Wittgenstein had
a reason for focusing on the complexity of the phenomenon of religious belief.
Wittgenstein began his lectures on religious belief by pointing out that believers and atheists regularly talk past each other. If you search the Web under “atheism,” you will find a great deal of intelligent and painstaking proof that the Bible contains e
but precious little recognition that most religious people are not fundamentalists, and many do not believe in the idea of divine dictation at all.
It is as if atheists too were “fanatics,” in Kant’s sense; for atheists, too, their [negative] religious belief is, it seems, akin to a perceptual certainty, something that involves no responsibility.
Wittgenstein, if I interpreted him correctly, did not want to make us believers (he was not religious himself ), but he felt an enormous respect for the literature and the spirituality contained in religious traditions, and he wished to combat this sort of simplistic stereotyping
Wittgenstein began his lectures on religious belief by pointing out that believers and atheists regularly talk past each other. If you search the Web under “atheism,” you will find a great deal of intelligent and painstaking proof that the Bible contains e
but precious little recognition that most religious people are not fundamentalists, and many do not believe in the idea of divine dictation at all.
It is as if atheists too were “fanatics,” in Kant’s sense; for atheists, too, their [negative] religious belief is, it seems, akin to a perceptual certainty, something that involves no responsibility.
Wittgenstein, if I interpreted him correctly, did not want to make us believers (he was not religious himself ), but he felt an enormous respect for the literature and the spirituality contained in religious traditions, and he wished to combat this sort of simplistic stereotyping
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