Abstract
Traditionally, analytic philosophy of religion has focused almost solely on specifically philosophical questions about religion. These include the existence of God and divine attributes, religious language, and the justification of religious beliefs, just to mention a few. Recently, many scholars in the field have begun to engage more directly with scientific results. We suggest that this is a promising direction for philosophy of religion to take. Nevertheless, we want to warn philosophy of religion against the excessive focus on methodology that has preoccupied the “science and religion dialogue” in theology. Instead of attempting to formulate a general methodology for all possible engagements between philosophy of religion and the sciences, philosophers of religion would do well to focus on local and particular themes. Since there is no single method in philosophy and since scientific disciplines that have religious relevance vary in their methods as well, progress can be made only if philosophical tools are employed to analyse particular and clearly demarcated questions.
Highlights
Since the 1950s, analytic philosophy of religion has focused almost solely on distinctly philosophical questions related to religion and theology
Some philosophers of religion have engaged with scientific results, usually either supporting of undermining theism (e.g., Swinburne, 2004), it is clear that the methods and the questions have been distinctly “philosophical” rather than scientific
The philosopher clarifies critical concepts thereby contributing to possible novel empirical questions and theoretical innovation in the target field. We think this kind of engagement could include the interpretation of scientific results: what kinds of conclusions can be drawn from them given their methodological assumptions? This, we suggest, can include engaging with popular science material, since oftentimes the most important interpretations of scientific results appear in popularised works rather than in scientific papers themselves
Summary
Since the 1950s, analytic philosophy of religion has focused almost solely on distinctly philosophical questions related to religion and theology. The second part of the article highlight some topics where philosophers of religion have, we suggest, successfully taken into account or responded to scientific work contributing to the interdisciplinary discussion. We, want to look beyond the apologetic motive and seek wider forms of engagement between the sciences and philosophy of religion.
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