From sometimes-commenter here Joshua Blanchard:
I do not feel as certain about God’s existence as I do about my mother’s existence. In fact, I feel much less certain about God’s existence than my mother’s existence. For example, I can’t even imagine a plausible explanation for my experiences if it turns out my mother doesn’t exist. However, I can imagine plenty of relatively plausible explanations for religious experience if it turns out God does not exist. Indeed, many authors have jumped the gun and already written whole books full of such explanation.My philosophical reason for finding the sentiment annoying is that the categories of evidence available for investigating the question of God are quantitatively less than those available for investigating other people. God has a couple of unfortunate properties, but most unfortunate of these is his invisibility (invisible things are either very tiny, or fictional; theologians insist God is neither). A lesser but still significant annoyance is the fact that God cannot be shown to others. I have introduced (many) people to my mother – not once has anyone walked away without a belief in my mother’s existence. This annoyance is separate from her visibility; I can also put people into contact with my mother without them seeing her. I can also point out to them that they (if they are lucky) experience mother-like creatures all the time. In fact, some people even are mothers. Lastly, although I don’t accept the atheistic argument from religious pluralism, there obviously is no such phenomenon with respect to belief in human persons. In other words, there aren’t communities of reasonable people who deny the existence of my mother.
I’ve long thought that these sorts of considerations completely rob the argument from religious experience of its force. But maybe that’s to quick to assume from the outset: maybe we should start by saying it either completely robs the argument of its force or significantly robs the argument of its force. Blanchard would seem to agree with that much, which is interesting, because I’m surprised to see a religious believer go that far–as Blanchard complains in his post, many religious believers seem to be much more confident about the existence of God than he is. But on the other hand, how many believers would seriously deny that the considerations he mentions are important?
invisible things are either very tiny, or fictional
Or far away (which is more like what Christians think God is like, I suppose).
I would say that these considerations don’t rob the argument of its force; rather, these considerations cast doubt on the epistemic certainty inspired by religious experience.
My general position is that an individual’s religious experience can provide very good grounds for that individual having a belief that God exists. But it is hard for me to see how the certainty warranted by this experience could be greater than the certainty warranted by non-religious experiences.
However (you should provide a link to the post!), in the rest of the post I add some discussion of why certainty-inspiring religious experience might be hard to come by, and furthermore what grounds a religious person might have for this certainty. In doing the epistemology of religion, we should be sensitive to our subject, and try hard to find models that have good “epistemic fit” with the kind of knowledge in question. Mothers are radically different from gods!
What do you think the difference is between robbing an argument of much of its force, and casting doubt on the epistemic certainty inspired by the thing? I’d tend to think the former is a more colorful way of saying the latter, though the way you just phrased it now is a bit complicated, so maybe you has something fairly subtle in mind?
Oh, and I added in the link.
I’m sure there are plenty of ways of constructing an argument from religious experience such that my position here undermines it. I’m curious about what you think is the strongest form of this argument?
It seems to me that the argument from religious experience doesn’t require that experience of God be more palpable or otherwise convincing than experience of mothers (Surely we have more than enough evidence and experience of mothers). It just requires that the experience of God be more palpable than some sort of baseline, which we’d have to determine (with fuzzy edges).
Based on the passage of mine that you excerpted, I suppose you hold that “these sorts of considerations” – not my whole argument – are what undermines the argument from religious experience. You might think that even granting, say, that religious experience is some kind of universal norm in the world, still the fact that the experience is of something that is invisible, immune to too much investigation, etc., makes it a bad argument. We shouldn’t be convinced or bothered at all by widespread testimony of religious experience, if that experience has these kinds of disappointing features. So then perhaps you think that indeed religious experience doesn’t meet the minimal epistemic requirements to be bothersome to a non-believer – even given whatever other noteworthy characteristics.
I don’t strongly disagree with that. But here would be the two comments I want to make:
(1) I give some non-ad-hoc religion-friendly reasons in the post for why mothers might be different than gods.
(2) Even granting the weakness of the argument from religious experience, I would say that such experiences can still provide good epistemic grounds for the person having them. We should distinguish between the argument from religious experience that tries to convince others, and the grounding in religious experience of one person’s religious beliefs.
One possibility that no one ever seems to want to consider: what most people might think of as “religious experience” (whether or not they’ve ever had such an experience) might, in fact, be disastrous. It might cause all sorts of negatives: depression, anger, fear, etc.
“Religious experience” may not be all it’s cracked up to be.