BTC#2: WHAT IS THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF?

An intelligent, albeit ascerbic personality over at PZ’s place observes:

“You've never explained how it is that your religious beliefs survived the gauntlet of skepticism that you so frequently praise. Furthermore, you've made vague assertions about your religious beliefs being beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry, which is only possible if they're incoherent and devoid of meaning.”

More than one person has raised this objection, and (as I’ve posted previously here) that’s one of the things that prompted me to start this blog in the first place.

I’ve been very slow to address it in any sort of detailed way, though. I’ve been feeling my way through a topic that is not at all familiar or comfortable, and for which the potential for self-deception is large. However, I do believe that I’ve come to an important conclusion, one that bears on the above question, and which is independent of the question of whether religious belief is either true or meaningful:

What is the nature of religious belief? It is fantasy.

Now, by that I mean not merely that religious beliefs are fed by subjective impressions (which is true of claims which are not religious) but that they require an active role for fantasy. The ‘leap of faith’ is, at least in part an imaginative ‘leap’ from that which can be demonstrated to that which can only be taken on faith. *

Now, if religious belief depends upon an element of fantasy, does it then follow that:

a) it is beyond the bounds of scientific inquiry?
b) it is incoherent?
c) it is meaningless?
d) it is compatible with reason, and can survive “the gauntlet of skepticism”?

My short ‘answers’ at this point to each of those questions are as follows:

a) not necessarily: depends on what we mean

b) yes

c) no

d) possibly, but I am uncertain how this be true, and I may well be wrong—and, in fact, part of the point of putting these ideas out here is to receive criticism and advice on these topics.

I will discuss these points, in the order given, in subsequent posts. I explicitly invite criticism, even anonymous criticism: otherwise, what's the point?

* The philosophically well-read (I don't include myself in that group) will probably recognize that I am indebted to Kirkeggard, though I wasn't conscious of it at the time I was thinking about the problem.