Commentary: Religious credence is not factual belief

Van Leeuwen (2014) claims religious credences are not factual beliefs. He holds that while factual beliefs alone (i) guide behavior in all relevant practical settings, (ii) support inferences between religious credences and (iii) are evidentially vulnerable; religious credences instead (a) have a perceived normative orientation, (b) are open to free elaboration and (c) are vulnerable to special authority. However, it is relatively easy to think of potential counterexamples to that seemingly neat dichotomy, as Van Leeuwen allows. Thus, rituals—such as rain dances—often have purported mundane effects that render beliefs regarding them evidentially vulnerable. The beliefs regarding such rituals must support inferences between factual claims about the details of the ritual to be performed and its efficacy, and certainly do guide ritual behavior in the relevant practical setting. The literature on ritual failure seems to bear out such a more heterogenous view of religious beliefs (Hüsken, 2007). Yet, it is not easy to judge the significance of such examples. Van Leeuwen is right to point out, after all, that claims normally deemed to be religious may have the traits of factual claims and vice versa. But, while undoubtedly true, this view has much scope for abuse along the lines of the no-true-Scotsman objection and, therefore, must be used advisedly when dealing with potential counterexamples. More importantly, Van Leeuwen does not really provide any evidence that the triplets of traits he identifies do regularly co-occur in the property space occupied by various propositional attitudes. He merely provides suggestions as to why some of the traits may co-occur. To show that a relatively clear distinction does exist—that factual beliefs and religious credences are clearly separable attractor positions in this space—it would be necessary to plot a representative sample of propositional attitudes in the property space and see whether they do cluster. What is more, such a study would need to be done cross-culturally, to avoid the possibility that the distinction is a WEIRD, post-secularization phenomenon (Henrich et al., 2010). To better appreciate the distinctions among propositional attitudes, however, I would suggest that it would be better to consider the underlying reasons for any differences in how people think about mundane claims (I will use the term " mundane " as it does not beg the question that religious claims are not factual) as opposed to religious claims, and ideologies in general. These differences are systematic, maintained by social and cultural institutions and exist …