Krytyczna rekonstrukcja głównych założeń analitycznej teologii naturalnej J. Hicka

Abstract

A synthetic depiction of John Hick’s philosophical reflections proves that in his research the religion-oriented theodicy issues come to the fore. The natural theology, or rather the philosophy of religion, proposed by him aims at (1) questioning the conclusivity of any attempts at supporting arguments for the existence of God (the cosmological or the ontological arguments). He claims that the measures taken in those arguments by no means stand up any logical criticism. On the other hand (2), John Hick puts forward an original proposal of an argument named as “eschatological verification”. This way of constructing arguments particularly appeals to him as he is immune to allegations against the inconsequence of metaphysical conclusions. He bases it on the intuition of logical consistency, though on the horizon of the very religious faith. Therefore, the “eschatological verification” formulated by the author of The fifth dimension and his highly controversial theory of “religious relativistic pluralism” boils down to an a priori quasi-religious concept of the world, a concept that cannot be subjected to any rational (logical) verification. His proposal only results from the projected coherence of religious experience.