  As a philosopher, Habermas has described his approach as a “methodological atheism,” by which he means a kind of experiment in radical demythologization whose outcome remains open. Taking this stance does not make him hostile or dismissive of faith and theological reflection; on the contrary, he grants that “indispensable potentials for meaning are preserved in religious language”—potentials that, at least so far, have not been fully reduced to philosophical and secular reasons (2002, 77, 162). At the same time, Habermas insists on the difference between theological and philosophical modes of discourse: as a reflection on faith, theology must not renounce its basis in religious experience and ritual. Consequently, he resists apologetic attempts to generate religious belief from philosophical premises. Rather, philosophers must satisfy themselves with the “transcendence from within” given with the context-transcending force of claims to truth and moral rightness. 