Religious delusion or religious belief?
Journal article
Gipps, R. and Clarke, Simon 2024. Religious delusion or religious belief? Philosophical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2302519
Authors | Gipps, R. and Clarke, Simon |
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Abstract | How shall we distinguish religious delusion from sane religious belief? Making this determination is not usually found to be difficult in clinical practice – but what shall be our theoretical rationale? Attempts to answer this question often try to provide differentiating principles by which the religious “sheep” may be separated from the delusional “goats.” As we shall see, none of these attempts work. We may, however, ask whether the assumption underlying the search for a differentiating principle – that religious beliefs and religious delusions can usefully be considered species of a common genus – is a good one. In this paper, we outline an alternative, “disjunctive,” understanding of religious belief and religious delusion. By reminding ourselves both of what is central to any delusion and of what distinguishes bona fide religious claims from their pretenders, we show how to resolve our reflective puzzlement about religious delusion without recourse to differentiating principles. |
Keywords | Delusion; Relgious delusion; Religion; Faith; Psychosis |
Year | 2024 |
Journal | Philosophical Psychology |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
ISSN | 0951-5089 |
1465-394X | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2302519 |
Official URL | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2024.2302519 |
Publication dates | |
Online | 10 Jan 2024 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 02 Jan 2024 |
Deposited | 22 Jan 2024 |
Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
Output status | Published |
https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/96x71/religious-delusion-or-religious-belief
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Publisher's version
Religious delusion or religious belief .pdf | ||
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | ||
File access level: Open |
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