RESPONSE TO CHAPPELL

Abstract

I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to Dr Chappell for the encomia he has so kindly included in his notice of my book. It was especially kind of him to include them when we appear to disagree so fundamentally on the two issues he has chosen to discuss. First, he does not think, as I do, that the world is religiously ambiguous. Second, he thinks that religious beliefs can be, and are, chosen, and I do not.Before beginning, I should perhaps say that I do not see the book as an attempt to steer a middle course between literalist and anti-realist extremes. From the outset I assume, with believers and their critics, that faith is, at the core, a matter of having certain beliefs about the cosmos and our relationship to it, and that it is especially controversial because the way in which these beliefs are held by those who have them does not seem to conform to the standards of rationality that both groups agree in applying to other beliefs. I think the words ‘literalist’ and ‘realist’ are appropriate enough to apply to this assumption. I also happen to think that anti-realist philosophers of religion like Cupitt and Phillips have responded to the criticisms that faith has generated by trying to replace its cognitive core of belief by other elements, like serenity or personal liberation, that are in actual faith combined with it. The book presents no arguments for this opinion, but I would be distressed if anything I have said in it savours of an attempt to lean towards an anti-realist view.