Urging legitimate philosophical utility in religion

Molinism, divine foreknowledge and human freedom

Abstract

It is not always clear precisely in what sense the contribution of philosophical inquiry to the analysis, substantiation, and/or rejection of religious beliefs is presented in our normal theoretical reflections and continuous quest for the truth  in  different  theses,  be  they  our  own  or  those  attributed  to  the  great philosophical minds. In this paper, I argue that by employing the methods of rational argumentation and conceptual analysis –two essential components of any philosophical task– philosophical inquiry becomes most useful for analyzing, substantiating and/or rejecting religious beliefs. First, the essay posits two theses: (1) that the conceptual analysis of a set of religious claims allows us to clarify the content of both those tenets and that of others conceptually entailed by them, while contributing directly to a clearer formulation of philosophical problems that can usually be identified in virtue of the abovementioned conceptual implications; and, (2) that rational argumentation is necessary to convincingly justify or reject a religious claim. I exemplify these two theses by placing them in the context of a concrete religious discussion: the millenarian, and ongoing, discussion of the problem of the incompatibility between divine omniscience and human freedom, in light of the Molinist solution to this problem. Finally, I briefly explore the issue of the existence of a reasonable doubt as to generalizations of the usefulness of these methods for substantiating or rejecting religious claims.