The listing of abstracts is in alphabetical order after the keynote address. Click on the author to reach the abstract. Papers, when available, can be reached from hyperlinked titles. They are unedited pdf files.
Philosophers have long been preoccupied with questions about happiness and the good life. But human beings require more for their happiness than security and wellbeing: they hunger for meaning in their lives. This paper examines two principal approaches to finding meaning in life: those which invoke a transcendent source of meaning and value, as in the theistic religions, and those which look for immanent meaning, within the ordinary human world. Theistic accounts are often thought to face the problem of ‘heteronomy’: they appear to make our fulfilment depend on our subordinating our lives to the will of a superior being. It will be argued, however, that this problem can be overcome by a proper understanding of religious allegiance. The paper then looks at secular attempts to find meaning entirely within our own human world, and argues that such accounts face serious philosophical problems about the nature of value. To try to secure meaning within an entirely ‘closed’ and contingent cosmos does violence to our unquenchable human aspiration to reach forward, beyond the given, to something greater.
Recent readings of Kierkegaard, including those of Zizek, Michael Burns, David Kangas and Steven Shakespeare, see him as being interested in ontological questions and, in harmony with his predecessors in the German Idealist tradition, in the nature of Being as a whole. These recent readings of Kierkegaard stand in contrast to those interpretations, of which there are many, which claim Kierkegaard’s thought to stand in opposition to the German Idealist tradition in general, to Hegel’s thought in particular and indeed, to any form of metaphysics or ontology. According to these latter readings, Kierkegaard opposes the abstractions of German Idealist thought in favour of the ‘actuality’ of lived experience.
The new way of viewing Kierkegaard’s texts stands alongside a revival of interest in ontology and metaphysics more generally. I will claim in this paper that these recent readers of Kierkegaard are right to suggest that he is focussing in part on ontological questions and on issues pertaining to the nature of being as a whole. I will also suggest that the view I will attribute to Kierkegaard not only has some plausibility as an interpretation of his deep and quirky writings, but that it is a view that has much to recommend it in its own right . I will make the bold claim that Being, for Kierkegaard, following Schelling, can be read in terms of conceptions of birthing – the capacity to give birth as well as a notion of a birthing body. I will claim, further, that the story offered by Kierkegaard, in the Concept of Anxiety, about the origin of freedom connects with a birthing body. I will also suggest that the ontological view I will attribute to him has some plausibility in its own right.
It is important, of course, to note that Kierkegaard, especially when writing under the pseudonym of Climacus, is concerned above all with subjective passion and with ‘faith as the highest passion of subjectivity’ and he is highly critical of ‘objective’ thought and of doctrines that might pass as ‘speculative’. However, it is possible to construe this as, at least in part, a critique not of all forms of philosophising but of particular philosophical positions. It may be that there are other options than those listed, for example by Edward Mooney. Subjectivity may neither be ‘a Cartesian state of consciousness (n)or a special place from which one can know’. Mooney’s own suggestion of subjectivity as a moral stance that realises personality, may itself constitute an ontological position. Indeed, the view, often held since Descartes, of the subject as self -positing, invokes an ontological claim that Kierkegaard contests.
In Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way, Johannes speaks of the Gods creating woman. In The Concept of Anxiety, this metaphor is transformed into a natural process. Woman and man, as free beings, free to do right or wrong, I will argue, evolved out of a purposive nature. Specifically, the awareness of freedom evolved out of a sexual capacity; the sexuality of a woman, of a being that has a body that can give birth. In its turn, I will argue, the ground of the possibility of right and wrong is Being itself conceived as a body that can birth. Importantly, however, this body is not only a body. Specifically, Being is itself grounded in a notion that cannot easily be described in terms of any kind of substance. Rather it is grounded in a capacity or a power. This power is described by Schelling in terms of a yearning or a longing – the yearning of ‘the eternal one’ to give birth to itself. Kierkegaard, I will suggest, draws on this metaphor.
This proposal, then, is concerned with Kierkegaard’s ontological conception of God as a power or a capacity to give birth, with nature as a birthing body and with the origin of the freedom to do right and wrong as itself grounded in Eve – a woman who has the capacity to give birth.
The reason for the invisibility of African traditional religion within the African continent and its Diaspora societies is not unconnected with certain historical antecedents and the materialist/scientific conception of reality that is now prevalent in contemporary societies. The historical antecedent relates to the Western anthropological conception of African religion as animism, a view which places African religion at a lower pedestal vis-a-vis its Western counterpart. This attitude also has its replica in slavery and colonial experiences of which anything that is Black (African) was condemned as evil. The contemporary dimension of the contempt for African religion is connected to the belief in contemporary societies that science is the paradigm of explanation of events and actions at both the theoretical and practical domains of our natural and social lives. Scientism has also relegated Western religion among African and its Diaspora societies to a class phenomenon, where those who do not embrace Christianity and Islam are regarded as the uneducated and hence belonging to a lower cadre in the twin process of civilization and modernity. My paper draws attention to the need to consider divination as an alternative epistemological, metaphysical and social system of reasoning and acting which is capable of addressing some of the existential challenges confronting the Caribbean as a historical and contemporary player in global affairs.
There is no gainsaying that religion has been one of the worst inventions of the human civilization. While humanity has evolved from very modest beginnings, with limited knowledge to fairly good understanding of reality, some of the tools humans have created to deal with reality have become masters of humans, making null the original good intentions behind their origination. Two of those tools are politics and religion. Anyone paying attention to the stranglehold of politics on societies (USA, Nigeria and Jamaica) would wonder how what was a tool has become the master. But even more significant is the case of religion.
In this essay I explore the epistemological limitations and enduring inadequacies which have led to the formulation of religion. I explore the fear created in, from and by religion about knowledge, information, science and technology, in order to ensure that humanity remains at the point of creation of religion, regardless of whatever has happened. It is suggested that religion captures all apparatuses of human civilization to serve its own ends, rather than redounding to assisting humanity to augment the needs of human societies. It is suggested that the most virulent examples of such debilitating religions are the Arabian Desert religions – blood thirsty, destructive, indecent and inhumane in all aspects of its relations with global humanity. It is concluded that the days of such religions may be numbered, if it does not result first in complete omnicide of humanity – this is my redemption song.
Henry of Harclay (ca. 1270-1317) was an English medieval philosopher who eventually rose to the rank of Chancellor of Oxford University. Though he was considered to be a “secular” master—that is, he was a professor who was unaffiliated with any particular religious order within Catholicism—he was undoubtedly a thinker who sought to reconcile the tenets of his faith with his scientific and philosophical views.
In this paper, I examine the ways in which this interplay between Aristotelian Science and Euclidean mathematics is informed by Henry’s religious commitments. Though Henry frequently makes use of theological claims (e.g., that God is simultaneously everywhere, or that Jesus’s body exists in many places at once during the Eucharist), he takes pains to develop an account of matter, dimension, and place that does not require an appeal to miracles for its justification. While religious beliefs are central examples in many of his arguments, ad hoc and extraneous appeals to direct intervention by God are consciously excluded from his theorizing. For Henry, an appeal to miracles does not make for good philosophy or good science.
In addition, Henry (as many of his contemporaries) is quite comfortable not only drawing from thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, the great Islamic commentator on Aristotle, but also in treating him as an authority nearly on par with Aristotle and the Christian Church Fathers themselves. Henry’s willingness to combine the best of the traditions with which he has familiarity—Catholic Christianity, Aristotle and other Ancient Greek philosophers, and Islamic NeoPlatonism—makes for a fascinating case study in the way a plurality of religious and scientific approaches can work together to create a new account of the some of the most fundamental aspects of the world. Untangling the puzzles of nature, he holds, requires that one appeal to multiple sources of philosophical, religious, and scientific thought.
The main source for this paper will be Henry of Harclay’s Ordinary Questions 21 and 24.
The aim of this paper is to argue for a new conception of religion that meets the needs of the Caribbean people. The paper calls for a new understanding and interpretation of religion primarily because the constitution of the Caribbean region has been socio-historically recreated to reflect European religious practices, and norms that have flourished in their societies, and in turn foisted into the Caribbean space with the expectation that they would flourish here as well. Consequently, the search for a comprehensive definition of religion suggests that, the notion of religious pluralism, embraces the quest for a religious ethic that reflects the Caribbean personality. European religious ethic in the region precipitated the historical vicissitudes that ensued, in the form of colonization, slavery, emancipation and independence in the experience of Caribbean societies. Ideologically, this shift evoked a sea change in the attitudes of the indigenes and, subsequent forced migrated Africans. The imperative wrought by the resulting religious intransigencies compelled the former enslaved people to seek a new conception of religion which could meet their aspirations, symbolised by the need to be free. Achieving this freedom meant that, the Euro-centric religious model needed to be amended and transcended. The modern Caribbean experience with religion is derived from the European tradition, rather than the African, and Asian derived religions bequeathed to us by our ancestors. In order to address some of the ills that plaque us, such as identity crisis and inequality; it is an imperative that we revisit our African religious heritage. In the first instance the European model does not embrace the African-Caribbean personality and ethos; and secondly, it is unable to help us reconcile the psychological trauma that we are experiencing as a direct result of our fore-parents’ experience of slavery. This mixed religious experience needs realigning to factor in the present existential realities. Therefore, the Caribbean people need to ‘carve out’ in the words of Sir Phillip Sherlock, a religion that reflects our experiential realities; while creating pathways towards the achievement of our aspirations.
One of the challenges of a modern democratic state is to ensure fundamental rights for all its citizens and to respect the human rights of all its inhabitants. Such a task is brought into sharp relief in the context of a pluralistic society such a Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean territories of which religion is an ingredient to be reckoned with in its various manifestations. At this juncture in the history of the region where many states are engaging in consultations on Constitutional reform, it is critical that national debates and the work of constitutional commissions take issue with the basic philosophical tenets underlying perspectives ventilated. One issue that requires further thinking through is the idea of a (secular) state and its relation to religion. Religion, while in principle separate from the arms of the State in Caribbean republics, is courted by politicians with the resultant privileging of religion giving a theocratic tinge to what becomes law and accepted practice; this in the place of a democracy imbued with a healthy respect for diversity and an evenhandedness in entitlements for all citizens. On exploring the idea of the separation of Church (Religion) and State, this paper reflects on the shape and degree of separation as existing in Trinidad and Tobago bringing to the fore selected hot button issues in which religion exerts considerable influence. With the tragic conflict between Israel and the inhabitants of Gaza, the IS and Bocoharam having declared themselves rulers of their own self defined Islamic States, and the recent Hobby Lobby rulings by the US supreme court, issues of state and religion, and the justifiable place of both are topical and significant not only for Trinidad & Tobago but for the region as its peoples take stock of themselves and examine institutional arrangements for governing well into the foreseeable future.
The conquest of Africa at the end of the 19th century was an important first step in the establishment of colonial empires there in the 20th century. Once established, these empires depended on a combination of force and moral suasion to sustain themselves. In this way, Christianity became the ideological basis of colonial rule. Yet Christianity had not been introduced into a tabula rasa for both African and Islamic religious thought and practice had permeated the African social fabric long before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Moreover, this prior non-Christian experience had severe implications for the process of erecting European regimes. This paper considers the African attitudes to Christianity in the area of British Cameroons. It suggests that the establishment of British rule over the territory was neither straightforward nor simple but was intimately bound up with the interplay of administrative policies, economic initiatives and religion. Thus, for example, the paper assesses the interplay of indirect rule, western education and Islam in British (Northern) Cameroons.
On December 25th, 2011 dozens of churchgoers were killed when members of Boko Haram detonated explosive devices. In the ensuing investigation, the following text message was recovered: Do a deed which Allah by his grace and mercy … [will] save you from the greatest fear and hell fire. 70 members of your family will marry you 72 virgins in paradise; give you a crown of respect which even the prophet will be impressed with. Utilizing the prospect of post-mortem paradise to generate temporal carnage has become a staple in the modern phenomenon of Islamic suicide bombing. But the practice extends beyond this modern form and far beyond the purview of Islam. The basic fact is that some religious believers kill themselves and others in order to attain a place in paradise. My essay is devoted to understanding this basic fact. I offer an outline of how differing conceptions of paradise generate greater and lesser propensities to engage in temporal violence. I identify three broad categories in which images of post-mortem paradise can be placed. Divided into dichotomous realms of heaven and hell, the promise of paradise and the threat of torment can be utilized to generate specific kinds of behaviour and/or allegiances to particular religious congregations. Post-mortem paradise, in this view, becomes a tool and it is a tool that can be utilized by anyone from violent extremists to strict religious pacifists. Pascal’s “Wager” is an emblematic philosophic representation of what I call a behaviour producing belief in the beyond. A second conception involves imagining the afterlife as an escape from a world that is viewed as metaphysically deficient. The glory and fullness of the otherworld is juxtaposed to the futility and transience of temporal existence. Tolstoy’s A Confession and Plato’s Phaedo capture this vision of the beyond. The dynamic in this form of afterlife belief is that of escape. But if the world is to be escaped, so too can human life be discarded. A third formulation of post-mortem paradise emerges in reference to those suffering sociopolitical oppression. The manner in which the oppressed believer interprets the beyond is all important. The believer can amplify his/her expectation of heaven and hell and thereby augment a desire to avenge his/her torment - heaven for the oppressed, hell for the oppressor. The late 2nd/early 3rd century Christian theologian Tertullian, as well as the fore-father of modern Islamic extremism, Sayyid Qutb, offer emblematic examples of such a vision. As an alternative to vengeance, the believer can focus solely on a forthcoming paradise for him or herself. Such a believer is often reduced to the impotence of which Marx critiqued when he noted that “the mortgage that the peasant has on heavenly blessings guarantees the mortgage that the bourgeois has on peasant lands.”4 The prospect of universal reconciliation represents a third response. Heavenly paradise becomes a site of reconciliation and the abolishment of oppression. Liberation theologians, with Gustavo Gutiérrez as a prime example, explore such a vision of post-mortem paradise.
[link is to powerpoints]
In recent years, epistemologists have devoted enormous attention to this question: what should happen when two epistemic peers who have shared their evidence and arguments nevertheless disagree about the truth-value of some proposition? One position (variously called the revisionist, conformist, conciliatory, and equal weight view) holds that in such cases, both peers possess a defeater for their belief, and so both are rationally required to revise their position in some way. The rival view (variously called anti-revisionism, non-conformism, steadfastness, and extra weight) holds that in such cases, neither party is rationally bound to revise her position. According to this view, both parties can rationally, as the saying goes, ‘agree to disagree’. Some philosophers have sought to apply the moves and countermoves from this debate to the context of religious disagreement. This is an extremely important endeavour, given the vast influence of religious disagreement throughout human history and indeed at the present time. In this paper, I set out and examine a provocative argument for anti-revisionism sketched by Catherine Z. Elgin (2010), and I explore whether it can successfully be applied to religious disagreement. Elgin says: “[p]ersistent disagreement in science or philosophy is not obviously a bad thing … [w]hen the reasons favoring each side of a dispute are sparse or exceedingly delicate, or the evidence is equivocal, or each side can solve important common problems that the other cannot, it may be better for the epistemic community that both positions continue to be accepted” (64-65). Her idea seems be that the community’s overall epistemic goals may be better served if individual inquirers persist in defending their views in the face of peer disagreement. Perhaps each participant in the disagreement will be motivated to more carefully develop and defend her view, and perhaps this will help to bring the community of inquirers as a whole closer to the truth. Elgin’s view has a certain prima facie appeal. After all, in certain communal endeavours, we tend to think that shared goals are best served when diverse viewpoints are represented. (Consider, for example, the notion that a democracy functions best when multiple rival factions have seats in parliament, or the idea that the presence of diverse perspectives on a hiring committee will lead to a better decision.) On the other hand, Elgin’s view might seem to license dogmatism, to promote acrimony, and to demand – unreasonably – that individual inquirers suborn their quest for truth to the needs of the group. After extracting what I take to be the most plausible argument suggested by Elgin’s remarks, I set out its chief philosophical advantages and disadvantages. I then consider whether it can plausibly be extended to religious disagreement. I identify several conditions that must be present for her argument to license religious anti-revisionism, and I argue that these will rarely, if ever, be satisfied.
I choose to discuss the topic from three novels produced by African writers from different horizons. I will use Mudimbe’s Entre les eaux (1975), Boris Boubacar Diop’s Les tambours de la mémoire (1990) and Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé (2000). Pierre Landu, the protagonist of Entre les eaux is a former catholic priest who in an effort to fight capitalism and exploitation of the poor by the rich joins a Marxist guerilla which preaches a proletarian Revolution. In Les tambours de la mémoire, Fadel Sarr, the son of billionaire, is inspired by the dream of peace and justice to join Queen Johanna Simentho in the Kingdom of Wissombo. Ahmadou Kourouma presents us an Ivorian twelve years old child, Birahima, who is involved in the wars that invade Liberia and Sierra Leone. What unites the three novels is the fact that they are all about religion. These novels all show the incapacity of religions, be it Christian belief or Islamic action to create a nation of peace, justice and work for all. Beyond the ontological question of how to live in a world of harmony and understanding among peoples of different descents rises the reality of ideology, dream and war as means to achieve human fulfillment. My paper seeks to philosophically question the impact of religion over the consciousness of human being as an impulsive force to overcome inequality and build a better world. The provocative title chosen by Kourouma, stating that Allah is not obliged to be just, shows the limits of religion in the construction of a nation. That a priest quits his Christian belief to embrace revolutionary thesis and radically reorient his life posits the question about the essence of religious and political behavior. The final aim of this paper is to critically identify the raisons d’être of ideology and religion in the building process of a human being and a nation. Published by a Congolese, a Senegalese and an Ivorian, the novels reflect at three historical moments of Africa the political situations of Africa recently hit by the Arab Spring, Boko Aram, Al Shabab or LRA of John Koni. The paper constitutes a start of a wider reflection on African leadership, “Africa and Religions”, relation between ideology and nation building.
In this paper, I consider the problematique of the public role of religion manifested in three spheres: the political, the cultural and the social spheres. The aim is to account for the changing shifts of the role of religion in the constitution of the lifeworld in these three spheres in an era of religiously motivated conflicts. To this end, I begin by describing these three spheres where the public role of religion is manifested. Thereafter, I articulate and interrogate the role of religion in the constitution of the lifeworld in the three spheres. My proposal is that the most plausible conception of the public role of religion should take the insights from the debates on post-secularism seriously. This is specifically the case because of the epistemological and cognitive dimensions of the resources embedded in the idea of post-secularism. These resources, I argue further, enable us to proffer new answers to the perennial problem of the opposition between naturalistic worldviews and religious worldviews. Furthermore, I propose that the idea of postsecularism articulated by Jürgen Habermas have vital contributions to make to the quest for global peace in contemporary times.
Philosophy of religion critically exams central themes and conceptions within religious traditions and investigates the religious significance of historical events. One such notable event is the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Understanding that philosophy is a transdisciplinary form of interrogation in contexts of discovery this paper presents the philosophy of the historical person Jesus as Jew, Rasta, Ubuntu and the prototype of the philosophy of Incarnation. In offering the philosophy of Jesus the distinction between revealed and natural theology, the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith will be offered. The first indication of Jesus’ philosophy would come from the historical fact that he was born, raised and died a Jewish man. In Judaism there is no real dualism. Jesus’ philosophy is monistic and dialectical with the oneness that is exhibited in his relationship with God, the Father and the community. The dialectical nature of Jesus’ philosophy can be grasped in the metaphysical understanding of himself when he states that “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. The intimate relation Jesus has for all reality therefore leads to an understanding of Rastafari as an expression of Incarnation. His union with God, i.e. Jah, and with the community, his brethren and sistren, is indistinguishable to the I-n-I of Rastafari. Jesus identifies the same three-fold relationship found in the I-n-I. I-n-I is central in understanding the Rastafarian reality. The I-n-I heralds the collapse of the radical dichotomy between creator and creature, heaven and earth, subject and object. With the African influence in the emergence of Rastafari one can recognize J.S. Mbiti’s statement that “I am because we are, we are because I am.” This is the foundation of Ubuntu as the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that one cannot exist as a human being in isolation and holds the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. As A Jew, Jesus is also Rasta and Ubuntu. This leads to the reality of Jesus as the testimony to a philosophy of Incarnation, identifying himself with the oneness of God.
Representationalism is often examined from a non-representationalist position and found to be counter-intuitive. However, taking a non-representationalist position, before it can be shown that non-representationalism is the case, puts the cart before the horse. There seems to be a dilemma here in that either a representationalist, or non-representationalist, position has to be adopted before we can debate the representationalist/non-representationalist issue and so we cannot debate this issue without some bias.
Representationalism is supported by science and needs to be examined carefully and so instead of taking the usual non-representationalist approach with its natural bias in favour of non-representationalism I assume a representationalist position and examine some philosophical issues from that perspective.
When this is done a significantly different model of how we perceive, think and communicate about our environment has to be adopted. This affects how we conceptualize language and consequently how we interpret ideas about religion expressed in language.
In the representationalist model I propose language cannot convey meanings; all that can be conveyed by language is a linguistic code, and the readers/listeners have to interpret this code and supply their own meanings. For example the sentences, “God is good” and “Allah is great” tend to be interpreted, from a non-representationalist perspective, to suggest that God and Allah are different entities. However, from a representationalist perspective the words “God” is a reference to a representation that the speaker has created in his own mind, as is “Allah”. There is much less certainty that these refer to different entities (they may be aspects of the same external entity).
In addition, the language God and Allah use when issuing their instructions cannot convey meanings; these meanings have to be supplied by whoever is listening/reading/experiencing the language. As a result no one can claim to “know” what God/Allah said or meant; they can only “know” the meanings they have attached to whatever they have read/heard/experienced. The effect of this way of interpreting language is to reduce certainty about the meanings of religious teachings while emphasizing the role of the interpreter. This can have a profound effect on religion.
Another consequence that can have an important impact on religion is the tendency for representationalism to encourage us to think of ourselves as using concepts to construct representational models, much as our perceptual systems is thought to construct representations using information gathered from the environment. This has the effects of changing the tone of a discussion on religion to one of constructing, testing and modifying representations, rather than making conflicting claims about what “is” the case.
As a result of globalization, we are living in the age of cross-cultural communication. This fact has strongly influenced all dimensions of our individual and social life, in such a way that none of the theories being presented for improving the quality of social life could be applicable unless they take into account this undeniable fact. It seems therefore necessary to know and analyze both factors facilitating and factors preventing this kind of communication if we want to have an appropriate cooperation across cultures and hence a better life. One of these factors, and perhaps the most significant one, is religion. Yet its role hasn’t been, up till now, rightly considered; While, investigating various religions’ basics and doctrines, we find that religion plays an essential and at the same time positive role in the field of cross-cultural communication. In this paper I intend to discuss that in fact religion doesn’t only have a very positive attitude towards interaction between different cultures, but more importantly one of its fundamental functions is to determine, in a positive way of course, the relationship between cultures. In other words if a religion denies the variety of cultures and speaks of the superiority of a certain culture it’s not a true religion. Actually I will argue against this assumption that an atheistic or agnostic outlook provide more scope to humans cooperate across cultures and show that religion as a sacred set of doctrines which is totally consistent with the existential structure of humankind provide frameworks whereby a better communication between cultures is possible. More precisely since religions claim they are well aware of all aspects of human nature and since culture is an inseparable part of human nature, religions then highly emphasize the issue of culture, whereas agnostic positions neglect some and even perhaps most of the essential aspects of human nature, including culture and this fact prohibits them to provide appropriate frameworks for cross-cultural communication. Thus we can claim that a religious perspective provide more scope for interaction between cultures. In order to support my argument I then will explain some instances from texts of a certain religion, Islam, and one of its main schools, namely Shia, to show how much religion values the problem of cross-cultural cooperation.
In this paper, I want to show how David Hume’s idiosyncratic way of thinking about religion can be a useful starting point for contemporary questions in the philosophy of religion, in particular the question of the plurality of world religions. Hume’s religious writings closely dealt with questions of religious pluralism and the value of what he named “true religion”. While his contribution to religious thought is generally regarded as negative, my approach suggests that Hume may have understood himself to be occupying a watershed moment when the Classical idea religio, a set of socially beneficial celebrations of the gods, was being replaced by the modern notion of religion, a system of beliefs and practices warranted by abstract thought. Reading him as this sort of a transitional figure re-positions the relative weight of his anti-religious sentiment and renders his writing more fertile for constructive work in the philosophy of religion. Like the organizers of the 2014 Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium, Hume wondered how religion, which appeared in a diversity of forms, came to be narrowly understood as a path to a singular Ultimate. In our day, the dissonance created by the many distinctive and competing (tradition-bound) responses to questions of Ultimate meaning has funded a debate between religious exclusivists and religious pluralists. Exclusivists assert that we should assume that one tradition has an exclusive grasp on Ultimate Truth, while pluralists contend that all faiths reflect a family of views that can be reduced to a core human response to the Ultimate. The claims of both the pluralists and the exclusivists are closely linked to the realism/anti-realism debate in religion. The realist concerning religion (exclusivist) holds that the Ultimate exists independent of the human mind, while the anti-realist (pluralist) affirms that the Ultimate is mind dependent. My paper will walk the listener through how Hume attended to issues of religious diversity both in the Natural History of Religion where he affirmed polytheism—the idea that the Ultimate was a plurality approached via multidimensional paths—and in his essay “On Miracles” where he argued for the equality of multiple miracle testimonies. In many ways, it seems that Hume can be easily situated on the side of the pluralists. His anti-realism regarding Ultimate power has been used to bolster the pluralist argument. But we should tread with caution: Hume may not be simply an anti-realist concerning Ultimate power; rather, he may be a causal realist regarding the mind’s natural presupposition of order and regularity. On the Humean position I argue for, different religions are neither paths to a singular Ultimate, nor beliefs about what is true. Religion, at its best, is one convention among many that can help us humanize others by moderating our passions. Hume’s work on religion ultimately invites us to epistemological humility for “the whole is a riddle, and enigma, an inexplicable mystery” (NHR, 185).
I propose to explain “ontological revelation” and will argue that the concept, once introduced as a model of core religious experiences, solves many crucial problems in the philosophy of religions. By ontological revelation, I mean the moment where the otherwise cognitively inconceivable divinity as such is revealed to human cognizers. In the Christian tradition, it is realized through experiencing the presence of God or angels. For Daoists, it can be realized through divinization of human bodies as a result of Daoist practice. In view of Buddhism, what is revealed is the “reality” at the moment of “awakening”.
I will argue that ontological revelation, if instantiated, provides the best epistemic status that religious beliefs could possibly enjoy, i.e., religious epistemic entitlement against naturalist reductions. More precisely, religious experience has been considered a source of evidence for religious beliefs in the same way that our ordinary perceptions provide evidence for beliefs about the physical world. Thus, cognizers with core religious experiences are entitled to reject naturalism in the same way that ordinary cognizers are entitled to reject skepticism. I will show how this analogy can be defended under optimal religious assumption, and why these assumptions cannot be adopted along this line unless we employ the concept of ontological revelation as the analysis of core religious experience.
As ontological revelation draws an epistemic gap between recipients of the revelations and the rest of the cognizers, divinity is no longer absolutely transcendent. It only transcends our ordinary “pre-revelation” cognitions. This promises both a reconciliation between religious and scientific worldviews and a solution to the problem of religious diversity. There would be no genuinely conceivable incompatibility between science and religion because we can conceive two objects as incompatible only if we have cognitive access to both of them. However, we have no cognitive access to divinity in our pre-revelation discussions. Likewise, there is no genuinely conceivable conflict between different religious worldviews. The relation between God and Buddha, between the Holy Spirit and the Dao, cannot be meaningfully wondered unless we have access to them all. As a result of the epistemic gap, the distinction between humanity and divinity is much more significant between various divine entities as we could possibly conceive.
Introducing the concept of ontological revelation and recognizing the epistemic gap it draws also allows us to adopt a literal interpretation of religious doctrines. If God exists, or if the world of Buddha is real, then it naturally follows that we cannot yet cognitively access to such worlds and our epistemic status must be substantially different from the prophets who genuinely witnessed divinity. This explains why the purpose of religious doctrines is not to provide a set of propositions or arguments to occupy our intelligence, but to help us conduct spiritual lives with humanly accessible instructions. Moreover, that the basis of our religion can be epistemically established entails that faith is not void of rational ground, because it would have genuine religious justifications other than mere esthetic feelings or moral improvement that we benefit from religious educations.