Beyond Faith: New Perspectives on Belief-Less Religion

Belief-less approaches to religion are becoming increasingly popular in contemporary analytical philosophy of religion. Most significant are religious fictionalism and non-doxasticism. Both these approaches are standardly treated as new ways of legitimizing traditional religious practice. However, this stress on the similarity between belief-less and belief-based religion is unfortunate. Important dissimilarities are neglected and so is the potential of belief-less religion to evolve into something different than traditional religion. The aim of this project is therefore to explore the limits and possibilities of belief-less religion. Hopefully, this exploration will make it possible to formulate a hybrid-position, a third approach incorporating elements from both fictionalism and non-doxasticism.