Rational Religion
Beyond Dogmatic Belief and Unbelief
The Danger of Polarization
• Dogmatic Belief: Reason has no place in religion; we must rely wholly on revelation. • Dogmatic Unbelief: Religion is necessarily irrational; therefore, we should reject it. • Shared Assumption: “Rational religion” is oxymoronic; faith & reason are antithetical. • The Result: A tired and polarizing debate; a needlessly narrow marketplace of ideas.
A Venerable Religious “Third Way”:
Enlightenment Religious Philosophy
• Many respected 17th- and 18th-century philosophers believed that it was possible to reason about religion, including:
- Rationalists: Descartes, Leibniz, Pascal - Empiricists: Berkeley, Hume, Locke
• I will focus my attention tonight on the arguments of one of these philosophers, Immanuel Kant, for two reasons inter alia: my specialty and the power and subtlety of his claims for God and immortality.
Kantian Terminology
Happiness
Ideally, the complete realization of all of our desires; Kant says that it is the universal subjective end of human beings.
Kantian Terminology
Virtue
Doing the right thing for the right reason, i.e., doing your duty out of respect for humanity in yourself and others, not for reasons of material selfinterest, reputation, honor, etc.; Kant calls virtue the “worthiness to be happy.”
Kantian Terminology
The Highest Good
Happiness proportioned to virtue perfectly realized: a moral ideal in which all human beings have achieved perfect virtue and enjoy full happiness as a consequence—a completely contented society of saints, in short.
Claim 1:
The Highest Good is a morally obligatory end and is therefore possible. • We are morality’s authors (autonomy). • Morality requires us to develop our virtue, to help others do so, and to advance their happiness when consistent with morality. • Viewed systematically, these efforts are equivalent to advancing the Highest Good. • To set something as an end, we must think that it is possible; if we must set something as an end, then moral reason authorizes us to believe in its possibility (ought→can).
Claim 2:
The Highest Good is impossible: no necessary connection exists between happiness and virtue. • No analytic connection: Happiness and virtue are not equivalent—happiness is possible without virtue and vice versa. • No synthetic connection: No known law of nature or power of man can unerringly connect happiness and virtue. • This impossibility is only subjective: we simply cannot conceive how a necessary connection of this sort is possible.
Implications of the Contradiction
• Our reason is simply at war with itself here:
- It demands that we pursue the highest good and assures us that it is possible, but - it also cannot conceive how it is possible.
• The psychological possibility of a moral life is threatened by this contradiction: how can we conscientiously pursue an end whose possibility is inconceivable to us? • Kant is concerned that this may lead to us “seeing [moral] effort as entirely futile in its effects and thereby flagging in it.” Despair.
Resolving the Contradiction
• Our reason warrants belief in both God and immortality in order to resolve this conflict:
- God: A being with the usual divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.) would be fully capable of proportioning happiness to virtue in this life…or the next. - Immortality: Moral perfection is possible only on the assumption of an infinite existence to spend conscientiously working towards it.
• God and immortality are in no way objectively impossible, so given our moral need for them, we are justified in believing in them.
The Modesty of the Argument
1. It makes claims about warranted belief rather than knowledge. 2. It is consistent with agnosticism: so long as God and immortality are believed to be possible, so is the Highest Good. 3. It may be consistent with even weaker religious beliefs: so long as a ground for the highest good is believed possible…. Kant’s argument does not mandate belief but rather insulates belief from the predations of an atheistic materialism.
The Radicalism of the Argument
• Morality precedes God, not vice versa. • Consequently, morality establishes both the content and the limits of all religious doctrine. For example:
- No warrant for superstition (e.g., sacrifices) or enthusiasm (e.g., mystical contact with God). - No warrant for scriptural literalism (e.g., the Abraham and Isaac story): moral hermeneutics.
• A rational warrant for one’s religious beliefs may come at a cost: the need for a revision of those beliefs→religious enlightenment.
Rational-Religion Readings
• Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 226-58 (5:107-48). • ──────, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, eds. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge University Press, 1998). • Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Cornell University Press, 1967 [paperback 1990]).