Pragmatism and Religion

Theism is partly based on testimonial evidence, and partly on philosophical arguments for the existence of a supreme being. Testimony is an invaluable source of evidence. Had it not been for the testimony of others and our tendency to accept it as a source of knowledge, learning would have been hampered in ways that would have impacted the speed of human progress. When we read a book, we normally learn new things through accepting the testimony of the author, and we tend to accept testimony as evidence only if we find it intuitively plausible, and if the testifier is reliable. Theistic discourse implies that religious messengers, by virtue of their excellent moral character, had a privileged access to truth. This article argues that even if we accept that they were morally excellent and perfectly honest in their testimonies, it still does not follow from this that they knew the truth or that they reported the truth to us. It could be the case that they were completely honest in their testimonies, and reported to us what they thought the truth was, not what the truth really was. The aim of this article is to examine the epistemic force of religious testimony and theistic belief in light of pragmatism.