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The Prudence of Religious Commitment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Abstract
This essay adopts Penelhum's analysis of parity arguments to show that Christian theistic faith and atheistic secular humanism are on an epistemic par with each other. It argues that Swinburne's attempt to show that theism is more probable than atheism fails because his ultimate canon of rationality is essentially contested and cannot render theism more probable than atheism. It proposes a way out of the epistemic stalemate by evaluating the prudence of religious commitment. It adapts some of Mavrodes' recent arguments and Swinburne's levels of rationality to analyze the dimensions of prudence. It finally extends this “prudential calculus” to indicate how a theologian could show a religious commitment prudent, and argues that if religious authorities silence theologians, the authorities may also show that commitment to and in their tradition cannot be comprehensively prudent.
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References
1 See, for instance, Tilley, T. W., “The Use and Abuse of Theodicy,” Horizons 11/2 (Fall 1984), 309–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 For instance, Davis, Stephen T., Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983);CrossRefGoogle ScholarMorris, Thomas V., The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
3 I am not using “internalist” in the sense that Phillips, D. Z. criticized in “Belief, Change and Forms of Life: The Confusions of Externalism and Intemalism,” The Autonomy of Religious Belief, ed. Crossan, F. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 60–92Google Scholar, i.e., that the internalist allows no connections between religious beliefs and other beliefs. Phillips was discussing “internalist” construals of belief systems; I am categorizing structures and strategies of argument.
4 Subsequent parenthetical references in this section are to Penhelhum, Terrence, God and Skepticism (Boston: Reidel, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pascal and Kierkegaard constructed classic negative parity arguments. Penelhum argues that a Humean approach can provide resources sufficient to undermine this type of argument (140-44).
5 These must be distinguished from negative parity arguments such as those of Antony Flew. Flew seeks to show that religious belief is not on an epistemic par with atheism. But to justify his standards, he makes a circular argument (see Tilley, T. W., Talking of God [New York: Paulist, 1978], pp. 15–18).Google Scholar No evidence other than evidence gathered presuming the validity of scientific approaches is permissible to Flew. He rules out religious experience as evidence because it fails to meet scientific standards, i.e., it is not publicly observable or repeatable. He has recently reiterated this view: “For they all know, just as well as everyone else knows, that, whenever and wherever they themselves claim to be enjoying their brand of supposedly cognitive religious experience, there is nothing available to be perceived, other than what is perceptible equally by all the rest of us; and, hence, that they are to all appearance engaged in nothing more or other than exercises of the imagination” (“The Burden of Proof,” in Knowing Religiously, ed. Rouner, L. S. [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985], p. 107).Google Scholar No evidence is permitted which might count against the principles by which evidence is gathered. But Flew's framework principles give meaning to his concept of evidence, so he cannot use what the principles construe as evidence to justify the principles without circular argument. Indeed, his attempt to construct a negative parity argument fails in the same way that Penelhum shows theologians' attempts to construct negative parity arguments fail.
6 Kai Nielsen, “God and Coherence: On the Epistemological Foundations of Religious Belief,” in Rouner, Knowing Religiously. Although Nielsen can be seen as constructing a negative parity argument in chapter six of Contemporary Critiques of Religion (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971)Google Scholar, his attempts to defeat theism are far less successful than his attempt to ground ethics without resort to religious sanctions, e.g., in Ethics Without God (London: Pemberton, 1973)Google ScholarPubMed, which relies primarily on a permissive parity argument for its cogency. I will not pursue these exegetical and historical points here.
7 Neilsen, , “God and Coherence,” p. 92.Google Scholar Of course, that arguments do not entail their conclusions does not render those conclusions incredible, but merely unsupported by those arguments.
8 For a discussion of belief in God as a properly basic belief, see Plantinga, Alvin, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Nous 15/1 (1981), 41–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Reason and Belief in God,” Faifh and Rationality, ed. Plantinga, A. and Wolterstorff, N. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), especially pp. 55–63, 71–91.Google Scholar
9 Nielsen, , “God and Coherence,” p. 97.Google Scholar
10 Nielsen concludes with a testimonial rejection of religious claims: “The wish to live forever for many of us is idle, something we are concerned neither to accept nor to reject. It is not true that if we no longer entertain these wishes our lives will become meaningless, fragmented, emotionally crippled; it is not true that given our atheistic intellectual convictions, our lives are something to be stoically endured with nihilism at the door. Fideists should not flatter themselves with the conceit that their response is the deepest, most human response to nonevasive reflection about our condition” (“God and Coherence,” p. 101). This testimony contrasts with Nielsen's negative evaluation of “fideists'” engaging in ad hominem arguments ten pages earlier.
11 A similar argument has been mounted by Gerald D. McCarthy to show that some contemporary liberal theologians, e.g., Hans Küng and Schubert Ogden, who claim that having the concept of a meaningful human life entails accepting a transcendent ground for that meaning, have not sustained their argument. In the language of this paper, these theologians try (and fail) to construct negative parity arguments for their positions by arguing that an atheistic view is epistemically inferior because it is epistemically thwarted or incoherent. See his “Meaning, Morals and the Existence of God,” Horizons 9/2 (Fall 1982), 288–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 One might join Plantinga, , “Reason and Belief in God,” pp. 65–68, 89–90Google Scholar, and attribute unbelievers' reluctance to believe in God to sin. However, such a move may exclude them from participating in a reasonable conversation and possibly show such religious belief imprudent5, in terms to be discussed below. Moreover, Plantinga's repeated response to the frivolous “Great Pumpkin Objection” (e.g., in “Reason and Belief,” pp. 74-78) as if it were serious obscures the possibility that non-Christian traditions might be as legitimate traditions for developing basic beliefs as the Christian traditions. Full discussion of the serious flaws in his “solution” is beyond the scope of the present essay.
13 Swinburne, Richard, Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), p. 199.Google Scholar Parenthetical references in this section are to this text. I will not correct his unrelievedly and obnoxiously non-inclusive language.
14 A belief p may be inconsistent with other beliefs q, r, s, a person holds. But that inconsistency does not mean that a person is irrational in holding all four. See section three, below.
15 Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), p. 278.Google Scholar
16 See Swinburne, , The Existence of God, p. 282Google Scholar, and Stopes-Roe, Harry V., “The Intelligibility of the Universe,” Reason and Religion, ed. Brown, S. C. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 44–71.Google Scholar
17 See Swinburne, , The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), pp. 97–125Google Scholar and Flew, , “The Burden of Proof,” p. 113.Google Scholar
18 By prudence I do not mean the ability to make means-ends calculations, as it is often understood, but rather the ability to deliberate “not merely to particular goals but to the good life in general … with a view to the best … and to happiness” and to be concerned with both general and particular actions. Although not offering a strictly Aristotelian account, I am accepting much of what Aristotle said of phrónēsis, the ability to realize in general what the good life consists in and to perceive what is right to do in a situation, including believe (insofar as belief is voluntary). See Sorabji, Richard, “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue,” Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Rorty, A. O. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 205–06.Google Scholar
19 Mavrodes, George, “Intellectual Morality in Clifford and James,” in The Ethics of Belief Debate, ed. McCarthy, Gerald D. (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1986), p. 210.Google Scholar
20 Mavrodes, George, “Belief, Proportionality and Probability,” in Reason and Decision, edited by Bradie, Michael and Sayre, Kenneth (Bowling Green, OH: Applied Philosophy Program, Bowling Green State University, 1982), p. 64.Google Scholar If Mavrodes is correct at this point, then even if Swinburne had shown that theism has a probability greater than 0.5, that does not entail that it is irrational not to believe theism or imprudent not to make a religious commitment in a theistic tradition.
21 Mavrodes, , “Belief, Proportionality,” p. 67.Google Scholar
22 Harvey, Van, “The Ethics of Belief Reconsidered,” in McCarthy, , The Ethics of Belief Debate, p. 198.Google Scholar
23 This account may seem to involve rejecting an Aristotelian account of prudence, by affirming that prudence is both role-specific and person-specific. Rather, it gives a different account from Aristotle's of the relation of prudence to “cunning” or “cleverness.” Aristotle's account is based on a hard separation of deinótēs from phrónēsis (see NE, 1144b-45a). This seems unwarranted, given his discussion of how virtue is learned (NE, 1103a-05b). How would one learn to be prudent in general except by first learning how to perform particular prudent acts? If these acts are merely clever, how could one learn prudence? The present account also explains why people stumble over the conundrum of calling someone a “good” (prudent3) Nazi and yet not a “good” (prudent4) person: the former considers only one or some of the roles a person plays, while the latter considers the expectations of the panoply of social roles a person plays and is expected to play.
24 In saying this, I am not denying objective moral standards, but claiming that moral claims are warranted not by measuring them against a standard, but by arguing for them in a community of discourse.
25 Swinburne, , The Existence of God, p. 73.Google Scholar
26 An “unlimited discourse community” would be one from which, in principle, no one is excluded. An “ideal speech situation” would be one in which members of an unlimited discourse community attempted to communicate with each other (rather than coerce, manipulate, rhetorically persuade each other) in a reasonable manner. Habermas claims these are implicated by every human engagement in speech, although that claim and its significance are disputable. For a theological appropriation of Habermas's “ideal speech situation,” see Peukert, Helmut, Science, Action and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communicative Action, trans. Bowman, James (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1984).Google Scholar
27 Compare David Tracy's claim, “The characteristic which distinguishes theology as a discipline from religious studies, moreover, is the fact that scholars in religious studies may legitimately confine their interests to ‘meaning’ while theologians must by the intrinsic demands of their discipline face the questions of both meaning and truth” in The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 20.Google ScholarPubMed If Christian faith were shown rational,, that would be sufficient to show the prudence of such commitment. But such a solution to Penelhum's problem is not forthcoming, as section two showed.
28 Compare Tracy, , The Analogical Imagination, p. 26.Google Scholar Tracy's “three publics” oversimplifies the matter of social location.
29 Compare Tracy, , The Analogical Imagination, p. 4.Google Scholar
30 Religious commitment undertaken on the basis of another's religious experience could well be imprudent2. While a religious experience may justly determine a person's own beliefs, William James suggests that another's experience and claims provide no warrant for those who do not share that experience: “Those of us who are not personally favored with such specific revelations must stand outside of them altogether and, for the present at least, decide that, since they corroborate incompatible theological doctrines they neutralize one another and leave no fixed results” (The Varieties of Religious Experience [New York: Collier, 1961], pp. 399–400).Google ScholarPubMed James goes on to say that so long as these beliefs are not intolerant, it is proper to tolerate them, even if one does not accept them. That a person is justified in relying on such experiences is argued by Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?”
31 Malcolm, N., “The Groundlessness of Belief: Postscript,” in Brown, S. C., Reason and Religion, pp. 186–90.Google Scholar It is not clear how, or if, Malcolm distinguishes the process, disposition or act of believing from the content of religious belief. Hence, it is not clear that the examples are true parallels, for one can distinguish the propositional content, “My name is N. N.” from what I do in believing my name to be N. N. For present purposes, I will assume the analogy holds and not argue for distinguishing the content of religious belief(s), i.e., doctrinae de fide et de moribus, from the manner of religious believing. For an evaluation of this approach, see Penelhum, Terence, “Do Religious Beliefs Need Grounds?” Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift (July 1986), 227–37.Google Scholar
32 Now it might be argued that in this section I have shifted my terms of analysis significantly. In the previous discussion, I talked of religious belief. In this section, I talk of vows. “Vows aren't beliefs,” an objector might say, “What applies to the latter does not necessarily apply to the former.” I think such an objection would be interesting, but not because the description of vowing is off, but because our expectations about religious belief are misguided. A vow is simply a strong, explicit expression of a religious commitment necessarily associated with a religious belief. For instance, a religious belief in God's creating and sustaining the world entails a way of living in the world. One way of expressing that is to construe God as the Landlord of the World and those of us who live here not as owners, but as renters; not as exploiters of nature, but as tenants of God's house. (And watch out for the damage charges when the lease is over!) A vow makes a commitment to that way of living explicit. Whether a vow is made or not, to beli eve in the world as God's creation makes religious sense only if it is connected with a commitment to live in certain ways. To have a religious belief is not to commit oneself to a proposition, but in attitudes and actions necessarily connected to a propositional belief. The nexus of these constitutes religious belief. While one can certainly distinguish the propositional content from the religious commitment in which it is ingredient, and discuss that proposition, one cannot truly separate the propositional content from the rest of the commitment and actions which constitute religious belief. Hence, treating religious belief as separable from religious commitment is as mistaken as treating religious belief as nothing but displaying certain forms of behavior without regard to the meaning and truth of the propositional expressions ingredient in that behavior. This is a main point of contemporary theological interest in narrative. For various accounts, see Tilley, T. W., Story Theology (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1985);Google ScholarThiemann, Ronald, Revelation and Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985);Google ScholarGoldberg, Michael, Theology and Narrative (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1982);Google ScholarShea, John, Stories of God (Chicago: Thomas More, 1978) and the literature they cite.Google Scholar
33 Ordinary believers do not have role-specific duties to check on the warrants for their beliefs. They must be prudent1 and prudent2 in their religious commitments, but, except to the extent that circumstances raise questions for them, do not have the obligation of defending their religious commitments as prudent3, but can rely on those members of their community who do theology to enable them to have prudent3 assumptions and warrants for their religious commitments.
34 Penelhum, , God and Skepticism, ch. 3, and p. 117.Google Scholar