On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

Historians of science and religion have given little attention to how historical‐critical scholarship influenced perceptions of the relationship between science and religion in the nineteenth century. However, the so‐called “cofounders” of the “conflict thesis,” the idea that science and religion are fundamentally and irrevocable at odds, were greatly affected by this literature. Indeed, in his two‐volume magnum opus, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), Andrew D. White, in his longest and final chapter of his (...) masterpiece, traced the development of the “scientific interpretation” of the Bible. In this article, I argue that developments in biblical criticism had a direct impact on how White constructed his historical understanding of the relationship between science and religion. By examining more carefully how biblical criticism played a significant role in the thought of White and other alleged cofounders of the conflict thesis, this article hopes to relocate the origins, development, and meaning of the science–religion debate at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The philosophical debate on miracles in Enlightenment England shows the composite and evolutionary character of the English Enlightenment and, more generally, of the Enlightenment’s relation to religion. In fact, that debate saw the confrontation of divergent positions within the Protestant field and led several deists and freethinkers to resolutely deny the possibility of “things above reason” (i.e. things that, according to such Protestant philosophers as Robert Boyle and John Locke, human reason can neither comprehend nor refute, and that humanity must (...) thus receive as supernatural). In their attacks on miracles, the deists adopted various strategies, which can be classified in two main groups. On the one hand, Charles Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Thomas Woolston, and Peter Annet, although employing different concepts of reason and having different views of God and nature, rejected miracles on the basis that God is unable to contravene the eternal, immutable, and mechanical laws of nature. On the other, William Wollaston, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chubb, and Thomas Morgan, whose theories on natural religion presented striking similarities, saw God as unwilling to interpose in human or natural affairs. They shunned the possibility of miraculous events while simultaneously acknowledging the presence and efficacy of divine providence in the government of the universe. In other words, they considered God as the active governor of the universe, rather than a distant and inert clockmaker removed from his Creation, but they held that God would not suspend the laws of nature, in which his impartial wisdom, forethought, and goodness found perfect expression. (shrink)

Almost all scholars of the Enlightenment consider Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke as the founding theorists of the “secular modern state.” In contrast to the widely held view of the modern state, I argue that far from being “secular” it was the product of the sacralization of politics, which resulted from the way these philosophers interpreted the Scriptures as part of their philosophical inquiries. The analysis of the “linguistic turn” in their biblical interpretations reveals how they tried to undermine the power (...) of the Church to claim greater freedoms for the state. Their philosophical inquiries initiated the secularization of the Christian religion and the sacralization of politics as two correlative developments, rather than the secularization of the state per se, as is usually supposed. The philosophical arguments proposed by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke helped to resolve the religious battles of Europe’s many confessions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but are still pertinent to our c... (shrink)

Leibniz frequently argued that reasons are to be weighed against each other as in a pair of scales, as Professor Marcelo Dascal has shown in his article "The Balance of Reason." In this kind of weighing it is not necessary to reach demonstrative certainty – one need only judge whether the reasons weigh more on behalf of one or the other option However, a different kind of account about rational decision-making can be found in some of Leibniz's writings. In his (...) article "Was Leibniz's Deity an Akrates?" Professor Jaakko Hintikka has argued that Leibniz developed a new vectorial model for rational decisions which is better suited to complicated decisions, where values are complementary to each other. This model, related closely to his work in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, is a heuristic device which helps in finding rational combinations - and in an ideal case an optimum - between plural inclinations to the good. I shall argue that Leibniz applies more or less implicitly both of these models in his practical rationality. In simple situations he applied the pair of scales model and in more complicated situations he applied the vectorial model. (shrink)