Is There Something Special About Religious Disagreement?

Abstract

Chapter 5 considers the question: Is there something distinctive about religious disagreement that makes it a suitable topic for examination? Religious disagreement may seem to differ from other disagreements, at least to the extent that devoting specific attention to religious disagreement does seem warranted. Yet, it is argued here, that there is nothing special about disagreement as compared with other cases of mixed evidence, and further, that there are no principles governing religious disagreements that differ from those governing other disagreements. Typically, one should be conciliatory toward those who disagree by reducing one’s confidence, because learning about others who disagree tends to shift the weight of one’s evidence, even if only slightly, away from what one already believes. Nevertheless, the chapter examines complications concerning how difficult it may be to discern such evidential pressure, particularly when it bears on one’s fundamental or “core” religious beliefs.