Summary
Title: The Case for Religion
Author: Keith Ward
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
ISBN: 1851683372
Pro:
• Sincere attempt to defend religion
Con:
• Doesn’t succeed in making a case for religion
Description:
• Priest and professor of divinity argues that religion is a good thing
• Attempts to argue that common arguments against religion don’t work
Book Review
Religious believers are, of course, ready defenders of religion generally and their religion in particular, but their efforts have met with mixed success at best — that’s why they keep trying and why new efforts are always being produced. Keith Ward, an Anglican priest and professor of divinity, has written his own defense entitled The Case for Religion.
How does Ward do? Like others before him, his success is decidedly mixed at best. His writing is clear and doesn’t require a degree in philosophy or theology to understand. He states his goals at the beginning, making it easy for anyone to evaluate how well he succeeds. Unfortunately, a careful examination of his efforts reveals that he doesn’t really accomplish the goals he sets out.
He writes, for example, that his book “demolishes some influential arguments against religion which are supposed to be based on science, sociology, and psychology.” What he does is attack some popular arguments against religion with criticisms that are well-known and, by this point, quite well-worn. What he doesn’t do is address recent work, for example the research done by Michael Persinger in which he is able to induce religious experiences with magnetized helmets.
This is especially troublesome given the fact that Ward seems to rest what little case he has on precisely that: religious experiences. Religious belief, Ward says, “is not fundamentally a matter of evidence. Religion may be based on experience, but that is very different from saying that it is based on evidence.” He claims that religious experiences are “unpredictable,” which is not true because Persinger has a lot of luck inducing just the sort of experience he wants. He says that religious experiences are “unique,” but there is a great deal of consistency in what people report.
He also engages in more than a few straw men to make his case. He insists, for example, that all “real atheists” and all “naturalistic explanation[s] of religious belief” say that believers in a spiritual reality are “deluded.” If by that he means that believers have deceived themselves, it’s certainly true of some but not necessarily of all atheists and naturalistic explanations of religion. If by that he simply means that believers have a “false opinion,” that is trivially and uninterestingly true — after all, adherents of any one religious tradition say that adherents of other traditions have false opinions as well.
Ward also says that his book shows that religions “are not in chaotic conflict, but...explore the logically possible set of answers to basic questions of spiritual meaning.” He doesn’t show that religions explore all possible answers to such questions, but even if he did, that wouldn’t amount to much. The fact that religions explore possible answers to questions about meaning doesn’t show that religion, either in general or in any particular instance, is justified.
Moreover, religions are in conflict. This conflict may not be “chaotic,” but the conflict does exist and cannot be dismissed. Ward explores the idea that all religions may have access to portions of “spiritual truths” and acknowledges some religious beliefs “may be mistaken,” but he never explores one further possibility: that all religious beliefs (where a so-called “spiritual reality is concerned) “may be mistaken.” Ward not only doesn’t explain why this isn’t so, he doesn’t address the matter at all — a very curious choice, given the topic of the book. One would think that a primary question to be answered is “why should any of these claims be taken seriously in the first place?”
