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Neil Van Leeuwen, Religion as Make-Believe, Harvard University Press, 2023, 312pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780674290334.
Reviewed by Eric Schwitzgebel, University of California, Riverside
In Religion as Make-Believe, Neil Van Leeuwen argues that factual beliefs (for example, that there’s beer in the fridge) differ greatly from “religious credences” (for example, that God is a trinity). Although people commonly say they “believe” the central doctrines of their religion, their attitudes are often closer to pretense. Hence, religion as “make-believe”.
According to Van Leeuwen, if you factually believe that there is beer in the fridge, your attitude normally has four functional features:
(1) It is involuntary. You can’t help but believe that there’s beer in the fridge upon looking there and seeing beer.
(2) It is vulnerable to evidence. If you later look in the fridge and discover no beer, your belief will vanish.
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