Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

Chapter 7

Philosophy of religion

Chad Meister

Philosophy of religion is the philosophical study of the meaning and nature of religion. Such study includes careful analyses of religious concepts, beliefs, terms, arguments, and practices of religious adherents. Philosophical reflection on religion is by no means a new endeavor; it has been part and parcel of the philosophical enterprise from the earliest times in both the east and the west. However, historically much of the work done in philosophy of religion has been primarily focused within the various theistic religions. More recent work often involves a broader approach – taking into consideration a plethora of religious traditions and topics from across the religious spectrum.

There are a number of themes which fall under the domain of philosophy of religion as it is commonly practiced in philosophy of religion departments, but the focus here will be limited to five: (1) religious belief and language; (2) religious diversity; (3) philosophical theology;

(4) arguments for and against the existence of God; and (5) problems of evil.

Religious belief and language

Philosophy, especially in the analytic tradition, prides itself on precision of terms and clarity of concepts. Religious language, however, is often imprecise and veiled in mystery. This imprecision was challenged in the mid-twentieth century with the rise of logical positivism. Logical positivists were philosophers who used a principle of verifiability to reject as meaningless all non-empirical claims; only the tautologies of mathematics and logic, along with statements containing empirical observations or inferences, were considered meaningful. Many religious statements, however, such as claims about the transcendent, are neither tautological nor empirically verifiable. So certain fundamental religious claims and beliefs (such as “Yahweh is good,” or “Atman is Brahman,” or “Nirvana is beyond Ultimate Reality”) were taken by the positivists to be cognitively meaningless utterances. Positivism became a dominant philosophical approach and for a time, for this and related reasons, philosophy of religion as a discipline became suspect.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, the philosophical tide began to turn with respect to religious language. Many philosophers argued that the positivists’ empiricist criteria of meaning were unsatisfactory and problematic. Due to the philosophical insights on the nature and meaning of language provided by the later Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889– 1951), the rise of a pragmatic version of naturalism offered by W. V. O. Quine (1908–2000), and other factors, logical positivism began to wane. For these reasons, along with the exemplary work of such analytic philosophers of religion as Alvin Plantinga (1932–), Richard

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Swinburne (1934–), John Hick (1922–), and others, by the 1970s discussions about religious (and metaphysical and ethical) concepts were revived and soon became accepted arenas of viable philosophical and religious discourse.

With the collapse of positivism, two different streams emerged in philosophy of religion: realism and non-realism. Probably the vast majority of religious adherents are religious realists – defined here as those who hold that their beliefs are about what really exists (or are so believed to exist) independent of the human beings who are having those beliefs. Assertions about Allah, for example, or Brahman, or Yahweh, are true if there are actual referents for them. While they are in the minority, there are also religious non-realists – those who hold that religious claims are not about realities which transcend human language, concepts, and social forms; religious claims are not about something “out there.” Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), for example, believed that there are no referents for religious beliefs about transcendent entities such as God, the dao, and so forth. Instead, religion is an illusion and religious beliefs are merely manifestations of this illusion. Belief in God, for him, is simply the projection of a father image.

Other non-realists have been more favorable toward religion. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, took religion very seriously. He was, however, opposed to natural theology – the attempt to demonstrate the existence of God from evidence in the natural world – and to the development of religious doctrines. He was more interested in religious symbol and ritual. In his later works, Wittgenstein understood language to be not a fixed structure directly corresponding to the way things actually are, but rather to be a human activity susceptible to the vicissitudes of human life and practice. Language does not offer a picture of reality, he argued, but rather is a set of activities which he described as “language games.” In teaching language, one needs to be able to respond to words in certain contexts; speech and action work together. In many cases, then, the meaning of a word is its use in the language. For Wittgenstein, this is true in religious discourse as it is elsewhere. Thus in speaking of God or Brahman or nirvana or the dao, the meanings of such words have more to do with their use than with their denotation. The language games of the religions reflect the practices and forms of life of the various religious adherents, and so religious claims should not be taken as providing literal pictures of reality which somehow lie beyond those activities.

Religious non-realists often note the alleged failure of realism to provide evidences for the objective truth of any particular religion, or of religion in general. Whether referring to arguments for the existence of God, or evidences for resurrection or reincarnation, for example, non-realists argue that such projects in natural theology are abject failures. Nonrealists are convinced that since there are no conclusive reasons to believe that a particular religion is true, a better way of approaching religious claims and beliefs is to understand them non-realistically.

Another point made by non-realists is that religious claims, beliefs, and practices exist within a given social context and involve human language and concepts. Since religious claims and activities are always within a particular human context, and since the mind structures all perception within that context, the meanings of these claims are determined and limited by that context. A person is simply unable, it is argued, to posit objective, transcendent realities beyond human language and cognition.

Realists have responded to these claims in different ways. Regarding the claim that there is no rational justification for religious beliefs, some realists (such as the fideists noted below) agree. Nevertheless, they claim that religion does not require evidence and justification; religion is about faith and trust, not evidence. Other realists, as we will see, disagree and

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claim that while faith is crucial to religion (at least to some religions), there are in fact good arguments and evidences for religious truth claims.

With respect to the point that religious claims, beliefs, and so on exist only within a given social context, some realists have responded by noting that while much of what occurs in religious discourse (and practice) is of human origin, one need not affirm a reductionist stance in which all religious meanings and symbols are reducible to human language. And some even argue that there are solid reasons and arguments for believing that religious claims are true, and that there are objective referents for their claims. Several of these arguments will be explored below.

Religious diversity

Philosophy of religion in the western context has emphasized themes related to Ultimate Reality understood theistically – themes such as the nature and existence of God, challenges to the existence of God, language about God, and so on. In recent times there has been a growing interest in religions and religious themes beyond the scope of the theistic traditions. This should not be surprising given the influx of religions in the west and the growing awareness of the wide variety of non-theistic religious traditions. While awareness of religious diversity is not a new phenomenon, philosophers of religion from both the east and the west are becoming increasingly more aware of and interactive with religious others. It is now fairly common to see contributions in western philosophy of religion literature on Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and African religions, for example.

This rising interest in eastern religion and in comparative religion by philosophers in the west has brought about a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the different nontheistic religious traditions. But it has also brought to the fore an awareness of the many ways the different traditions conflict. Consider some examples: for the Advaita Vedantan, the concept of Ultimate Reality is pantheistic monism in which only Brahman exists, whereas Muslims affirm theistic dualism in which Allah – the one and only God – exists as distinct from human beings and the other created entities; for the Christian, salvation is the ultimate goal whereby human beings are united with God forever in the afterlife, while the Buddhists’ ultimate goal is nirvana – an extinguishing of the individual self and complete extinction from all suffering. Numerous other examples could be cited as well.

How is one to respond to this diversity of fundamental beliefs? Different answers have been offered. One response to diversity is to deny or minimize the doctrinal conflicts, or to maintain that doctrine itself is not as important for religion as religious experience and that the great religious traditions are equally authentic responses to Ultimate Reality. This is one form of religion pluralism. John Hick, a leading defender of pluralism, denies the claim (widely held by atheists and others) that religion is solely a human projection. Utilizing Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) distinctions of noumena (things as they are in themselves) and phenomena (things as they are experienced), Hick argues that a person’s experiences

– religious and non-religious – depend on the interpretive frameworks and concepts through which one structures and understands them. Thus, while some people experience and understand Ultimate Reality in personal, theistic categories (as Allah or Yahweh, for example), others do so in impersonal, pantheistic ways (as nirguna Brahman, say). Yet others experience and understand Ultimate Reality as non-personal and non-pantheistic (as with the Tao). One common illustration of the pluralist view of experiencing God uses the Hindu parable of the blind men and the elephant to capture this point. In this parable God is like an

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elephant surrounded by several blind men. One man touches the elephant’s tail and believes it is a rope. Another touches his trunk and believes it is a snake. Another touches his leg and believes it is a tree. Yet another touches his side and believes it is a wall. Each of them are experiencing the same elephant but in very different ways from the others. In our experiences and understandings of Ultimate Reality, we are very much like the blind men, for our beliefs and viewpoints are constricted by our enculturated concepts.

Hick argues for the pluralistic hypothesis – that Ultimate Reality or the “Real” is ineffable and beyond the understanding of our conceptual systems. Nevertheless, the Real’s presence can be experienced (in various forms) through various spiritual practices and linguistic systems. He uses analogies to describe his hypothesis, including an ambiguous picture of a duck-rabbit which Ludwig Wittgenstein used in his influential work, Philosophical Investigations. A culture that has ducks but no familiarity with rabbits would see the ambiguous diagram as a duck. People in this culture would not even be aware of the ambiguity. So too with the culture that has rabbits but no familiarity with ducks. People in this culture would see the diagram as a rabbit. Hick’s point is that the ineffable Real is experienced in the different traditions as Yahweh, or as Allah, or as Vishnu, or as the Tao, etc., depending on one’s religious concepts through which his or her individual experiences occur.

An objection to the pluralistic hypothesis is that it stands over the traditions and makes an exclusive (non-pluralistic) claim about the Real and salvation/liberation; namely, that the Real is experienced equally legitimately among the different traditions and that they each offer valid expressions of the soteriological goal. None of them is correct in contrast to the others; rather, they are all in a sense true. This claim, some have argued, is self-contradictory, for in asserting that no religious position in reference to the Real and the soteriological goal is superior to or truer than another, one has done just that – asserted that this pluralistic view is truer than and superior to all others.

Another way of responding to the conflicting claims of the different traditions is to remain committed to the truth of one set of religious teachings while at the same time agreeing with some of the central concerns raised by pluralism. One way of accomplishing this is through what Joseph Runzo calls “religious relativism,” whereby the correctness of a religion is relative to the worldview of its community of adherents. On this view the different religious traditions are comprised of various experiences and mutually incompatible sets of truth claims, and the traditions are themselves rooted in distinct worldviews that are incompatible with, if not contradictory to, the other worldviews. Runzo maintains that these differing experiences and traditions emerge from the plurality of phenomenal divine realities experienced by the adherents of the traditions. On this relativistic view, a person’s worldview (that is, her total cognitive web of interrelated concepts and beliefs) determines how she comprehends and experiences Ultimate Reality. Furthermore, there are incompatible yet adequate truth claims which correspond to the different worldviews, and the veracity of a religion is determined by its adequacy to appropriately correspond to the worldview of which it is subsumed. Thus, an important difference between the religious relativist and the pluralist is that for the former, and not for the latter, truth itself is understood to be relative.

While relativism may offer a more accurate account than pluralism of the actual cognitive beliefs of religious adherents, it is sometimes argued that it nevertheless falls short of their actual beliefs. Muslims, for example, have not historically held that Allah is the true God only within the Islamic religion. To the contrary, for Muslim adherents the claims about Allah (as well as all other claims) described in the Koran are taken to be unequivocally and objectively true. For the Islamic believer, then, Allah is the one and only true God regardless of what

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one’s religion or worldview happens to be – regardless of whether a person believes it or not. So too among the other major faith traditions; their beliefs are typically understood to be true in an objective and absolute sense. In effect, adherents of the major religious traditions have historically been exclusivists rather than relativists (or pluralists), and this leads to yet another response to religious conflict.

A third response to the apparent conflicting truth claims of the religions is exclusivism. As with pluralism and relativism, there are different meanings of the term “exclusivism” when used in religious discourse. The major element in this context is that the central tenets of one religion are true and any claims which are incompatible with those tenets, including those of other religions, are false. For example, from the exclusivist perspective, if the Jewish claim that Yahweh is the one true God who literally spoke to the biblical prophets in space and time is true, then the Advaita Vedantan claim that Brahman (God) is nirguna – without attributes – must be false, for these two understandings of Ultimate Reality are contradictory. This does not mean that exclusivists are not self-critical of their own beliefs, nor does it rule out the practice of dialoguing with or learning from religious others. But it does mean that religious differences are real and that there are intractable disagreements among religious adherents. Some form of religious exclusivism is historically the most widely held position among the adherents of the major world religions, although pluralism and relativism are currently on the rise.

Responses to exclusivism include moral objections (such as that the exclusivist is arrogant, dishonest, oppressive, or the like) and intellectual or epistemic objections (including claims that the exclusivist holds unjustified or irrational beliefs).

Philosophical theology

Though the terms “philosophy of religion” and “philosophical theology” have sometimes been used interchangeably in past times, more recently they have developed distinct connotations. As already noted, philosophy of religion is philosophical reflection on religious ideas, concepts, and practices. Philosophical theology has come to mean the philosophical examination of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the various doctrines within the religions, most especially the theistic religions.

There are both theistic and non-theistic understandings of God, or Ultimate Reality. Monotheism, or what is sometimes referred to as “Ethical Monotheism,” is the doctrine or belief that God exists as a perfect being and that God’s nature can be at least partly described as having attributes that set God apart from human beings. Traditionally, these attributes have included omniscience (being all-knowing), omnipotence (being all-powerful), omnibenevolence (being morally perfect), and timelessness (being eternal), among others. This is the view of God traditionally held by adherents of the three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as a longstanding theistic tradition within Hinduism. Much of the work in philosophical theology, then, focuses on the broadly theistic topics of the divine attributes, miracles, revelation, death and immortality, and others. It also commonly includes specific Christian theological issues such as the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and Atonement, sin and salvation, and heaven and hell.

The coherence of theism is yet another major topic of discussion in philosophical theology. The logical consistency of each of the divine attributes of classical theism has been challenged, and in the last few decades the objections to them have come from both adherents and non-adherents of theism. Take the divine attribute of omniscience, for