On the normative significance of the aims of religious practice

During the last decades it has been common to assert—especially in the field of science and religion—that the aims characteristic of religious practice determine the norms we should employ when evaluating its normative status. However, until now, this issue has not been properly investigated by paying attention to contemporary metanormative research. In this article, I critically examine how different popular theories of normativity relate to the proposed normative significance of the aims characteristic of religious practice. I argue that whether or not, and in what way exactly, the aims characteristic of religious practice are normatively significant is highly dependent both on controversial issues concerning the nature of religion, and on a number of controversial metanormative issues.