Starker religiöser Realismus

A critical contribution to the current intercultural religious discourse, this paper is not about 'religion' but 'religiosity'. This differentiation refers to Georg Simmel's assumption that it is not religion which creates religiosity but religiosity which creates religion. The paper's approach involves a consistent neutrality with regard to any historical manifestation of religious forms of life and a decided recurrence to the transcendental implications of religiosity. It is assumed that there are religious properties inherent in nature, i. e., that there is a religious reality and that this reality is completely autonomous from any subjective epistemic achievement ('Strong Religious Realism'). It is shown that propositions about that religious reality can be grounded on empirical knowledge.