Is the Pope Catholic?

Abstract

Abstract There are many reasons that those who don’t believe in God may find it advantageous to act “as if” they believe. However, often these reasons seem morally dubious. But are there moral reasons for the non-believer to nondoxastically accept religious claims? Christopher Jay (2014) offers a Kantian argument that nondoxastic acceptance in the existence of God is morally preferable to full belief, since one who genuinely believes that good behavior will be rewarded in the afterlife will likely find their motivations corrupted by the promise of this reward. This chapter considers whether the attitude of immersed acceptance without belief is possible in light of concerns raised by Paul Horwich (1991), and suggests (in analogy with the author’s response to Horwich on behalf of the mathematical fictionalist (Leng 2010)) that many self-professed theists may be better thought of as already make-believing, rather than fully believing, that there is a God.