6 - Skepticism, Fideism, and Religious Epistemology

Summary

This chapter examines the relationship between skeptical themes and debates concerning the rationality of religious belief. This relationship manifests itself not only in terms of critiques of the rationality of religious belief, but also in prominent defenses of the rationality of religious belief, such as Lockean evidentialism, reformed epistemology, and skeptical fideism. The discussion puts particular focus on a specific form of skeptical fideism that employs an epistemic parity argument with regard to the epistemological status of religious and everyday belief. In this regard, it considers quasi-fideism, an account of the rationality of religious belief that applies a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology to the religious case, and which has a natural affinity with skeptical fideism.