Description
Book SynopsisTo speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does My faith holds value in God's plan, while yours does not. This book argues that these two concerns with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical.
There is a strong tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies.
Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is
Trade ReviewIn this book, Guy Axtell joins this important conversation about lucky belief, with an eye toward the religious case. He focuses on the epistemic justification of religious belief: the "de jure question" (p. 6). Axtell's main target is religious exclusivism -- a doctrinal or soteriological uniqueness that sets a particular religion apart from other religions. . . . Overall, the contingency of belief is a fascinating issue that deserves serious consideration. I'm hopeful that Axtell's book draws more attention to the intriguing problems raised by religious luck. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
A thought-provoking, historically-informed, and highly distinctive take on the important questions raised by religious luck, this is a welcome addition to the literature. -- Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh
Table of ContentsPart I
Religious Cognition and Philosophy of Luck
1 Types of Religious Luck: A Working Taxonomy
2 The New Problem of Religious Luck
Part II
Applications and Implications of Inductive Risk
3 Enemy in the Mirror: The Need for Comparative Fundamentalism
4 We Are All of the Common Herd: Montaigne and the Psychology of our ‘Importunate Presumptions’
5 Scaling the ‘Brick Wall’: Measuring and Censuring Strongly Fideistic Religious Orientation
6 The Pattern Stops Here? Counter-Inductive Thinking, Counter-Intuitive Ideas, and Cognitive Science of Religion
