The Vagueness of Religious Beliefs

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (2):181-210 (2020)
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Abstract

My paper characterizes religious beliefs in terms of vagueness. I introduce my topic by providing a general overview of my main claims. In the subsequent section, I develop basic distinctions and terminology for handling the notion of religious tradition and capturing vagueness. In the following sections, I make the case for my claim that religious beliefs are vague by developing a general argument from the interconnection between the referential opacity of religious belief content and the long-term communitarian history of the precisification of what such content means. I start from describing an empirical example in the third section, and then I move to settle the matter in a conceptually argumentative frame in the fourth one. My conclusions in the final section address a few of consequences relevant to debates about religious epistemology and religious diversity.

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Daniele Bertini
University Of Rome 2, Tor Vergata

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References found in this work

Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Vagueness, truth and logic.Kit Fine - 1975 - Synthese 30 (3-4):265-300.
Quantifiers and propositional attitudes.Willard van Orman Quine - 1955 - Journal of Philosophy 53 (5):177-187.
The existence of God.Richard Swinburne - 1979 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Can there be vague objects?Gareth Evans - 1978 - Analysis 38 (4):208.

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