9 - Social Religious Epistemology

Summary

Chapter 9 argues for a “social turn” in the philosophy of religion, by showing how the information economy framework can be fruitfully applied to several perennial issues in religious epistemology, including the problem of religious disagreement, Hume’s critique of testimonial evidence for miracles, and the problem of divine hiddenness. More generally, the chapter argues, contemporary epistemology of religion assumes an overly individualistic account of knowledge and justification, including reductionist accounts of testimonial knowledge and evidence. By adopting recent advances in the epistemology of testimony and in social epistemology more generally, a social religious epistemology promises to enrich and expand the field.