Faith’s Retreat and the Evolution of Religious Belief Since 1689
FAIN: FT-305684-25
Mark Boespflug
Fort Lewis College (Durango, CO 81301-3908)
Research and writing leading to a book tracing the decline
of faith as a symptom of the loss of the philosophical basis for belief.
At the dawn of the Enlightenment, faith was held to involve a high degree of confidence based on strong evidence in the form of revelation corroborated by miracles. By the 21st century, each of these components has been denied by extant authors on faith. Faith need not even involve belief; indeed, it is purportedly compatible with the lowest degree of confidence. Faith need not be based on any evidence whatsoever. Revelatory testimony corroborated by miracles has ceased to be regarded as the critical basis for faith. The goal of my project, “Faith’s
Retreat,” is to understand how this transition unfolded over the course of the intervening centuries.