Rationality Of Religious Belief Research Articles

New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, by Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink

New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, by Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink. Springer. 2018. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion 4. i–vii + 220pp. $139.99. ISBN: 978-3-319-90238-8.

What are we talking about when we talk about the (post)secular? Recentering mutual participation and a commitment to communicability in scholarly discussions of contemporary religions

AbstractWhat are we talking about when we talk about the postsecular? This article looks at the ways articulations of the secular often presuppose the presence – not the absence – of religion and religious plurality. This can be observed even in the work of early theorists of secularism as well as of the first sociologists who observed secularizing tendencies in society and sought to conduct social‐scientific inquiry in a way that aimed to be analytically agnostic. At the same time, the return or renewed visibility of religion does not imply a decrease in individualization of religious expression, the disappearance of secularist attitudes, or that challenges of negotiating religious pluralism have been overcome. This more complicated orientation toward relating secularity and religious pluralism shifts the focus away from debates over the truth or rationality of religious beliefs and practices to the need for mutual, voluntary, open, and ongoing communication among them. On the one hand, a commitment is necessary to the creation and maintenance of meaningful participation opportunities in the self‐presentation of religious self‐understandings in relation to issues of common concern (the mutuality requirement); on the other hand, a steadfast commitment is needed from religious persons and groups themselves to persistent participation in presentation of one's own views or those of one's constituencies in ways that are clear and accessible to all other participants (the voluntariness requirement).

Quasi-fideist Presuppositionalism: Cornelius Van Til, Wittgenstein, and Hinge Epistemology

Abstract I argue that the epistemology underlying Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic methodology is quasi-fideist. According to this view, the rationality of religious belief is dependent on absolutely certain ungrounded grounds, called hinges. I further argue that the quasi-fideist epistemology of presuppositional apologetics explains why Van Til’s method is neither fideist nor problematically circular: hinges are rational in the sense that they are partly constitutive of rationality, and all beliefs (not just religious ones) depend on hinges. In addition, it illuminates something of why it may strike one as a misguided or uncompelling apologetic method: instead of starting by tackling the comparatively minor epistemic commitments of the nonbeliever, it directly approaches their deepest and surest commitments.

Christianity of non-believers by Marian Przełęcki: on the universal meaning of mercy

Among the many reasons for departing from faith in God is a peculiar intellectual formation, which presupposes the acceptance only of such beliefs that meet the conditions of intersubjective verifiability and communicability. The text is a reminder of the thoughts of Marian Przełęcki, who, due to his rationalism, chose the path of agnosticism, but identified with the ethical aspect of Christian faith. It includes a presentation of the philosopher's views on faith, the rationality of religious beliefs, and presents a conception of Christianity of non-believers built in relation to Christian ethics, along with a critical commentary.

On Roger Pouivet’s Religious Exclusivism

In the contemporary discussion of religious diversity, religious exclusivism is a minority theory but well defended by some leading philosophers of religion like Alvin Plantinga. Recently, in his article, The Right to Believe that Only One Religion is True, published recently in “Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches”, Roger Pouivet has defended a version of religious exclusivism based on the assumption of theological realism. In this article, I discuss Pouivet’s religious exclusivism with a dual purpose. On the one hand, accepting the premises of theological realism, I agree with Pouivet’s view that religious exclusivism is not a blatant expression of arrogance about religious diversity but a plausible theory that can be justified in the light of the contemporary debate on epistemology of religious disagreement. On the other hand, I sustain that theological realism supports religious exclusivism as well as religious inclusivism, but the latter is a more consistent theory, capable of avoiding the soteriological problems raised by the first. In this perspective, I suggest that religious inclusivism is properly supported by natural theology insofar as the latter relates to divine attributes which are common to various religious traditions. Accordingly, natural theology must not be reduced, like Pouivet thinks, to a philosophical theology that assumes the immediate rationality of religious beliefs, guaranteed by the way they are formed. On the contrary, I suggest that natural and philosophical theology can work together, in their distinction, to rationally justify theistic faith and the belief that only one religion is true. In the light of the aforesaid one can believe that the issue of the correlation between philosophical theology and natural theology has sound methodological significance in various contexts of studies in philosophy of religion.

John Locke at the Polish Brothers school

The goal of this article is to show the influence of Polish Brothers on the British philosopher John Locke. As an example, it will be point out the influence of Polish Brothers on the very influential text of Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration and other writings of this philosopher. Only in recent years it was accepted that Locke borrowed the concepts like tolerance and rationality of religious beliefs from Polish Brothers.

Editorial: New Themes in Analytic Dogmatic Theology

Analytic theology (AT) is a particular approach to theology and the study of religion that engages with the tools, categories, and methodological concerns of analytic philosophy. As a named-entity, AT arrived on the academic scene with the 2009 Oxford University Press publication, Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea. AT was arguably represented, prior to this publication, by the proto-analytic theologian Richard Swinburne in his noteworthy works on Christian doctrine (e.g. Providence and the Problem of Evil, Responsibility and Atonement, The Christian God, Faith and Reason, and The Resurrection of God Incarnate), as well as by other professional philosophers of religion such as Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Swinburne, William Alston, Eleonore Stump, Robert and Marilyn McCord Adams, Basil Mitchell, Keith Yandell, Paul Helm, and Stephen T. Davis, among others. These philosophers were addressing such topics as the coherence of theism, the rationality of religious belief, and the contributions of such philosophical theologians of the medieval past including Thomas Aquinas or William Ockham and those from modernity including René Descartes and Jonathan Edwards. Yet, the impetus for utilizing analytic philosophy to treat these topics emerged, not from the theological side of the conversation, but from the philosophical side. Anachronistically, then, the term “analytic theology” seems to aptly describe the work of these philosophers of religion.

Therapeutic Theodicy? Suffering, Struggle, and the Shift from the God’s-Eye View

From a theoretical standpoint, the problem of human suffering can be understood as one formulation of the classical problem of evil, which calls into question the compatibility of the existence of a perfect God with the extent to which human beings suffer. Philosophical responses to this problem have traditionally been posed in the form of theodicies, or justifications of the divine. In this article, I argue that the theodical approach in analytic philosophy of religion exhibits both morally and epistemically harmful tendencies and that philosophers would do better to shift their perspective from the hypothetical “God’s-eye view” to the standpoint of those who actually suffer. By focusing less on defending the epistemic rationality of religious belief and more on the therapeutic effectiveness of particular imaginings of God with respect to suffering, we can recover, (re)construct, and/or (re)appropriate more virtuous approaches to the individual and collective struggle with the life of faith in the face of suffering.

“I Believe Because it is Absurd”: The Enlightenment Invention of Tertullian'sCredo

Tertullian is widely regarded as having originated the expressionCredo quia absurdum (est)(I believe because it is absurd) and the phrase often appears in contemporary polemics about the rationality of religious belief. Patristic scholars have long pointed out that Tertullian never said this or meant anything like it. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the circumstances in which this specific phrase came into existence and why, in spite of its dubious provenance, it continues to be regarded by many as a legitimate characterization of religious faith. This paper shows how Tertullian's original expression—“It is certain, because impossible”—was first misrepresented and modified in the early modern period. In seventeenth century England a “credo” version—I believebecause it is impossible—became the common form of Tertullian's maxim. A further modification, building on the first, was effected by the EnlightenmentphilosopheVoltaire, who added the “absurdity condition” and gave us the modern version of the paradox: I believebecause it is absurd. These modifications played a significant role in Enlightenment representations of religion as irrational, and signal the beginning of a new understanding of faith as an epistemic vice. This doubtful maxim continues to play a role in debates about the cognitive status of religious faith, and its failure to succumb to the historical evidence against it is owing to its ongoing rhetorical usefulness in such debates.

Sensus Divinitatis or Divine Hiddenness? Alvin Plantinga and J. L. Schellenberg on Knowledge of God

Knowledge and Christian Belief. By Alvin Plantinga. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. vii + 129 pp. $16.00 (paper).The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God. By J. L. Schellenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. vii + 142 pp. $35.00 (cloth).Both of the books under review present important arguments for a broader audience that the authors had previously made in a more technical manner for professional philosophers. Plantingas also summarizes a long, distinguished, and provocative contribution to epistemology and thus requires more background to appreciate fully, so the treatments are unequal in length but I hope equal in illumination.For the past fifty years-ever since the publication of his first book God and Other Minds in 1967-Alvin Plantinga has been considered one of the most influential philosophers of religion in the world.1 Bom in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1932 of Dutch parents and brought up in the Christian Church, Plantinga taught at Wayne State University, Calvin College, and the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in 2010. In the first of several volumes published over the past few decades engaging critically with various aspects of his thought, the editors write: Besides his landmark work in the philosophy of religion, Plantinga has authored many penetrating and beautifully crafted studies in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. In particular, his writings in the area of metaphysics concerned with necessity, possibility, essence and accident are of profound significance.2Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, Plantinga's primary research focus began to shift from metaphysics to epistemology-both in regard to the general theory of knowledge and the rationality of religious belief. Against the common objection that belief in God is only rational if supported by valid philosophical arguments, the main assertion of Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology is that belief in God is in fact properly basic-that is, entirely rational whether any arguments support it or not.3 Such proper basicality is not unique to religious belief but also holds for memory, sense perception, and a priori beliefs regarding logical or mathematical truths. Plantinga thus argues not simply against the evidentialist objection to belief in God but against the broader epistemological framework in which it belongs, namely the classical foundationalism derived from Descartes and Locke. Along with his colleague Nicholas Wolterstorff, Plantinga was thus a signal voice in directing our attention away from exclusive concern about the validity or invalidity of specific theistic arguments to meta-epistemology, and thus to a deeper awareness that there is more than one way in which we can (and should) think about our intellectual obligations, assumptions, and capacities.In 1993 Plantinga published two substantial contributions to the general theory of knowledge, Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function, which were then followed in 2000 by a massive, five-hundred-page magnum opus, Warranted Christian Belief, in which he sought to synthesize his broader epistemological concerns with his religious convictions.4 Indeed, he says that Warranted Christian Belief serves simultaneously as the third volume in his Warrant trilogy and as a sequel to God and Other Minds and his classic essay Reason and Belief in God.5 As the common element in the title of all three volumes indicates, Plantingas distinctive concern is not with the more familiar epistemological category of justification (which he believes is inevitably and unhelpfully limited to concerns about intellectual obligations) but with warrant, which he defines as the elusive further quality or quantity which, or enough of which, stands between knowledge and mere true belief.6 That is, what must be added to a given instance of true belief in order for it to constitute actual knowledge? …

A Defense of First and Second-Order Theism: The Limits of Empirical Inquiry and the Rationality of Religious Belief

We argue that the use of the term “supernatural” is problematic in philosophy of religion in general, and in the contribution by Thornhill-Miller and Millican (TMM) in particular. We address the disturbing parallel between Hume’s case against the rationality of belief in miracles and his dismissal of reports of racial equality. We do not argue that because Hume was a racist (or an advocate of white superiority) therefore his view against miracles is faulty, but we draw attention to how Hume sets up a framework that, for similar reasons, discounts evidence of black intelligence and divine intelligence (or evidence of acts of God). We go on to argue against TMM’s revision of Hume on miracles. We then argue that empirical testing on the veracity of petitionary belief is impossible for there is no control case (everyone is prayed for) and that empirical testing can no more evaluate the evidential merits of most religious experiences than it can assess the merits of any robust philosophical position in epistemology, metaphysics, value theory, logic and mathematics. We express doubts about the integrity and scope of how one might enjoy the good of religion without belief. In a final section we offer a defense of the rationality of believing in specific religious traditions based on religious experience along with what we refer to as sufficient philosophical reasoning.

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz on the concept of the world-view and the rationality of religious beliefs

The aim of the paper is presentation and critical analysis of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s concept of the world-view. Ajdukiewicz’s philosophy was strongly inspired by the rationalism of Kazimierz Twardowski as well as by some ideas of the Vienna Circle. However, in contrast to the latter's logical empiricism, Ajdukiewicz could be interpreted as holding that beliefs constituting our world-view have both logical value and cognitive content—they cannot be construed as mere expression of some emotions.

¿Son válidos los argumentos evolutivos desacreditadores de la memética contra la racionalidad del teísmo?

The aim of this paper is to answer the question of whether the two evolutionary debunking arguments (EDA) which, in my interpretation, can be developed from memetics (the argument of contagion and the argument of belief in belief) successfully undermine both the internalist and the externalist rationality of theism. The EDA against the rationality of religious belief try to prove that if such belief is caused by processes that do not track the truth, then this belief is unwarranted or even false. I will argue that the contagion argument is not valid due to the theoretical weakness of memetics, while the argument of belief in belief may be partly valid, since it is logically independent of the memetic approach. Finally, I will examine a possible refutation of that argument based on the thesis that the propositional belief in God is not decisive for the adaptive explanation of the complex system of religion. I will show, briefly, that this does not save theism from another EDA based on the adaptive nature of religion.

Preface to the Paperback Edition of Why Tolerate Religion?

This is a new preface to the forthcoming paperback edition of Why Tolerate Religion? (Princeton, cloth edition, 2013). I briefly discuss the reception of the book, in both Europe and the United States, focusing especially on the response of some conservative Christian readers and scholars. I also clarify some themes from the book, and explain why this book does not devote much time to the topic of the possible rationality of religious belief.

Courting Epistemology: Legal Scholarship, the Courts, and the Rationality of Religious Belief

What we here show is two-fold. First, there is in certain sectors of the legalcommunity a trend to pronounce negatively on the epistemic credentials ofreligious belief: many hold that religious belief as such is simply irrational. Oursecond claim is simply that religious belief need not be irrational: it is perfectlypossible for religious believers to have epistemically justified religious beliefs. Wediscuss here several implications of our two-fold claim. The most important ofthese is simply that religious citizens’ religious beliefs cannot be barred from thepublic square for any epistemological reason.

The Rationality of Religious Belief in John Locke

Discussions about the justification of having religious beliefs have been continued since the beginning of the history of philosophy. The roles of evidence and the will in belief have been discussed under the title of “The Ethics of Belief”. John Locke also addressed to evidentialism in his works. Considering to construct his epistemology and belief on the strictest basis, Locke argued that believing something on insufficient evidence or failing to proportion our degree of belief according to the strength of the evidence is a transgression against our endowed light.

Can We Believe Without Sufficient Evidence? The James/Clifford Quarrel and the Response of Alvin Plantinga

This paper aims to be a brief discussion about the character of “evidentialism” in the discussion between William Clifford and William James. Known under the topic “the ethics of belief,” it discusses the problem of religious epistemology, specifically the status of the rationality of religious beliefs. After such discussion, we shall adduce in an introductory way Alvin Plantinga’s so-called “reformed epistemology” as a proper response to the problem of evidentialism.

Religious Diversity and its Challenges to Religious Belief

AbstractContemporary Western culture is experiencing a heightened awareness of religious diversity. This article surveys a range of possible responses to such diversity, and distinguishes between responses that concern the salvation or moral transformation of persons (soteriologicalviews) and those that concern the alethic or epistemic status of religious beliefs (doctrinalviews). After providing a brief taxonomy of these positions and their possible relations to one another, the article focuses primarily on competing views about the truth and rationality of religious beliefs (e.g., pluralism, exclusivism, and skepticism). Here a heavy emphasis is placed on arguments for and against the rationality and moral propriety of retaining one's religious beliefs in the face of disagreement. The article surveys some of the more prominent arguments from the literature on this topic and closes with suggestions for further research.

Everyday Speech and Revelatory Speech in Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein

You can't hear God speaking to someone else, you can hear him only if you are the addressee.-That is a grammatical remark. Wittgenstein1 In May 2005 thousands of people, Egypt to Indonesia, participated in protests against the USA, sparked by a report in Newsweek-later retracted-that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet. In several places, President Bush was burned in effigy, along with American flags and copies of the American constitution. In Jalalabad, Afghanistan, protests turned to riots, leaving several dead and many wounded. According to Michael Isikoff, one of the journalists responsible for the report, Neither Newsweek nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did.2 What did these journalists and Pentagon officials fail to understand? Why are so many people so outraged by the treatment of a book? What stake do religious believers have in what they regard as divine revelation? How might Islam, Christianity and Judaism differ in this respect? How might members of each community differ among themselves in their views of revelation? Are these questions on which philosophy can shed any light? If one considers contemporary philosophy of religion-as represented by university classes, textbooks and academic journals-then any such hope is likely to be dashed. Much of the discipline exhibits a concernunderstandably defensive in what we are told is a secular age-with epistemological matters such as the justification or, at least, the rationality of religious belief. There is also discussion of ontological issues, such as the consistency of divine benevolence and omnipotence with the existence of evil. But none of this is of much help in the face of the so-called Newsweek riots. What we want in the first place is not to assess what is at stake in the Koran for some Moslems-not to judge its rationality or consistency-but to understand what is at stake. Perhaps this is a question for some other discipline-say, for religious studies. Yet it nevertheless raises further questions that are clearly philosophical: Under what conditions are religious beliefs intelligible? Can religious beliefs be understood by those who do not share them? Can they be rational if they are intelligible only to those who share them? These are questions addressed by Wittgenstein in his Lectures on Religious Belief. But, although he said that he saw every problem from a religious point of view,3 these student notes are the main source for Wittgenstein's thinking on religion, and that is not much to go on.4 It has recently been suggested that there are striking affinities between Wittgenstein, arguably the most important thinker of the twentieth century in the tradition of analytic philosophy, and Franz Rosenzweig, arguably the most important thinker of the twentieth century in the tradition of Jewish philosophy.51 will argue here that there are indeed such affinities, although there are also important differences. In light of both the affinities and differences, I suggest that Rosenzweig can help us to develop a philosophical approach to religious belief that is animated by a spirit very like Wittgenstein's. Moreover, the juxtaposition promises especially to shed light on the concept of revelation, and on the role this concept can play in the lives of both believers and nonbelievers. Affinity It is no accident that the affinity between Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein was first noted by Hilary Putnam in an introduction to Rosenzweig's Understanding the Sick and the Healthy. For it is here above all that Rosenzweig develops his critical and explicitly therapeutic approach to the philosophical tradition, and it is in this approach that the affinity with Wittgenstein is the clearest. However, to say that Rosenzweig and Wittgenstein are critical of the philosophical tradition, that they practice a form of therapy, and even that this therapy centrally involves the everyday or the ordinary, would be far too imprecise, and would fail to bring out the specific affinity-I want to say, the affinity of spirit-that distinguishes both of them others who are critical of the philosophical tradition in somewhat similar fashions. …

Evil, God, and the Agnostic Inquirer

Sandra Menssen and Thomas D. Sullivan Evil, God, and the Agnostic Inquirer Suffering and wickedness pervade the world. How could an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God have created such a world? This question poses what philosophers and theologians call "the problem of evil." Perhaps this is something of a misnomer. After all, there is more than one problem of evil. What are the psychological roots of wickedness and apathy? How does one fight one's own recalcitrant will? What is the best way to alleviate abuse and poverty? All these are certainly problems of evil, but they are different from the problem theoreticians have chosen to call the problem of evil—or better—the philosophical problem of evil. The philosophical problem of evil challenges theists to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of God. The philosophical problem of evil has blocked more inquiries into theism than all other philosophical problems combined. Countless thinkers inquiring into the rationality of religious belief have foundered on the existence of evil, and have concluded a good God does not exist. And it is not merely agnostics and atheists who Logos 2:1 Winter 1999 128 Logos are troubled by the philosophical problem of evil. Believers, too, are perplexed, and sometimes so deeply troubled by the problem that faith dissolves into doubt, and doubt into disbelief. The problem ofevil has exercised so many philosophers and theologians that a technical term has been introduced to label attempted solutions: they are called theodicies. In this essay we want to describe a new strategy for thinking about the philosophical problem of evil, a new approach to constructing a theodicy.We develop this new strategy by adopting the perspective of a philosophically inclined nonbeliever, an agnostic interested in assessing theism, and particularly Christianity, but bothered by the problem of evil.1 In Section I we examine the standard philosophical approach to theism and theodicy and indicate , through the eyes of our Inquirer, what we take the limitations of the standard approach to be. In Section II we explain our new strategy. I.The Standard Philosophical Approach to Inquiry Argumentsfor God in Traditional Natural Theology What route should be taken by an Inquirer of the sort we're imagining—a philosophically inclined nonbeliever, sincerely interested in investigating theodicies and theism? Pick up an armful of textbooks on the philosophy of religion or philosophical theology, peruse the topics discussed and the sequences of discussion, and it's likely that the broad path will seem obvious. First, it looks like an Inquirer needs to investigate the divine attributes and make an assessment of the coherence of the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God. If the concept turns out to be coherent—that is, if it looks like it's possible, not self-contradictory, that there might be a good God—then one can turn to philosophical arguments that actually try to establish the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being. That accomplished, one can turn to Evil, God, and the Agnostic Inquirerj tq the problem of evil, and argue that the omnipotent, omniscient being is perfectly good. And then the argument that a good God would give a revelation to his people, would announce the terms of salvation, can be scrutinized. Eventually one may be entitled to ask more specifically what kind of revelation a good God would give, and finally to identify a particular revelatory claim made by a particular church as best satisfying the description. Minor variations in the prescribed route will be encountered. Maybe one is initially directed to look at the proofs for God, and then focus on the internal coherence of the concept of God, rather than the other way around. But all of the paths recommend leaving to the very end of the investigation examination of the aspect of religion that first intrigues many interested nonbelievers: a particular message, a revelation that promises bread more nourishing than the loaves fashioned by human hands, and medicine for the soul that the world cannot provide. Let's consider in some detail just how our Inquirer might proceed if she decides to follow the standard ordering protocol. We may easily imagine that it makes good sense...