Gorazd Andrejč will present an approach to religion and science he has adopted in his recent work, the so-called Wittgensteinian Non-Overlapping Magisteria (WNOMA). WNOMA affirms a categorial difference between religious and scientific language and attitudes. This differrence is interpreted with the help of Wittgenstein’s distinction between religious and empirical belief-attitudes, and Bas van Fraassen’s distinction between religious and empiricist stances. WNOMA is anti-evidentialist regarding religious beliefs and sees the experiential and instinctive aspects of religion as more fundamental than the systematic-intellectual aspect. Andrejč will explain the difference between WNOMA and Stephen Jay Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA), how WNOMA avoids several pitfalls that made NOMA problematic, and why WNOMA can be applied to different religious stances (the example briefly discussed in the talk will be contemporary pantheism).
Dr. Gorazd Andrejč is Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Religion, Culture & Society, University of Groningen; & Senior Researcher at the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies, Science and Research Centre of Koper.