Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:37:44.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Religious Disagreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2018

Helen De Cruz
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University

Summary

This Element examines what we can learn from religious disagreement, focusing on disagreement with possible selves and former selves, the epistemic significance of religious agreement, the problem of disagreements between religious experts, and the significance of philosophy of religion. Helen De Cruz shows how religious beliefs of others constitute significant higher-order evidence. At the same time, she advises that we should not necessarily become agnostic about all religious matters, because our cognitive background colors the way we evaluate evidence. This allows us to maintain religious beliefs in many cases, while nevertheless taking the religious beliefs of others seriously.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781108557849
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 15 November 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Al-Ghazālī, A. H. M. (11th century [1963]). The incoherence of the philosophers (S. A. Kamali, Trans.). Lahore: Pakistan Philosophical Congress.Google Scholar
Al-Ghazālī, A. H. M. (ca. 1100 [1952]). Deliverance from error. In W. M. Watt (Trans.), The practice and faith of al-Ghazālī (pp. 1359). London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Alston, W. P. (1991). Perceiving God. The epistemology of religious experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Asiedu, F. B. A. (2001). The limits of Augustine’s Personal Authority: The Hermeneutics of Trust in De utilitate credendi. In Paffenroth, K. & Hughes, K. L. (Eds.), Augustine and liberal education (pp. 124145). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Augustine, . (5th century CE [1961]). Confessions (R. S. Pine-Coffin, Trans.). London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Augustine, . (5th century [1953]). The usefulness of belief (De utilitate credendi). In Burleigh, J. H. S. (Ed.), Augustine: Earlier writings (pp. 284323). Philadelphia: Westminster Press.Google Scholar
Ballantyne, N., & Coffman, E. (2012). Conciliationism and uniqueness. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90, 657670.Google Scholar
Barnett, Z. (in press). Belief dependence: How do the numbers count? Philosophical Studies, 123.Google Scholar
Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? Lanham, MD: AltaMita Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, J. L., Richert, R. A., & Driesenga, A. (2001). God’s beliefs versus mother’s: The development of nonhuman agent concepts. Child Development, 72, 5065.Google Scholar
Benton, M. A. (2016). Expert opinion and second-hand knowledge. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 92, 492508.Google Scholar
Berger, M. (1998). Rabbinic authority. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bogardus, T. (2013). The problem of contingency for religious belief. Faith and Philosophy, 30, 371392.Google Scholar
Bourget, D., & Chalmers, D. J. (2014). What do philosophers believe? Philosophical Studies, 170, 465500.Google Scholar
Calvin, J. (1559 [1960]). Institutes of the Christian religion (F. L. Battles, Trans.). Philadelphia: Westminster Press.Google Scholar
Carel, H., Kidd, I. J., & Pettigrew, R. (2016). Illness as transformative experience. The Lancet, 388(10050), 11521153.Google Scholar
Christensen, D. (2007). Epistemology of disagreement: The good news. Philosophical Review, 116(2), 187217.Google Scholar
Christensen, D. (2010). Higher-order evidence. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 81(1), 185215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, D. (2011). Disagreement, question-begging, and epistemic self-criticism. Philosopher’s Imprint, 11(6), 122.Google Scholar
Clark, K. J., & Barrett, J. L. (2010). Reformed epistemology and the cognitive science of religion. Faith and Philosophy, 27, 174189.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. (2000). If you’re an egalitarian, how come you’re so rich? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2008). Rethinking expertise. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cummins, R. (1998). Reflections on reflective equilibrium. In Ramsey, W. & DePaul, M. (Eds.), The role of intuition in philosophy (pp. 113127). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
De Cruz, H. (2018). Religious belief and philosophical views: A qualitative study. Res Philosophica, 95(3), 477504.Google Scholar
De Cruz, H. (2017). Religious disagreement: An empirical study among academic philosophers. Episteme, 14, 7187.Google Scholar
De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2015). A natural history of natural theology. The cognitive science of theology and philosophy of religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2013). Reformed and evolutionary epistemology and the noetic effects of sin. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74(1), 4966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dellsén, F. (2018). When expert disagreement supports the consensus. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96, 142156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, R. D., Lowery, R. C., & Jones, L. P. (1992). The fact and form of born-again religious conversions and sociopolitical conservatism. Review of Religious Research, 34, 117131.Google Scholar
Douven, I. (2010). Simulating peer disagreements. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A, 41, 148157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Draper, P., & Nichols, R. (2013). Diagnosing cognitive biases in philosophy of religion. The Monist, 96, 420444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Easwaran, K., Fenton-Glynn, L., Hitchcock, C., & Velasco, J. D. (2016). Updating on the credences of others: Disagreement, agreement, and synergy. Philosophers’ Imprint, 16(11), 139.Google Scholar
Ecklund, E. H., & Scheitle, C. P. (2007). Religion among academic scientists: Distinctions, disciplines, and demographics. Social Problems, 54(2), 289307.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. (1821). A treatise concerning religious affections, in three parts. Philadelphia: James Crissy.Google Scholar
Elga, A. (2007). Reflection and disagreement. Noûs, 41, 478502.Google Scholar
Feldman, R. (2007). Reasonable religious disagreements. In Anthony, L. (Ed.), Philosophers without gods (pp. 194214). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R. M. (1994). Al-Ghazālī and the Ash‘arite school. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fricker, L. (2014). Epistemic trust in oneself and others – An argument from analogy? In Callahan, L. & O’Connor, T. (Eds.), Religious faith and intellectual virtue (pp. 174203). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fridland, E. (in press). Do as I say and as I do: Imitation, pedagogy and cumulative culture. Mind and Language.Google Scholar
Gauchat, G. (2012). Politicization of science in the public sphere: A study of public trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010. American Sociological Review, 77, 167187.Google Scholar
Gellman, J. (1997). Experience of God and the rationality of theistic belief. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellman, J. (1992). A new look at the problem of evil. Faith and Philosophy, 9(2), 210216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, A. I. (2001). Experts: Which ones should you trust? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63, 85110.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. (2018). Expertise. Topoi, 37, 310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, S. J. (2001). Nonoverlapping magisteria. In Pennock, R. (Ed.), Intelligent design creationism and its critics. Philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives (pp. 737749). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Griffel, F. (2005). Taqlīd of the philosophers: al-Ghazālī’s initial accusation in his tahāfut. In Günther, S. (Ed.), Ideas, images, and methods of portrayal: Insights into classical Arabic literature and Islam. Leiden and Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Griffel, F. (2017). Al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of the philosophers. In El-Rouayheb, K. & Schmidtke, S. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Islamic philosophy (pp. 191200). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gross, N., & Simmons, S. (2009). The religiosity of American college and university professors. Sociology of Religion, 70, 101129.Google Scholar
Guthrie, S. E. (1993). Faces in the clouds. A new theory of religion. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (1982). Religious belief and religious skepticism. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (2009). What philosophers know: Case studies in recent analytic philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814834.Google Scholar
Harris, P. L., & Corriveau, K. H. (2011). Young children’s selective trust in informants. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 366, 11791187.Google Scholar
Heiphetz, L., Spelke, E. S., Harris, P. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2013). The development of reasoning about beliefs: Fact, preference, and ideology. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 559565.Google Scholar
Hick, J. (1988). God and the universe of faiths. Essays in the philosophy of religion. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hills, A. (2009). Moral testimony and moral epistemology. Ethics, 120, 94127.Google Scholar
Hume, D. (1757). The natural history of religion. In Four dissertations (pp. 1117). London: A. Millar.Google Scholar
James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience. A study in human nature. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.Google Scholar
Janzen, J. (1978). The quest for therapy in Lower Zaire. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children “intuitive theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15, 295301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelley, J., & De Graaf, N. D. (1997). National context, parental socialization, and religious belief: Results from 15 nations. American Sociological Review, 62, 639659.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, T. (2011). Consensus gentium: Reflections on the ‘common consent’ argument for the existence of God. In Clark, K. J. & VanArragon, R. J. (Eds.), Evidence and religious belief (pp. 135156). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
King, N. L. (2012). Disagreement: What’s the problem? Or a good peer is hard to find. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85, 249272.Google Scholar
King, P., & Ballantyne, N. (2009). Augustine on testimony. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 39(2), 195214.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1990). The division of cognitive labor. Journal of Philosophy, 87, 522.Google Scholar
Kox, W., Meeus, W., & Hart, H. (1991). Religious conversion of adolescents: Testing the Lofland and Stark model of religious conversion. Sociological Analysis, 52(3), 227240.Google Scholar
Lackey, J. (2010). What should we do when we disagree? In Gendler, T. & Hawthorne, J. (Eds.), Oxford studies in epistemology (Vol. 3, pp. 274293). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lackey, J. (2011). Assertion and isolated second-hand knowledge. In Brown, J. & Cappelen, H. (Eds.), Assertion: New philosophical essays (pp. 251275). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lackey, J. (2018). Experts and peer disagreement. In Benton, M., Hawthorne, J., & Rabinowitz, D. (Eds.), Knowledge, belief, and God: New insights in religious epistemology (pp. 228245). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakhdar, M., Vinsonneau, G., Apter, M. J., & Mullet, E. (2007). Conversion to Islam among French adolescents and adults: A systematic inventory of motives. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 17(1), 115.Google Scholar
Lane, J. D., Wellman, H. M., & Gelman, S. A. (2013). Informants’ traits weigh heavily in young children’s trust in testimony and in their epistemic inferences. Child Development, 84, 12531268.Google Scholar
Langermann, Y. T. (2000). Maimonides’ repudiation of astrology. In Cohen, R. S. & Levine, H. (Eds.), A Maimonides reader (pp. 131157). Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Legare, C. H. (2017). Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 78777883.Google Scholar
Levinstein, B. A. (2015). With all due respect: The macro-epistemology of disagreement. Philosopher’s Imprint, 15(13), 120.Google Scholar
Levy, N. (2017). Religious beliefs are factual beliefs: Content does not correlate with context sensitivity. Cognition, 161, 109116.Google Scholar
Levy, N. (in press). Due deference to denialism: Explaining ordinary people’s rejection of established scientific findings. Synthese, 115.Google Scholar
Lindeman, M., Svedholm-Häkkinen, A. M., & Lipsanen, J. (2015). Ontological confusions but not mentalizing abilities predict religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in supernatural purpose. Cognition, 134, 6376.Google Scholar
Littlejohn, C. (2013). Disagreement and defeat. In Machuca, D. E. (Ed.), Disagreement and skepticism (pp. 169192). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lofland, J., & Stark, R. (1965). Becoming a world-saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective. American Sociological Review, 30, 862875.Google Scholar
Longino, H. E. (1991). Multiplying subjects and the diffusion of power. Journal of Philosophy, 88, 666674.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. M. (2006). The art of hearing God: Absorption, dissociation, and contemporary American spirituality. Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 5, 133157.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. M. (2012a). A hyperreal God and modern belief. Current Anthropology, 53, 371395.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. M. (2012b). When God talks back. Understanding the American Evangelical relationship with God. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Luskin, R. C., O’Flynn, I., Fishkin, J. S., & Russell, D. (2014). Deliberating across deep divides. Political Studies, 62(1), 116135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maimonides, M. (12th century [1963a]). The guide of the perplexed (Vol. 1; S. Pines, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Maimonides, M. (12th century [1963b]). The guide of the perplexed (Vol. 2; S. Pines, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Maimonides, M. (12th century [1972]). Letter on astrology. In Twersky, I. (Ed.), A Maimonides reader (pp. 463473). Springfield, NJ: Behrman House.Google Scholar
Matheson, J. (2009). Conciliatory views of disagreement and higher-order evidence. Episteme, 6(3), 269279.Google Scholar
Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The enigma of reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. London: John W. Parker and Son.Google Scholar
Mill, J. S. (1874). Three essays on religion. London: Henry Holt and Co.Google Scholar
Nagel, J. (2012). Intuitions and experiments: A defense of the case method in epistemology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85, 495527.Google Scholar
Nielsen, M., Mushin, I., Tomaselli, K., & Whiten, A. (2014). Where culture takes hold: “Overimitation” and its flexible deployment in Western, Aboriginal, and Bushmen children. Child Development, 85, 21692184.Google Scholar
Norenzayan, A., Gervais, W. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2012). Mentalizing deficits constrain belief in a personal god. PLoS ONE, 7, e36880.Google Scholar
Paloutzian, R. F., Richardson, J. T., & Rambo, L. R. (1999). Religious conversion and personality change. Journal of Personality, 67(6), 10471079.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasnau, R. (2015). Disagreement and the value of self-trust. Philosophical Studies, 172(9), 23152339.Google Scholar
Paul, L. A. (2014). Transformative experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peels, R. (2015). Believing at will is possible. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93, 524541.Google Scholar
Pettigrew, R. (2016). Jamesian epistemology formalised: An explication of “the will to believe.” Episteme, 13, 253268.Google Scholar
Plantinga, A. (2000). Warranted Christian belief. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pollock, J. L. (1987). Defeasible reasoning. Cognitive Science, 11, 481518.Google Scholar
Potter, K. (2013). Religious disagreement: Internal and external. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74, 2131.Google Scholar
Pritchard, D. (2008). Knowing the answer, understanding, and epistemic value. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 77(1), 325339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 369381.Google Scholar
Ranney, M. A., & Clark, D. (2016). Climate change conceptual change: Scientific information can transform attitudes. Topics in Cognitive Science, 8(1), 4975.Google Scholar
Reid, J. (2015). The common consent argument from Herbert to Hume. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 53, 401433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rini, R. (2017). Fake news and partisan epistemology. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 27(2), E43E64.Google Scholar
Roberts, R. C., & Wood, W. J. (2007). Intellectual virtues: An essay in regulative epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rollins, J. (2015). Beliefs and testimony as social evidence: Epistemic egoism, epistemic universalism, and common consent arguments. Philosophy Compass, 10, 7890.Google Scholar
Rowe, W. L. (1979). The problem of evil and some varieties of atheism. American Philosophical Quarterly, 16, 335341.Google Scholar
Schoenfield, M. (2014). Permission to believe: Why permissivism is true and what it tells us about irrelevant influences on belief. Noûs, 48, 193218.Google Scholar
Schwitzgebel, E. (2014). The moral behavior of ethicists and the role of the philosopher. In Luetge, C., Rusch, H., & Uhl, M. (Eds.), Experimental ethics: Toward an empirical moral philosophy (pp. 5964). Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Schwitzgebel, E., & Cushman, F. (2015). Philosophers’ biased judgments persist despite training, expertise and reflection. Cognition, 141, 127137.Google Scholar
Seeskin, K. (2017). Maimonides. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, retrieved September 21, 2017, from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/maimonides/Google Scholar
Shea, N. (2009). Imitation as an inheritance system. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 364, 24292443.Google Scholar
Shtulman, A. (2013). Epistemic similarities between students’ scientific and supernatural beliefs. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105, 199212.Google Scholar
Simpson, R. M. (2017). Permissivism and the arbitrariness objection. Episteme, 14(4)519538.Google Scholar
Smith, J. (1902). History of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. Period I: History of Joseph Smith, the prophet, by himself (Vol. 1). Salt Lake City: Deseret News.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G., & Wilson, D. (2010). Epistemic vigilance. Mind and Language, 25, 359393.Google Scholar
Stanford, K. (2006). Exceeding our grasp: Science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stroud, S. (2006). Epistemic partiality in friendship. Ethics, 116, 498524.Google Scholar
Swinburne, R. (2004). The existence of God (6th ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Taves, A. (2016). Revelatory events. Three case studies of the emergence of new spiritual paths. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Teresa of Ávila, . (1577 [1921]). The interior castle or the mansions. www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.pdf.Google Scholar
Van Inwagen, P. (1996). It is wrong, everywhere, always, for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. In Jordan, J. & Howard-Snyder, D. (Eds.), Faith, freedom and rationality (pp. 137154). Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, N. (2014). Religious credence is not factual belief. Cognition, 133, 698715.Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, N. & van Elk, M. (in press). Seeking the supernatural: The interactive religious experience model. Religion, Brain and Behavior.Google Scholar
Vavova, K. (2018). Irrelevant influences. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 96(1), 134152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedgwood, R. (2007). The nature of normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wettstein, H. (2012). The significance of religious experience. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
White, R. (2014). Evidence cannot be permissive. In Steup, M., Turri, J., & Sosa, E. (Eds.), Contemporary debates in epistemology (pp. 312323). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A., Allan, G., Devlin, S., Kseib, N., Raw, N., & McGuigan, N. (2016). Social learning in the real-world: ‘Over-imitation’ occurs in both children and adults unaware of participation in an experiment and independently of social interaction. PloS One, 11(7), e0159920.Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, N. (1996). John Locke and the ethics of belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Worrall, J. (2004). Science discredits religion. In Peterson, M. L. & VanArragon, R. J. (Eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of religion (pp. 5972). Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, L. (2011). Epistemic self-trust and the Consensus Gentium argument. In Clark, K. J. & VanArragon, R. J. (Eds.), Evidence and religious belief (pp. 2236). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, L. (2012). Epistemic authority: A theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, P. (2007). Atheism. Contemporary numbers and patterns. In Martin, M. (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to atheism (pp. 4765). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Religious Disagreement
  • Helen De Cruz, Oxford Brookes University
  • Online ISBN: 9781108557849
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Religious Disagreement
  • Helen De Cruz, Oxford Brookes University
  • Online ISBN: 9781108557849
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Religious Disagreement
  • Helen De Cruz, Oxford Brookes University
  • Online ISBN: 9781108557849
Available formats
×