Religious fictionalism is roughly the view that our engagement with religious discourse, ritual and practise involves pretense. According to the fictionalist, religious talk does not involve assertion and religious thought does not involve belief. When we say things like ‘God is good’, we are merely expressing something like a make-belief that God is good (and perhaps inviting others to do the same). In this paper, I defend a version of hermeneutic religious fictionalism, suggesting that religious fictionalism is not just a practise we should adopt, it is a practise that many (if not most) religious practitioners currently adopt. If I am correct, religious practitioners are not in error; but many philosophers and athiests are.
