the origins and the worth of theism

T H E O R I G I N S A N D T H E W O R T H O F T H E I S M

Scientific theories and discoveries can and do give evidence of the worth or lack of worth of beliefs that are peripheral to some systems of religious doctrine, (e.g. the belief that the world was created a few thousand years ago). Scientific claims might even be able to show the worth (or lack of worth) of what is essential to some particular set of religious doctrines, (e.g. if the special creation of man were essential to a system). But could science establish anything about the worth of what is essential to the overwhelming proportion of"major" religions? This is the question that I shall consider in this paper and which I shall answer in the affirmative.

I shall argue for and defend the view that discoveries and theories of the social sciences about the origins of theism can establish something about its worth. Since some version of theism is essential to a vast number of major religions, and many discoveries and theories about its origins can be called scientific, I shall be showing that science can establish something about the worth of the essential doctrine of most major religions. This will show that the discussions of the relations (even the "conflict") of science and religion could be redirected from peripheral concerns of a few sects to the very core of most religions. The alleged conflict of science and religion could occur at a very deep level.

I shall consider all versions of the belief that there is a god except those where the proposition is thought to be logically necessary. In the first two sections of this paper I shall show that claims about the origins of any version of this belief are relevant to its worth. In the next two sections I meet some objections to this conclusion and to the arguments for it. In conclusion I indicate the significance of these results for the philosophy of religion and for the theory of knowledge.

46 THE ORIGINS AND THE W O R T H OF THEISM

The doctine I am attacking lurks in the thought of many writers, but it is stated with force and clarity by Frederick Ferr6 in his generally excellent book on the philosophy of religion. Ferr6 says:

The way in which an idea arises has no particular bearing on its worth. No doubt the genesis in most individuals of religious doctrines they accept is accounted f o r . . , by the psychological mechanisms of suggestion. But the mechanisms of suggestion are entirely neutral to the reliability of the beliefs that may take root by their m e a n s . . . How thought comes into the mind, then, is no sure guide to a judgment on whether the thought should be permitted to remain. 1 The origin of a belief is no index to its reasonableness. What- ever the genetic method may r e v e a l . . , the critical evalua- tion of whatever ideas are alleged by religions to be worthy of acceptance must still be made. ~

And much later he approves of the view:

Your b e l i e f . . , has causes; but my pointing out these causes can't by itself discredit the belief. What I need to do is give reasons against your view?

Ferrd's view that the origins of a belief are not relevant to its worth is vague in certain respects. One may differentiate two sorts of origins that a belief may have and also one may differentiate two criteria by which the worth of a belief can be appraised. These dis- tinctions bring to light four distinct interpretations of "the origins of a belief are not relevant to its worth".

One may distinguish two sorts of origins of a belief. "The origins of a belief" might refer to the place, time and group of people where the belief was first held. For example, "Theism had its origins over one billion years ago among creatures on Mars." In this case the origins of a belief are its beginnings. "The origins of a belief" may also

Frederick Ferr6, Basic ~lodern Philosophy o f Religion (New York: Scribners, I967) , pp. 85-6. 2 Ibid., p. 86. 3 Ibid., p. 314

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 47

refer to what brings a person or group of persons to have a certain belief. For instance, "His belief in a god had its origins (originated) in his need to feel secure from his tyrannical father coupled with in- culcat ion of religious at t i tudes dur ing his format ive years." In this case the origins of a belief are the c a u s e s of a belief. O n account of these distinct senses of"or ig ins ," " the origins of a belief are i r re levant to its wor th" may mean either that the beginnings of a belief are i r re levant to its wor th or tha t the causes of a belief are i r relevant to its worth.

Each of these distinct claims is still vague enough to be open to two interpretat ions, for one can distinguish two senses of "wor th of a bel ief". In some contexts the wor th of a belief is judged in terms of its t ru th value, while in others it is j udged in terms of its reasonableness. O f course "bel ief" is not used in the same way in these two contexts ; for one appraises the t ru th value of the proposi t ion believed while one ascertains the reasonableness of the "ac t" or disposition of believing a proposition. T o say that the causes (beginnings) of a belief are i r relevant to its worth is in the first case to say that knowledge of its causes (beginnings) could not give any informat ion about whether the proposit ion believed is p robab ly true or is p robab ly false. In the second case it is to say that knowledge of causes or beginnings could not give any informat ion about whether it is or is not reasonable for any person to assent to the proposition.

The thesis that the origins of a belief are i r relevant to its wor th m a y be equivalent to any one or any combinat ion of the following claims.

I. T h e beginnings of a belief are i r relevant to its t ru th value. 2. T h e causes of a belief are i r relevant to its t ru th value. 3. T h e beginnings of a belief are i r relevant to its rat ionali ty. 4. The causes of a belief are i r relevant to its rat ionali ty.

I shall show that all four of these claims are false when the par t icular belief in quest ion is theism. T o do this I shall consider a theory about the origins of theism which I call the Freudian Th eo ry instead of Freud 's Theory , because it is only a part ial and somewhat inaccurate presentat ion of Freud 's actual theory. Th e Freud ian T h e o r y involves two claims, and it might even be considered two theories. T h e first claim concerns the beginnings of theism. I t would belong to anthropology. I t is:

4 8 T H E ORIGINS A N D T H E SVORTIcI OF T H E I S M

The belief that there is a god originated in groups of relatively ignorant people.

The second claim concerns the causes of believing that there is a god. It is a 'potential discovery of psychology. It is:

People quite generally, and not just the first ignorant people, come to believe that there is a god because: i) they are threatened by forces of nature and forces of society that are beyond their control, 2) they want to alleviate the insecurity produced by these threats, and 3) they believe that a god will provide the desired security by somehow controlling these forces.

I[

Consider the first claim - the one concerning the irrelevance of the beginnings of a belief to the truth value of the proposition believed. The following case shows that if one discovered (or even supposed) that the belief that there is a god had certain beginnings, then one could know (or at least correctly infer) that the proposition that there is a god is probably false. (Other cases could be con- structed in which the information about the beginnings of the belief would show that the proposition believed is probably true.) Suppose that the belief that there is a god was first held by virtually all members of culture c at time t and place p and that they believed substantially the same proposition that many people believe today. Also suppose that these people were extremely ignorant; so ignorant that most of what they believed was false. Saddled with such ignorance, they were beset by fears and insecurity. They were so unable to adapt to their environment that they soon perished.

Suppose that one's belief that there is a god had such beginnings. Also suppose that either no other evidence for the truth or falsity of the proposition is available or all the available evidence is equally balanced between truth and falsity. In this case one can infer that the proposition that there is a god is probably false if it is meaningful at all. The reason for this is as follows. Since most of what was believed by the people in c at t and at p was false, it is more likely that the proposition that there is a god is false than that it is true, for it is one of the propositions believed in c at t and p. Thus, if one's belief that a god exists began in such surroundings, then certainly this


would show that the proposition one believed is probably false. Now consider a case involving the relationship of the causes (not

beginnings) of a belief to the t ruth value of the proposition believed. The a rgument parallels the one just given. In this case the claims about what causes a person to believe that there is a god could determine with some degree of assurance whether the proposition that there is a god is true (false). The case is this. Suppose that what causes the people of culture c to believe that there is a god is their belief that a god will fulfill thier need for security together with their desire for security. Suppose also that most of the beliefs that are caused by such a desire for security are beliefs in false propositions. In this case there is empirically establishable information about the causes of the belief that would show" that the proposition believed

�9 by these people was probably false. It would also show" that any other person whose belief was caused by these factors probably believed a false p~ oposition. Such cases show that scientific or empirical da ta about the causes of a belief might be relevant to deciding whether a proposition is probably true or probably false.

Let us turn from truth value to rationality. The same sort of considerations show that what might be discovered about the origins of theism (or any belief) could show whether or not theism is a reasonable position to hold. Of course, the origins of theism might not be relevant to whether theism is a reasonable position for just anyone to adopt, but it could determine whether or not theism is a reasonable position for someone to adopt.

Suppose that theism began in the way described in the Freudian Theory - among quite ignorant people. Surely if someone both had good reason to accept this scientific finding and that person realized that this scientific claim implied that probably there is no god, then it would be reasonable for that person to believe that there is no god. Similarly if theism began among people most of whose beliefs were correct, then someone who had good reason to believe this and saw that it implied that probably there is a god would be rat ional to hold that there is a god. Exactly the same situations obtain if one considers the causes instead of the beginnings of theism.

In these cases, and in cases like them, what scientists discover or claim to discover about the origins (in either sense of "origins") of theism will have implications for whether or not theism is a reasonable belief for someone to adopt. The reason for this is not hard to

5 ~ T H E O R I G I N S A N D T H E W O R T H OF T H E I S M

find. I f the origins of a belief make it likely that the proposition believed is true (false), then it would (not) be reasonable for someone to adopt that belief if he knows or has good reason to believe that the proposition is true (false) because of its origins? I am not merely using the fact that if someone knows or has good reason to believe that a claim is true (false), then it is reasonable for him to believe that the claim is true (false). I am using the fact that if someone knows or has good reason to believe that a claim is true (false) because of what he knows or has good reason to believe about the origins of the belief in the claim, then it is reasonable for him to believe that that claim is true (false). When this latter situation obtains, information or alleged information about the origins of a belief is one of the factors that makes it reasonable for someone to adopt that belief. In such circumstances a claim about the origins of theism is relevant to whether or not it is reasonable for some group of people to be theists. Since these are possible circumstances, it is possible for claims about the origins of theism to indicate with some degree of probability whether or not it is reasonable (for some person) to be a theist. This was the point to be proved.

I have used examples to refute the four versions of the ambiguous claim that the origins of a belief are irrelevimt to its worth. All the examples rely upon a single technique. The empirical claim about the origins of the belief incorporates information which either is relevant to the truth value of the proposition believed or (if different information) which is relevant to whether or not it is rational for someone to hold the belief. One might multiply examples. One might give examples to support rather than to attack theism. But any successful example would have to incorporate into the empirical claim information relevant to truth value or rationality. Thus new examples would not introduce anything fundamentally new. In my first major example the relevant datum was that theism began among people whose beliefs were mostly incorrect. In the second example the datum was that theism was caused by factors which generally result in incorrect beliefs. In both cases these are empirically ascertainable data about the origins of theism and in both cases these data could establish the probable truth value of the theist's

4 I n a n o t h e r sense it is r e a sonab l e for s ome one to bel ieve so a n d so jus t in case it is useful

or benef ic ia l to h imse l f or to some g r o u p to do so. I a m no t cons ider ing this " p r a g m a t i c " sense of " r e a s o n a b l e to be l i eve" ,


claim in the circumstances I imagined - where the claim is meaningful and there is no other information about its truth value.

[ I I

Some philosophers have found my position to be true, 5 yet others have attacked it with vehemence. I shall consider some of these objections in this section and in the next section of the paper. In this section I shall show that [ have neither committed the genetic fallacy nor confused causes with reasons.

THE GENETIC FALLACY

The most interesting of the common objections to my position is this: "You infer the probable truth value of a claim from information about what caused people to believe it. To do this is to commit the genetic fallacy."

This objection is incorrect. To make such a inference need not be, but may sometimes be, to commit the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy, like several other fallacies, conforms to the rule: a particular inference is fallacious if and only if the universal principle used to justify the inference is false, otherwise (if the principle is true) the inference is cogent (non-fallacious). For example, if one justifies the inference from "Einstein believed that F = ma" to "F = ma' is probably true" by appeal to a principle like:

Beliefs of reputable physicists in propositions of elementary physics are probably beliefs in true propositions,

then the inference would be cogent. But if one supported the same inference with the principle:

Beliefs held by men whose last names begin with "E" are probably beliefs in true propositions,

then the inference would be fallacious.

5 C. D. Broad, in Religion Philosophy and Psychical Resem~h (New York: Harcourt & Brace, 1953) espouses my position while discussing religious experience. He says: " S u p p o s e . . . it could be shown that this particular combination of factors [involved in religious experience] tends to originate in and be activated only under certain conditions which are known to be very commonly productive of false beliefs held with strong conviction. Then a satisfactory answer to the questions of psychological analysis and causal antece- dents would have tended to answer the epistemological questions of validity in the nega- tive".

52 T H E O R I G I N S A N D T H E W O R T H O F T H E I S M

Whether or not any part icular inference involves the genetic fallacy or some other fallacy depends upon which universal principle is actually used to justify it. The genetic fallacy occurs whenever one tries to justify an inference from the causes of believing a proposition to the t ru th value of tha t proposition by using the universal principle that one can always move from claims about the causes of believing tha t P to the t ru th value of P. This m a y also be expressed as : for any belief and for any proposition believed, if the causes of believing proposition P are factors A, B and C, then P is (probably) true (false). The genetic fallacy rests upon the assumption that the causes of believing are always relevant to the t ruth value of what is believed.

The foregoing account of the genetic tMlacy makes it clear that my a rgument does not involve the genetic fallacy. At no point did I use such a universal principle to justify an inference from causes to t ru th value. I only appealed to the principle that one can sometimes, in special circumstances which m a y never be realized, move from claims about the causes of believing that P to the t ruth value of P. I certainly did not say that one can always make such an inference. I did say that one can always make such an inference in selected ci~rumstances, but that is merely to say that one can sometimes make such an inference.

I f it is so clear that I have not commit ted the genetic fallacy, why might critics like Ferrd think otherwise? I shall suggest two ways in which critics might be led astray. Perhaps neither account captures the error of any actual critic, but both accounts do capture general sorts of confusions that often underl ie the objections of actual critics.

M y first suggestion is that the critic m a y be confused about what constitutes the genetic fallacy in the following way. He thinks that the fallacy consists in trying to justify a move from the causes of believing that P to the t ruth value of P by using the qualified principle tha t it is sometimes legitimate to "move from causes to t ru th value." In fact, the fallacy is in so using the universal principle: " I t is always legitimate to 'move from causes to t ruth value ' ." The critic may have arrived at this incorrect view of the genetic fallacy in any number of ways, but two stand out. First, the critic may have thought of the fallacy somewhat vaguely as "it is not correct to move from causes to t ru th value." This claim is ambiguous; for it might mean tha t one ought not always to infer from causes to t ru th value, or it


might mean that one ought not ever to infer from causes to truth value. The first of the two readings captures the genetic fallacy; but the critic might have slipped into the second reading because of the ambiguity in "it is not (always, ever) correct to move from causes to truth value." Second, the critic might have been tricked by language when he slipped from the realization that "it is not always correct to infer from causes to truth value" to "it is always incorrect to infer from causes to truth value." This would be another example of the familiar confusion of "it is not always the case that P" with "it is always the case that not-P."

The second major way in which the critic may have erred involves a more subtle confusion about the genetic fallacy. This confusion is illustrated by an imaginary presentation of the critic's attack on my position. He might object:

(i) You have defended the inference from "the causes of theism are wishful thinking and the desire for security" and "such causes bring about incorrect beliefs" to the conclusion "probably there is no god." (2) This is a particular instance of the inference pattern: tbr any proposition P, if the causes of believing that P are A, B and C, then probably P is true (false). (3) But it is false that it is always correct to infer from causes A, B and C for believing that P to the truth or falsity of P. (4) Therefore, you are committing the genetic fallacy when you use this general inference pattern and false principle to justify your inference about theism.

The critic who argues in this way purports to show that I really have tried to justify the inference about theism by appealing to the false general principle that it is always correct to infer from causes to truth value. The difficulty in his argument is, however, that he never shows that I use the false general principle to justify the inference about theism. The fourth step asserts that I have used the principle in this way, but there is nothing in the first three steps to support this. The first three steps only establish that the false general principle at the heart of the genetic fallacy subsumes the inference about theism as a particular instance, as (x)Fx subsumes Fa, Fb, etc. But this fact does not imply that I am using that general principle to

.justify the inference about theism. The critic must suppose that I am

54 T H E O R I G I N S A N D T H E W O R T H O F T H E I S M

using the false general principle to justify my inference about theism if he is to accuse me of committing the genetic fallacy. The critic has confused the subsumption of one claim (Fa) by another ((x)Fx) with the justification of the one claim by the other.

One can easily see how the critic could think that my position involved the genetic fallacy. To understand the critic's objections is not, however, to condone them; for they are incorrect. Yet no other objections are any more likely to succeed, as we shall now see.

R E A S O N S A N D CAUSES

The second sort of objection that might be raised against my position concerns the relationship of the causes of believing that P (e.g. that there is a god) to the reasonableness (versus the truth value) of believing that P. The critic might object:

"One cannot decide whether or not theism is a reasonable position by discovering the causes of theism. To infer from the causes of theism to the reasonableness of theism is to confound scientific, descriptive claims about causes with philosophical (non-scientific), evaulative claims about its rationality. Such an inference confuses causes with reasons."

Before considering the intrinsic merits and demerits of this line of criticism, its parasitic relationship to the first criticism should be noted. It is parasitic in the sense that it will be a successful objection only if the first objection concerning the genetic fallacy is a successful objection. Since the first objection (against moving from origins to truth value) does not succeed, it follows that the present objection (against moving from origins to reasonableness) must also be un- successful. This can be seen from the following considerations:

(I) If the first objection fails, then one can move from origins to truth value (e.g. one can use claims about the origins of theism to ascertain whether or not there is a god). (2) I f the move from origins to truth value could be correct, then someone who had good reason to believe certain claims about the origins of theism would have good reason to adopt a position on the probable truth value of "there is a god". (3) If it is reasonable for someone to adopt a position on the


t ru th value of " there is a god", then it is reasonable for that person to believe that there is (or is not) a god. (4) Thus, if someone can move from origin to t ruth value (and I have shown that one can do this), then it is reasonable for that person to believe (or disbelieve) the claim because of his knowledge of the origins of the belief and his knowledge of the bearings of the origins of the belief upon the t ruth value of the claim believed.

To grant this last claim just is to grant that if the first objection fails then the second objection must also fail. This was the point to be proved.

One ought to reject the second objection because of its parasitic relationship to the first objection. But the second objection also deserves to be rejected on its own demerits. Its principal failing is simply that it lacks any support wor thy of serious consideration. Perhaps the most widespread "support" for believing that one cannot infer from the origins of a belief to its rat ionali ty is merely the charge that any inference f~om the causes of believing P to the reasonableness of believing P must confuse the causes of believing with the reasons for believing. But there is no reason to think this charge is correct. Doubtless, the causes of holding a belief are not always the same as the reasons for holding a belief. Doubtless philosophers have confounded causes and reasons. Doubtless there are contexts in which it is easy to confound these separate notions. On the other hand, my t rea tment of cases where one can move from a claim about the causes of theism to a conclusion about the rat ionali ty of being a theist does not involve any confusion of causes and reasons. In fact I explicitly distinguished the causes of theism from the reasons (grounds) for theism. Having separated causes and reasons, I proceeded to show that claims about the causes of theism could bear upon whether it was (or was not) reasonable for someone to be a theist. M y demonstrat ion relied upon the claims that scientific da ta about the causes of any claim could contain information relevant to its t ruth value and that the t ruth value of a proposition is relevant to the reasonableness of believing that proposition. The critic must show either that I have relied upon doubtful claims or that I have confounded reasons and causes. Unti l the critic has done one of these things, it is reasonable to conclude that the second objection to my position, like the first objection, has no merit.

5 6 T H E ORIGINS A N D T H E W O R T H OF T H E I S M

IV

In this section I shall rebut four other objections. They are not necessarily objections to my conclusion that the origins of a belief are relevant to its worth, but they are objections to two claims at the heart of my argument for that conclusion. The first of these two claims is that social scientists could discover the probable truth values of a large proportion of the beliefs of some person or group of persons. The second disputed claim is that it is rational to use the proportion of such beliefs that is true or reasonable as an index to the likelihood that theism is a correct or rational position.

The first of the four objections attacks the first of these claims. The objection is that the social scientist could not discover or even intel- ligently estimate what proportion of someone's total corpus of beliefs is probably true or probably reasonable to hold. In support of this he might say that there is no way to decide what constitutes the total corpus of someone's beliefs, that there is no hope of testing all of someone's beliefs, or that if one tested only a sample of the beliefs one could not know that it was a representative sample. I agree that these are significant practical difficulties for the social scientist. Even the minimal requirement of estimating how many beliet~ someone has is difficult to satisfy, for there is not yet any clear way even to individuate beliefs or propositions believed. It is also impossible in practice to test the correctness of even a large proportion of a set of beliefs if the set is very large. And if one tried to arrive at an estimate by testing only a representative sample of someone's beliefs, it would be difficult to know whether the sample was actually representative. But all of these practical difficulties are beside the point. My argument only requires that it is logically possible to estimate in a rough way what proportion of someone's beliefs are correct or rational beliefs. Nothing in this first objection or in any other objection known to me gives grounds for saying that such estimates are not even logically possible.

The second, third and fourth objections are three different ways to attack the second claim involved in my argument. They are three attempts to show that one cannot rationally infer from the proportion of probably true or rational beliefs in the sample (viz. beliefs whose probable truth value or rationality is testable by social scientists) to the likelihood that theism (or any other belief outside


this sample) is true or reasonable to believe. I f one calls the beliefs in the sample naturalistic beliefs and if one calls the other beliefs supernaturalist ic beliefs, the three objections can be viewed as three arguments to show that one cannot rat ional ly make the inference from "Person p's naturalistic beliefs are p robab ly mostly ( in)correct or ( i r )rat ional" to "person p's supernaturalist ic beliefs are p robab ly ( in)correct or ( ir)rat ional ."

T h e first of these three objections is that one should not infer from correctness in one subject or range of subjects to correctness in an- o ther subject or range of subjects. I agree, of course, tha t one tannot

always rat ional ly use correctness in one area (e.g. physics) as a guide to correctness in another area (e.g. religion). But what needs to be proved is tha t one can never reasonably use correctness in one area as a guide to correctness in another . I f my a rgument is correct then one can sometimes quite rat ional ly make this inference; so it cannot be used as an object ion to my argument wi thout begging the question. O the r considerations to be in t roduced shortly also show that it could be reasonable to use expertise or ignorance in one area as a guide to expertise or ignorance in ano ther area. I conclude that this first object ion should be rejected as question begging and incorrect or as irrelevant .

T h e second of the three objections to ever using correctness about naturalistic claims as a guide to the correctness of theism is this: claims about the existence of a god are not empirical ly testable; therefore, no empirical discovery could possibly reveal their probable t ru th values. This position is unpala table in all its forms. Even if one precludes pantheistic, "natural is t ic" and other interpretat ions of theism which allow the existence of a god to be direct ly observed, one must still mainta in that some observable worldly event is re levant to de termining the t ru th value of theism, otherwise theism is un- verifiable and unfalsifiable and is no belief at all. But this second position is also untenable because it begs the quest ion at issue, viz. "Can empirical enquiries of social scientists be relevant to estab- lishing the wor th of theism?" To assert tha t the claim that there is a god is not empir ical ly testable is merely to assert tha t empir ical enquiries are i r relevant to discovering the worth of theism. But tha t is what needs to be proved by the critic, not merely asserted.

The third of the three objections to inferring from the correctness of someone's naturalistic beliefs to the correctness of his belief in a

5 8 T H E O R I G I N S A N D T H E W O R T H OF T H E I S M

god is tha t there is no positive reason for making such an inference. This sort of position would p robab ly be taken only by someone who saw that his positive arguments against making the inference were failures and decided to shift the burden of p roof to those who wish to use such an inference.

I t is ent irely p rope r to d e m a n d some positive justif ication for making the inference in question, but the critic errs in thinking that it cannot be provided. I t only needs to be shown that it is correct to make the inference in quest ion in some possible situation, and it is not difficult to imagine such situations. To do this one needs only to notice tha t even where someone has beliefs about widely diverse subject matters, he may use very similar s tandards of evidence and inference when he comes to have these beliefs. Jus t as the differences in subject ma t t e r might lead one to suppose that the cogency of someone's beliefs on one subject is not a good guide to the cogency of his beliefs on a different subject, the use of the same intel lectual s tandards in enquiries into two subjects would lead one to believe that the cogency of someone's beliefs on one subject is a good guide to the cogency of his beliefs on a different subject. Exper ience shows tha t if the same high (low) intel lectual s tandards are appl ied in different areas, then if the beliefs in one area are mostly (in)correct , the beliefs in the other area are also likely to be mostly (in)correct . T h e converse is also t rue: different s tandards of enqui ry create a presumpt ion that the degree of cogency on one prob lem is no indicat ion of the same degree of cogency on the other p rob lem even if they are in problems in the same area.

I t seems obvious that there are actual ly cases in which someone uses roughly the same s tandards of evidence and inference in adopt ing beliefs in "different areas" and so there surely could be such cases - which was all tha t needed to be shown. I would go even further, for it is reasonable to think that all enquiries are like this unless there is evidence to the contrary . Standards used in one enqui ry tend to be used in others, at least if one is considering fundamenta l and deeply engra ined intellectual dispositions toward the adequacy of evidence and the cogency of inferences. Thus it is actual ly correct to infer f rom someone's degree of correctness on non-religious matters to his degree of correctness on religious matters unless there are special reasons not to do so.

I t is well known tha t there are special reasons to suppose tha t


different intellectual standards are used in adopting the belief that a god exists than in adopting non-religious beliefs. Believers often admit that they discard their usual critical standards when they accept theism "on faith." Nevertheless, it is surely possible that st~me, person or even some group of persons does use similar intellectual standards concerning both religious and non-religious matters. Thus someone's degree of correctness about naturalistic claims could

be an indication of the probability that his belief that there is a god is (in)correct.

V

I have argued for and defended the doctrine that the origins of any version of theism could show whether or not that belief is probably true or is rational to accept, but that this is so only under certain circumstances that (logically) could occur but almost certainly will never occur. In one respect this is a weak doctrine; for it only claims that it is logically possible that the origins of theism bear upon its worth. But the doctrine is strong, and therefore is important, in another respect. It claims that origins are relevant to the worth of the belief that is essentiaI t o the vast majority of major religions.

My result is important in other ways as well. It tends to break down some traditional ways of viewing questions in religion and in the philosophy of religion. Since "religious questions" and "philosophical questions about religion" could be answered by scientific means, they might well be thought to be scientific questions or at least to be scientific questions about religion rather than philosophical questions about religion.

Finally, the results that have been attained concerning theism can be extended to any belief at all that is meaningful. Information about where and how a belief originates calz shed light on both the truth value and reasonableness of any logically contingent and meaningful claim, and it can even shed light on the reasonableness, though not the truth value, of claims that aIe logically necessary.

In spite of all this, my conclusions may be disappointing. After all, the most unlikely conditions must be satisfied before scientific discoveries about the origins of beliefs would actually establish anything about the worth of those beliefs. This means that there is no good reason to think that such discoveries of the social sciences

6o T H E O R I G I N S A N D T H E W O R T H OF T H E I S M

will ever actually aid us in evaluating the worth of any belief. This is true. But to be aware of this is itself to know something important about the de facto usefulness of science. One is free from the mis- conception that scientific discoveries could not bear upon the worth of any important religious claim; yet now one has rational grounds for being pessimistic about the chances that science will be of much help in deciding the worth of these claims. One has replaced the irrational view that scientific enquiries into the origins of beliefs could not possibly provide information about the worth of those beliefs with the rational view that it is possible but highly improb- able that information about origins will provide information about worth.

ALBERT W. WALD Washington State University

the origins and the worth of theism

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