Problems of Religious Luck: Assessing the Limits of Reasonable Religious Disagreement

290 Pages·2018·2.151 MB·English

by  Guy Axtell

Problems of Religious
Luck

Problems of Religious
Luck
Assessing the Limits of Reasonable
Religious Disagreement
Guy Axtell
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2019 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available
ISBN 978-1-4985-5017-8 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (electronic)
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
PART I: RELIGIOUS COGNITION AND PHILOSOPHY
OF LUCK 1
1 Kinds of Religious Luck: A Working Taxonomy 3
Multi-Sided Interest in Problems of Religious Luck 3
Accounts of and Kinds of Luck: A Methodological Primer 7
A Working Taxonomy 10
Conclusion: Emerging Philosophical Questions 35
2 The New Problem of Religious Luck 53
Qualifying and Refocusing Etiological Challenges Based on
Contingency 53
The Exceptionalist Dilemma 60
Explanatory Asymmetries and Critical Reasoning Dispositions 62
An Objection and Reply 70
Conclusion 73
PART II: APPLICATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF
INDUCTIVE RISK 83
3 Enemy in the Mirror: The Need for Comparative Fundamentalism 85
From Philosophy of Luck to an Inductive Risk Toolkit 87
Fundamentalist Orientation and the Risks of Teleological
Suspension 94
Conclusion 99
v
vi Contents
4 “We Are All of the Common Herd”: Montaigne and the
Psychology of our “Importunate Presumptions” 109
Psychologists and Philosophers on Our Bias Blind Spot 109
How Etiological Symmetry Begets Religious Contrariety in
Testimonial Traditions 120
Conclusion 130
5 Scaling the ‘Brick Wall’: Measuring and Censuring
Strongly Fideistic Religious Orientation 143
The Many Sources of Religious Diversity 143
Descriptive and Prescriptive Fideism: A Crucial Distinction 148
Bridge Building, or Burning? A Critique of the Belief Model 158
The Conceptual Incoherence Argument 168
Dicey Advising? Dilemmas for the Two Forms of Exclusivism 170
Objections and Replies 179
Conclusion 185
6 The Pattern Stops Here? Counter-Inductive Thinking,
Counter-Intuitive Ideas, and Cognitive Science of Religion 201
What Is Meant by “Science of Religion”? 201
Vainio’s Christian Philosophic Appropriation and Critique
of CSR 204
De Jure and De Facto Challenges: How Related? 214
Part Two Conclusion 230
Book Conclusion 232
Bibliography 247
Index 265
About the Author 281
Acknowledgments
I have many persons to thank for opportunities to present ideas in this book,
and for discussion and helpful comments along the way. The project began
under sabbatical leave support in Fall 2016 from Radford University. I thank
staff and other fellows at IASH, Duncan Pritchard, Matthew Chrisman,
Alistair Isaac, David Ward, and other University of Edinburgh PPL faculty.
Also to J. Adam Carter, University of Glasgow and the EIDYN Center; and
to Jesús Navarro, Kegan Shaw, Harvey Siegel, Lee Whittington, and other
members of the Epistemology Reading Group.
Special thanks also go to Scott Aikin, Lenn Goodman, Lucius Outlaw
(Jr.), and Robert Talisse at Vanderbilt; Roger Ames and Peter Hershock at
the East–West Center; Ron Bontekoe and Chun-Ying Cheng at University
of Hawaii; Henrik Rydenfelt and Sami Pihlström at the Nordic Pragmatist
Network. My warmest thanks to Heather Battaly, John Bishop, Ian Church,
Catherine Elgin, Jacob Goodson, Robert Hartman, Phil Olson, Walter
Sinnott-Armstrong, and Wesley J. Wildman; finally to Paul Thomas and my
fellow RU faculty, and to Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, and UNC Chappell
Hill philosophy departments. Katelyn Dobbins provided invaluable research
assistance during Summer, 2018. Dedicated in memory of formative conver-
sations with a good friend, Louis Pojman.
vii

Part I
RELIGIOUS COGNITION AND
PHILOSOPHY OF LUCK
Since opinions formed from experience, relative to the same class of
objects, are the only rule by which persons of sound understanding are
governed in their conduct, why should the philosophers be proscribed
from supporting conjectures upon a similar basis, provided they
attribute to them no greater certainty than is warranted by the number,
the consistency, and the accuracy of actual observations?
–Marquis de Condorcet1
NOTE
1. Condorcet, “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind:
Library of Ideas” [1794], Tenth Epoch.
1