René van Woudenberg

An epistemic argument for tolerance

In this paper I first take a critical look at Grube’s allegiance to the idea that bivalence should be rejected as it can serve the cause of religious toleration. I argue that bivalence is not what Grube says it is, and that rejection of bivalence comes at a very high price that we should not be willing to pay. Next I analyze Grube’s argument for religious toleration – an argument that does not involve the rejection of bivalence. I argue that the argument is unconvincing because there exists no relation between epistemic justification and toleration. (I also note problems with the notion of ‘justification’ as used by Grube.)In this paper I first take a critical look at Grube’s allegiance to the idea that bivalence should be rejected as it can serve the cause of religious toleration. I argue that bivalence is not what Grube says it is, and that rejection of bivalence comes at a very high price that we should not be willing to pay. Next I analyze Grube’s argument for religious toleration – an argument that does not involve the rejection of bivalence. I argue that the argument is unconvincing because there exists no relation between epistemic justification and toleration. (I also note problems with the notion of ‘justification’ as used by Grube.)

Christianity and Science

The relations between Christianity and science are, and have conceived to be, multifarious and diverse. It has been argued, for instance, that modern science emerged in a thoroughly Christian context and probably could not have emerged outside of it (Hooykaas, 1972). It has been argued that modern science and Christian belief are incompatible (Philipse, 2012), or even ‘at war’ with each other, but it has also been argued that the alleged conflicts are only superficial and that their concordance is much deeper (Plantinga, 2011). Discussions about alleged conflicts have often focused on such questions as ‘Are evolution and divine creation mutually exclusive?’ (Dennett, 1995; Ruse, 2001; Alexander, 2008); ‘Does and can God, if He exists, work miracles in the world?’ (Swinburne, 1991, Ch. 12); ‘Doesn’t the cognitive science of religion show that religious beliefs are illusions?’ (Schloss and Murray, 2009; Bering, 2011); and many more (a first-rate work on many of the focal issues is Stewart, 2010; also important is Ruse, 2010).