RELIGION, CONSERVATISM AND INTELLIGENCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26512/2358-82842019e29089Keywords:
faith, doubt, political conservatism, religious conservatism, epistemic conservatism.Abstract
In view of the relative absence of the study of religion in the Brazilian academic philosophical circles, the text explores the thesis that this fact is due to an association of religion to a politically conservative attitude and a lack of critical spirit, given a supposed valorization of faith instead of a skeptical stance. The article aims to discuss the relationship between religion and intelligence by employing the notion of conservatism as conceptual mediation. Firstly, it analyses the relation between religion and conservatism, in which it will be proposed a notion of religious conservatism as different from political conservatism. The second section deals with the relationship between conservatism and intelligence, analyzing the role of epistemic conservatism in the scientific (and epistemological in general) desideratum of cognitive gain over reality. A comparison between the epistemic roles of doubt and belief follows from this analysis. Thirdly, it will be discussed the relation between religion and intelligence, both from the point of view of the application of epistemic conservatism principles to the defense of religious belief reasonableness and from a broader comprehension of intelligence than the mere intellectual one. In the end, the problem of religion in the academic circles is retaken in view of the relationship between religion, conservatism and intelligence.
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