In our previous discussions of Antony Flew and William Kingdon Clifford, we've been exploring the evidentialist thesis in the philosophy of religion. Evidentialism is the view that we require evidence to ground our beliefs: belief in the absence of evidence is contrary to reason, perhaps even to morality. Confronted with this challenge, a person of faith can either accept the burden of proof and attempt to meet it, or they can try to show that the skeptic's ideas about proof are inadequate somehow. While, traditionally, natural theology goes in for the first approach, I think it's fair to say that in philosophy of religion the second approach is the more common. In our previous article, on William James's The Will to Believe, we encountered one such approach. James holds that a strict evidentialism in the philosophy of religion is too timid to be practical, and is really based on an exaggerated fear of being wrong.
Another more recent approach has been developed by Alvin Plantinga. He, too, questions the type of strict evidentialism advocated by Clifford, but not so much on that it is too timid as on the grounds that it overestimates what reason and evidence can really do for us. Consider, for example, my perception that there is a lamp on my desk. I do not know that my perception is true. Indeed, it could be false. After all, I learn from physics that what I perceive as a lamp is mostly empty space, from neuroscience that all my perceptions are caused by electrical signals in my brain, and from metaphysics that there may not be any external reality at all. I could, in other words, be a "brain in a vat" that merely thinks it is perceiving something external to it. Or then again, maybe everything I think is my life is only an extended dream. With many similar arguments we can raise doubts about the veracity of my perception that there is a lamp on a desk, and yet I am very far from doubting that there is, in fact, a lamp on my desk. The belief is, in other words, incorrigible. Try as I might, I simply cannot make myself believe that it isn't there, notwithstanding that I am totally powerless to prove that it is, in fact, there.
Someone will point out that I could walk up to the lamp and touch it, that I could ask a neighbor if they share my experience, that I could take a picture of it and see if it's still there in the photograph, or think of howsoever many other such tests that show that the lamp is, in fact, there. But all of this would miss the point because whatever test they can propose, it will rest on the assumption that we have been calling into question: namely, that my perceptions report true information about an external reality. After all, if my sense of sight can deceive me, why not also my sense of touch or hearing? If I can't trust my sight to show me that the lamp is there, why should I trust it when it comes to the photograph? If the lamp may be a figment of my imagination, why not my friend who tells me it is really there? And so on. No matter what test we propose, it will always be possible to raise some such objection.
Now, the point is not, to repeat, that the lamp isn't really there. Of course it is. The point is, rather, that I can't prove it's there, and neither can anyone else. If a person is determined to be a skeptic about the existence of an external reality, there are all sorts of clever arguments they can muster, and we will eventually have to admit that we are powerless to persuade them of the lamp's reality. Thus my belief that there is a lamp on my desk rests not on reason, and not on evidence, but on something much better: a direct and incorrigible perception of its reality. Put differently, I don't need to prove that the lamp is there in order to be fully rational in believing that it is. In fact, I don't need to have any argument at all, and it would probably never even occur to me to formulate one until or unless some niggling metaphysician started questioning it. I just go through my daily life innocently, yet in no way irrationally, supposing that my perceptions of an external reality are truth-telling. The case is similar when we consider whether there has been a past (any argument designed to show that there has been a past will have to make use of the concept, "the past" itself, and will thus be exposed to the charge of circular reasoning), or whether there are other minds (no empirical test can distinguish between a conscious agent and a sufficiently sophisticated simulation). Yet, just as we go through our lives innocently-yet-rationally supposing that there exists an external reality, we do the same when it comes to the past and to other minds.
According to Alvin Plantinga, the theist is in the same position. It might be true that we can't come up with a really knock-down argument for God's existence, but it is not true, as Clifford or Flew suppose, that we need one, according to Plantinga. Indeed, the believer may hold that they have something better than an argument—they have a perception. And, having that perception, it is not up to them to show that it is truth-telling, but on the contrary, it is on the skeptic to give them some grounds for doubting it. Properly speaking, then, theism is not the belief that God exists, but the belief that the experience of God is truth-telling. But just as the lamp on my table will not go away just because I decide to doubt its reality, so, too, the experience of God will not go away if I accept some skeptical argument. In other words, there is something deeper going on here than propositional reason.
Indeed, the believer may hold that they have something better than an argument—they have a perception.
Earlier, I described reformed epistemology as a more recent approach in the philosophy of religion. That's true, but there's also a sense in which it is a very old approach. It was once remarked that nobody really doubted the existence of God until Anselm, a twelfth-century ecclesiastic, undertook to prove it. While this is a bit of an exaggeration, there's an important point here: namely, that it's not obvious to every person of faith, even very sophisticated thinkers, that the existence of God is something that needs to be proven. Reformed epistemology is "reformed" in the sense of taking its starting point from the work of the reformed theologian John Calvin (Plantinga is a reformed, i.e., Calvinist, Christian.) According to Calvin, we are all born with an innate knowledge of God's existence—a sensus divinitatus—which gives continual, internal testimony of God's existence. Thomas Aquinas reasoned similarly, writing that "to know in a general and confused way that God exists is implanted in us by nature." If that's true, there would seem to be something suspect about this entire idea of proving God's existence (i.e., natural theology). Properly, we already know that God exists—what we need to do is take that knowledge seriously. For this reason, reformed theologians have often been hostile not just to skepticism, but to natural theology as well, taking the view that, as Martin Luther said, "Atheism is not to be argued with, but to be preached at."
Reformed epistemology has been challenged on several grounds, however. In the first place, who says there is a sensus divinitatus? If you say you have an internal, continual testimony that there is a God, perhaps I will respond by saying that I have an internal, continual testimony within me that there is not. Perhaps I have a "sensus atheistus" within me that is just the opposite of your sensus divinitatus, and perhaps you are not in a position to gainsay my sense any more than I am in a position to gainsay yours.
Secondly, if we get to appeal to our innate convictions anytime we're challenged, then when will it ever end? If you can say, today, that you just do know that God exists, independent of argument or evidence—or if you can even go further and try to undermine my reasonable demands for argument and evidence, as somehow misguided or beside the point—if you can do all that today, then what's to stop you from making some such similar claim tomorrow, about whatever crazy idea happens to seize your imagination? It's not hard to see how appeals to some hidden, internal testimony could get out of hand. What we need, the skeptic might contend, is not private conviction, but public evidence. That's what makes science qualitatively superior to religion: religion is based on how you personally feel, but science is based on publicly accessible evidence, capable of being rationally discussed, adopted, or discarded, as reason dictates.
Finally, an objection is possible on the grounds of the diversity of religious experience itself. When you walk into my living room, you reliably see the same lamp that I do. Maybe you can't prove that the lamp is really there any more than I can, but it is surely more of a stretch to think that two people are hallucinating, are brains in a vat, or what have you, than that one person is. The consistency across perceptions helps to anchor their veracity. But when it comes to faith, that's not at all the case. One person is a Christian, another a Muslim; one person a pantheist, another a deist, while for another there is no God at all; and on and on. Each person can validate their belief on the same grounds Plantinga appeals to in order to validate his. So there's a problem of this argument not being selective enough—it seems to prove not too much, but too little. Further, if we were all having the same experience of God, maybe the skeptic's argument would fall flat. But the sheer variety of such experience seems to argue for something other than simple perception. Perhaps the reason that there are so many different religious experiences is that there are so many different religions, and perhaps the reason there are so many different religions is that they're all basically just stories that people tell each other—profoundly moving stories, perhaps, but stories nonetheless, with no necessary connection to any deeper, underlying reality. If Clifford's evidentialism lets in too few beliefs, as James contends, perhaps Plantinga's non-evidentialism lets in too many, and perhaps they undermine each other through their sheer variety and confusion.
We can't get into all of the back-and-forth here. Suffice it to say that there is plenty a reformed epistemologist can say in defense. But when it comes to the first objection, at least—the appeal to a sensus atheistus—we have a fairly straightforward procedure for settling the question: we can look at the scientific literature on the cognitive science of religion, and find out which way our internal dispositions (at least most of the time) really do run. In our next article, we'll begin just such an exploration.
Daniel Halverson is in the PhD program at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. His research focuses on the history of evolutionary biology in the Victorian and WWII eras.
If you’re just beginning to follow this series, or would like a handy reference, here are links to the previous articles:
Part II: Ian Barbour—The Conflict Model
Part III: Ian Barbour—The Independence Model
Part IV: Ian Barbour—The Dialogue Model
Part V: Ian Barbour—The Synthesis Model
Part VI: John Hedley Brooke, Complexity Thesis
Part VII: Plato and the Geometric Model of Knowledge
Part VIII: Arthur O. Lovejoy, the Great Chain of Being
Part IX: Did Heliocentrism Knock Humanity off Its Perch?
Part X: Thomas Paine and the Controversy over Extraterrestrial Life
Part XI: Arthur O. Lovejoy, the Great Chain of Being and Pre-Darwinian Biology
Part XII: Michael Allen Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity
Part XIII: William of Ockham and the Origins of Nominalism
Part XIV: Nominalism, Petrarch, and the Renaissance Origins of Humanism
Part XV: A Fractured World: God, Humanity, and Nature
Part XVI: Did Medieval Islamic Theology Subvert Science?
Part XVII: Galileo Goes to Jail?
Part XVIII: Humanistic, Scientific, and Theistic Approaches to History
Part XIX: What Is Science? (Part A)
Part XX: What is Science? (Part B)
Part XXI: Charles Taylor: A Secular Age (Part A)
Part XXII: Charles Taylor—The Bulwarks of Belief (A Secular Age, Part B)
Part XXIII: Charles Taylor—Time, Space, and Self in the Enchanted World (Part A)
Part XXIV: Charles Taylor—Time, Space, and Self in the Enchanted World (Part B)
Part XXV: Charles Taylor—The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of the Disciplinary Society
Part XXVI: Charles Taylor — Providential Deism and the Impersonal Order
Part XXVII: Charles Taylor—The Malaise of Modernity
Part XXVIII: Charles Taylor—The Dark Abyss of Time
Part XXIX: Antony Flew—The Presumption of Atheism
One way I use the word is to mean well founded trust. Someone one or something that has kept its agreements in the past so I expect they will continue to keep their agreements.
Yes, that’s true.
Happy to see this series proceed apace! Daniel, I wonder if you think there is possibly some sort of anthropological explanation that also obtains here. That is to say, is it possible – historically speaking – that questioning God’s existence (or even an individual self-consciously recognizing an inborn ‘sensus atheistus,’ not to speak of them articulating such intuition publicly) potentially comes at such a high cost that it’s somehow personally suppressed, or de-prioritized, or just considered immaterial to any discussion worth having with other members of one’s contemporaneous community?
Consider for a moment the grand arc of human existence. We might purport to say that only in the last couple hundred years maximum, and probably then only for a small fraction of the (industrialized and comfortable) world’s population, have most individuals’ lives been guided by a consistent sense of predictability, fairness, linearity, and so on. A good reason to have an inborn sensus divinitatus, therefore, is that this perception somehow gives me access to a convincing and long-term grasp on psychological, or metaphysical, coherence.
Not in-coincidentally, such an argument is also a popular and (at least for me) compelling reason for the remarkable regularity of unique religious experience and mythological tradition, in discrete populations, over time. Put another way, we humans basically need religion (or at least have needed so for a very long time) to properly make sense of our lives in this highly-confusing world.
If we borrow that old axiom about every new generation standing on the shoulders of giants (i.e. all of their forefathers), it’s only by virtue of our chronological place in time (and all the cumulative philosophical and scientific achievement coming in train) that we indeed have the luxury, perhaps, of imagining or perceiving a world minus this sensus divinitatus.
Certainly there may be dyed-in-the-wool skeptics (including those possessing a ‘sensus atheistus’) that go all the way back to the pre-Socratics, but is it not reasonable to conjecture that at least one reason we remember and celebrate these same figures is for their very highly-unorthodoxed claims and intuitions? In many cases, they were famous for being infamous!
Presuming there is some veracity to this argument, we might argue that this ‘sensus atheistus’ is real, and maybe even worthwhile to own, but a fairly-expensive premium good to possess over humanity’s existence, and only enjoyed (even now) by the proportionally very few.
Hi Luke.
Thanks for your kind words. Cognitive Science of Religion is a new field which theorizes about the psychological and evolutionary bases of belief in God. In the next few articles I’ll be exploring Justin L. Barrett’s book, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? where he addresses these issues. It’s hard to really take up your question without giving away the discussion, so I have to ask for your patience! I do think it goes a long way toward explaining why belief is so common, and skepticism comparatively rare, throughout history.
Best,
Daniel
Great. Well, looking forward to it; thank you!
I’d like to know the origin of this claim: “That’s what makes science qualitatively superior to religion: religion is based on how you personally feel, but science is based on publicly accessible evidence, capable of being rationally discussed, adopted, or discarded, as reason dictates.”
The claim that religious claims are in fact adopted by persons purely on the basis of *sentiment* would not be accepted, I think, by most persons who have adopted religious claims. This certainly not the case for *converts* to this or that religious view, especially converts from atheism.
And how much less would it be granted by converts to atheism? For even atheism, in the lives of *some* of its adherents, becomes a “functional religion”: An integrated collection of metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, cosmology, anthropology, and a habituated approach to life’s problems, which serves to influence the behavior of its adherents in distinctive ways.
Yet when person first embraces his functional religion (whatever its content), the sentiments associated with that embrace might be a mix of positive and negative sentiments, attractants and repellents. Are we asked to believe that both the converted atheist and the converted Methodist arrived at their new views solely because the attractive associations slightly outweighed the repulsive ones?
And what are we to make of persons like Aristotle, and the later Anthony Flew? Was it out of sentiment that they accepted their final views about Actus Purus? Isn’t it the case that the Arguments for God offered by someone like Ed Feser, whether successful or not, are basically syllogistic attempts to exhibit the less-obvious logical implications of “publicly accessible evidence” (such as the existence of change, of composition, of contingency)? Such abstract musings don’t, in my experience, evoke a lot of strong sentiment.
Were you, perhaps, only intending to address the “sensus divinitatus” idea, and not to describe “religion” generally?
If so, then it seems you ought to rewrite the claim as follows: “That’s what makes the scientific method qualitatively superior to relying solely on appeal to a sensus divinitatus: The latter is based on how you personally feel, but the scientific method, properly employed, is based on publicly accessible evidence, quantifiable observations, repeatable experiment, and all the kinds of reasoned discussion appropriate to exploration of the publicly accessible, the quantifiable, and the repeatable.”
With such a rewrite, the claim becomes defensible.