ABSTRACT
The religious realism/antirealism debate concerns the questions of God's independence from human beings, the nature of religious truth and our access to religious truths. Religious realists also usually maintain that at least some religious claims are actually true. Extensive work has focused on identifying the core points of disagreement between realists and antirealists and providing a framework in which the debate can be helpfully pursued. Moreover, the interpretation and relative importance of the various aspects of the realism problem, as well as the types of antirealist opposition, differ with each philosophical setting. A useful way into the realism problem is to consider whether religious statements aim primarily to describe the world, or instead express the attitudes of those who assert them. This debate is standardly construed in terms of whether religious statements have cognitive content. Non-cognitivism has been defended for various regions of language other than religious discourse.
