Religious exclusivism unlimited: JEROEN DE RIDDER

Like David Silver before them, Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune argue that the facts of religious pluralism present an insurmountable challenge to the rationality of basic exclusive religious belief as construed by Reformed Epistemology. I will show that their argument is unsuccessful. First, their claim that the facts of religious pluralism make it necessary for the religious exclusivist to support her exclusive beliefs with significant reasons is one that the reformed epistemologist has the resources to reject. Secondly, they fail to demonstrate that it is impossible for basic religious beliefs to return to their properly basic state after defeaters against them have been defeated. Finally, I consider whether there is perhaps a similar but better argument in the neighbourhood and conclude in the negative. Reformed Epistemology's defence of exclusivism thus remains undefeated

Religious exclusivism unlimited

Like David Silver before them, Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune argue that the facts of religious pluralism present an insurmountable challenge to the rationality of basic exclusive religious belief as construed by Reformed Epistemology. I will show that their argument is unsuccessful. First, their claim that the facts of religious pluralism make it necessary for the religious exclusivist to support her exclusive beliefs with significant reasons is one that the reformed epistemologist has the resources to reject. Secondly, they fail to demonstrate that it is impossible for basic religious beliefs to return to their properly basic state after defeaters against them have been defeated. Finally, I consider whether there is perhaps a similar but better argument in the neighbourhood and conclude in the negative. Reformed Epistemology's defence of exclusivism thus remains undefeated. © 2010 Cambridge University Press

Religious Pluralism and the Buridan's Ass Paradox

The paradox of ’Buridan’s ass’ involves an animal facing two equally adequate and attractive alternatives, such as would happen were a hungry ass to confront two bales of hay that are equal in all respects relevant to the ass’s hunger. Of course, the ass will eat from one rather than the other, because the alternative is to starve. But why does this eating happen? What reason is operative, and what explanation can be given as to why the ass eats from, say, the left bale rather than the right bale? Why doesn’t the ass remain caught between the options, forever indecisive and starving to death? Religious pluralists face a similar dilemma, a dilemma that I will argue is more difficult to address than the paradox just describe

A reading in religious epistemology : reformed epistemology and objection to it

One of the contemporary movements that has inspired the new discussions in religious epistemology is Reformed Epistemology. This movement is associated with Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and William Alston. These philosophers have established some very fundamental challenges to the epistemology of religious belief that has dominated the Western thought since the Enlightenment. In contrast to the evidentialist tradition, Reformed Epistemology emphasizes that belief in God can have rationality, justification or warrant without being based on propositional evidence (argument). Some philosophers, such as Philip Quinn, deny the sufficiency of this justification for well-informed contemporary theists. Quinn argues that there are "defeaters" for the non-inferential justification of theistic belief, particularly the problem of evil, projective explanations of religion, and the problem of religious pluralism. The present research will explore the above issues, it and comes to the conclusion that for rational justification of belief in God for well-informed contemporary theists, additional positive argumentative supports are needed

Warrant and Non-function: A Critique of the Sensus Divinitatis in Plantinga\u27s Reformed Epistemology

In recent years, there has been a surge in attempting to demonstrate how a theistic belief can be held rationality apart from classical proofs. Championed by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Reformed Epistemology attempts to defend a God-belief as properly basic, which is therefore justified and warranted apart from traditional argumentation. With this in view, he put forward a position of religious epistemology that attempts to show how a GB can be on par with other beliefs we have on a daily basis that are considered rational, even if devoid of argumentation. In this paper I focus on Plantinga’s version of the RE position and analyze the accuracy of this type of religious epistemology. While he has constructed an impressive epistemological system, I argue that ultimately there are issues with his account because it posits a superfluous and ad hoc cognitive faculty known as the sensus divinitatis. Plantinga thinks that if God exists and Christianity is true, then we should expect the SD to work in the way he sets it out. However, the superfluous nature of this cognitive faculty is demonstrated by the fact that there are perfectly good alternate accounts for a GB that meet the necessary conditions for warrant and do not include a philosophically novel cognitive faculty. Further, a potential warrant defeater will be considered for the RE account based on religious pluralism and the idea that humanity has a history of being wrong in assigning agency and religious belief to natural phenomenon. This warrant defeater provides motivation for thinking that the epistemic environment would be faulty in which the sensus divinitatis is said to operate. This thesis is defended by first looking closely at what Plantinga’s RE entails, analyzing the necessity of the sensus divinitatis by looking at both perception and testimony models of GB, and by considering whether religious pluralism is a potential warrant defeater for RE

Responding to the Religious Reasons of Others: Resonance and Non-Reducitve Religious Pluralism

Call a belief ”non-negotiable’ if one cannot abandon the belief without the abandonment of one’s religious perspective. Although non-negotiable beliefs can logically exclude other perspectives, a non-reductive approach to religious pluralism can help to create a space within which the non- negotiable beliefs of others that contradict one’s own non-negotiable beliefs can be appreciated and understood as playing a justificatory role for the other. The appreciation of these beliefs through cognitive resonance plays a crucial role to enable the understanding of those who hold other perspectives. epistemological and spiritual consequences of this claim are explored

Redefining Religious Truth as a Challenge for Philosophy of Religion

One of the most important features of contemporary Western societies is the rise of pluralism. Whereas theism used to serve as a common ground to discuss the truth-claims of religion, this approach seems to have lost much of its plausibility. What I want to argue in this article is that philosophy of religion as a critical intellectual activity still cannot do without the notion of religious truth, but also that it needs to redefine this truth in an existential way, i.e. by interpreting religions as concrete ways of life. In this paper I develop this idea of religious truth by interpreting religions as traditions of wisdom, being a kind of truth that is able to orientate humans’ lives without being swayed by the issues of the day. In order to substantiate my interpretation I discuss three fundamental aspects of wisdom, viz. the fact that it rests on a broadened idea of reason, the way in which it discovers the universal in the particular, and the insight that all life-orientations are based on a principle that is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate

The Fruits of the Unseen: A Jamesian Challenge to Explanatory Reductionism in Accounts of Religious Experience

In Religious Experience, Wayne Proudfoot argued that a tout court rejection of reductionism in accounts of religious experience was not viable. According to Proudfoot, it’s possible to distinguish between an illegitimate practice of descriptive reductionism and the legitimate practice of explanatory reductionism. The failure to distinguish between these two forms of reductionism resulted in a protective strategy, or an attempt to protect religious experience from the reach of scientific explanation. Among the theorists whom he accused of deploying this illegitimate strategy Proudfoot included William James and his work in The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this article, I argue that while James does occasionally deploy a protective strategy in Varieties, this is not the only nor most important method of treating religious experience James developed. Implicit in his rejection of medical materialism, James not only deploys the protective strategy Proudfoot criticizes, but the pragmatic method with which he treats all claims. I argue that James’s pragmatic method leads to what James called noetic pluralism, or the view that there is no privileged knowledge practice, but a plurality of knowledge practices, and that this method puts pressure on the explanatory reductionist, who is implicitly committed to noetic monism

Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Defense of Religious Inclusivism

Faced by the challenge of religious plurality, most philosophers of religion view pluralism and exclusivism as the most accepted and fully developed positions. The third alternative, the model of inclusivism, held especially within the Catholic tradition, has not received adequate attention in the debates in philosophy of religion, perhaps as it is based solely on theological grounds. In this essay I offer a philosophical defense of the position of religious inclusivism and give reasons why this position represents the most appropriate position in the face of conflicting religious truth claim