In the same boat?

JOHN W. LOFTUS SAID:

“I pretty much have been saying this for quite some time, so it's nice to hear you state the same things. But then what becomes of your assertion that ‘any objection to the Christian faith is a stupid objection’? Skeptics too have internalized some things and have had different experiences and different understandings that make what we believe reasonable to us.

Fair question. Before we delve into the details, let’s begin with a definition. The argument from religious experience is often drawn far too narrowly. Here’s a more realistic definition:

“Let’s define an ‘experience’ as simply an event or occurrence that one consciously lives through (whether as a direct participant or as an observer) and about which one has feelings, opinions, and memories. Let’s define the term ‘religious experience’ quite broadly, that is, as any experience which one *takes to be religious*,” S. Davis, God, Reason & Theistic Proofs (Eerdmans 1997), 122.

This will be my operating definition.

1.In context, I was contrasting Christian experience with the way in which exapologist described his loss of faith. To judge by his description, his reasons for believing were entirely analytical, and when he began to have doubts about the arguments, he began to have doubts about the faith.

And he is attacking the faith of Christian believers on the same grounds, as if their only reasons were analytical reasons—rather than intuitive reasons.

So I’m simply critiquing him on his own grounds. There are people who seem to convert on the basis of arguments alone, and who seem to deconvnert on the basis of arguments alone. Maybe there’s more to their apostasy than meets the eye, but this is how exapologist chose to frame the issue in his own case.

Loftus is correct to observe that in many cases, there is more going on that formal arguments and counterarguments. But I wasn’t discussing unbelievers in general.

2.As I’ve also told him on many occasions, there’s an epistemic asymmetry between experience and inexperience. Inexperience is not on a par with experience. Lack of evidence is not equivalent to positive counterevidence.

If I’ve seen snow, and you haven’t, your inexperience doesn’t cancel out my experience. My observation of snow counts as evidence for the existence of now, while your ignorance of snow does not count as evidence to the contrary.

3.Now, it’s also true that unbelievers or nominal believers can have an experience that leads them to doubt or deny the faith. This is not, of itself, an *argument* against the Christian faith. Rather, it supplies the *raw materials* for such an argument.

Oftentimes, it’s not the experience alone, but a certain expectation or preconception which they bring to their experience, that supplies the interpretive grid.

i) For example, they expect that if God were real, he would do certain things he doesn’t do, or refrain from doing certain things he does do (as reported in Scripture).

So their a posteriori experience doesn’t mesh with their a priori expectation.

ii) The problem is not necessarily with their experience, or lack thereof. The point at issue is not whether they had a genuine experience—although that is sometimes a source of the problem.

Generally, the problem is with their preconception. They interpret their experience in light of their false expectation.

iii) I would hasten to add, however, that there’s some degree of correlation between religious inexperience and an irreligious environment. If you avoid the means of grace, then it comes as no great mystery if you have no experience of God’s grace in your life.

iv) Or, to take another example, they expect that if the Bible were true, it would say certain things it doesn’t say, or refrain from saying certain things it does say, or say them differently.

v) Apropos (iv), I’ve been distinguishing between expectation and experience. But experience can, of itself, condition our expectations.

For example, when a modern reader interprets the Bible, his own cultural preunderstanding supplies the frame of reference—absent an alternative framework. That’s the default setting.

He interprets the Bible in light of what he believes, and what he believes is the result of his own cultural conditioning.

Therefore, he may decide that Scripture is “obviously” false since he is measuring the Scriptures by an extrascriptural yardstick.

This is not, in the first instance, a question of judging the claims of Scripture. Rather, this is a question of understanding what Scripture claims.

It takes a conscious effort to bracket you own cultural assumptions and read the OT through the lens of ANE assumptions—or read the NT through the lens of Second Temple Judaism.

4.Finally, an unbeliever or nominal believer may have an experience which he reacts to emotionally rather than rationally.

Say a father loses a child to illness or accident. This is the stuff of which the argument from evil is made.

But it may not rise to the level of an argument. The father may not regard this personal tragedy as an argument for the nonexistence of God.

Rather, he may, as a result of that traumatic experience, simply not care about the question of God’s existence. At this point it doesn’t matter to him whether God is real or not. If God is real, then he blames God for failing to save his child.

But we can still evaluate his experience from our own viewpoint.