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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2009
In this paper I evaluate Brian Zamulinski's recent attempt to rebut an argument to the conclusion that having any kind of religious faith violates a moral duty. I agree with Zamulinski that the argument is unsound, but I disagree on where it goes wrong. I criticize Zamulinski's alternative construal of Christian faith as existential commitment to fundamental assumptions. It does not follow that we should accept the moral argument against religious faith, for at least two reasons. First, Zamulinski's Cliffordian ethics of belief is defective in several regards. Second, the truth of doxastic involuntarism and the possibility of doxastic excuse conditions can be used to demonstrate that the argument is unconvincing.
1. Zamulinski, Brian ‘Christianity and the ethics of belief’, Religious Studies, 44 (2008), 333–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Page references will be to this article, unless indicated otherwise.
2. At certain points Zamulinski even limits the discussion to Protestant versions of Christian faith, but we need not take those details into account for the purposes of this paper.
3. See Zamulinski, Brian ‘A defence of the ethics of belief’, Philo, 7 (2004), 79–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem ‘A re-evaluation of Clifford and his critics’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 40 (2002), 437–457; and idem ‘Morality and the foundations of practical reason’, Reason Papers, 29 (2007), 7–17.
4. Contrary to what Zamulinski suggests (340), the propositional attitude that he deems relevant for Christian faith might be exactly the concept (or a specific use of the concept) which Jonathan Cohen refers to as ‘acceptance’. Cohen clearly distinguishes acceptance from assuming, supposing, presuming, and taking as a hypothesis: in opposition to the latter, acceptance implies commitment to a pattern, and it suggests that there is a giver of premises or rules of inference and a receiver. Also, one holds it relevant that p in a given context iff one believes that in that context anyone should accept that p. Cf. L. Jonathan Cohen An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 12–14.
5. For some well-known recent defences of non-doxastic accounts of religious faith, see William P. Alston ‘Belief, acceptance, and religious faith’, in Jeff Jordan (ed.), Faith, Freedom, and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 3–27; Robert Audi ‘Faith, belief, and rationality’, in James E. Tomberlin (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives, V, Philosophy of Religion (Atascadero CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1991), 213–239; idem ‘Rationality and religious commitment’, in Marcus Hester (ed.) Faith, Reason, and Skepticism (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 1992), 50–97; idem ‘The dimensions of faith and the demands of reason’, in Eleonore Stump (ed.) Reasoned Faith (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 70–89; idem ‘Belief, faith, and acceptance’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 63 (2008), 87–102; Golding, Joshua L. ‘Toward a pragmatist conception of religious faith’, Faith and Philosophy, 7 (1990), 486–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James L. Muyskens The Sufficiency of Hope: The Conceptual Foundations of Religion (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 1979), 122–124; Louis P. Pojman Religious Belief and the Will (London: Routledge, 1986), 212–234; and J. L. Schellenberg Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 127–166. All these authors have it that religious faith does not entail certain religious beliefs, although their analyses of what religious faith amounts to are highly different and sometimes even mutually exclusive. For an elaborate critique of Robert Audi's non-doxastic account of religious faith, see Radcliffe, Dana M. ‘Nondoxastic faith: Audi on religious commitment’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 37 (1995), 73–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. Zamulinski, Brian ‘Religion and the pursuit of truth’, Religious Studies, 39 (2003), 43–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 55. That this assumption is crucial to Zamulinski's argument in that paper is rightly argued by Tim Mawson in his ‘Religions, truth, and the pursuit of truth: a reply to Zamulinski’, Religious Studies, 40 (2004), 361–364, and acknowledged by Zamulinski in his reply to this article, ‘Rejoinder to Mawson’, Religious Studies, 40 (2004), 365–366.
7. ‘Loving objectively’ would then be a technical term rather than an expression of common parlance. For, clearly, one can act to the benefit of some person y without (in the ordinary sense of the word) loving y and one can harm y while loving y more than anyone else.
8. This is also why I did not say that MA is logically valid. For, one should not have religious beliefs only if the obligation not to have religious beliefs trumps the obligation to have them (if there is such an obligation).
9. Here, one might think, for instance, of David S. Wilson Darwin's Cathedral (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 51ff.
10. See John Calvin Inst. I.iii.1-3, iv.2.
11. Cf. William K. Clifford ‘The ethics of belief’, Lectures and Essays, II (London: Macmillan, 1901), 163–205, 163ff.
12. I would like to thank Anthony Booth, Brian Zamulinski, and an anonymous referee for this journal for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
