Religious Conversion and Loss of Faith: Cases of Personal Paradigm Shift?

Is Thomas Kuhn's model of scientific revolutions in terms of paradigm shifts appropriately applied to cases of radical changes in religious outlook, and in particular conversion to faith, or loss of faith? Since this question cannot be addressed in purely a priori terms, three case studies of p...

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Bibliographic Details
Subtitles:"Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism"
Main Author: Le Poidevin, Robin 1962- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Netherlands 2021
In: Sophia
Year: 2021, Volume: 60, Issue: 3, Pages: 551-566
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:Is Thomas Kuhn's model of scientific revolutions in terms of paradigm shifts appropriately applied to cases of radical changes in religious outlook, and in particular conversion to faith, or loss of faith? Since this question cannot be addressed in purely a priori terms, three case studies of philosophers who have described significant changes in their own perspectives are examined. Part of the justification for such an approach is to see how changes in view seem from the first-person perspective. Although what is offered here is a very limited group of studies, each of them perforce brief, a key theme emerges: that the incommensurability between paradigms which is part of the Kuhnian model is mirrored by the shift away from atheist or humanistic perspectives, though not necessarily by loss of faith.
ISSN:1873-930X
Contains:Enthalten in: Sophia
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11841-021-00864-2