Theistic Belief, Atheistic Belief and Standards of Rationality

This proposed project aims at continuing some of the initiatives launched at the former projects and to add some new ones. In doing so, it shall capitalize on the successes of the first project and make use of the positive momentum, which analytic approaches are currently gaining among philosophers and theologians in Russia. The project plans to translate three books and to organize a series of workshops for promising young Russian scholars interested in analytic philosophy of religion and theology.

The main topics of the project are

(1) the epistemology of religious belief—boundaries of rationality in religious belief and especially in theology and whether belief is primarily aimed at achieving truth;

(2) the nature of theology as a kind of knowledge;

(3) the problem of scientific atheism—to what extent a scientific understanding of reality fosters atheism and what the epistemic connections between a scientific understanding of reality and atheism are.

Concrete questions to be discussed in the project