Religious beliefs in a scientific age: A question of metaphysical relativism
Keywords:
fideism, metaphysical relativism, prophet, religious beliefs, rhetoricAbstract
Relativism, in particular, and, on the one hand, is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that facts in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Metaphysical Relativism, in general, and, on the other hand, is the position that objects in particular, and reality in general, only exist relative to other objects, and have no meaning in isolation – what they mean depends on how the individuals who hold such beliefs interpret them (the beliefs). This article explains what the language of religious belief is (or should be, using some selected examples of prophecies and discourses largely in Ghana) and how this language affects an otherwise what should have been a rational way of demonstrating one’s faith. The paper used, what has been adopted, stipulatively, metaphysical relativism as reason, perhaps, for why religious beliefs, no matter how illogical one may think, cannot be interpreted within the framework of logic.
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