My religion preaches ‘p’, but I don't believe thatp: Moore's Paradox in religious assertions

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe thatd’ and ‘d, but I believe that~d’, wheredis a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious faith as entailing belief. In the article, I explore the possibility of undermining these commonly held assumptions and argue that the assertability of religious Moorean propositions can be justified by an account of faith as an intention to form religious beliefs. In the end, I also consider the consequences of such a stance, especially concerning the debate on the ethics of religious belief and doxastic voluntarism.