Modern sociology and anthropology proposed from their very beginnings a scientific study of religion. This paper discusses attempts to understand religion in this ‘scientific’ way. I start with a classical canon of anthropology and sociology of religion, in the works of E. B. Tylor (1832–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). Science aims to be a discourse that transcends local identities; it is deeply cosmopolitan. To offer a local metaphysics as its basis would produce a discourse that was not recognizable as a contribution to the cosmopolitan conversation of the sciences. So, a science of religion cannot appeal to the entities invoked in any particular religion; hence the methodological atheism of these three founding fathers. This cosmopolitan ideal, the calling of the scientist, on the one hand, and the concern to understand the ideas of other cultures, on the other, can pull in different directions. Understanding requires us to appeal to our own concepts but not to our own truths. In the explanations, though, truth – the universal shared reality – has to matter, because the scientific story of religion has to work for people of all faiths and none, precisely because it is cosmopolitan. Not everything we call a religion will have historical Christianity's laser-like focus on ontological truth-claims. But as long as there are people making truth-claims in the name of religion, there will be the possibility of a tension between the very idea of a science of religion and some of the multifarious collections of beliefs, practices and institutions that make up what we now call ‘religions’.

Peter van Inwagen has given an answer to the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. His answer is: Because there being nothing is as improbable as anything can be: it has probability 0. Here I shall examine his argument for this answer and I shall argue that it does not work because no good reasons have been given for two of the argument's premises and that the conclusion of the argument does not constitute an answer to the question van Inwagen wanted to answer.

‘Real’ and ‘really’ are deflated and minimalized in parallel to the minimalist and de-flationary treatment of truth. J.L. Austin's insightful comment that with ‘real’: ‘The negative wears the trousers’ is elucidated and developed. There follows a discussion of the bearing of the point on Plato's claims about knowledge, belief and ignorance. It is maintained that it is implausible to hope that acquaintance with a Form for various Fs is going to provide complete knowledge of the wardrobe of Austinian trousers, especially inasmuch as that wardrobe grows and changes with the vicissitudes of socio-industrial-commercial-technological life.

In response to widespread doubts among professional philosophers (Russell, Horwich, Dietrich, McGinn, Chalmers), Stoljar argues for a ‘reasonable optimism’ about progress in philosophy. He defends the large and surprising claim that ‘there is progress on all or reasonably many of the big questions’. However, Stoljar's caveats and admitted avoidance of historical evidence permits overlooking persistent controversies in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that are essentially unchanged since the 17th Century. Stoljar suggests that his claims are commonplace in philosophy departments and, indeed, the evidence I adduce constitutes an indictment of the widely shared view among professional analytic philosophers.

I argue that the widely-held view that belief aims at the truth is false. I acknowledge that there is an important connection between truth and belief but propose a new way of interpreting that connection. On the account I put forth, evidence of truth constrains belief without furnishing an aim for belief.

This paper starts by recalling a conversation of the author, then a young student, with Karl Popper in 1988. Popper argued that there is a ‘British mystery’ among the English-speaking peoples: their deep love of liberty, combined with a deep sense of duty, which was epitomised in the 20th Century by Winston Churchill. This paper argues that Churchill was a representative of an old tradition that goes back to Magna Carta of 1215. At its core is the protection of liberty to enjoy decentralised and peaceful ways of life and the corresponding allergy to revolutions and to schemes of perfection centrally designed.