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    Religion Within Reason
    Religion Within Reason
    Religion Within Reason
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    Religion Within Reason

    By Steven M Cahn

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    In the views of most believers and critics, religion is essentially connected to the existence of a supernatural deity. If supernaturalism is not reasonable, the argument goes, religion cannot be reasonable, or if supernaturalism is reasonable, religion must be as well. Are faith and reason, religion and science doomed to a constant struggle for the heart and future of humanity? Steven M. Cahn believes that they are not, that even if God exists, religion may not be justified, and even if religion is justified, belief in God may not be.

    In Religion Within Reason, Cahn argues that the common understanding of the relationship between religion and supernaturalism is flawed, and that, while supernaturalism is not reasonable, religious commitment may well be. Writing not as a theist but as one who finds much to admire in a religious life, he examines faith and reason, miracles, heaven and hell, religious diversity, and the problem of evil, using a variety of examples taken from religious thought, literature, and popular culture. Lucidly written in a nonpolemical spirit, Religion Within Reason offers an exciting new approach to the reconciliation of science and religion.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherColumbia University Press
    Release dateMar 14, 2017
    ISBN9780231543668
    Religion Within Reason
    Author

    Steven M Cahn

    Steven M. Cahn is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. Among the seven books he has authored are 'Fate, Logic, and Time; Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia, Revised Edition; and Puzzles & Perplexities: Collected Essays'. He has edited twenty-two books, including 'Classics of Western Philosophy, Sixth Edition; Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy; Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion; Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology; The Affirmative Action Debate, Second Edition'; and 'Philosophy for the 21st Century: A Comprehensive Reader'.

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      Book preview

      Religion Within Reason - Steven M Cahn

      PREFACE

      MY aim in this book is not to grapple with the voluminous technical literature that has been developed over the past several decades by philosophers who have defended central tenets of Christianity and by critics who have found such defenses unpersuasive. Rather, I seek to provide an accessible and, I hope, provocative overview of the sort of challenges philosophy presents to any version of supernatural belief, while also exploring the possibility of religion within a naturalistic framework.

      I approach the subject not as a traditional theist but as one who finds much to admire in a religious life, so long as its beliefs and practices do not violate the methods and results of scientific inquiry. Those who suppose that no religion can meet such a standard are among the readers I am addressing.

      This work draws in part on my published books and articles. All the material, however, has been reworked to provide a unified presentation of a position I have developed over many years.

      Here are my sources:

      A New Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Reprinted in 2004 by Wipf and Stock.

      God, Reason, and Religion. Belmont, Calif.: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006.

      Puzzles and Perplexities, 2nd ed. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2007.

      Happiness and Goodness: Philosophical Reflections on Living Well (with Christine Vitrano). New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

      The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophic Proofs for the Existence of God. American Philosophical Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1969): 170–173.

      Cacodaemony. Analysis 37, no. 2 (1977): 69–73.

      Teaching About God. Teaching Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2007): 29–33.

      The Theodicy Trap. Think 15, no. 44 (2016): 23–28.

      Why Worship God? Think 16, no. 46 (2017).

      I am grateful to my editor Wendy Lochner. This book is the sixth we have done together, and I continue to benefit from her guidance and encouragement. I also want to thank assistant editor Christine Dunbar, manuscript editor Robert Demke, and other members of the staff of the Press for assistance throughout production.

      I wish to acknowledge the many stylistic suggestions received from my brother, Victor L. Cahn, playwright, critic, and professor emeritus of English at Skidmore College.

      To my wife, Marilyn Ross, MD, I owe more than I would try to express in words.

      1

      PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

      WE begin with a familiar question: Does God exist? A theist believes that God exists, while an atheist believes that God does not exist. An agnostic believes the matter as yet undecidable. Which of these positions is the most reasonable? The first step is to determine what is meant by the term God. The word has been used in various ways, ranging from the Greek concept of the Olympian gods to the proposal by the prominent American philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) that the divine is the active relation between ideal and actual. ¹ Let us adopt the more usual view, common to many religious believers, that God refers to an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, everlasting creator of the world. The question, then, is whether a being of that description exists.

      Throughout the centuries, various philosophical arguments have been presented to prove the existence of God. Each can be formulated and defended in a variety of ways, but I shall bypass innumerable complexities to focus on a straightforward version of each.

      We begin with the cosmological argument, which rests on the assumption that everything that exists depends for its existence on something else. For example, a house results from the actions of its builder, and rain results from certain meteorological conditions. But if everything that exists depends for its existence on something else, then the world itself depends for its existence on something else, and this something else is God.

      Although the cosmological argument may seem initially plausible, it has a major difficulty. If everything that exists depends for its existence on something else, then whatever the world’s existence depends on is itself dependent for existence on something else. In that case the world’s existence would not depend on God, for God is an all-powerful being, not depending for existence on anything else.

      A defender of the cosmological argument might try to surmount this difficulty by claiming that whatever the world’s existence depends on does not depend on something else but is self-explanatory, that is, the reason for its existence lies within itself. If, however, we admit the possibility that something is self-explanatory, the cosmological argument crumbles, for if the world’s existence depends on something that can be self-explanatory, why cannot the world itself be self-explanatory? In that case, no need would arise to postulate something on which the existence of the world depends, because the existence of the world would be self-explanatory.

      In an attempt to salvage the cosmological argument, a defender might argue simply that something must be responsible for everything, and this something is God. Yet even if we grant that something is responsible for everything (and this supposition could be contested by appeal to the mathematical notion of an infinite series), the something may not be all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, or everlasting. Perhaps the something is evil or ceased to exist after a brief life. No such possibilities are excluded by the cosmological argument, and thus it appears not to be successful.

      A second classic proof for the existence of God is the ontological argument. It makes no appeal to empirical evidence but purports to demonstrate that God’s essence implies God’s existence.

      In its simplest form the argument takes God to possess all perfections. Then assuming that a being who exists is more perfect than one who doesn’t, the conclusion reached is that God must exist.

      Although this argument has been defended in subtle ways, it is open to the crucial criticism, stated succinctly by the influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), that existence is not an attribute. In other words, the definition of anything remains the same regardless of whether that thing exists. For example, the definition of a unicorn would not be altered if we discovered a living unicorn, just as our definition of a whooping crane would not be altered if whooping cranes became extinct. In short, whether unicorns or whooping cranes exist does not affect the meaning of the terms unicorn and whooping crane.

      To clarify this point, imagine a ferocious tiger. Now imagine a ferocious tiger that exists. What more is imagined in the second case than the first? Our concept of a ferocious tiger remains the same whether any ferocious tigers exist.

      Applying this insight to the ontological argument, we see a major difficulty. Because the definition of something remains the same whether it exists, the definition of God remains the same whether God exists. Thus existence cannot be part of the definition of God. God may be understood to possess every perfection, but existence does not render something more perfect, because existence is no attribute at all. To assert that something exists is not to ascribe perfection to the thing but to state a fact about the world. What we mean by God is one matter; whether God exists is another. The ontological argument conflates the two and thereby seems to goes awry.

      The third argument we shall consider, the teleological argument, is much less abstruse. Its defenders point out that the world possesses a highly ordered structure, just like an extraordinarily complex machine. Each part is adjusted to the other parts with wondrous precision. For instance, the human eye, which so many of us take for granted, is a mechanism of such intricacy that its design is breathtaking. But doesn’t a design require a designer? The magnificent order of our world cannot be a result of chance but must be the work of a supreme mind responsible for the order. That supreme mind is God.

      Although this argument has persuasive power, it suffers from several critical difficulties. To begin with, any world would exhibit some kind of order. Were you to drop at random ten coins on the floor, they would exhibit an order. An

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