RELG 2260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Falsifiability, Logical Positivism, Advaita Vedanta
16 Feb 2017
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We"ve seen the interconnections between religious experience and religious beliefs. Hick decides to use the terms non-realist and realist for these two positions. Realism means the object of perception is really out there, not completely a projection or illusion. Different religions describe that something out there differently. Hick contrasts an abrahamic conception of god with a hindu conception of brahman. Religious realism doesn"t always involve reading scriptures completely literally. All human thinking (including religious thinking) involves interpretation, and interpretation varies by culture (or tradition), and by individual. The real can only be experienced through the lenses of culture and psychology. Hick says that a literalist religious understanding is similar to naive realism in philosophy. Critical realism in philosophy says that humans see a real world, but only see it through the lenses of concepts and interpretations. Naive realism is right to say that there are things out there, but wrong to ignore how things are interpreted, even within sensory perception.
