Models of Spiritual Belief in Star Wars

This pair of short discussion articles were part of a Philosophy course I took in my undergrad, through which we discussed the psychological and sociological drivers of spiritual belief. For these assignments, I was tasked with exploring spiritual skepticism in the Star Wars franchise, with the prompt being this clip of Han Solo, Obi Wan, and Luke Skywalker arguing about their belief in The Force.

In the first discussion, Star Wars: The Evidentialists Strike Back, I construct my argument of how Philosophical models of religious belief play out in this scene. My hypothesis is that Obi Wan draws from an Evidentialist argument in direct opposition to Han Solo’s Prudential Fidiestic perspective. I analyze the strengths, shortcomings, and logical fallacies from each perspective, and determine who came out stronger in the scene.

In the second discussion, Star Wars: Revenge of the Pragmatists, I introduce a third model in response to the Fidiestic argument I constructed for Han in the previous discussion.

This was an incredibly fun project to work on, as it uniquely applied the hyper-academic teachings of this course to a franchise that I grew up with, and gave me the opportunity to adopt philosophical perspectives in opposition to my own. You can find both discussions here -