Disagreement and Religious Relevance

This chapter argues that recent work in philosophical epistemology of religious belief and disagreement can be meaningfully connected to related work on belief and religious diversity in religious studies, the sociology and the psychology of religion. What is required is a shift of theoretical focus from paradigmatically religious propositions to religiously relevant propositions or questions. The proposed notion of religious relevance is empirical and context-sensitive. Still, it is exclusive enough to avoid inflationary religion-spotting. Religious relevance goes hand-in-hand with non-religious relevance. Putting the focus on religious relevance can thus help explain why questions engaging some persons’ religious worldviews overlap with questions significant to others in non-religious ways.