Experimental religion

INTERLOCUTOR SAID:

“1) You took Exapologist to say that one of the main reasons that he stopped believing in Christianity was that he saw a failure in the arguments for Christianity.”

True.

“2) You said that this could not be the case for you because you have many reasons to believe in the God of Christianity. You divided these reasons into (at least) two types: (a) arguments (b) religious experiences.”

No, I think what I said is that I rejected his apologetic paradigm. That’s not quite the same thing as making an autobiographical statement about what my personal reasons happen to be for what I believe, and how, or to what extent, I’d distinguish between my existential beliefs and my analytical beliefs. My point was more general. Not just about me.

It isn’t easy to distinguish these in practice. However, I was responding to the way in which exapologist described his own loss of faith.

Speaking for myself, I think it’s fair to say that religious experience is either a predominant or even dominant factor in my Christian faith.

However, I can’t give you percentages, or tell you where one leaves off and the other kicks in.

On the one hand, I have a lot of arguments for my faith. On the other hand, I have a lot of counterarguments against the alternatives.

How far the analytical process confirms the existential process, or how far the existential process feeds into the argumentative process is, at this stage of the game, elusive of strict or even approximate demarcation.

“3) I took you to mean that you base your faith on both of these and that these do not overlap.”

No, they do overlap, but they don’t coincide.

i) Some experiences are resistant to any degree of formalization.

ii) Other experiences are susceptible to formalization up to a certain point.

iii) Still other arguments are not based on personal experience.

“4) I wondered how religious experience could offer a basis of belief if it was not also, itself, in an argument (thereby, making all of your faith grounded on argument).”

i) Keep in mind that I wouldn’t begin with *religious* experience as the paradigm. Rather, I’d begin with experience in general, experience qua experience, as the paradigm—of which religious experience is a special case.

ii) I don’t think it should be especially controversial to say that some of our beliefs originate in experience rather than argument.

“I questioned this because: (i) Other people have experiences they take to be religious, but that you may (or may not) consider to be ‘truly’ religious (i.e. you don't consider them to be experiences in which they encounter the only, true, living God).”

i) I have repeatedly denied the very position you impute to me. A non-Christian can enjoy a veridical religious experience.

ii) But not every religious experience, even if veridical, is a redemptive experience. The subject can have a veridical religious experience without entering into, or presupposing, a soteric relationship with God.

I’m using “redemptive” as a synonym for “soteric.”

iii) In addition, as I’ve also said before, the experience of God varies in its range of specificity.

iv) Apropos (i)-(iii), to experience God in nature is one thing, to experience an answer to prayer in the name of Jesus is quite another thing—to take two examples.

In both cases, the subject may encounter the true God. But these two encounters are hardly equiparent in their soteric significance or sectarian attestation.

“(ii) The fact that others have religious experiences (in the broad sense you describe) seems to demand that you reflect on your own experiences and question whether or not they were ‘true’ religious experiences (i.e. they are encounters with the only, true, living God) or whether they are false like the experiences of others.”

You’re building on a series of faulty assumptions.

“5) In order to verify those experiences, however, you would need to base that on other things (presumably arguments). In this sense, I thought that your faith was also based entirely on arguments like the view you attribute to Exapologist.”

Yes, in order to *verify* an experience, we need to go beyond the experience itself; but I can know something by acquaintance whether or not I verify it, or whether or not it can be verified.

For example, I remember conversations I had with my grandmother. At this distance, it would be impossible to verify some of my memories. There is no independent record of our conversations. And she’d been dead for 30 years.

But this doesn’t mean that none of my memories count as knowledge. And this doesn’t mean that I should automatically doubt any memory of mine that I cannot verify.

Indeed, it isn’t even possible to systematically verify memory, for even if I attempted to verify my memories, I would have to remember the results of my verification.

***QUOTE***

Imagine a world in which I was raised in Saudi Arabia and, quite naturally, became a Muslim. During my lifetime, I had many experiences that I took to be religious. There were moments at mosque, when I considered the teachings of Muhammed, when I spoke with an imam, etc.

One day, a Christian missionary happened along and asked me about my faith. I said that it was based on arguments and my own religious experiences. The Christian missionary carefully reviewed my arguments and demonstrated them to be false. I tell the missionary, though, "That's fine, but my faith is also based on my many religious experiences. Those experiences are not based on arguments."

How would the missionary respond? I know you said this was context dependent (e.g. faith in the Koran brought about by religious experience that can be challenged on other grounds), but this seems to take us right back to my question.

For example, you have a religious experience upon which you (partly) ground your faith in the Christian Bible. Someone challenges your experience of the Bible in the way that you challenge the Muslim's experience of the Koran. Someone points out that prophecies were not fulfilled. What good are the religious experiences at this point?

***END-QUOTE***

i) There is no uniform answer to this question because it depends on the erudition and sophistication of the Christian in question.

Some Christians will be unable to rise to the challenge.

ii) However, you are combining to questions in one:

a) Is a Christian’s religious experience sufficient to ground his own faith?

b) Is a Christian’s religious experience sufficient to refute a Muslim?

I’ve said all along that the argument from religious experience is basically a subdivision of defensive apologetics rather than offensive apologetics.

In the nature of the case, it’s only compelling to an insider, not an outsider—since the outsider is a stranger to the particular experience in question.

A Muslim cannot enter into the distinctive religious experience of a Christian, or vice versa.

However, the fact that religious experience may be insufficient to refute the rival faith of an outsider does not, of itself, mean that religious experience is insufficient to ground the faith of the subject.

Religious experience may or may not be sufficient to ground the faith of the subject. That depends on the details of the experience. Its veridicality (or not). It’s level of specificity. It’s soteric character (or not).

iii) If a Muslim were to challenge my faith, I would not appeal to my own experience to refute him.

Rather, I would marshal arguments for the Bible, as well as arguments against the Koran.