418 book reviews

J. L. Schellenberg
Evolutionary Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 174.
ISBN: 978-0-19-967376-6.

Humanity needs a new religion, according to J. L. Schellenberg. Not a revival of

old-time religion, feverishly serving God with the fervor of firm belief. Not a
new age religion that replaces God with belief in spiritual powers or forces.
Those and all other venerable religions suffer from a common ailment: they’re
based on belief. What we need is a religion without belief, grounded in and
motivated by the recognition that we humans are barely at the beginning of an
evolutionary history that may gift us or our descendants with future knowl-
edge and intellectual abilities far greater than we can presently conceive.
We intellectually immature animals should embrace Evolutionary Religion—
attitudes and practices based on non-believing faith that ultimism is true,
where ultimism is the view that there exists a reality that transcends the natu-
ral world and possesses greater intrinsic value than any natural thing, relation
to which would fulfill us far more than any natural thing. This faith suits our
place in evolutionary history.
Why should we adopt evolutionary religion? Schellenberg’s general strategy
is first to humble us with religious skepticism, and then to show us a desirable
way of being religious while also being a religious skeptic. Evolution is what
should humble us. Humans have spent a mere 50,000 years thinking about reli-
gion compared to the billion years we may have left on earth to evolve. Future
humans, or our descendants, could well evolve to have far greater intellectual
abilities as well as the benefit of a much larger history of accumulated knowl-
edge. This Great Disparity (as Schellenberg calls it) between us and our possi-
bly hyper-intelligent descendants should humble us and make us realize that
we probably have a highly limited and flawed understanding of many things,
including religion. What follows is evolutionary religious skepticism: religious
belief and religious disbelief (i.e., belief that there is no religious reality of any
kind) are not justified for humans today or in the near future.
The great disparity should also make us realize that our descendants may
yet discover amazing religious truths; for all we know, there is some important
religious reality out there waiting to be discovered. We should be open to dis-
covering religious entities, and so we should adopt an attitude that would help
us to discover them (if they exist) and that, in any case, will help us and our
descendants to flourish. Schellenberg believes that non-believing faith that
ultimism is true is the best such attitude we could take. For Schellenberg, one
has non-believing faith that p when one does not believe that p (nor disbelieve
that p), and yet one thinks it would be good for p to be true, one takes p to be

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/22105700-05031216

book reviews 419

epistemically possible, one imaginatively represents the world as including the

truth of p, forms an intention to be “mentally guided by this picture on an
ongoing basis” (103), and one follows through on this intention. Non-believing
faith that p will also lead one to regard p as true in practical reasoning. Faith in
ultimism should lead us to work to understand ultimate things, understand
ourselves and shape our character for the better, and engage with the needs of
the world.
Schellenberg thinks that we have no reason to believe that ultimism is true
and yet we should have non-believing faith in ultimism. Why? Because human-
ity would benefit. Faith in ultimism enlarges our mental capacities, spurs us to
understand the world as deeply as possible, does justice to our sense that there
is something deeply beautiful about the world that we occasionally catch
glimpse of, motivates appreciation and preservation of beauty, and gives life
zest. Furthermore, much like William James argued, we have a better chance of
discovering whatever religious truth there is by having faith in ultimism—it is
something we will actively search for and it may be the sort of thing that, James
suggested, we only come to know by accepting and acting as if it were true.
Lastly, faith in ultimism is a way of standing for what ought to be true.
A view like Schellenberg’s will likely be dismissed by religious believers and
ignored by bemused philosophers. But he deserves better than that. The view
is defended with wit and analytic precision. His explication and defense of
non-believing faith as a rational attitude builds upon a heap of recent work in
epistemology and philosophy of religion on non-doxastic attitudes like accep-
tance and faith. In short, the book merits careful engagement; readers who,
like myself, disagree will still learn a lot.
So, let’s engage. I want to briefly raise objections to two parts of Schellenberg’s
argument. Let’s start with his argument for evolutionary skepticism. In short,
his argument goes like this: evolution tells us that there is a possible great dis-
parity in intellectual ability and knowledge between us and our evolutionary
descendants. This great disparity shows that, for all we know, no religious enti-
ties exist. Thus, we don’t know that a religious entity exists. Furthermore, the
great disparity shows that we lack good enough reason to justify belief in any
religious entity.
How does the great disparity show that, for all we know, no religious entities
exist? The great disparity simply says that our descendants may well have
greater intellectual abilities and vastly more knowledge than us. Surely our
descendants will know a lot more about, say, physics and biology than us.
They’ll probably know more about religion and have developed new argu-
ments regarding religious claims. Some of what we think we know right now
will turn out to be false. But it is hard to see how the great disparity implies, or

international journal for the study of skepticism 6 (2016) 405-421