Disputed Issues: Contending for Christian Faith in Today's Academic Setting

14. Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion—A Valid Option?

169 Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion— A Valid Option? 14 I Are religious belief and unbelief metaphysical choices? I am to answer that question in this chapter. So I must obviously first define terms like metaphysics, belief, and unbelief. These words are defined variously, and debate about the proper definitions of these and related terms can be vigorous. I will try to avoid such debates by simply stipulating how I will use them on this occasion. I understand the term metaphysics in a broad way.1 It is, as a first approximation , simply the attempt to say how things are. But that definition is too inclusive. On this understanding, I would be practicing metaphysics if I were to say things like: 1. There is a Toyota in my driveway. 2. San Francisco is north of Los Angeles. 3. Water at sea level boils at 212 degrees. And such statements do not seem to be, in any ordinary sense, metaphysical statements. Now it seems that what is normally called metaphysics is motivated in part by the conviction that reality is sometimes hard to detect or get clear on; sometimes how things are hidden, so to speak, behind how things appear to be. The hallmark of both ordinary empirical statements and scientific statements is The present paper is a revision of my 2006 conference paper, “Belief and Unbelief: A Metaphysical Choice?” Since D. Z. Phillips came to Claremont as Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion in 1993, I have had to think about Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion much more than I had previously. The present version includes material from two or three of my writings since 1993. 170 Disputed Issues that there are established and agreed-upon criteria for verifying or falsifying them. But statements that are typically classified as metaphysical are extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to verify (if they are true) or falsify (if they are false). In that way, they are quite unlike 1–3, which seem fairly easy to verify or falsify. So perhaps we should say that metaphysics is the attempt to say how things are in nonordinary empirical and nonscientific situations, or metaphysics is the attempt to say how things are in cases where reality is difficult to discern. Or maybe we should say even that metaphysics is the attempt to say how things are in cases where the statements that we make are extremely difficult or impossible to verify or falsify. But one problem here is that some statements that everybody recognizes as scientific are exceedingly difficult to verify or falsify, for example, “There is enough matter in the known universe eventually to cause a Big Crunch” or “The Neanderthals did not pass on their genes to modern humans.” Still, definitions like the ones cited above do have the strong point that they allow as metaphysical such universally accepted metaphysical statements as the following: 4. Human beings consist of material bodies and immaterial souls. 5. Human beings are sometimes libertarianly free. 6. The A Theory of time is true. So for the purposes of this chapter I will stipulate that metaphysics is the attempt to say how things are where reality is difficult to discern in nonempirical and nonscientific situations. If that definition includes too little or too much, it will not particularly matter for our purposes. II What, then, are belief and unbelief? Since in the present chapter I want to discuss religious belief and unbelief, I will say that a believer is someone who has beliefs like the following: 7. God exists.2 8. We will live on after death.3 9. There will be a last judgment. And a nonbeliever is someone who does not have such beliefs. Obviously , there are religions that do not require or even allow belief in (7), (8), and (9), so there are plenty of religious people who reject them. But I will intentionally confine myself here to Christian religious belief, because this is the religion that I know best. In Christian religious contexts , beliefs like these seem typical. (I believe, however, that virtually all Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion—A Valid Option? 171 of what I will say in this chapter also applies to other theistic traditions such as Judaism and Islam.) The question that I want to address, then, is whether a choice between believing or disbelieving items like (7), (8), and (9)—disbelieving them either by denying them or simply by not affirming them...