Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:45:20.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Is sceptical religion adequate as a religion?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2013

ANDREW DOLE*
Affiliation:
Department of Religion, Amherst College, AC # 2252, Amherst, MA 01002, USA e-mail: adole@amherst.edu

Abstract

I argue that J. L. Schellenberg's sceptical religion faces two problems of religious adequacy. The first has to do with its relationship to the goal of bringing persons into proper alignment with an ultimate good; the second, with the desideratum of sceptical religion's becoming sufficiently well-established as to be a vehicle for the accomplishment of great things on the stage of history. I argue that actual sceptical religion would need to accommodate itself to the requirements of historical existence, and that such accommodation might well lead to a blurring of the distinctions Schellenberg draws between ‘sectarian’ and sceptical religion.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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

Byrne, P. (1989) Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Hout, M. et al. (2001) ‘The demographic imperative in religious change in the United States’, The American Journal of Sociology, 107, 468500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, E. (2011) Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (London: Profile Books).Google Scholar
Schellenberg, J. L. (2005) Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Schellenberg, J. L. (2007) The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Schellenberg, J. L. (2009) The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Schellenberg, J. L. (2013) ‘My stance in philosophy of religion’, Religious Studies, doi:10.1017/S0034412513000036CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max (2003) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons (tr.) (New York: Dover).Google Scholar