Wisdom I: Religion and Reason

Abstract

Professor Wisdom holds that religions speak about the world we all know even when they seem to refer to what lies outside the sphere of our senses or beyond this life. He insists that even when there is little or no difference between the believer and the non-believer in what they expect in a future life, the difference between them is not confined to how they live their life and face death. They also differ in how they see life— though these two differences are logically dependent. So it makes sense to ask whether what they say about life is true; religious beliefs are amenable to reasons which ultimately rest on how things stand here and now. A belief in the God of the scriptures is no exception to this.

Originally published in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. V, no. 4 (December 1975).