Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T17:31:13.744Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

John Bishop's leaps of faith: doxastic ventures and the logical equivalence of religious faith and agnosticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2013

JAMES BEACH*
Affiliation:
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

In recent essays John Bishop proposes a ‘doxastic venture’ model of religious faith. This author notices that a so-called doxastic venture model of theistic faith is self-defeating for the following reason: a venture suggests a process with an outcome; by definition a venture into Christian faith denies itself an outcome in virtue of the transcendent character of its claims – for what is claimed cannot be settled. Taking instruction from logical positivism, I stress the nonsensical character of religious claims while attacking Bishop's model. However, I wish to avail myself of this same model to describe a state of belief among certain parties which does not refer to transcendent matters, in order to show that a doxastic venture is indeed a valid description of a state of belief, and that pursuing this model shows in relief the transformative nature of belief, along with its essentially scientific status. It is my ambition to show, turning Bishop's model against itself, that a state of religious belief suffers from a precise logical equivalence to a condition of agnosticism. I ask whether we are justified in believing in belief.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ayer, A. J. (1952) Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover).Google Scholar
Bishop, John (2002) ‘Faith as doxastic venture’, Religious Studies, 38, 471487.Google Scholar
Bishop, John (2007) Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Camus, Albert (1955) ‘An absurd reasoning’, in The Myth of Sisyphus (New York: Vintage Books), 347.Google Scholar
James, William (1896a) ‘Is life worth living?’, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays (New York: Longmans, Green and Company), 1430.Google Scholar
James, William (1896b) ‘The will to believe’, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays (New York: Longmans, Green and Company), 114.Google Scholar
Maimonides (1995) The Guide of the Perplexed (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing).Google Scholar