Topics Religion

Question I recently was in an " Ask an Atheist" panel at a predominantly Lutheran college, and after asserting that the burden of proof lies on the theist, someone claimed that a deeply spiritual person has knowledge that is only available to them. In other words, regarding what is morally correct or anything else god could want us to do, a theist is justified doing things akin to Abraham attempting to sacrifice Isaac because they have a certain kind of knowledge that justifies doing so despite all evidence that suggests it is wrong. Is this logically or epistemologically sensical, especially regarding morality? What about people like Hildegard of Bingen who claimed to receive visions from God and know this is the case beyond all doubt?

Accepted:
May 18, 2011

Comments

It does not make any epistemological sense to me. Knowledge at least implies a justification that presumably could be made public, so even if such persons are right in their views I don't think that they can claim to have knowledge.

Burden of proof arguments can be tricky. Atheists often say that believers have the burden of proof, but at the least that depends on what's being asked. Is the claim that the believer is irrational or intellectually blameworthy if s/he doesn't meet this burden? As we'll see below, that's a lot less obvious than one might think.

That said, I agree with my co-panelist that there's something off here. Saying just what may be a bit tricky, however. One view of knowledge is that it's justified true belief, where the justification is something that could be articulated. However, that view has come in for a good deal of criticism. The most relevant problem is that there seem to be cases of real knowledge where the knower couldn't articulate any justification. Animals plausibly know things. So do young children. For that matter, there seems to be a good deal of general knowledge that most of us possess, that really is knowledge, but that that most of us would be unable to justify.

Reliabilists downplay justification. They say that knowledge is a matter of having a well-functioning cognitive system that's appropriately plugged into the environment. For example: when our senses are working properly, they give us knowledge. But we might be quite unable to articulate anything that would count as a justification of what we've picked up perceptually. (This is especially true for the sorts of subtle perceptual knowledge that an expert often has.) And reliablilism has made its way into the discussion of religious belief. Suppose there really is a God, and that this God has endowed us with a faculty that leads us to form true beliefs about "him" in response to certain experiences. Alvin Plantinga has developed this idea at length, and claims that if this sensus divinitatis ("sense of the divine") is functioning properly, it gives the person who has it genuine knowledge.

This idea isn't crazy or ad hoc, the scoffing of many philosophers notwithstanding. As Plantinga points out, if there were a God, it wouldn't be surprising for God to give us some means of knowing "him." And the fact that not everyone has such knowledge could be explained in various ways, not least by human corruption and willful blindness. Keep in mind: the point here isn't that there is a God, or that there is a sensus divinitatis. It's only that the idea is not obviously incoherent, and in some sense of "for all I know" could be true for all I know. However, the case you describe adds a significant wrinkle. Your interlocutor says that the believer might know what she believes in spite of all evidence to the contrary. That's tougher. Suppose I'm a highly skilled diagnostician. For reasons I would find very hard to articulate, I conclude that a certain patient has disease X rather than disease Y. This could be true, and I might even be attuned enough to the subtleties that I actually know it. But now add to the case that evidence comes in against my diagnosis: patients with disease X almost never have have symptom S and almost always have symptom S'. My patient has S and doesn't have S'. I could still be right, but if enough of this counter-evidence accumulates and I have nothing to say in response, it gets very hard to take seriously the idea that I know she has X -- even if that eventually turns out to be true. In any case it gets very hard to take seriously the idea that I ought to keep believing she has X. A reasonable person, we might think, would at least suspend judgment in the face of massive contrary evidence. Put another way: even if reliabilism is an important part of the story of knowledge, reasonableness has a role to play too.

A caveat, however. Some cases of religious belief may well fit the mold of unreasonable belief in the face of massive contrary evidence. But many other cases aren't like that. The belief that the world was created 6,000 years ago goes sufficiently against the evidence that it's hard to see how a reasonable, informed person could hold it. But if someone believes that God loves them, it's hard to see what massive contrary evidence that contradicts. Reasonable people, I'd suggest, can believe that there's a God who loves them without incurring a special burden of proof. That's how the world seems to them and to many others, and the evidence to the contrary is by no means overwhelming. Of course reasonable people can also believe that there is no God, let alone one who loves them. But in case like this, I'd suggest that we can't peg the believer as irrational just because s/he can't overcome the non-believer's doubts.

This thought rankles many non-believers, but why should it? Atheism is an honorable position. However, like many broad philosophical views, it retains its honor in spite of the fact that its contrary can be honorably held as well.