Pragmatic Encroachment: An Epistemic Explanation in favor of Religious Beliefs.

In this article, we address the role of pragmatic considerations in knowledge and, in particular, religious knowledge, as one of the challenging topics in epistemology and religious epistemology, and suggest a different model for the relation between pragmatic considerations and religious beliefs. Based on this model, a plausible explanation for believers and atheists' different positions in similar and identical epistemic situations can be conferred. In this regard, after presenting epistemic purism as the common view in epistemology with the claim that epistemic subjects must have the same position in the same and identical epistemic situations, we will show its inadequacy in explaining some epistemic intuitions. Then we consider subject-sensitive invariantism from Fantl and McGrath's perspective and confirm its supremacy over epistemic purism for its ability in explaining those epistemic intuitions. Finally, using a version of subject- sensitive invariantism in the field of religious beliefs, we show that believers can defend their theistic positions without being accused of deficiency and epistemic vices.