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Reconciling reason and religion: a response to Peels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2010

BRIAN ZAMULINSKI
BRIAN ZAMULINSKI*
Affiliation:
Department of Applied English, Kainan University, No. 1 Kainan Road, Luzhu, Taoyuan County 33857, Taiwan
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In ‘The ethics of belief and Christian faith as commitment to assumptions’, Rik Peels attacks the views that I advanced in ‘Christianity and the ethics of belief’. Here, I rebut his criticisms of the claim that it is wrong to believe without sufficient evidence, of the contention that Christians are committed to that claim, and of the notion of that faith is not belief but commitment to assumptions in the hope of salvation. My original conclusions still stand.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 109 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. Zamulinski, Brian ‘Christianity and the ethics of belief’, Religious Studies, 44 (2008), 333–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Peels, Rik ‘The ethics of belief and Christian faith as commitment to assumptions’, Religious Studies, 46 (2010), 97–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. W. K. Clifford ‘The ethics of belief’, in Lectures and Essays, II (London: MacMillan, 1879), 177–211.

4. Since there are no others options, Clifford's ethics of belief is the ethics of belief if we ignore doctrines that use the term ‘ethics’ metaphorically.

5. I have added the parenthetical remark to avoid arguing over what constitutes standards of evidence – even though it is certainly arguable, for instance, that people who rely on biased samples lack optimal standards of evidence.

6. Peels also characterizes a single paragraph as ‘a fairly extensive discussion’ and somehow parlays three possible excuses into four (99).

7. Near the end of his paper, Peels has a paragraph to the effect that adherents of more than one religion have examined the evidence for their respective beliefs thoroughly enough not to be culpable for accepting them (106). Since evidence for one is evidence against the others, the notion is incoherent.

8. Zamulinski, Brian ‘Religion and the pursuit of truth’, Religious Studies, 39 (2003), 43–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar