Post by metacrock on Jun 12, 2014 14:02:45 GMT
Arguments for the existence of God based upon Religious experience have always been understood as weak, second rung arguments (behind cosmological and ontological and design). It was assumed by both sides that religoius experience is subjective,and too much can be alleged about mental instability to use it as a guiding light.
This is no longer the case as we can see in a huge body of empirical work that has developed in psychology of religion. A method for establishing the nature of valid religious experience has been developed and has a lot of back up in validating studies, but is almost unknown outside of psychology of religion. These studies are not done by Christians, they are not ministers getting their flock to respond. Many of them are done by atheists and even famous ones such as Abraham Maslow (he wrote a whole book about it). I have discussed this body of work in my new book The Trace of God by Joseph Hinman.
Here are a couple of apologetic arguments that flow out of this work (I discuss them in the book).
I. Argument from epistemic judgement.
(1) No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.
(2) We do not find this epistemological dilemma debilitating on a daily basis because we assume that if our experiences are consistent and regular than we can navigate in "reality" whether it is ultimately illusory of not.
(3) Consistency and regularity of personal experience is the key.
(4) religious experience can also be regular and consistent, perhaps not to the same degree, but in the same way.
(5) Inersubjective
RE of this type has a commonality shared by bleievers all over the world, in different times and diffrent places, just as the exeternal world seems to be percieved the same by everyone.
(6) Reala and Lasting effects.
(7) therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experince as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds.
In this argument the studies help to estabish that the experiences do fit the criteria. They show that religious experience is regular, consistent, inter-subjective and enables navigation in a sense.
II. Argument for co-determinate
Co-determinate: The co-determinate is like the Derridian trace, or like a fingerprint. It's the accompanying sign that is always found with the thing itself. In other words, like trailing the invisable man in the snow. You can't see the invisable man, but you can see his footprints, and wherever he is in the snow his prints will always follow.
We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the wrold.
The only question at that ponit is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answere in the argument below. Here let us set out some general peramitors:
(1) The trace produced content with speicificually religious affects
(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine relaity, are transformative of life goals and self actualization
(3) Cannot be accounted for by alteante cuasality or other means.
Argument (1)There are real affects from Mytical experince.
(2)These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.
(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explaintions we should assume that they are genuine.
(4)Since mystical experince is usually experince of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater trasncendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, or that the affects are the result of some real higher reailty.
(5)The true measure of the reality of the co-dterminate is the transfomrative power of the affects.
order my book the Trace of God: Rational warrant for belief, by Joesph Hinman, on amazon.
This is no longer the case as we can see in a huge body of empirical work that has developed in psychology of religion. A method for establishing the nature of valid religious experience has been developed and has a lot of back up in validating studies, but is almost unknown outside of psychology of religion. These studies are not done by Christians, they are not ministers getting their flock to respond. Many of them are done by atheists and even famous ones such as Abraham Maslow (he wrote a whole book about it). I have discussed this body of work in my new book The Trace of God by Joseph Hinman.
Here are a couple of apologetic arguments that flow out of this work (I discuss them in the book).
I. Argument from epistemic judgement.
(1) No empirical evidence can prove the existence of the external world, other minds, or the reality of history, or other such basic things.
(2) We do not find this epistemological dilemma debilitating on a daily basis because we assume that if our experiences are consistent and regular than we can navigate in "reality" whether it is ultimately illusory of not.
(3) Consistency and regularity of personal experience is the key.
(4) religious experience can also be regular and consistent, perhaps not to the same degree, but in the same way.
(5) Inersubjective
RE of this type has a commonality shared by bleievers all over the world, in different times and diffrent places, just as the exeternal world seems to be percieved the same by everyone.
(6) Reala and Lasting effects.
(7) therefore, we have as much justification for assuming religious belief based upon experince as for assuming the reality of the external world or the existence of other minds.
In this argument the studies help to estabish that the experiences do fit the criteria. They show that religious experience is regular, consistent, inter-subjective and enables navigation in a sense.
II. Argument for co-determinate
Co-determinate: The co-determinate is like the Derridian trace, or like a fingerprint. It's the accompanying sign that is always found with the thing itself. In other words, like trailing the invisable man in the snow. You can't see the invisable man, but you can see his footprints, and wherever he is in the snow his prints will always follow.
We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the wrold.
The only question at that ponit is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answere in the argument below. Here let us set out some general peramitors:
(1) The trace produced content with speicificually religious affects
(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine relaity, are transformative of life goals and self actualization
(3) Cannot be accounted for by alteante cuasality or other means.
Argument (1)There are real affects from Mytical experince.
(2)These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.
(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explaintions we should assume that they are genuine.
(4)Since mystical experince is usually experince of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater trasncendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, or that the affects are the result of some real higher reailty.
(5)The true measure of the reality of the co-dterminate is the transfomrative power of the affects.
order my book the Trace of God: Rational warrant for belief, by Joesph Hinman, on amazon.