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Philosophical Study of Religion

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Religion is to be defined as the primary form of culture, or "cultural system" (Geertz), through which human beings explicitly answer the existential question of the meaning of ultimate reality for us, and thus express or imply a claim to decisive existential authority and truth; and religion is to be explained, accordingly, in the same way in which forms of culture generally are to be explained---namelyexplained—namely, as one of a number of systems of concepts/symbols created by human beings and transmitted nongenetically through which they understand their existence and act to maintain or transform themselves together with others in society.

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Functional analysis and revisionary metaphysics are alternative accounts of religious language in two respects: (1) in respect of all of the positions represented in the "theology and falsification debate," insofar as these positions all agree in assuming that the only meaningful assertions are and must be factual assertions; and (2) in respect of one another, insofar as the first declines to provide the general account of the meaning and truth of religious language that the second insists is necessary and undertakes to provide.

4.5. Why is it ecessary necessary to analyze the structure of religious inquiry?

It is necessary to analyze the structure of religious inquiry both in itself and in relation to that of other fields of inquiry, or "domains of truth," in order to specify the generally accessible criteria of meaning and truth but for specifying which one cannot uphold the claim that religious language is cognitively significant.

4.6. How are oppositios ofreligious oppositions of religious doctrines possible?

Oppositions of religious doctrines are possible if some of the constituents of the different patterns of life proposed by the doctrines (i.e., their course-of action recommendations, proposals of valuation, and/ or proposals for belief) are incompatible and, therefore, cannot be jointly accepted without absurdity.

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The main things to be observed about the constitutive concept of theistic religion, "God," are two:(1) its basis in our common experience or basic faith simply as human beings, insofar as it properly functions to provide an explicit answer to the existential question about the ultimate meaning of human life, and thus about the meaning of ultimate reality for us; and (2) its defining characteristics as a concept, at least when it is radically developed, as it is, in different ways, in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheisms---namelymonotheisms—namely, that it identifies strictly ultimate reality as the universal individual or the individual universal, whose functions as the sole primal source and the sole final end of all things are completely universal even while they are the functions precisely of an individual.

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Anyone who makes or implies a claim, be it theistic or antitheistic, bears the burden of proof for the claim in theistic-antitheistic argument; and the logic of the constitutive assertion of theistic religion, "God is strictly ultimate reality," which cannot be true or false merely factually or contingently, but is and must be true or false metaphysically and so necessarily, requires one to argue either for or against its truth by a priori, rather than a posteriori, kinds of arguments, whether religious or phiJosophicat philosophical and so metaphysical and moral.

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Miracles and such other traditional "credentials of revelation" are not sufficient to establish the claims of a particular theistic religion because any argument from religious experience or ecclesial authority either begs the question or else refers beyond itself to yet other credentials by which the experience or authority must in turn be authenticated, while all arguments from such other alleged credentials as miracles and fulfilled prophecy have been shown to be open to methodological objections that have so far proved insurmountable.

Falt Fall 1992-93; rev. 28 October 2009