Religion and Secular Utility
Happiness, Truth, and Pragmatic Arguments for Theistic Belief
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4079154 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Craig Duncan (0000-0003-0687-5783, Ithaca College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 381-399 |
| Publication date | 2013-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1747-9991 • E-ISSN: 1747-9991 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/phc3.12024 |
| OpenAlex | W1579825937 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 18 |
This article explores "pragmatic arguments" for theistic belief - that is, arguments for believing in God that appeal, not to evidence in favor of God's existence, but rather to alleged practical benefits that come from belief in God. Central to this exploration is a consideration of Jeff Jordan's recent defense of "the Jamesian wager," which portrays itself as building on the case for belief presented in William James's essay "The Will to Believe." According to Jordan, religious belief creates significant gains in this-worldly happiness (i.e. gains in "secular utility," I shall say), and provided the individual does not have decisive evidence against God's existence, these gains give the individual sufficient reason to strive to believe in God. In its exploration of this argument, the article presents an overview of recent social scientific work on the this-worldly effects of religious belief. It canvases several challenges to pragmatic arguments, namely, a challenge according to which happiness rooted in false belief is worth less than that rooted in truth, a perfectionistic challenge alleging that one should strive for personal excellence rather than happiness, and a challenge alleging that any happiness gains of religious belief are outweighed by the potential harms brought about by religious belief
Appeal · Belief in God · Epistemology · Excellence · Happiness · Political science · Religious belief · Theism · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology · Theological Perspectives and Practices
Religion and the individual
Karl Marx
Handbook of Religion and Health
The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality
The foreign policy decision-maker simulation
Pascal's Wager
Well-being
Pascal's Wager as an Argument for Not Believing in God
Society without God
Darwin's Cathedral
Aristotelian Well-Being
The Persecutor's Wager
Religion and Intragroup Cooperation
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |