This chapter examines how the cognitive science of religion (CSR) relates to naturalism, as both a methodological and a metaphysical principle. CSR is heir to a rich tradition of natural histories of religion that provide integrated causal accounts of religion, based on anthropological, historical, and psychological observations. Natural histories of religion traditionally had a strong antitheistic agenda. This in part explains why CSR is still regarded as a project that has mainly negative implications for the rationality of religious beliefs. (...) The question of whether CSR challenges religious beliefs nevertheless remains a subject of enduring debate. To approach this question, I examine how naturalness is developed as a concept in CSR, exploring McCauley's claim that religion is natural. I conclude that the naturalness of religion does not challenge the epistemic standing of religious beliefs. Notably, this is a result of CSR's self‐imposed methodological constraints, in particular its attempts to reduce religious phenomena to nonreligious cognitive dispositions. (shrink)

Religion, especially Western religion, calls upon us to 'believe' on the basis of 'faith.' But in what way can faith serve as a justification for belief? In this essay, I distinguish between 'belief in' and 'belief that' and argue that faith, properly understood, entails the former, not the latter.

Earlier versions of this paper were read to the Departments of Philosophy at the University of New Brunswick and at Saint Francis Xavier University and to the Canadian Societh for the Study of Religion at Queen’s University, Kingston. The authors wish to thank the participants for their comments.

In Theory of Games, Braithwaite shows that mathematical theory of games can be used to shed light upon such notions as prudence and justice in situations involving human choices and co-operation between individuals. In his work on the Nature of Religious Belief he argues that just as a moral assertion is an expression of an intention to act in accordance with certain policy, so a religious assertion must be understood as a declaration of adherence to a system (...) of moral principles governing 'inner life' as well as external behaviour. (shrink)

In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art - and in particular literature and film - can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences. In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier (...) Paolo Pasolini and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology. (shrink)

A collection of five essays in which the religious experiences and activities of individuals, communities, and cultures are seen as preeminently rational responses to reality. Of interest to students and scholars of technology and philosophy.

It is widely acknowledged that the new emerging discipline cognitive science of religion has a bearing on how to think about the epistemic status of religious beliefs. Both defenders and opponents of the rationality of religious belief have used cognitive theories of religion to argue for their point. This paper will look at the defender-side of the debate. I will discuss an often used argument in favor of the trustworthiness of religious beliefs, stating that cognitive science (...) of religion shows that religious beliefs are natural and natural beliefs ought to be trusted in the absence of counterevidence. This argument received its most influential defense from Justin Barrett in a number of papers, some in collaboration with Kelly James Clark. I will discuss their version of the argument and argue that it fails because the natural beliefs discovered by cognitive scientists of religion are not the religious beliefs of the major world religions. A survey of the evidence from cognitive science of religion will show that cognitive science does show that other beliefs come natural and that these can thus be deemed trustworthy in the absence of counterevidence. These beliefs are teleological beliefs, afterlife beliefs and animistic theistic beliefs. (shrink)

Multiple authors in cognitive science of religion (CSR) argue that there is something about the human mind that disposes it to form religious beliefs. The dispositions would result from the internal architecture of the mind. In this article, I will argue that this disposition can be explained by various forms of (cultural) learning and not by the internal architecture of the mind. For my argument, I draw on new developments in predictive processing. I argue that CSR theories argue for (...) the naturalness of religious belief in at least three ways; religious beliefs are adaptive; religious beliefs are the product of cognitive biases; and religious beliefs are the product of content biases. I argue that all three ideas can be integrated in a predictive coding framework where religious belief is learned and hence not caused by the internal architecture of the mind. I argue that the framework makes it doubtful that there are modular cognitive mechanisms for religious beliefs and that the human mind has a fixed proneness for religious belief. I also argue that a predictive coding framework can incorporate a larger role for cultural processes and allows for more flexibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94. HUME'S EXPLANATION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF1 In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume offers a not unsophisticated account of the fact that persons hold religious beliefs. In so doing, he produces an explanatory system analogous to that which occurs concerning causal belief, belief in 'external objects', and belief in an enduring self in the Treatise ¦ The explanation of the occurrence of (...) class='Hi'>religious belief is more detailed than the explanation provided in the other cases just mentioned. In the Natural History, Hume devotes a short volume to explaining religious belief, while in the Treatise the causal, external object, and enduring self beliefs merit 2 but long sections. More important, however, than length of treatment is the fact that the pattern of explanation is identical in each instance. The Natural History could be embedded without categorial clash into the Treatise, perhaps as Book Four with"fifteen sections, and each formerly separate volume would shed light on the program and tactics of the other. My interest here is in the epistemic features of the explanatory system Hume developed in the Natural History. Hume forthrightly proclaims that The Natural History Of Religion is in fact an attempt to explain the occurrence of religious belief. He writes: What those principles are, which give rise to the original belief, and what those accidents and causes are, which direct its operation, is the subject of our present enquiry.4 (NHR21) Original belief here does duty for "original religious belief", and as he takes religious belief to be nearly but not altogether universal in scope and astonishingly diverse in object, he supposes the principle, or cause, of such belief to be secondary in the sense that its operation is (so to say) defeasible and its product diversified. Hume's powerful critique of the argument from design in Sections II 95. through VIII of the Dialogues is not the only reason for doubting that his occasional kind remarks concerning it should be taken as indicating that he supposed it sound and valid. The very fact that Hume wrote a book intended to explain the occurrence of religious belief by identifying as its cause a built-in principle and its eliciting stimuli should give us pause about Hume's apparent acceptance of something like the argument from design. For while in the Natural History he says that: The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no ¦ rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. (NHR21) He speaks, not of a conclusion having been proved true, but of a belief having been rendered unsuspendable. Further, neither we nor Hume will ordinarily offer a causal account of the fact that a person has a belief unless there is doubt that the person has sufficient reason for holding it. He does not, for example, offer any such explanation of our acceptance of sincere present-tense first person psychological reports, concerning the truth (indeed, the incorrigibility ) of which he in the Treatise confidently affirms : For since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every thing that enters the mind, being in rea lity perception, 'tis impossible any thing should to feeling appear different. This were to suppose that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken. (T190) Or, even more modestly, and without assuming a causal-account and a sufficient-reason-account of a belief to be competing (or even necessarily different) explanations, we may note that Hume proposes to explain the occurrence of religious belief by reference to principle and eliciting stimuli without making reference to reasons or arguments as items possessing epistemic function or 96. evidential force, but only as items capable of triggering a built-in response. That this is_ his tactic I have argued rather fully on another occasion; here I will focus only on the general pattern of Hume's explanation of religious belief. Hume endeavors to explain religious belief without supposing it (in any of its forms) to be true as well as without supposing it... (shrink)

This paper offers a brief introduction, summary, and commentary on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), a burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of study that examines the way mental resources and predispositions facilitate religious beliefs and behavior. This presentation of CSR devotes special attention to research on teleological bias, agency detection, and counterintuitive concepts; moreover, critical discussions of mystical experience and god concepts ensue from treatments of the latter two topics. Research on teleological bias, agency detection, and counterintuitiveness supports the basic (...) position that religious cognition is natural, although distinctive rationales are associated with each topic of investigation. While the major focus of this article is epistemological – how religious thought develops and is sustained – the conclusion briefly addresses the ontological significance of basic CSR findings. (shrink)

ln a number of recent essays, Hendrik Hart has elaborated an account of the nature and function of religious belief that, he believes, is post-modern in inspiration and anti-foundationalist in character. ln this paper, I reconstruct what I take to be Hart’s central claims. While Hart does remind us of some important aspects of the nature of religious belief---aspects often overlooked by many critics---l suggest that there are several problems in the account he provides, that there (...) are tensions between his view of religious belief and his claims about how it can function, and that it is not clear that he ultimately avoids adopting a variant of the foundationalism he explicitly rejects. (shrink)

This article examines the epistemological aspects of religious belief in early modern Europe. It suggests that the most prominent feature of Christian creeds during this period was their plurality and mutual inconsistency and that efforts to address this issue focused on the capacity of our natural cognitive faculties to limit the scope of faith and to establish the authenticity and meaning of documents that were said to have been inspired by God. It was widely accepted that the probability (...) of any religious belief depends on the probability that it was revealed by God and that it has been correctly interpreted. Thus, the proliferation of inconsistent creeds by a wide range of churches provided many reasons to doubt both the source and the interpretation of doctrines that were presented as if they were indubitable. (shrink)

If something like Reformed Epistemology is correct, an agent is innocent in regarding certain ways of forming beliefs to be reliable until those ways have been proven guilty. An important species of argument purporting to show guilt (1) identifies the ways of forming beliefs at the core of our cognitive activity, (2) isolates the features of our core practices which account for their reliability, and (3) determines whether or not peripheral practices which ought to have those features enjoy at least (...) their functional equivalents. An example. Sense perception is at the heart of our cognitive activity; a feature of sense-perception which provides us with confidence in its reliability is that we can subject sense-perceptual beliefs to intersubjective criticism - others can check our beliefs. Beliefs about God formed on the basis of religious experience cannot be so checked and therefore lack positive epistemic status.An important response to such criticism consists of arguing that the difference between two ways of forming beliefs is just what we should expect given some relevant difference between the subject matters of those two ways of forming beliefs. This species of response employs what I call ‘the Ontological Principle,’ viz., that the nature or characteristics of an object constrain the way an agent ought to form beliefs about that object.In this paper, I attempt to provide a rationale for the Ontological Principle. I argue as follows. Any epistemic norm which requires of an agent that she enter into causal relations with an object which she cannot in the ‘nature’ of the case enter lacks epistemic merit - it violates the ought implies can dictum. Because the epistemic norms properly governing the cognitive activity of a given agent are constrained by the causal relations possible between an agent and an object of belief, and because the causal relations possible between an object of belief and an agent are determined in part by the characteristics of the object of belief, the epistemic norms properly governing the cognitive activity of a given agent are determined in part by the characteristics of the object of belief. That is, the Ontological Principle is true. (shrink)

Most literature on religious disagreements focuses on the epistemic problems related to doctrinal disputes. While, the main argument of my paper does not address such a topic, my purpose is to point at a practical exit strategy from the blind spot to which most disagreements lead. However, in order to argue for my views, I need to provide a substantive account of how religious beliefs work and which epistemic obligations they involve. Such account challenges most mainstream assumptions, and (...) needs to be developed in some details. My method consists, then, in construing a theory for religious beliefs, and exploring its consequence concerning disagreements. I will focus particularly on the positive task. Indeed, if my account for religious beliefs works, consequences easily follow. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:94. HUME'S EXPLANATION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF1 In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume offers a not unsophisticated account of the fact that persons hold religious beliefs. In so doing, he produces an explanatory system analogous to that which occurs concerning causal belief, belief in 'external objects', and belief in an enduring self in the Treatise ¦ The explanation of the occurrence of (...) class='Hi'>religious belief is more detailed than the explanation provided in the other cases just mentioned. In the Natural History, Hume devotes a short volume to explaining religious belief, while in the Treatise the causal, external object, and enduring self beliefs merit 2 but long sections. More important, however, than length of treatment is the fact that the pattern of explanation is identical in each instance. The Natural History could be embedded without categorial clash into the Treatise, perhaps as Book Four with"fifteen sections, and each formerly separate volume would shed light on the program and tactics of the other. My interest here is in the epistemic features of the explanatory system Hume developed in the Natural History. Hume forthrightly proclaims that The Natural History Of Religion is in fact an attempt to explain the occurrence of religious belief. He writes: What those principles are, which give rise to the original belief, and what those accidents and causes are, which direct its operation, is the subject of our present enquiry.4 (NHR21) Original belief here does duty for "original religious belief", and as he takes religious belief to be nearly but not altogether universal in scope and astonishingly diverse in object, he supposes the principle, or cause, of such belief to be secondary in the sense that its operation is (so to say) defeasible and its product diversified. Hume's powerful critique of the argument from design in Sections II 95. through VIII of the Dialogues is not the only reason for doubting that his occasional kind remarks concerning it should be taken as indicating that he supposed it sound and valid. The very fact that Hume wrote a book intended to explain the occurrence of religious belief by identifying as its cause a built-in principle and its eliciting stimuli should give us pause about Hume's apparent acceptance of something like the argument from design. For while in the Natural History he says that: The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no ¦ rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. (NHR21) He speaks, not of a conclusion having been proved true, but of a belief having been rendered unsuspendable. Further, neither we nor Hume will ordinarily offer a causal account of the fact that a person has a belief unless there is doubt that the person has sufficient reason for holding it. He does not, for example, offer any such explanation of our acceptance of sincere present-tense first person psychological reports, concerning the truth (indeed, the incorrigibility ) of which he in the Treatise confidently affirms : For since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every thing that enters the mind, being in rea lity perception, 'tis impossible any thing should to feeling appear different. This were to suppose that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken. (T190) Or, even more modestly, and without assuming a causal-account and a sufficient-reason-account of a belief to be competing (or even necessarily different) explanations, we may note that Hume proposes to explain the occurrence of religious belief by reference to principle and eliciting stimuli without making reference to reasons or arguments as items possessing epistemic function or 96. evidential force, but only as items capable of triggering a built-in response. That this is_ his tactic I have argued rather fully on another occasion; here I will focus only on the general pattern of Hume's explanation of religious belief. Hume endeavors to explain religious belief without supposing it (in any of its forms) to be true as well as without supposing it... (shrink)

Branden Thornhill-Miller and Peter Millican as well as Janusz Salomon put forward versions of supernaturalism that avoid the existence of a religion which alone provides the true revelation and the only way to salvation and which teaches that God acted in this world. Their rejection of revealed, exclusive religion is based on an argument from religious diversity and an argument from natural explanations of religious phenomena. These two together form the "common-core/diversity dilemma". In this article I refute these (...) two arguments by arguing that explaining the origin of belief in supernatural agents does not provide a reason for not believing in the existence of supernatural agents. (shrink)

It is no exaggeration to say that there has been an explosion of activity in the field of philosophical enquiry that is known as natural theology. Having been smothered in the early part of the twentieth century due to the dominance of the anti-metaphysical doctrine of logical positivism, natural theology began to make a comeback in the late 1950s as logical positivism collapsed and analytic philosophers took a newfound interest in metaphysical topics such as possibility and necessity, causation, time, the (...) mind-body problem, and God. This chapter begins by considering how we might characterise natural theology as a field of enquiry. It then proceeds to survey the landscape of contemporary natural theology, which has spawned a large and at times highly technical body of literature. Finally, consideration is given to two epistemological issues confronting the theist who wishes to appeal to natural theology, which could be termed the problem of the gap(s) and the problem of accessibility. (shrink)

An account of the relation between belief and practice is inseparable from a general theory of religion and religious discourse. Rejection of the one time popular, but now more or less defunct, nonrealist position of people such as D. Z. Phillips, Don Cupitt, and indeed Wittgenstein leaves contemporary theo rists in anthropology and the "history of religions" with basically the vastly different "literalist" and "symbolist" analyses of religion from which to choose. This article critically appraises John Skorupksi's influential (...) defense of intellectualism. I argue that his dismissal of symbolist approaches is more theoretically radical than he recog nizes. It rejects outright some of the very foundations and staples of contempo rary anthropology in, for example, Durkheim. His argument for the rejection of the symbolist approach is examined. Skorupski's defense of intellectualism is set in the context of a problematically naive understanding of the nature and function of religion. (shrink)

These essays represent an important contribution to modern philosophical theology. They begin with an appreciation of Basil Mitchell's work and then discuss the role of reason in the justification of Christian theism, giving special attention to the nature of informal reasoning in religion and science. The latter essays examine particular arguments raised by specific religious concepts, covering such topics as the problem of evil, conspicuous sanctity, atonement, and the Eucharist. Drawn from a wide spectrum of philosophers and theologians, the (...) contributors include Maurice Wiles, Grace M. Jantzen, Gordon Kaufman, J.R. Lucas, Rom Harr'e, Richard Swinburne, and Michael Dummett. (shrink)

Aspect-perception is a phenomenon described in detail by L. Wittgenstein in part XI of Philosophical Investigations. The most famous example is the duck-rabbit figure, which can be viewed either as a duck or a rabbit, but the phenomenon extends well beyond visual Gestalt pictures and permeates various fields of human life, including aesthetic, moral and linguistic experience. Recently there have been attempts to apply the notion of aspect-perception to religious faith. It has often been observed that religious faith (...) involves a particular way of ‘seeing’ different objects and events (recall the famous phrase from the hymn Amazing Grace, ‘I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see’). For this reason, the attempt to use the category of aspect-seeing to analyze religious faith may appear promising. My aim in this paper to analyze critically one such attempt, made by N. K. Verbin in ‘Religious Belief and Aspect seeing’ and ‘Can Faith be Justified?’. In these papers Verbin argues for two closely related theses regarding religious belief. The first is conceptual; she proposes that we should understand ‘certain kinds of religious beliefs which we view as central to a person having a living faith’ as ‘a type of aspect-seeing’. The second follows from the first: we should modify accordingly the way we construe justification for religious belief. In what follows I expound Verbin’s conceptual claim and present arguments against equating religious belief with seeing religious aspects. Basing myself on examples of people who see religious aspects but do not reach religious belief, I conclude that the two categories should not be conflated. Although I reject Verbin’s overall claim, however, I concede that aspect-seeing does play a significant role in justifying religious belief, although not in the way Verbin proposes. (shrink)

The phenomenon of religious belief has been much discussed in philosophy of religion. However, a priori argumentation alone cannot establish what religious belief is like as a psychological attitude. Recent advances in the cognitive science of religion have paved the way for a new, naturalized philosophy of religion. Taking into account the relevant results and hypotheses presented within these disciplines, it is possible to develop a more empirically informed philosophy of religious belief. Instead of (...) asking whether believing is rational, it is here asked how religious belief is cognitively possible. Combining Boyer's evolutionary account of religion with Sperber's and Cosmides and Tooby's theory of metarepresentation, we get the sort of conceptual toolkit needed to specify those cognitive mechanisms and operations that make religious belief possible. Religious belief is shown to require a unique combination of these mechanisms and operations. (shrink)

In this critical examination of recent accounts of the nature of science and of its justification given by Kuhn, Popper, Lakatos, Laudan, and Newton-Smith, Banner contends that models of scientific rationality which are used in criticism of religious beliefs are in fact often inadequate as accounts of the nature of science. He argues that a realist philosophy of science both reflects the character of science and scientific justifications, and suggests that religious belief could be given a justification (...) of the same sort. (shrink)

The article «The gene of agricultural grain-growing civilization of the modern Ukrainian territory as a marker of religious beliefs» by О. Zavalii. The issue of the origins of the agricultural culture of the territory of modern Ukraine is considered in the article, based on the analysis of the leading foreign and domestic scientists’ research. The culture served as the source of religious beliefs based on the Natural worldview which was predetermined by the geographical living conditions.

Scientific interest in religion often focusses on the “puzzle of belief”: how people develop and maintain religious beliefs despite a lack of evidence and the significant costs that those beliefs incur. A number of researchers have suggested that humans are predisposed towards supernatural thinking, with innate cognitive biases engendering, for example, the misattribution of intentional agency. Indeed, a number of studies have shown that nonbelievers often act “as if” they believe. For example, atheists are reluctant to sell the (...) very souls they deny having, or to angrily provoke the God they explicitly state does not exist. In our own recent work, participants who claimed not to believe in the afterlife nevertheless demonstrated a physiological fear response when informed that there was a ghost in the room. Such findings are often interpreted as evidence for an “implicit” belief in the supernatural that operates alongside (and even in contradiction to) an individual’s conscious (“explicit”) religious belief. In this article, we investigate these arguably tenuous constructs more deeply and suggest some possible empirical directions for further disentangling implicit and explicit reasoning. (shrink)

Recent summaries of psychologist James H. Leuba's pioneering studies on the religious beliefs of American scientists have misrepresented his findings and ignored important aspects of his analyses, including predictions regarding the future of religion. Much of the recent interest in Leuba was sparked by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham's commentary in Nature , “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith.” Larson and Witham compared the results of their 1996 survey of one thousand randomly selected American scientists regarding their (...) class='Hi'>religious beliefs with a similar survey published eighty years earlier by Leuba. Leuba's original studies are themselves problematical. Nonetheless, his notion that different fields of science have different impacts on the religion‐science relationship remains valid. Especially significant is his appreciation of religion as a dynamic, compelling force in human life: any waning of traditional beliefs does not mean a decrease in religious commitment but calls for a new spirituality in harmony with modern scientific teachings. Leuba's studies, placed in proper context, offer a broad historical perspective from which to interpret data about religious beliefs of scientists and the impact of science and scientists on public beliefs, and opportunity to develop new insight into the religion‐science relationship. (shrink)

Preface ix Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction: towards an acceptable fideism 1 The metaquestion: what is the issue about the ‘justifiability’ of religious belief? 4 Faith-beliefs 6 Overview of the argument 8 Glossary of special terms 18 2 The ‘justifiability’ of faith-beliefs: an ultimately moral issue 26 A standard view: the concern is for epistemic justifiability 26 The problem of doxastic control 28 The impossibility of believing at will 29 Indirect control over beliefs 30 ‘Holding true’ and ‘taking to (...) be true’ 33 A second—direct—locus of doxastic control 35 Moral doxastic responsibilities 41 The moral significance of faith-beliefs 47 Linking moral to epistemic justifiability: reinstating the standard view? 48 3 The epistemic justifiability of faith-beliefs: an ambiguity thesis 53 Plausibility of requiring epistemic for moral justifiability under a realist interpretation of faith-beliefs 53 Interpreting the link principle: epistemic entitlement as requiring evidential justification 55 Evidentialist requirements specified by an implicit evidential practice 65 Rational empiricist evidential practice 66 Applying rational empiricist evidential practice to theistic faith-beliefs: an ambiguity thesis 68 vi contents 4 Responses to evidential ambiguity: isolationist and Reformed epistemologies 77 Two strategies for defending the moral probity of theistic faith-belief in the face of evidential ambiguity 78 Appealing to a special theistic evidential practice/improved epistemologies 79 An isolationist epistemology 79 Reformed epistemology 86 Conclusion: the need for a fideist response to ambiguity 99 5 Faith as doxastic venture 101 Agenda for a defence of doxastic venture 102 The nature of theistic faith 103 The doxastic venture model 106 The psychological possibility of doxastic venture 111 A Jamesian account 112 ‘Passionally’ caused beliefs 113 6 Believing by faith: a Jamesian position 122 An initial hypothesis for a Jamesian thesis on permissible doxastic venture 123 The notion of a ‘genuine option’ 125 A ‘degrees of belief ’ challenge 128 Evidentially undecidable forced options 129 Permissible doxastic venture: supra- not counter-evidential 135 How theistic religion could present essentially evidentially undecidable genuine options: the notion of a highest-order framing principle 137 Restricting thesis ( Ji) to faith-propositions: thesis ( J) 145 7 Integrationist values: limiting permissible doxastic venture 151 Can counter-evidential fideism be non-arbitrarily excluded? 151 A coherence requirement and integrationist values 155 Moral integration of faith-commitments 163 Implications for reflective faith-believers 167 Coda: A reflection on Abraham as forebear in faith 170 contents vii 8 Arguments for supra-evidential fideism 174 The importance of defending the epistemic permissibility of faith-ventures 176 Strategies for supporting fideism 178 An ‘assimilation to personal relations cases’ strategy: experimental ventures in interpersonal trust 180 The ‘assimilation to personal relations cases’ strategy: cases where ‘faith in a fact can help create a fact’ 182 A consequentialist strategy 185 A note on Pascal’s Wager 187 The tu quoque strategy 189 Is hard-line evidentialism self-undermining? 190 Attitudes to passional doxastic inclinations 194 Epistemological externalism again: a presumption in favour of fideism? 196 Scepticism about passional doxastic inclinations as guides to truth: how passions may be schooled 197 The significance of scientific theories of passional motivations for faith-commitment 204 An impasse? 206 9 A moral preference for modest fideism? 208 Implications of accepting ( J+) for orthodox and revisionary theistic faith-ventures 209 The apparent fideist/evidentialist impasse and its implications 211 Beyond impasse? Direct moral evaluation of the fideist/evidentialist debate 215 Self-acceptance and authenticity 216 Hard-line evidentialism as grounded in doctrinaire naturalism 220 Coherence amongst moral and religious passional commitments 225 Conclusion 227 Bibliography 230 Index 237. (shrink)

In this article Ricken indicates how James reacts to the physicalistic way of thinking in religious matters. James stresses the crucial difference between opting for a scientific hypothesis and opting for a religious belief. His claim is not merely that religious belief has the same rights as religious unbelief , but moreover that religious belief is more in accordance with the depths of human nature. The study of mysticism reveals the possibility of (...) human self-surrender and the force of the abstractions of religious doctrine. (shrink)

Cognitive science of religion is sometimes portrayed as having no bearing on the theological doctrines of particular religious traditions, such as Christianity. In this paper, I argue that the naturalistic account of the etiology of religious beliefs offered by the cognitive science of religion undermines the important Christian doctrine of the grace of faith, which teaches that the special gift of divine grace is a necessary precondition for coming to faith. This has some far-reaching ramifications for Christian theology. (...) -/- . (shrink)

Beliefs seem to be more significantly constrained by some norms than others e.g. one should only believe what they have sufficient evidence for, a belief that p is correct iff p is true etc. I call these norms, doxastic norms. Constitutivism is the view that doxastic norms are a constitutive feature of belief. I argue that this view is mistaken. In making this case, I come to defend views about the semantics of doxastic norms, the nature of (...) class='Hi'>belief, and the value of truth. Doxastic norms are naturally stated in deontic terms. In the first chapter, I consider how we should best understand these statements, given that we likely don't control our beliefs in the same way that we do our actions. In the second chapter, I consider whether the account of religious belief given by either Ludwig Wittgenstein or Søren Kierkegaard provide a counterexample to constitutivism. In the third chapter, I argue that constitutivism can't account for certain intuitions about our reasons for belief. In the fourth chapter, I defend a descriptive account of belief in terms of the appearance of truth. In the fifth chapter, I show how my view can better account for the data which is thought by some to support constitutivism. In the final chapter, I describe how our reasons for belief might arise from our goals. (shrink)

Belief is the affirmation of reality, but not all affirmations of reality are beliefs, for if we have, or have had, perceptual experience of a reality, we do not say, “I believe,” but “I see, hear, perceive, or remember.” Similarly, of the realities involved in our inner experience, we say, “What I had in mind, desired, hoped, or felt was…” or else say, more simply, “I was much moved, was in pain, felt affection or hatred, longed for, was thinking (...) about, knew.” On the other hand, there are realities of the perceptual order in which we may express belief, as when we say, “I believe that New Zealand exists, that nitrogen is a gas, that the earth is round, that William the Conqueror crossed the Channel in 1066, that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again.” The realities in which we thus express belief are not realities which we ourselves have observed, but are such that they could have been observed by a person appropriately situated in time and in place. Hence in this case it is not the nature of the realities affirmed that differentiates belief from experience of either the perceptual or the inner type. The difference lies elsewhere. When we affirm a reality of which we ourselves have, or have had, perceptual experience, it is the reality itself, present to our perceiving mind, which alike determines the content of our affirmation and justifies us in making it. (shrink)

This is a re-Examination of hume's intentions in the final part of the "dialogues". It is here, If anywhere, That we find the resolution of the conflict between his naturalistic acceptance that belief has non-Rational causes, And his wish to expose religious belief as irrational. The paper amends its author's previous view that hume is shown to have accepted, At least verbally, That such a theism is a result of cleanthes' arguments, But to have maintained his secularism (...) by showing it to be religiously vacuous, And hence a socially benign influence. The argument relies on hume's use of the thought and language of the fideist tradition, And on questioning how far we can identify hume with philo as the "dialogues" conclude. (shrink)

I critically examine two features of Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology. (i) If basic theistic beliefs are threatened by defeaters (of various kinds) and thus must be defended by higher-order defeaters in order to remain rational and warranted, are they still “properly basic”? (ii) Does Plantinga’s overall account offer an argument that basic theistic beliefs actually are warranted? I answer both questions in the negative.

One popular conception of natural theology holds that certain purely rational arguments are insulated from empirical inquiry and independently establish conclusions that provide evidence, justification, or proof of God’s existence. Yet, some raise suspicions that philosophers and theologians’ personal religious beliefs inappropriately affect these kinds of arguments. I present an experimental test of whether philosophers and theologians’ argument analysis is influenced by religious commitments. The empirical findings suggest religious belief affects philosophical analysis and offer a challenge (...) to theists and atheists, alike: reevaluate the scope of natural theology’s conclusions or acknowledge and begin to address the influence of religious belief. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that attention to the intricacies relating to belief illustrate crucial difficulties with Schellenberg's hiddenness argument. This issue has been only tangentially discussed in the literature to date. Yet we judge this aspect of Schellenberg's argument deeply significant. We claim that focus on the nature of belief manifests a central flaw in the hiddenness argument. Additionally, attention to doxastic subtleties provides important lessons about the nature of faith.

Are religious commitments beliefs or some other kind of mental state? Do religious affirmations express beliefs or other non-doxastic attitudes? These questions have been prominent in philosophical research on the language and psychology of religion since the mid-twentieth century, but the history of interest in these topics traces back to late antiquity. In a recent paper, Tim Crane approaches these questions from the perspective of research on theories about the nature of belief. According to some accounts, he (...) argues, the attitudes that we call religious “beliefs” do not exhibit the properties requisite for belief. He raises grounds for dissatisfaction with the proposed account of belief and cognate debates about cognitivism and non-cognitivism, and concludes by setting out a more descriptive approach as the basis for an understanding of religious attitudes. This paper argues that Crane’s argument relies on an unduly demanding theory of belief. However, the concerns that he raises about the belief status of religious commitment can be motivated – and are extensively debated – in recent research on religious faith. Crane’s characterisation of the cognitive/non-cognitive debate is also disputed. The paper concludes by raising concerns about Crane’s description of the scope of the field of religious language. (shrink)

Even if an argument from religious experience can show that the subjects of religious experience are in contact with something which can justifiedly be named 'God', this does not settle the matter because, 'God' has a use other than its use as a proper name, in which use the term had descriptive content. To be of interest to Natural Theology, the argument from religious experience must show that the object of religious experience has the properties associated (...) with the term 'God' in this descriptive sense. In particular, it must show that the object of religious experience is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly loving, and the creator of the physical universe. ;I consider five ways of making that further argument: a descriptivist theory of names, whereby the name has as its content the predicates in the description; an account of religious experience whereby the subject perceives that God has those properties named in the description; an argument from the testimony of God concerning his own properties; an argument from the effects of religious experience on its subjects to the effect that since it makes them better, the experiences must be at least of a benevolent being; and an argument that Christian practice is a well-founded doxastic practice, and so beliefs formed in this practice are prima facie justified, including the belief that the object of religious experience is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly loving. I find all these arguments inadequate to make the case. (shrink)

Intractable disagreements are commonly analyzed in terms of the semantic opposition of (at least) couples of disputed beliefs (purely epistemic view, from here on PEV). While such a view seems to be a very natural starting point, my intuitions are that such an approach is misleadingly unrealistic, and that an empirical modeling towards how individuals hold beliefs in intractable opposition constitutes a strong defeater for PEV. My work addresses disagreements within the religious domain. Accordingly, I will be concerned with (...) developing my empirical understanding of religious beliefs, and will show the consequences of such proposal on how to answer the problem of religious diversity. (shrink)