Reason and Religion

In his new book Reason and Religion: Evaluating and Explaining Belief in Gods, Herman Philipse returns to the project of his book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (Oxford University Press, 2012), There he focused on what he described as “the strategic choices and dilemmas with which religious believers and apologetic philosophers of religion are faced in our age of science.” Using the innovative framework of a decision tree, he provided a taxonomy of defenses of the legitimacy of theism. The most promising type of defense, in his view, was exemplified by Richard Swinburne’s The Existence of God (Clarendon Press, 2004), and he accordingly offered a detailed critique of Swinburne’s views, culminating with a recommendation of atheism. 

Like its predecessor, Reason and Religion surveys the landscape of the philosophy of religion through the lens of Philipse’s decision tree, and offers the same recommendation of atheism, but with important and interlocking changes. Apparently aimed at a broader and less scholarly audience, Reason and Religion is overall less technical: the reader is frequently referred to God in the Age of Science? for further discussion of various details. Departing from the discipline of philosophy, a pair of chapters is devoted to considering scientific explanations of religious belief and its development (including, e.g., the relationship between polytheism and monotheism and the spread of moralizing religions). And a usefully revised version of the decision tree is presented.

After a brief introduction, there is a confusing beginning. Chapter 1 starts by presenting the argument that religious belief is defeated by the realization that it is culturally contingent. Under pressure, though, the argument is repeatedly revised. By the end of the chapter, cultural contingency is downplayed in favor of the claim that the primary sources of religious beliefs—“such as revelations, religious experiences, or dreams” (33)—are incapable of “calibration,” meaning that they cannot be established usually to yield true or probably true beliefs. Although the gist of the calibration argument is clear, it is not presented in sufficient detail to be particularly convincing. It is also disappointing that Philipse is not explicit in his verdict on the cultural contingency argument, which is of independent interest.

In chapter 2, Philipse turns his attention to the relationship between science and religion, emphasizing what he regards as the intrinsic conflict between the two by invoking stock examples such as Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace versus Isaac Newton on the stability of the solar system and Charles Darwin versus William Paley on the design of living things. The conflict, in his view, is due to the impossibility of calibrating the primary sources of religious beliefs: “if the scientific enterprise . . . is defined as our human search for truth by means of well-validated epistemic methods and sources, there is a methodological conflict between science and religion” (55). The chapter is marred by a tendency to assimilate specific empirical claims and scriptural interpretations to “theism” without qualification.

In the following pair of chapters, Philipse briefly surveys modern scientific explanations of religious belief. Chapter 3 addresses the origin of religious belief and the transition from polytheism to monotheism. Here he is broadly sympathetic to work in the naturalistic tradition initiated by David Hume, although not doctrinaire about issues not yet settled by the evidence. The bulk of chapter 4 examines explanations of the rise and spread of moralizing religions, with a focus on Christianity. Philipse ends the chapter with a somewhat off-topic plea to religious leaders to “preach passionately a restraint in human procreation within their communities” (120) in order to mitigate the climate change crisis, with no consideration of the ethical issues of population control.

Finally, Philipse presents his decision tree. In the resulting taxonomy, theists are non-factualists (e.g., D. Z. Phillips) or factualists. Factualists are fideists (e.g., Søren Kierkegaard) or “reasonabilists,” who regard their beliefs as (epistemologically) reasonable. Reasonabilists, in turn, are “confidentialists,” who regard their beliefs as reasonable even if evidence for them is unavailable (e.g., Alvin Plantinga), or evidentialists. Evidentialists then divide into those who hold that the evidence for their beliefs may be accessible only to participants in a religious community (e.g., John Cottingham and Paul Moser) and those who hold that such evidence is publicly available. The latter evidentialists split into those who take science as their methodological model (e.g., Richard Swinburne) and those who do not.

The decision tree approach is in general valuable, even for readers who may not agree with Philipse’s specific criticisms of the various positions that dangle from its limbs, and the rendition in chapters 5 and 6 of Religion and Reason is particularly useful thanks to its concision. Additionally, Philipse’s sustained attention to the relatively underdiscussed positions represented by Cottingham and Moser is welcome. These chapters on their own might be profitably used in a philosophy of religion course, although the discussion is not entirely self-sufficient, since forms of evidentialism in which science is not taken as the methodological model (“Science-shunning Natural Theology,” to use Philipse’s term) are summarily dismissed partly on the basis of the calibration argument from chapter 1.

There is a certain tension between the approach of chapters 5 and 6 and the approach of chapter 1. Chapter 1 assumes that religious belief is epistemologically based on revelation (sensu lato) and rejects it as uncalibratable and thus epistemologically illegitimate, while chapters 5 and 6 begin by assuming that the question of the epistemological basis of religious belief is open and only accord a brief discussion to rejecting the legitimacy of revealed religion. Perhaps Philipse should have considered incorporating the discussion of calibration within the decision tree. Be that as it may, Reason and Religion is a welcome contribution, primarily on account of its development of the project of God in the Age of Science? It is to be hoped that Philipse continues to refine and expand these themes.

Glenn Branch is deputy director of the National Center for Science Education.

Glenn Branch

Date Of Review:

May 25, 2023