Religious Discourse A Special Kind of Discourse

Religious discourse is a special kind of discourse. There are at least two ways of access to religion. We may discover the higher world of religion or people may have designed and created that world. The latter case is a matter of religious construction, which would render religious truth relative. If the higher world of religion has been created by people, then we would confront several serious questions. For theinsiders, would religious ideas be only relatively or absolutely true? For them, would relativity exclusively be a matter of the metalevel? How would people having different religious ideas communicate one with another? What are the criteria for assessing the acceptability of religious extrapolation or construction? If an idea is true in religious discourse, would it follow that it is true in empirical, metaphysical or historical discourse as well? The author, who wants to argue neither for nor against religious truth, writes: ‘It would seem… that when differences between universes of discourse are not heeded, Tarskian truth-conditions at the hands of an Inquisition could cause people to die at the stake’. Religious belief may also be based on religious reflection, in which there are elements both of discovering and of religious construction. Religious reflection is about traditional religious ideas, about authoritative and holy religious texts, about the universe, life and death. Development of religious ideas based on reflection of insiders to certain religious communities easily leads to different traditions and different practices. This makes one wonder why differences in religious views and practices so often issue in misunderstanding, hatred and violence.

Charles Goossens taught philosophy, especially moral philosophy, at the national universities at Leiden and Utrecht, The Netherlands. His publications include Exploring a Theory of Morality and Religion: Moderate Constructivism (2nd edition, 2020), and Towards a Theory of Relativity of Truth in Morality and Religion (2nd edition, 2023).