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The indispensability of belief to religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2001

PAUL HELM
Affiliation:
Endsleigh Cottage, High St., Fifield, Oxfordshire, OX7 6HL

Abstract

The article examines a central methodological tenet of Grace Jantzen's Becoming Divine. In this book she turns her back on what she calls Anglo-American philosophy of religion in favour of what she calls a continental approach. I argue that for her, belief is as indispensable in religion and in the philosophy of religion as it is for the Anglo-American philosophy of religion which she rejects. Further, the only argument that she offers for her position is a genetic argument for the origins of religious belief. Consistently with her position, she does not consider any empirical evidence relevant to this causal claim. However, the logic of such genetic claims is that for every empirically grounded genetic argument for A there is a corresponding genetic argument for not-A. So if such an argument invalidates A, it also invalidates not-A.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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