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What Makes Religious Beliefs Religious?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

W. D. Hudson
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I want to put forward a certain view of the logical foundation of religious belief. It is, in a sentence, the view that religious belief is constituted by the concept of god. This view will be discussed under three headings. First, I shall explain as clearly as I can what I mean by it. Secondly, I shall indicate what seem to me to be interesting parallels, both with regard to universes of discourse in general and to religious belief in particular, between my idea of a constitutive concept and Wittgenstein's ideas of a fundamental proposition and a religious ‘picture’. Thirdly, I shall try to substantiate the view I take of the logical foundation of religious belief by rebutting three conceivable objections to it: namely, that it rests on an illegitimate craving for generality, that it is at variance with common usage, and that it consigns religious belief to an intellectual ghetto.

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Religious Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1977, pp. 221 - 242
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 223 note 1 See his On Certainty, 58.

page 223 note 2 Bentham, J., Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, I.X, in Selby–Bigge, L. A., British Moralists, 363.Google Scholar

page 223 note 3 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903)Google Scholar, chapter 1. What he says of ‘good’ applies to ‘ought’.

page 226 note 1 See his ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1950.Google Scholar

page 228 note 1 References to L. Wittgenstein's works will be made in accordance with the following abbreviations: OC, On Certainty; BBB, Blue and Brown Books; PI, Philosophical Investigations; PG, Philosophical Grammar; RFM, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics; LRB, Lectures on Religious Belief in Lectures and Conversations. I deal further with fundamental propositions in my ‘Wittgenstein and Fundamental Propositions’, The South–western journal of Philosophy (U.S.A.), February 1977Google Scholar, and with religious ‘pictures’ in chapter 5 of my Wittgenstein and Religious Belief (London, 1975).Google Scholar

page 229 note 1 See his papers ‘A Defence of Common Sense’ (1925), ‘Proof of the External World’ (1939), ‘Four Forms of Scepticism’ (1959), ‘Certainty’ (1959), all contained in his Philosophical Papers (London, 1959).Google Scholar

page 230 note 1 See my ‘Did Wittgenstein think that language–games have presuppositions?’, forthcoming in Philosophy.

page 232 note 1 I See e.g. Hunter, G. F. M., ‘“Forms of Life” in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1968.Google Scholar

page 234 note 1 See letter from Griffiths, D. A. in the Times Literary Supplement, 21.ii.75Google Scholar and the review of my A Philosophical Approach to Religion (London, 1974)Google Scholar by Ellis, A. in Philosophical Quarterly, 1975.Google Scholar I would now concede that my use of PI p. 173 was not the best way of making my point. I deal much more satisfactorily with the sense in which Wittgenstein thought that language–games have presuppositions in the paper referred to in note 1 on p. 230.

page 234 note 2 Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 11.56.

page 237 note 1 Williams, B., ‘Has “God” a Meaning?’, Question, 1 (1968).Google Scholar

page 237 note 2 This seems to be the implication of Tillich's, P. remark: ‘Genuine atheism is not humanly possible for God is nearer to a man than that man is to himself’, The Shaking of the Foundations (Penguin, London, 1962), p. 131.Google Scholar

page 239 note 1 Price, H. H., ‘Belief “In” and Belief “That”‘, Religious Studies (1965)Google Scholar, and Belief (London, 1969), 11, 9Google Scholar; and e.g. Malcolm, N., ‘Is it a Religious Belief that God exists?’ in Faith and the Philosophers, edited by Hick, J. H. (London, 1964).Google Scholar

page 239 note 2 Malcolm, op. cit.

page 240 note 1 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, chapters 1–111.Google Scholar

page 240 note 2 See, e.g., Robinson, J. A. T., Honest to God (London, 1963), chapter 3.Google Scholar

page 240 note 3 Meaning and Method (London, 1972), p. 344.Google Scholar

page 240 note 4 See Hesse's, M. reference to my view in her review article on Talk of God, edited by Vesey, G. A. N. (London, 1969)Google Scholar in Philosophy (1969), and Bertocci's, P. review of my contribution to Davies, R. E., We Believe in God (London, 1968)Google Scholar in Religious Studies (1969).