Is personal revelation a rational basis for theism? -- seebs vs. Philadelphia Lawyer [Archive I]

seebs

March 28, 2006, 02:56 PM

Resolved: Personal revelation can constitute a rational basis for theistic belief.

The assertion that subjective personal experiences, such as personal revelation, cannot be evidence is a standard of atheological arguments, and is often simply taken for granted. However, this assertion is false. Personal experience is the basis of all human beliefs, and forming beliefs based on our experiences is not only consistent with rationality, but necessary for it.

To explore this, we need to look at the question of what consitutes a rational basis for holding beliefs. In particular, what do we mean by "rational"? The most relevant sense of the term is probably "consistent with or based on reason". What is reason? A casual search for a dictionary reveals that reason is apparently a kind of pornography; we can't define it, but we know it when we see it.

To reason is to try to develop a coherent theory, drawing conclusions from premises, and testing premises by the conclusions they reach. Reason, it seems, must be accepted a priori. We accept the principle of non-contradiction for lack of viable alternatives, not because we can "prove" it.

In general, we form beliefs based on our experiences and our analysis of them. Our experience of the world is the only source of information we have. As we grow and mature, we learn to evaluate theories about the world in a number of ways, but all of these theories are ultimately based on the experiences we've had. People develop theories based on their experiences, and the alternatives to this are quite clearly irrational. Sometimes the theories are wrong. Even if a conclusion is wrong, this does not show that the process used to reach it was irrational.

By the time they are six months old, long before they have the capacity for formal analysis, babies infer the existence of things from their impressions and experiences. Later, we come to learn to recognize descriptions of experiences we have had and attach names to them; we hear someone else describe being angry, and we learn that our experience of anger is presumably similar to theirs. Although we cannot directly experience their experience, we can relate it to our own. It is certainly rational to try to relate our own experiences to those of other people.

Given this, it is no suprprise that many people, having "religious" experiences, come to accept the explanations that other people put forth for these experiences. Rationally, they come to believe in God.

There are a number of possible objections to the rationality of such beliefs. Some are merely arguments that some people come irrationally to these same conclusions. This I grant without argument; even a casual search will turn up people whose reasons for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow are quite firmly irrational. However, there are some arguments which might reasonably be presented against any variant of this argument.

Objection #1: Non-verifiability of personal revelation

The first likely objection stated is the impossibility of verifying personal revelation; a common specific variant is the observation that such experiences are far from universal. However, this presupposes that all beliefs ought to be based on verifiable claims. In fact, many claims are hard, or even impossible, to verify with such certainty. When multiple eyewitnesses to an event describe it differently, it may be impossible to find out what really happened. While physical evidence may be conclusive in some cases, in many cases it is not. In such circumstances, it is certainly rational to acknowledge that theories about what happened are speculative, but this doesn't mean it's irrational to accept the one that seems most likely.

In fact, believers frequently engage in careful efforts to analyze and compare their experiences and theories. These efforts may not be as quickly rewarding or as conclusive as some might hope, but they are a sign of continued rational inquiry, and offer substantial verification. The ability to compare experiences with other people and find commonalities is substantially equivalent to the philosophical stance of intersubjective verification modern scientists frequently espouse.

The verification here may not rise to the level of verification possible for some claims, but it is comparable to the verification possible in ethical studies. Not all fields of inquiry afford the same level of testing of answers.

Objection #2: Irrationality of the supernatural

Another argument is to simply assert that it is inherently irrational to believe in anything supernatural. This argument tends to be mere equivocation on the term "natural". It is possible to define the word "natural" such that God, souls, and other such things are "natural", and having done so certainly eliminates the notion of a "supernatural entity". However, it also reduces the word "natural" to total meaninglessness.

A more subtle argument is to assert that things which exist have physical form, and that anything we can't physically observe is therefore not real. This is not equivocation; it is merely begging the question. The assertion that there are no non-physical things is supported by the observation that there is no physical evidence for them, which is relevant because of the presupposition that all things which exist provide physical evidence.

I have not yet seen a non-circular form of this argument, and it's totally uninformative either way; if you assume that there are no non-physical things, you have a basis for rejecting apparent evidence for them, thus confirming that there's no reason to believe in them, because all of the evidence can be rejected. If you assume that there are non-physical things, you have a basis for accepting apparent evidence for them, and thus confirming their existence. It's a dead-end.

Objection #3: Hallucinatory experiences

The argument that it would be irrational to accept hallucinatory experiences as evidence is thoroughly problematic. The most obvious problem is the difficulty of identifying whether or not an experience is hallucinatory before we decide what to make of it. More generally, to make use of this argument, one must somehow show that all religious experiences are hallucinatory, which seems rather like begging the question. This argument seems to be a dead end, although I can't rule out the possibility that there's a variant with some meat to it.

Objection #4: The leap from experience to theism

The really hard question, and perhaps the best available counter, is that there's rather a large leap in going from a sense of well-being to theism. This may indeed be the case, but it is at this point that we see the significant difference between purely internal speculations and the rational path of comparing experiences with others. To provisionally accept a widespread explanation of an experience is a fairly typical example of rational behavior, and hardly needs a defense at all.

Objection #5: Multiple varieties of theism

Multiple varieties of theism are frequently used as an argument against accepting personal revelation. However, while this argument has some merit against revelation as a reason to hold to a specific religion, it has little to offer against theism in general. Debates about the specific nature of a real thing presuppose the existence of the real thing, and indeed, may be taken as evidence that there's some kind of common reality of which people have shared experiences. This could be seen as evidence against arguments that, because a given person experiences "God" in a certain way, God necessarily has those traits, but such arguments are beyond the scope of this debate.

Objection #6: Alternative explanations

This is perhaps the most frequently-heard objection; there are other possibilities. Religious experiences could be hallucinatory, or the explanations offered could be wrong. Well, yes. They could. However, most of the things we believe could be wrong; rationality consists, not of holding only positions that are absolutely certain, but of holding positions that seem to be the most likely or reasonable. In most cases, this ends up being a variant of Objection #2; an assertion that we simply have to prefer non-supernaturalist worldviews, because they're better. In doing so, however, this argument tends to become circular. After all, the belief that religious experiences are hallucinatory is vulnerable to the same essential argument; we have alternative explanations.

This does lead to a potentially salvageable variant of Objection #2, that being the Occam's Razor argument; if you can find an alternative explanation which is simpler, you should accept it. However, this naive analysis could just as well be used in favor of solipsism, which is after all even simpler! The Razor is reasonable when looking at two explanations, neither of which offers advantages over the other. When one explanation does a good job of unifying disparate observations or theories, however, it may be preferred even if it is marginally more complicated; similarly, a theory which relies on dismissing large quantities of primary experience is questionable. It is generally not rational to ignore your own experiences.

Summary

It is generally rational to form opinions and theories of the world based on your own experiences. It is generally rational to consider theories proposed by other people who are describing similar experiences. Combining these rational behaviors leads some people to adopt theistic beliefs, and a combination of rational behaviors is typically also rational.