Faith,Belief and Fictionalism

Is propositional religious faith constituted by belief? Recent debate has focussed on whether faith may be constituted by a positive non‐doxastic cognitive state, which can stand in place of belief. This article sets out and defends the doxastic theory. We consider and reject three arguments commonly used in favour of non‐doxastic theories of faith: (1) the argument from religious doubt; (2) the use of ‘faith’ in linguistic utterances; and (3) the possibility of pragmatic faith. We argue that belief is required to maintain a distinction between genuine faith, pretend faith, and fictionalist faith.     

The Impossible of Faith: Marxist and Post–Secular Interpretations of Belief and Religion

Books reviewed in this article:
Slavoj Žižek, On Belief
John D. Caputo, On Religion     

论信、信念、信仰、宗教信仰的特征及意义

“信”植根于人性之中并且是人之生存、思考和行动的基础。研究信、信念、信仰、宗教信仰的含义、特点及其相互关系具有重要的理论意义和现实意义。信仰作为一种具有超越性的人生终极价值,在很大程度上是和宗教观念联系在一起的。宗教信仰具有个体性、选择性、神圣性等特征。信仰(包括宗教信仰)对人生的重大影响主要表现在:为人生提供终极的基础;为人们提供价值体系中的“应当的应当”;对道德进行聚合和圣化;给人生带来无限的希望;使人生获得真正的自由。     

信仰和知识之间的宗教——德里达与宗教

世界的意义存在于世界之外。——维特根斯坦:《逻辑哲学论》在今天这个经常以宗教名义各行其是的纷乱世界,如何能够不割断哲学传统进行宗教思考?这是德里达在《信仰与知识》!"中要探讨解决的问题。德里达其实很早就开始对宗教进行思考。宗教问题成为他深入运用他的解构策略的重     

Financing Faith: Religion and Strategic Philanthropy

Over the last century, a new form of strategic philanthropy arose—that of the private foundation. Foundations do not account for a large portion of donations received by religious organizations, but they can deploy important resources at critical moments. Examining data between 1999 and 2003 from the Foundation Center on grants and grant making, we find that a very small number of foundations are dominant actors in religious strategic philanthropy. These organizations introduce isomorphic tendencies within American religion. Federal tax policies and financial scandals precipitated the emergence of more organizational forms—regranting organizations, supporting organizations, and oversight organizations. Factors such as secularization, religious pluralism, and globalization have generated new challenges for private foundations, and in the aggregate, these developments have contributed to a restructuring within the world of religious philanthropy.     

Religion and Paranormal Belief

This article uses a Canadian national sample to examine the relationship between conventional religious belief, church attendance, and belief in paranormal phenomena. Greater religious belief is strongly associated with greater paranormal belief. Church attendance (and other measures of religious participation) are only weakly associated with paranormal belief until conventional religious belief is statistically controlled; once this is done, greater church attendance is strongly associated with lowered paranormal belief. Together, these two religious variables explain about one-quarter of the variance in paranormal belief, making them the strongest predictors that have yet to be identified.     

Consuming Religion: Faith in the Future and the Future of Faith

Books reviewed in this article:
John Drane, The McDonaldization of the Church: Spirituality, Creativity, and the Future of the Church
George Ritzer, Enchanting A Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption     

Religion,Philosophy and Family Resemblances

Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblances has been adopted by some writers either to explain the use of the word ‘religion’ or to advocate a use in the context of a definition. The purpose of this definition is supposedly to avoid an essentialist definition of religion such as ‘belief in God or gods’ which is seen as too parochially tied to Judaeo-Christian theistic origins of the word, while at the same time guaranteeing a distinctive role for religion as a universally applicable analytical concept. However, if an essentialist definition is not smuggled in for the purpose of maintaining a distinction between the ‘religion’ family and other neighbouring families such as ideologies, worldviews, values or symbolic systems, then the family becomes so indefinite that the word ceases to pick out any distinctive aspect of human culture. And this definitional dilemma in fact reflects the actual use of the word ‘religion’ by the scholarly community. Analysis of ‘religion’ texts shows that the word is used in such a large range of contexts that it is devoid of analytical value. Consequently, there is an obligation on the community of scholars to reconceptualize the wide and valuable range of work which is being carried out in ‘religion’ departments.     

Rationality,Relativism, and Religion: A Reinterpretation of Peter Winch

Many point to Peter Winch’s discussion of rationality, relativism, and religion as a paradigmatic example of cultural relativism. In this paper, I argue that Winch’s relationship to relativism is widely misinterpreted in that, despite his pluralistic understanding of rationality, Winch does allow for universal features of culture in virtue of which cross-cultural understanding and even critique is possible. Nevertheless, I also argue that given the kind of cultural universals that Winch produces, he fails to avoid relativism. This is because in order to provide the standards without which relativism ensues, one requires a certain kind of criteria of rationality, namely, what I here call substantive universals, a kind of criteria which Winch rejects.     

Robert Cummings Neville,Defining Religion: Essays in Philosophy of Religion

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

试论当代宗教哲学的历史背景和主要论域

本文不仅尖锐地提出了在后休谟-康德时代,特别是在后逻辑实证主义时代,宗教哲学是否能够继中世纪和近代"再次成为哲学的可以承认的分支学科"的问题,而且从"现代经验主义的英美哲学传统"的理论维度描述了当代宗教哲学产生和存在的"历史背景",并对当代宗教哲学的主要论域,如"上帝的本性"、"宗教语言"、"对有神论的辩护"、"宗教经验"及"恶的问题"等,作了颇具特色的概述.