Philosophy Faculty Seminar-1, S. Lourdunathan, 25 July 2013, S.

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Is it reasonable to be religious?
If religion does not exist would God exist? If God does not exist would religion exist?

01. Sometimes it is better to think; to think why we should think This is the disposition of the way of being human in a world of beings-not-human. Modern thinking claims that the nature of being human implies the centrality of reflective-ability. Rene Descartes for instance, is pretty assertive of the indubitable that we think, therefore we exist, meaning to say as humans we are self-reflective or reason-able. Alternatively the absence of selfreflective capability forecloses the potentiality of being human and discloses the possibilities notsufficiently human. Though to some/many extent, we as humans are culturally domesticated/constructed we are not mere entities devoid of selfreflective or reason-ability. 02. The term religion does not and cannot have an essential meaning. Religion means different things to different people. For some, buying/eating fish on Friday is a sense of religious identity, for some going to pilgrim centers is a sense of being religious, for some others utterance of a set of words/prayers repeatedly is a sense of being religious, for some others (ritual-skillful players) following/adherence of a set of rules and regulations is a sense of being

religious, for some others being theological (attributing specific meaning) is the way of being religious (for instance, instead eating fish on Friday, save the Friday-money for charity) etc. So, the definition of religion is that it can have many definitions and hence cannot be defined in an essentialist manner. antiessentialism 03. In this discussion, let me use the terms religious and having faith as synonymous. The claim that someone is religious, I take to mean that s/he claims to have faith and s/he is a religious practitioner. 04. My primary concern is to ask: is it reasonable to be religious? To think the reason for being religious is the concern here, by which we as self-reflective humans implore a sense of Faith seeking understanding rather than faith seeking faith for faith, cannot seek by itself. (An egg cannot seek its own reason for its being an egg. One needs to the break the egg, if need be. 05. Breaking the Issues: Many people claim they are religious. Why do they say that they are religious? If so, what do they mean when they say they are religious? In other words, what is the possible reasonableness on the basis of which such claims are justified? Are our beliefs justified true beliefs? If we claim that we are religious on certain reasonable grounds, does it
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mean say that those who are notreligious are irrational and after all what is rational is rational if and only if it is publicly rational and there cannot be such thing called private reason and what we normally call private reason is only a matter of private affairs and not necessarily reason per-se. If it is not reasonably justifiable to be religious, why should one claim that s/he is religious? That is to say, that X is religious in absence of being rational? If so, on the grounds of the centrality human-reason, such religious-humans, can we say , refuse to be rational? If a claim to be religious is rationally justifiable does it amount to say, those who claim to be non-religious are irrational or non-rational? Alternatively If we claim that we are not religious does it mean, those who are religious are irrational? Can we justify our reasons to be religious? Can we justify our reasons to be no-religious? Many religious persons claim that religion and morality are interlinked, to be religious is to be moral, and if so, does it mean to say those who are not religious are non-moral? And if one can be moral without being religious why if it all there be religious-claims. What is the relation between reason and religion and morality?

I think one can raise many more related issues around this theme but let me hold back to address the issue namely is it reasonable to be religious? if so, what are the reasons on the grounds of which one can justify ones reason to be religious and if not otherwise. 06. There seems to be three types of global trends with reference to religious-claims that operative in the recent times: 4.1. There are identifiable groups that spine for a culture based on unquestioning faith, they are named religious fundamentals. 4.2. There are those who are religious in a sense of unselfconscious relationship to their traditions 4.3. There are those ignited by the secular trends of modernity needle a culture based on reason, science, democracy and technology- atheistic trends. They consider religion as cultureddespisers. 4.4. There are those who struggle to find a balance/bridge between faith and reason. 4.5. Who am I and what is my identity in relation to religion is still an identity issue for many. Philosophical discussions do always treat the study of religion as one of its intimate subject of inquiry and in fact it is not far from truth if I claim that religious claims deep down are philosophical and not vice versa. The relation between philosophy and
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religion remains so intimate those philosophical inquiries make the faith in the path of understanding. 07. We shall first look at these statements: (i) John says, I am religious because I have faith. (ii) Peter says, I am religious because I have sufficient reasons to be religious. (iii) Suresh says, I am religious because I have sufficient reasons, the reasons of my claim to be religious are moderately reasonable. Between these first two statements or positions, the because in the first statement in fact does not have any because (reason) for it only repeats the first part of the statement. It is like saying: I am religious because I am religious (I have faith). Such a statement lacks any epistemic validity for the second part of statement prefixed with because merely restates the first part of the statement. It is a matter of repeating the case in question hence redundant. It is like saying India is a spiritual country and Gandhi is from India, therefore Gandhi is spiritual. (To put it differently), X belongs to a particular system of religious belief, therefore X is a believer (I hold) is similar to saying, X religious because he belongs to religious sect and therefore X has faith. Repetition of a position inquestion does not amount to provide the reasonableness of it. A

statement/position cannot be conclusively be legitimized to be true no matter how often it is repeated and how-different ways it is repeated. 08. This is what is often termed as the problem of begging the question or circular reasoning. (Lourdu says, God must exist. Antony asks, How do you know that God exists? Lourdu responds:Because the Bible says so. Anonty asks, Why should one belief whatever is said in Bible?. Lourdu responds: Because the Bible is the word of God this is what is known as the problem of begging the question or argument in circularity) I know for certain we do make such repeated claims thinking that we are trying to assert but what we do is we are repeating the original statement. Antony Flew would say this, a fine brash of hypothesis is killed by thousand qualifications. 09. Truth necessitates its merit and not its 1000 times repetitions. That be reason, that St. Augustine, in his Sermon (43.7,9) asserts, Crede ut intelligas (Believe in order that you may understand ). This means that faith demands trust in a reliable source and Faith if it is to be FAITH (in Augustinian sense, should seek understanding. Understanding or knowledge provides the foundation for being faithful to Faith (being religious). Augustine would go further to argue that while faith comes first in time, knowledge comes first in importance). In fact, the French
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Philosopher Rene Descartes, cogito ergo sum is but a derivation from the catholic Augustinian position, dubito ergo sum (I doubt therefore I am). (Note: this is one of the reason I feel often skeptical about peoples position that faith does not require knowledge, and I believe such tall claims are anticatholic. This is one of the reasons, Vatican documents demands the necessity of a serious study of philosophy and serious study of philosophy means, letting the students to study philosophy in centers where, the philosophical is taught and not mere philosophy is taught. 10. Repetition may serve the purpose of a domineering position or self-domination but it lacks any authentication. Repeated acts of feeding the chicken in the farm is not intended to promote the chickens but its moral intention is to feed the chicken in order to be fed by the feeders, a process of selfgratification and not necessarily the gratification of the chickens, the othergratification. Repetition of any assertion does not have truth-value rather it does posses the value of undue domination on/for those it is repeated. 11. The third statement is a question regarding not only the reasons but the reasonability of the reasons of ones claim, and this is what exactly what I intend opening up for a discussion (though I have not finely addressed this issue here, we may reserve it for the more discussion).

12. Hence, philosophically speaking, any assertion or claim needs to be rationally justified. In other words, a truth-claim is true in so far as it conceives the possibility of its truth-conditions. A statement/position is authenticated to be true if and only if it propels its truth conditions. This is one of the reasons, that an epistemic position demands that knowledge-claims must be justified true belief. 13. And so, the question is it reasonable to be religious demands a serious sense of thinking the reasons to be religious. The statement Peter says, I am religious because I have sufficient reasons to be religious is more plausible than the statement of John I am religious because I have faith. The statement of Suresh is more reasonable than the former ones. The last one, calls for an epistemic validity. It is, as per the Augustinian position, is the way of being Christian within the Catholic Church Faith seeks understanding.
14. Reasonableness to be religious: Religious practice reduces the chances of a person committing suicide: A study conducted among suicide victims, those with no-religious practices are more prone to suicide attempts than with those who practice religion Religious practitioners and Church attendants were less prone to depression: A large Canadian study involving 70,000 adults found that those who attended Church services regularly had fewer depressive symptoms than average. Interestingly, those who described 4

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themselves as spiritual, rather than religious, had more depressive symptoms. Both effects were true regardless of age, sex and other variables. Religious practices help the bereaved to cope with the loss/death of loved ones: One recent study examined 135 relatives and close friends of those who died in a palliative care centre at one, nine and 14 months after bereavement. People with no spiritual beliefs did not resolve their grief over the period of the study, those with strong beliefs did so progressively, and those with low levels of belief showed no change for the first nine months, but they began to resolve their grief after that point.. Religious practice reduces risk-taking and sexual behavior among teenagers: One major study involving over 2,000 young people aged between 11-18 showed church attendance and involvement in a churchbased youth group reduced risk-taking behaviors such as smoking, alcohol use, marijuana use, truancy and depression, even when controlling for confounders such as socio-economic status and self-esteem. Religious practices reduce and sexual behavior among teenagers: Regarding sexual activity, church attendance and youth involvement reduced sexual activity. Furthermore, the risk-taking behavior that often occurs in early adulthood was less marked in the religious cohort. Self-esteem was also higher among those attending church. Reduces or able to fight Alcoholism, smoking: Of those who are saved from alcoholism, people with religious practices are more than that of people without religious orientation/practice. Religious practice enhances self esteem: a study reveals that the self-esteem level of

those who belong/practice religion is higher than that of those who do not. Religious practitioners have lower number of sexual partners: A survey of 1,100 American adults aged over 18 found that those who were religious had a lower number of sexual partners than those who were not Religious practice adds to life expectancy: A meta-analysis of all studies relating to religious involvement and longevity was carried out in the year 2000. A total of 126,000 people were involved. It found that active religious involvement increased the chances of living longer than the average by 29%, and participation in public religious practices, such as church attendance, increased he chance of living longer by 43%.

Enhances Marital Stability: The greatest amount of marital stability is found among couples who practice the same religion. Marriages in which neither spouse is religious are the least stable. Marriages between couples who practice different religions, or where one is religious and the other is not, fall in between these two poles. Marital stability among religious believers is explained partly by religious injunctions against divorce, but it also may be explained by the fact that religious believers attach less importance to personal

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autonomy and more importance to commitment. Patient Recovery faster: A number of studies have been conducted to test the effect of prayer on patient recovery. These have compared groups of patients who were being prayed for, but didnt know it, and another group who were not being prayed for. None of the patients knew they were part of these studies. Measures such as mortality, duration of fever and length of stay in hospital were shorter in the prayer group than in the non-prayer group. However, these studies are not conclusive. They only indicate that there may be some positiveeffect from prayer because other studies, for example involving cardiac patients, have shown no effect. Numerical strength: In India Religion Practicing People numerically more than those who do not practice religion. Religious practitioners have a stronger sense to values and morals: religion and morality are inseparable. Religion exists in multiple ways: (my previous lecture at Chennai) Rich & Poverty, Happiness argument: Among the poor people, those with religious practice are happy in spite their daily low-income, it is not surprising to see that they are happy and visit temples and churches repeatedly in spite of their lower income. People who are rich does not any way refrain from religious practices and this means a question of happiness and personal satisfaction of the religious practitioners. Post-modernity, in a sense is a way of turning back to religious tradition. The above-said studies, most of them sociological in nature argue to the effect that people with religion (religious people)

are in an advantageous position than that of those who are not in tune with religious practices.

16. Most arguments or reasons for being religious can be classified in the following ways. They are of the type of argument from. These include: 16.1. Argument from human pathology (Mother-Teresa) 16.2. Argument numerical strength 16.3. Argument from tradition or cultural inheritance 16.4. Argument from morality 16.5. Argument from consciousness (not explained here) 16.6. Argument from no argument etc 17. Some questions on Reasonableness of our reasons to be religious: Strength of the evidence does not guarantee the truth of the conclusive assertion: Pope John Paul made the first visit to Brazil, in 1980; nearly 90 percent of the population considered itself Catholic; by the 2010 census, that had fallen to under two-thirds, with the number of Brazilians calling themselves Protestants rising to 22 percent from 6 percent during the same period. According to a poll conducted recently by the local Datafolha organization, only 57% of Brazilians identify themselves as Catholics, and fewer than 16% say they attend weekly Mass. Protestant

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evangelicals are making strong inroads among the Catholic faithful. Argument from human pathology is an argument for security-needs: Freud, for example, felt that belief in God was a projection of our need for security and for a father figure. Religion is an easy-response and recourse (safety-valve) to the unspelt identity problem. Bertrand Russell to the effect that an argument from the facts of the world to the existence of God could not be valid "as one could not deduce a necessary conclusion from a contingent premise". Religion as a systematic entity, as it emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a concept of polemics and apologetics. Reason is not the territory of the religious practitioners. It is psychological, emotional, pathological, and cultural. No amount of belief makes something a fact

Conclusion: If we claim we are homosapiens, and thereby we are selfreflective let there be moments of/for further reflections. Let faith seek its understanding. ----------