruz - 2019 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Disagreement and Religion.Matthew A. Benton - 2021 - In Matthew A. Benton & Jonathan L. Kvanvig (eds.), Religious Disagreement and Pluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-40.

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References found in this work

How to Defeat Opposition to Moore.Ernest Sosa - 1999 - Noûs 33 (s13):141-153.
You just believe that because….Roger White - 2010 - Philosophical Perspectives 24 (1):573-615.
An analysis of factual knowledge.Peter Unger - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (6):157-170.
Luminosity and the safety of knowledge.Ram Neta & Guy Rohrbaugh - 2004 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (4):396–406.

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