Philosophy and the Study of Religions E-Book

Kevin Schilbrack

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Manifestos
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 458

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto advocates a radical transformation of the discipline from its current, narrow focus on questions of God, to a fully global form of critical reflection on religions in all their variety and dimensions.

• Opens the discipline of philosophy of religion to the religious diversity that characterizes the world today
• Builds bridges between philosophy of religion and the other interpretative and explanatory approaches in the field of religious studies
• Provides a manifesto for a global approach to the subject that is a practice-centred rather than a belief-centred activity
• Gives attention to reflexive critical studies of 'religion' as socially constructed and historically located

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Series

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Full Task of Philosophy of Religion

i. What is “Traditional Philosophy of Religion”?

ii. The First Task of Philosophy of Religion

iii. The Second Task of Philosophy of Religion

iv. The Third Task of Philosophy of Religion

v. What is the Big Idea?

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Chapter 2: Are Religious Practices Philosophical?

i. Toward a Philosophy of Religious Practice

ii. Embodiment as a Paradigm for Philosophy of Religion

iii. Conceptual Metaphors and Embodied Religious Reason

iv. Religious Material Culture as Cognitive Prosthetics

v. A Toolkit for the Philosophical Study of Religious Practices

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Chapter 3: Must Religious People Have Religious Beliefs?

i. The Place of Belief in the Study of Religions

ii. Objections to the Concept of Religious Belief

iii. Holding One's Beliefs in Public

iv. What We Presuppose When We Attribute Beliefs

v. The Universality of Belief

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Chapter 4: Do Religions Exist?

i. The Critique of “Religion”

ii. The Ontology of “Religion”

iii. Can There be Religion Without “Religion”?

iv. “Religion” as Distortion

v. The Ideology of “Religion”

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Chapter 5: What Isn't Religion?

i. Strategies for Defining Religion

ii. Making Promises: The Functional or Pragmatic Aspect of Religion

iii. Keeping Promises: The Substantive or Ontological Aspect of Religion

iv. The Growing Variety of Religious Realities

v. What this Definition Excludes

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Chapter 6: Are Religions Out of Touch With Reality?

i. Religious Metaphysics in a Postmetaphysical Age

ii. Antimetaphysics Today

iii. Constructive Postmodernism and Unmediated Experience

iv. Unmediated Experience and Metaphysics

v. The Rehabilitation of Religious Metaphysics

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Chapter 7: The Academic Study of Religions: a Map With Bridges

i. Religious Studies as a Tripartite Field

ii. Describing and Explaining Religious Phenomena

iii. Evaluating Religious Phenomena

iv. Do Evaluative Approaches Belong in the Academy?

v. Interdisciplinary Bridges

Bibliographic Essay

Endnotes

Works Cited

Index

Wiley Blackwell Manifestos

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This edition first published 2014 © 2014 Kevin Schilbrack

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Cover image: Religious procession, Belarus. Photo © Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters Cover design by Nicki Averill Design & Illustration

For Sasha, whom I could not love more.

Preface

This book was written to expand our understanding of the role of philosophy in the study of religions. It is in the first place a critique of the way that the discipline of philosophy of religion is practiced at present, though it is also addressed to those in the study of religions outside philosophy who look to philosophy for tools that can help them with their work.

Concisely put, this book proposes a transition from an old way of doing things, what I call “traditional philosophy of religion,” to a new way that I sketch over the next seven chapters. In one sentence, what I am recommending is this: philosophy of religion ought to evolve from its primary present focus on the rationality of traditional theism to become a fully global form of critical reflection on religions in all their variety and dimensions, in conversation with other branches of philosophy and other disciplines in the academic study of religions.

The traditional view, in brief, has been that philosophy of religion pursues a set of interconnected questions concerning the evidence, logic, justifiability, or warrant for belief or lack of belief that God exists. (I describe the full range of work in traditional philosophy of religion in the first section of Chapter 1.) Although I was trained in the questions that constitute traditional philosophy of religion, and I consider them to be legitimate, live questions, my critique of the traditional view of the task of philosophy of religion is threefold. First, the traditional view is narrow in the sense that it does not engage more than a few of the actual religions of the world. It does not engage the religious teachings outside a classical conception of God; in fact, it often defines God in such a narrow way that it regularly excludes the theistic views of many who do believe in God. Second, it is intellectualist in that it engages only the doctrinal dimensions of the religions it does cover. It is rare to find any treatment by philosophers of the ethical, political, and ritual practices in which the majority of religious people seek to learn and perfect their piety. And third, it is insular in the sense that traditional philosophy of religion does not play well with others: with the exception of Christian theology, and sometimes Biblical studies, traditional philosophy of religion draws very little from and contributes very little to the other disciplines in the study of religions.

Each chapter in the book addresses a distinct issue and for that reason one can read the chapters independently of each other. Nevertheless, I wrote them to trace a particular path toward a broader understanding of the roles of philosophy in the study of religions. Here is that path.

In the first chapter, I argue that the task of philosophy of religion should grow and that—to address the three problems of narrowness, intellectualism, and insularity—it should grow in three specific ways. First, the task of philosophy of religion ought to grow so that it excludes no religious traditions. At present, it is rare to find a course or a textbook in philosophy of religion that includes forms of theism other than classical theism; even rarer will such courses or textbooks include pantheistic, panentheistic, or nontheistic religious traditions; and even rarer still—almost never—will one find a philosophical treatment of polytheistic religious traditions. But all religious traditions include reason giving in some form, and so the task of philosophy of religion should grow to include the study of the philosophical aspects of all religious traditions. Developing the discipline in this direction would bring philosophy of religion into conversation with scholars of the religious traditions of east and south Asia, North and South America, Africa, Australia, and elsewhere. Second, the task of philosophy of religion ought to grow so that it takes full account of religious practices. At present, philosophers of religion focus primarily on religious teachings as they are found in the texts of religious thinkers. But not all religious communities have a class of text-writing thinkers, and even when such a class of religious thinkers exists, the concern to state and defend one's religious beliefs is a relatively small part of the lives of religious people. The discipline of philosophy of religion therefore ought to develop the tools to provide philosophical accounts of the aspects of religion other than explicit, written arguments. It ought to include the philosophical study of worship practices, sacrifices, spiritual disciplines, liturgies, rites of passage, contemplative exercises, and ceremonies. Developing the discipline in this direction would bring philosophy of religion into conversation with scholars of performance, ritual, and embodiment. And third, philosophy of religion ought to grow to be reflexive. At present, philosophers of religion too often take the concepts operating in the study of religion unreflectively, as if “religion” and “belief” and “God” are stable concepts whose meanings have not varied from one time period or culture to another. Philosophers ought to see the study of religions as itself a practice that deserves philosophical reflection. They therefore ought to develop what one might call the philosophical study of the study of religions. Developing the discipline in this direction would bring philosophy of religion into conversation with its own institutional and conceptual history, and with poststructuralist, deconstructive, and genealogical approaches to the study of religion. My hope is that my readers will agree not only that one could include these three broader sets of questions in philosophy of religion but also that philosophy of religion is their proper home.

The second chapter develops the proposal that philosophy of religion should pay appropriate attention to religious practice. In this chapter, I join those who have argued that philosophers of religion should include in their purview not only the textual versions of the doctrines asserted and defended by religious intellectuals but also the performed dimensions of how ordinary people live their religious commitments. Paying greater attention to how people live religiously will lead philosophers of religion to join with anthropologists, historians, and other scholars who focus on religious practices. I don't think that religious practices will attract wide interest among philosophers, however, unless the practices can be seen not merely as expressing religious thoughts (as if what a religious community “really” teaches is articulated only in the texts written by their intellectuals) but also as themselves examples of thinking. The aim of this chapter therefore is to explore how religious practices themselves—prayers and pilgrimages and circumcisions, for example—can be seen as opportunities for inquiry in which religious practitioners investigate and make judgments about the nature of their environment. Toward this end, I argue first that philosophers of religion should adopt an embodiment paradigm in the sense that they see a religious body not only as a passive object on which culture operates but also as the seat of subjectivity and of religious being-in-the-world. I then recommend two theoretical tools. The first is the theory of conceptual metaphor that lets us see ways in which abstract religious thought draws on embodied knowledge learned in the physical exploration of the world. The second is the theory of extended mind that lets us approach the material aspects of religious practices as cognitive prosthetics that help the practitioners remember and process information. The two theories complement each other in that the theory of conceptual metaphor focuses on embodied knowledge that is largely prelinguistic and to that extent common across cultures, whereas the theory of extended mind focuses on aspects of religious practices that are culturally particular. Together, they provide tools for those interested in seeing religious practices as thoughtful.

The third chapter reflects on the concept of religious belief. Given the diversity of ways of being religious around the world, coupled with the turn to practice that I recommend, one might ask whether the concept of belief should continue to have a central role in the future of philosophy of religion. Indeed, the central role given to belief in the study of religions has been increasingly criticized as misleading or distorting, if not completely illegitimate. Some argue not only that scholars of religion should give more attention to the material aspects of religion, but also, more radically, that one can and should completely explain religious behavior without the concept of beliefs. In this chapter, I consider two objections from the critics of belief. The first is that since one can observe others' religious discourse and practice, but not their beliefs, the assumption that all religious people have beliefs saddles the academic study of religions with a problem of access. The second is that in its pursuit of orthodoxy, Christianity has made the category of belief central, but other religions have not and therefore the assumption that all religious people have beliefs saddles the academic study of religions with a problem of cultural bias. I argue, however, that the critics who raise the problem of access largely assume a dualistic or Cartesian account of belief, and I draw on more recent dispositionalist and interpretationist accounts of belief in order to highlight the ways in which beliefs are embodied and social and, to that extent, public. And I argue that the critics that raise the problem of cultural bias are right to do so, although the solution is not to drop the concept of belief but to distinguish between creedal belief as an interest that only some religions share and intentional belief as an aspect of human action that is presupposed whenever we attribute agency.

In the first three chapters, then, I call on philosophers of religion to re-conceive their discipline as global, practice-centered, and reflexive; I make a proposal about how philosophers might include the study of religious practices as modes of inquiry; and I clarify the senses in which beliefs are and are not essential to religions. A serious obstacle arises for a cross-cultural philosophy of religion, however, from those who point out that the very concept of religion is not a concept that one finds throughout history or around the world. “Religion” is instead a relatively recent creation of the modern west. How can philosophers study religion globally if religion is merely a local concept? In the fourth chapter, I examine the arguments that “religion” is a rhetorical term invented as part of an ideology that privileges modern western political arrangements and that therefore one should not assume that the concept corresponds to realities outside the western scholar's imagination. Against that view, I describe the ways in which the world in which we live is composed not only of physical facts (like molecules, gravity, and mountains) but also social facts (like politics, economics, and religion). I then make the case for a critical realist view in which one can see religion as a certain cultural pattern that exists “out there” in the world, even independently of the modern western label.

The fourth chapter's argument that one can speak of religion as a cross-cultural phenomenon leads naturally to the fifth chapter's argument about how one should do so. What practices, beliefs, stories, people, and institutions should be classified as the religious ones? In this chapter, I examine the two primary and often-contentious strategies for defining religion—the functional and the substantive—and I then propose that the definition that is most useful for the study of religions (and, happily, the one that also best captures how people today speak of religions) is the one where the two strategies intersect. That is, I recommend that religion is best understood both functionally as making promises about how participation functions to solve problems in one's life and substantively as putting participants in touch with what I call superempirical realities. A “mixed” definition of religion like this one is especially useful, I hold, because of what it excludes. Specifically, this definition does not count as religious (i) beliefs or feelings about superempirical realities that are not tied to participation in social practices, and so it would not include as religious a purely inner, private state. And it also excludes (ii) ultimate concerns or orientations to life and that are not tied to superempirical realities, and so it would not include secular humanism, Marxism, or fans of sports teams.

The definition of religion I recommend in the fifth chapter centers on the claim that religious practices appeal to superempirical realities, realities whose existence is said to depend on no empirical thing. To take a ready example, prayer often involves an appeal to God. For philosophers, however, to interpret religions in this way as making claims about the nature of reality raises questions about whether such religious claims could be true. And answering such questions becomes even more difficult if one holds, as I do, that some religious claims are not empirical at all but rather seek to describe metaphysical realities that cannot be known through the tools of science. Such metaphysical claims are today often seen as hopeless or discredited. And many twentieth-century philosophers have taken “overcoming metaphysics” as their goal. In the sixth chapter, however, I seek to rehabilitate metaphysical claims by arguing, first, that philosophical opposition to metaphysics is generally based on a certain (modernist, subjectivist) picture of a gap between mind and world that must be “mediated,” and therefore, second, that contemporary philosophers interested in pursuing metaphysical questions should shift to a picture of experience without that gap. I take as allies in this project Donald Davidson's Wittgenstein-inspired version of pragmatism, the critical realist movement in philosophy of science, and accounts of intelligent behavior from the emerging field of embodied cognitive science. In brief, I argue that if all experience of the world is filtered by one's concepts, and those filters differ from one religion, culture, or language—or even one individual—to another, then there is no way to adjudicate rival claims about the world and metaphysical claims become suspect. But if one's experience of the world is unmediated or direct, then it is possible to speak both of a shared world and of the possibility of rational claims about the character of that world in general.

The overarching goal of this book is to articulate and begin to develop a vision for philosophy of religion as global, practice-centered, and reflexive. The final question that I address is: how would such a vision for the discipline relate to the other parts of the academic study of religions? The last chapter of the book therefore argues for a certain map of how the evaluative questions that characterize most philosophy of religion relate to the descriptive and explanatory questions pursued in other disciplines. I see the academic study of religions as a multidisciplinary field in which there are distinct kinds of inquiry pursued, and I seek to show that the evaluative questions that philosophers of religion ask are a legitimate and, ultimately, an inevitable aspect of descriptive and explanatory approaches. The different kinds of work done in the field are not autonomous but are connected by “bridges” that I seek to identify. According to my map, the academic study of religions is constituted by three kinds of work, namely, the descriptive work presupposed by all the other questions in the field, and then the two kinds of critical work: explanatory questions about the causes of religious phenomena and evaluative questions about the reasons that can be given for them.

In the spirit of a manifesto, I have streamlined the chapters by moving most of the references to the bibliographic essay at the end of each chapter. Those looking for my sources or for additional reading on the subjects I discuss can find them there.

The goal of an academic work is often to enter into an established debate, to explain the two sides to its audience, and then to argue that one side is more persuasive than the other. That is not the kind of goal I pursue in this book. My goal in this manifesto is to move away from established debates, to go to the edge of the field of the academic study of religions where there is little or no consensus about the future of the field, and to make suggestions about how the discipline of philosophy can contribute. Although in each chapter I do argue for a position on each of the questions I raise, my primary hope is not that the book settles some debates but rather that the book illuminates new and productive ways in which philosophy can contribute to the study of religions.

Acknowledgments

Although I wrote my dissertation at the University of Chicago with Chris Gamwell, Paul Griffiths, and Phil Devenish 20 years ago, and this book does not overlap with that project at all, I want to thank them nevertheless for their friendship and for the guidance that they have had on my work as a scholar. My views that philosophy of religion ought to develop the tools to take a global perspective, that human agents are not separated from their environments by language, and that clarity in metaphysics supports the rest of one's theoretical work are indebted to their examples.

Several friends read or discussed parts of the book with me. I would especially like to thank Kevin Carnahan, Paul Griffiths, David Henderson, Christopher Hoyt, Craig Martin, J. Aaron Simmons, Bryan Rennie, Tyler Roberts, John Whitmire, and the students in the WCU philosophy club for helpful discussions of this project. Thanks too to Amy McKenzie for her meticulous help with the book.

I am also grateful to the faculty of the department of religion at Wake Forest University, especially Jay Ford, for the opportunity to present a version of Chapter 1 there; to the faculty of the department of religion at Amherst College, especially Andrew Dole, for the opportunity to present a version of Chapter 2 there; to the faculty of the department of Philosophy and Religion at Drake University, especially Timothy Knepper, for the opportunity to present a version of Chapter 6 there; and to the UGA graduate department of religion, and especially Will Power, for the opportunity to present and discuss an earlier version of Chapter 7 as the 2011 George E. Howard Lecture at the University of Georgia. The book was also improved by the critical responses of the anonymous reviewers arranged by Wiley-Blackwell. I am grateful for the careful attention these colleagues gave my work and for the extended scholarly community they help to create.

Lastly, I want to thank Rebecca Harkin for her encouragement and patience on this project.

Chapter 1

The Full Task of Philosophy of Religion

i. What is “Traditional Philosophy of Religion”?

In this book, I am arguing that philosophy of religion should expand the traditional understanding of its task and take a broader view. Here at the beginning, however, I want to put on the table what my alternative is an alternative to. “Traditional philosophy of religion” defines its task in terms of the rationality of theism and this is the primary focus found in most philosophy of religion journals, textbooks, and courses.1 As I mentioned in the preface, my critique of traditional philosophy of religion is that it is it narrow, intellectualist, and insular. Despite that critique, I am not arguing that traditional philosophy of religion is not a rich and multifaceted discipline. Here is one way that one can organize the variety of the central debates in the traditional approach. (I use a flowchart to map these debates, and it may help to follow that chart in Figure 1.1)

Figure 1.1 Traditional Philosophy of Religion: A Flow Chart.

First, the most basic division in the field comes between those theists who argue that there exists a being worthy of worship and those who argue that there does not (or that, if there does, we cannot know it). Some of the atheist or naturalist philosophers in this latter camp hold that belief in a God of perfect power and benevolence cannot be reconciled with experiences of gratuitous evil. They argue either that, given those painful and demoralizing experiences, the claim that a benevolent God is decisively disproven or at least that, given the amount of suffering in the world, the truth of the claim is unlikely. Other naturalists argue that we cannot make sense of the unusual idea of a being who knows the future or that is all-powerful or that exists necessarily. Others in this camp argue that the lack of a clear revelation or experience of God—what is sometimes called “divine hiddenness”—justifies skepticism about God's existence. Such views have been popularized in bestselling books by the so-called New Atheists, and some atheist or naturalist philosophers of religion have developed their positions with great sophistication.

By contrast, the philosophers of religion who are theists hold that there does exist a being worthy of worship. I divide the theistic philosophers into two camps. The first maintains that the faith that God exists is the kind of commitment that can be supported by reasons, reasons intelligible to those who do not yet share that commitment. Let's call this commitment: reasoned faith. I will come back to this group. The other group of theists holds that faith in God, properly understood, is not the kind of commitment that can be supported by such reasons. These theists are persuaded, for example, by Søren Kierkegaard's account of faith as a passionate and subjective commitment, or by Richard Braithwaite's account of faith as an attitude about one's values and not about facts, or by Ludwig Wittgenstein's account of faith as drawing its sense from a set of ungrounded practices or form of life. Philosophers of religion in this camp hold that there are no criteria by which faith can be justified that are not internal to that commitment or way of looking at the world. Call these theists: fideists. As an illustration of fideism, consider the philosophers of religion who are inspired by Wittgenstein's observations about religion when he says, “The point [of belief in God] is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business. Anything that I would normally call evidence wouldn't in the slightest influence me.”2 From this perspective, what religious communities teach is not a set of opinions or hypotheses or truth claims that can be compared to facts about the world, but rather ways of living and speaking. To agree with the fideists that theistic beliefs are not held on the basis of reasons is not necessarily to consider religion unreasonable. As Wittgenstein says, those who believe in God “don't treat this as a matter of reasonability.” Fideists therefore argue that one misinterprets theistic beliefs if one thinks that they are either warranted or unwarranted, and the task of philosophy of religion for those in this camp is not to assess the warrant or justification for belief in God. The task, instead, is to clarify what it means to live and speak as a believer.

Let me now return to those theists who do seek to marshal a reasoned faith. I also subdivide these philosophers of religion into two camps: on the one hand, there are those who argue that it is reasonable to believe in God because, they argue, one can provide some grounds that belief in God is true. Call these theists: foundationalists. I will come back to this group of philosophers in a moment. The other group of theists argues that although the belief that God exists, properly understood, is not the kind of belief that one can prove true, or even probable, theism can nevertheless be reasonable. They make a prudential case that it is good to believe or that one ought to believe that God exists. Theism might be reasonable simply because, as Blaise Pascal famously argues, given the eternal stakes at play, it is in one's interest to believe. (As a billboard near my house similarly suggests: “If you are living as if God does not exist, you had better be right,” and the bottom of the billboard is covered with flames.) William James also proposes a way of believing reasonably without grounds. In a trenchant analogy, he says: if a mountain climber becomes stuck on a precipice and, to get back home, she needs to make a jump that she has never made before and cannot prove that she can make, it is still reasonable for her to believe that she can (and must!) make the jump, and it is still reasonable for her to attempt the jump, rather than staying stuck on the mountain.3 Such arguments don't offer grounds that theism is true, though they do offer reasons to believe it.

The foundationalists who argue that there are grounds for the belief that God exists I divide based on whether they hold that the grounds are direct or indirect. One example of direct grounds for belief is perception. To take an example, in a case when I am having a face to face talk with my brother, I would believe the proposition this is my brother, and I would be warranted in doing so, but we would not say that I believe because I have evidence or clues from which I was able to infer that this is my brother. If someone asked me afterwards, “How did you know that it was your brother you were talking to?,” I could answer, “Because he was right there.” My reason for belief is not indirect or via any other belief. Analogously, these theistic philosophers argue that those who believe in God do not do so because they have evidence or clues from which they are able to infer that God exists. Rather, they believe that God exists, and they do so justifiably, because they simply perceive God's presence. They point out that, in fact, we hold many beliefs in this direct way: the belief that the world is more than five minutes old and the belief that other people are not robots are not beliefs that we base on careful examination of the evidence. These philosophers argue that the theistic belief in God, like the memory belief that I had a grapefruit for breakfast or the perceptual belief that there is a cup in front of me right now, is grounded directly. It is a belief on which other beliefs can then come to be based. In this way, theism can structure the practices and values that make up one's life, but it is based in a foundational way on direct experience and not on other beliefs that are more basic.

Other theistic philosophers hold that apart from these claims of perceiving God directly, there is indirect evidence that God exists. Call this latter group: evidentialists. When we speak of “evidence,” we typically mean something that points to a reality that is not present. For example, a fingerprint can be evidence left by the perpetrator or smoke from a window can be evidence that there is a fire inside. One infers from the evidence a cause that could have brought it about, and so evidence like this can be called inferential evidence. But some evidentialists argue that God is such a distinctive reality that God's existence can be demonstrated with evidence that is not inferential. They argue that if God is properly understood as a reality that is worthy of worship, a reality that is perfect, then God's mode of existence by definition cannot be limited or weak or contingent or dependent. If it is God about whom we are speaking, then we cannot be speaking about a reality that was brought into existence or a reality that might conceivably cease to exist. God therefore must exist not only in some places or some times, but always and everywhere, neither brought into existence by something else nor capable of not existing. If God by definition has every good quality, then God by definition has the quality of necessary, non-contingent existence. And if God's existence is necessary, contingent on nothing, then God exists under all conditions. And so God must exist. Though this argument is often dismissed on the grounds that one cannot simply define a reality so carefully that—poof—that reality must exist, there is no confusion in saying that a being worthy of worship would be one that exists under all conditions.

The theistic philosophers who argue for the existence of God based on inferential evidence claim that, just as smoke serves as a sign that there is a fire, there are realities in the world of human experience that point to the existence of a divine being. Some philosophers in this camp point at physical evidence that is external to the subject. More on them in a moment. Others, however, argue that the clues for God's existence are internal and non-physical. Some argue that the best evidence from which one can infer a divine reality is morality. C. S. Lewis is a philosopher who argues in this way, holding that when people look inside themselves, they find a moral law that is not a product of human imagination or social practices, “a real law which we did not invent and know that we ought to obey.”4 If the universe is the source of that law—the mailman who put that letter in our mental mailbox, to use Lewis's metaphor—then it must be or include something like a mind, at least in the sense that it gives instructions and cares about how human beings act. Immanuel Kant also uses the experience of a moral law as evidence for theism. Kant does not infer that God must be the source of the law that one finds in one's conscience. He argues, instead, that if the moral law is not incoherent, then the happiness one earns in one's life must be proportioned to the virtue one develops. It seems painfully clear that such proportioning does not happen in this life, however, and therefore one must take as a practical hypothesis or “postulate” that God as a moral judge of the world and immortality are real.

Now consider those philosophers of religion who are theists, who hold that one can give reasons for one's faith, that these reasons serve as grounds that their beliefs are true, that the grounds are evidence, that the evidence is inferential, and that the inferences are based on facts about the physical world. These philosophers of religion argue that there are facts about the natural world from which one can infer a supernatural creator. Such arguments can be usefully distinguished into two general kinds: some of these arguments are based on particular objects or facts about the natural world, and others are based on facts about the general character of natural things. The classic example of the first strategy is William Paley's early nineteenth century argument that there are objects in the natural world whose purposeful functions can only be explained by an intelligent designer. The anatomy of the eye, for instance—including the cornea, the iris, the lens, the pupil, the chambers with their aqueous and vitreous humors, the retina, and so on, all working together to give sight to the creature—requires an explanation that the natural world alone cannot supply. Michael Behe has recently updated and strengthened this kind of argument for a supernatural designer. As complex as the anatomy of the eye is, Behe points out, it is nothing to the staggering complexity of the biochemistry of vision, the mechanisms of protein chains that respond to light by creating electrical nerve impulses. Such operations at the molecular level within the cells used to be a mystery, a “black box” to science. But now that the black box has been opened by biochemists, one can see that the mechanisms are irreducibly complex—in the crucial sense that if one part of the system were removed, the system would not function. Because they are irreducibly complex, the emergence of some parts of the natural world is inexplicable through blind chance and the gradual stages of natural selection; they therefore point to the existence of an intelligent designer.5

Those philosophers of religion who take up the second strategy base their arguments for God's existence not on the character of some particularly remarkable objects or states of affairs in the world, such as the eye or the apparently perfect adjustment of natural laws for intelligent life—but rather on facts about physical things in general. These are cosmological theistic arguments. One cosmological argument states that if every single physical thing is contingent, in the sense that it might not have existed, then it seems that the same contingency equally applies to the set of all physical things. If we call this set of all physical things “the universe,” then we can say that the universe as a whole is contingent and might not have existed. One might therefore legitimately wonder why anything exists at all. Why is there something rather than nothing? The only answer for that question would be some reality whose existence is not contingent—that is, a being that is different from the universe and everything in it because its existence is necessary. In another cosmological argument, theistic philosophers of religion argue that if every physical thing requires a cause, and the chain of causes stretches back through history of the cosmos, then at the beginning of time then there must be a first cause. They argue that the existence of God answers the question about the origin of the universe as a whole. For example, some theists hold that the scientific evidence that the world began roughly fifteen billion years ago in a Big Bang gives people reason to believe that the natural world must have a creator. The idea that the world has not always existed but rather began to exist a finite amount of time ago is a recent development in physics and, as William Lane Craig has pointed out, this remarkable, new scientific evidence lends support to those theists who believe that the world was created. Drawing on what is sometimes called the Kalam argument, after the Islamic philosophical theologians who first employed it, Craig argues that if everything that begins to exist is caused, and the universe began to exist (as the Big Bang theory holds), then these two truths together point to the need for a cause for the physical universe, a supernatural first cause of everything.

As one can see, the questions pursued in traditional philosophy of religion cover a very wide set of questions. Traditional philosophy of religion draws on debates in physics, biology, ethical theory, and modal logic. It also contributes to Christian theology and to Biblical studies. This fruitfulness notwithstanding, one can see that traditional philosophy of religion has focused on a relatively narrow topic: the rationality of belief in God. Even the philosophers of religion who are skeptics or atheists fit that description of the discipline.

There are some forms of philosophy of religion that do not focus on the kind of theistic and atheistic arguments that I have listed. For example, when we turn to philosophy of religion as it is practiced in non-Anglophone, Continental Europe, we find an approach quite different from the topics just listed. In Continental philosophy of religion, one does not find a focus on the characteristics that God must have or proofs for the existence of God. Instead, one finds a focus on religious experience, on the phenomenology of overflow experiences, and on overcoming ontotheology. Continental philosophy of religion primarily reflects on the limits of reason and on faith as a response to revelation. It is primarily concerned with the nature and limits of God-talk rather than with warrant for truth claims. Nevertheless, as one sees in John Caputo's definition of religion simply as “the love of God,” Continental philosophers of religion predominantly share with analytic philosophers of religion the narrow focus on theism. In fact, as Christina Gschwandtner points out, almost all the Continental philosophers of religion from France—including Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste, and Emmanuel Falque—are apologists for the coherence of thought about God and for the viability of religious experience.6 Another approach that does not pursue the theistic and atheistic arguments I listed is found in feminist philosophy of religion. Whether feminist philosophers of religion use the analytic approach or (more commonly) the Continental approach, they typically focus on the biases and distortions woven into traditional, masculine accounts of God and how these might be avoided. But the questions of theism are still usually central. Continental philosophy of religion and feminist philosophy of religion thus share a view of their task that is limited in the ways described in this chapter and to that extent they too should develop along the three axes I recommend in the rest of this chapter.

I begin this book with this enumeration of the variety of topics one finds in traditional philosophy of religion because I do not want to give the sense that traditional philosophy of religion is not already a complex and evolving discipline. As I mentioned, in one sense, the discipline is flourishing. Nevertheless, I think that the majority of Analytic, Continental, and feminist philosophers of religion operate with a narrow, intellectualist, and insular view of the task of the discipline and that therefore, as an understanding of what philosophy of religion can and should be, the traditional approach is incomplete.

ii. The First Task of Philosophy of Religion

My critique of traditional philosophy of religion is that, despite its achievements, it operates with an inadequate understanding of the task of the discipline. To avoid narrowness, intellectualism, and insularity, philosophers of religion should understand their task as having three parts: it should exclude no religions, it should give proper recognition to the centrality of religious practice to religious communities, and it should expand its conversations with the other branches of philosophy and the other disciplines in religious studies. The task of philosophy of religion would then be composed of three sets of questions. Using a geometrical metaphor, one might think of each set of questions as an “axis.” The first set of questions—the first “axis”—is intended to address the criticism of narrowness, and it is generated when philosophy of religion broadens its view to include the doctrines and arguments from religions globally and throughout history.

When one takes a global view of philosophy of religion, one uncovers a host of religious philosophies outside of theism. For example, the Hindu teacher Adi Śakara (788–820 CE) developed what he called Non-dualist or Advaita Vedanta which taught that since the supreme reality (which he called Brahman) is infinite, it is misguided to think that Brahman is distinct from the world and is not present here, in our midst, in our minds and bodies. It is misguided to think that Brahman is not present everywhere. Śakara holds that if the supreme reality cannot be distinguished from the world, then it is a mistake to imagine that Brahman is a person who has thoughts and plans and emotions. On this view, to use Śakara's analogy, the supreme reality is more like an ocean of which we are but drops. Central questions for philosophers of religion to raise then are: what reasons does Śakara give that this non-dualist view of the nature of things is correct? What reasons could one give? And what arguments against non-dualism were given by Śakara's Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain opponents? What arguments could one give?

A second example of non-theistic religious philosophies can be drawn from Buddhism. The Japanese Soto Zen teacher Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253 CE) was responsible for the training of monks, and he taught them the classical Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising or origination: everything that exists is transient and impermanent. As a Mahayana Buddhist, however, Dōgen developed this doctrine in terms of emptiness, the claim that nothing that exists can exist without dependence on other realities. If Dōgen is right about emptiness, then he provides an alternative to most versions of theism. So the philosopher of religion should ask: what reasons does Dōgen give that this view of the nature of things is correct? What reasons could one give? What arguments against emptiness were given by his Buddhist, Confucian, and Shinto opponents? What arguments could one give?

These are Hindu and Buddhist examples, and there are several philosophers of religion who are working on religious philosophies from India and Japan. There are fewer, but still some, philosophers of religion working on Daoist and neo-Confucian religious philosophies of China and East Asia. There are almost no philosophers of religion working on African religions (despite the fact that, as described by Stephen Prothero, there may be 50 million people who practice Yoruba religion, which is to say that there are more Yoruba adherents than Jews, Sikhs, Jains, or Zoroastrians). There are next to zero philosophers of religion working on indigenous wisdom traditions of Australia, or North America, or South America. And there are next to zero working on the intellectual aspects of New Religious Movements.

What I am calling the first axis of philosophy of religion is the set of questions that are generated when one engages philosophically with the wisdom traditions that one finds all around the world that offer practices based on superempirical realities.7 As the world shrinks, and global communication and immigration increase, philosophy of religion can play an important role in the interpretation and critical assessment of those teachings. I agree with Richard King: “engagement with the intellectual traditions of the non-western world has become the single most important task for the philosopher in an age of globalization.”8

I have a friend who is a traditional philosopher of religion who agrees with this proposal in principle. He points out rightly, however, that no single philosopher of religion can master the philosophical intricacies of one religious tradition, let alone all of them. Scholarly expertise requires specialization. And so he asks: is there anything wrong from the perspective advocated in this book with specializing, as he does, solely in Christian philosophy of religion?

I have two answers. First, the proposal is not for a change in the work of any individual philosopher of religion, but rather in our understanding of the task of the discipline as a whole to which that work is meant to contribute. Insofar as philosophers of religion come to see the scope of their work as global, it may have an impact on their teaching and scholarship. But it would certainly have an impact on our understanding of what one should find in philosophy of religion journals, courses, and textbooks. It also means that my friend's department—which at present includes several philosophers of religion, all of whom specialize exclusively in Christian philosophy of religion—would see their present coverage in the discipline as one-sided and incomplete.

The second response is more critical. Many traditional philosophers of religion see their work as a defense of the truths that they find in their own religious traditions. From the perspective of this proposal, this is a legitimate goal. The flaw in their understanding of their task, however, is that they often assume a limited grasp of who their rivals are. Traditional philosophers of religion who are struck by the secular transformation of western states in modernity take it as their task to rebut philosophical naturalism. But to make the case for theism today requires engagement not only with late modern European challenges but also with the post-colonial return of religion. The flaw is the assumption that theism and naturalism are the only two “live” options. (Note that this choice is the first step on the flowchart of the positions in traditional philosophy of religion). Given that there are multiple religious traditions that offer philosophical defenses of their worldviews, to show the weaknesses of philosophical naturalism does not suffice to establish traditional theism, and those philosophers of religion who do want to demonstrate the superiority of their faith need to engage with rival religious philosophies. Simply put, one cannot make comparative claims about the superiority of one's position unless one actually compares. Consequently, those who want to defend their faith cannot succeed at their task if they do not take into account the full range of religious options, which is to say that they ought to agree to the proposal of this book.9

What should one call this alternative, more inclusive philosophy of religion? There are several proposals in the air. Some call it comparative philosophy of religion. This label, modeled on the comparative study of religion, gets at the idea that the object of philosophy of religion is multiple. And comparative philosophy of religion is cousin to the emerging disciplines of comparative religious ethics and comparative theology. But although comparison is an apt part of what alternative philosophy of religion involves, it is not a required part. Philosophers compare religions in order to identify what truths they teach; they do not try to identify truths in religions in order to compare them. This issue is avoided by the label cross-cultural philosophy of religion. That label might nevertheless also be misleading in that it may describe the western philosopher of religion who works on non-western philosophies, but it does not fit the non-western thinker who crosses cultures to operate on western religious thought.

To call it global philosophy of religion emphasizes the non-exclusivity of the project, though it may also suggest “globalization,” the imposition of North Atlantic categories and values on the rest of the world. Others suggest post-colonial philosophy of religion, a label that foregrounds the resurgence of formerly colonized nations and their ability to speak as subjects. Similarly, to call it post-secular philosophy of religion gets at the failure of the secularization hypothesis and the resulting recognition that religious ways of living and thinking cannot be assumed to be irrational. Perhaps my favorite of the alternative labels is the relatively subtle: philosophy of religions. Adding the “s” indicates the inclusion of diverse religions. And since the word “of” can be either objective genitive or subjective genitive, this label can refer to an understanding both that religious thinkers are the object of philosophy—that is, they are what is studied philosophically—and that religious thinkers are the subjects of philosophy—that they themselves practice philosophy.

These different labels capture different emphases of this approach and one can use any of them or all of them to identify a philosophy of religion that does not exclude most of the religions of the world. Thus, one can call the view for which I am arguing in this book a post-secular, post-colonial, cross-cultural, comparative, global philosophy of religions. That said, none of the above terms is the label I prefer. The truth is that if philosophy of religion means the philosophical study of religion, then traditional philosophy of religion has simply not lived up to its name. It has become fixated on a fraction of its proper object; a more fitting name for the bulk of what one finds in philosophy of religion textbooks courses and journals would be “philosophical theology” or “philosophy of theism.” To be sure, the philosophical study of theistic claims is a legitimate part of philosophy of religion. But it is a relatively narrow part and to identify the two is to confuse part with whole. Philosophy of religion properly means the philosophical study of religions in all their diversity, in all their aspects, and as a contributing part of a family of approaches in the study of religions. Thus the best name for the approach to the discipline proposed in this book is simply to reclaim the name, philosophy of religion.

iii. The Second Task of Philosophy of Religion

In the previous section, I argued that although philosophy of religion has traditionally assumed that the subject matter of the discipline is God, the discipline should overcome that narrowness and come to understand its central task as philosophical engagement with all religious traditions, whether theistic or not. As limiting as the focus on theism has been, however, there is another assumption in traditional philosophy of religion, even less recognized, that has limited the discipline in a different way. This is the assumption that the proper objects of study by philosophers of religion are the products of religious intellectuals. Expanding the discipline to include not only the philosophies of Aquinas, Maimonides, and Averroes but also Śakara and Dōgen would not change this. I therefore want to develop a view of the proper task of philosophy of religion in a second direction, along an axis that is, so to speak, perpendicular to the first. Here the question is: on what aspects of religions should philosophy of religion focus?