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THE IRRATIONALITY OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2015

Bryan Frances
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Abstract

Many highly educated people think religious belief is irrational and unscientific. If you ask a philosopher, however, you'll likely get two answers: most religious belief is rational in some respects and irrational in other respects. In my previous essay (THINK 40) I explained why they think so many religious beliefs are rational. In this essay I explain why they think those same beliefs are irrational.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 15 , Issue 42 , Spring 2016 , pp. 15 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015 

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References

Note

1 A more ambitious version of charge C8 claims that in many cases even if the three-part antecedent isn't quite true of someone, the person in question is sophisticated enough that it should be true of her, and that's enough for an epistemic defect in the retained theistic belief. Think of an athlete who misses something she should not have missed: she is blameworthy for failing to do X even though she didn't detect anything that called out for doing X. The idea here is that we have epistemic responsibilities and failure to meet them in some circumstances is a serious epistemic defect.