Chapter 5 – Problems with Swinburne’s Argument from Religious Experience Agnaldo Cuoco Portugal In Chapter 4 I described how Swinburne uses religious experience to argue in favour of theism. We saw that his strategy was to employ the principles of credulity and testimony so that he could claim that the hypothesis of theism is by far the best explanation for the phenomenon of religious experience. Applied to religious experiences, the principle of credulity would allow us to say that, unless there are reasons to believe otherwise, if a subject S seems to have perceived God, then S has perceived God. In other words, other things being equal, the fact that many claim to have perceived God is a powerful piece of evidence in favour of the hypothesis of theism, since this is the best explanation for that phenomenon. In the present chapter, I will challenge Swinburne’s conclusion that religious experience provides an objective, acceptable for all and forceful piece of evidence in favour of theism. In this critical discussion, three main issues will be stressed: 1) the disanalogies between religious experience and sense perception that can damage Swinburne’s argument, 2) the challenge posed to his proposal by naturalistic explanations of religious experiences, 3) problems posed by religious pluralism to his argument, especially as regards the identification of God in religious experiences. 1. The Analogy between Religious Experience and Sense Perception Swinburne’s efforts to argue that religious experience has evidential value are centred in the idea that since the way we perceive objects through our normal senses provides grounds for believing that the respective objects exist, perceptions of God should be taken as evidence of His existence. In other words, there is a strong analogy between religious experience and sense perception, one that permits him to say that scepticism regarding the former is as irrational as to the latter (see Swinburne 1991: 254 footnote). As a result, a crucial point to be addressed in a criticism of his position here at issue is the correlation between religious experience and sense perception. Michael Martin holds, however, that it is possible to be sceptical of the evidential value of religious experience without having the same attitude towards sense perception. To ground his assertion, Martin points out that when we do not perceive the presence of a sensory object this is prima facie reason for us to believe it does not exist, or that it is not in the particular place we surveyed. He calls this the ‘negative principle of credulity’ or NPC, which reads ‘if it seems (epistemically) 1 to a subject S that x is absent, then probably x is absent’ (see Martin 1986: 83). Swinburne does not agree that the perception of God’s absence can be grounds for believing that God does not exist, because we cannot control the conditions under which God will manifest Himself (see Swinburne 1991: 249). In addition, Swinburne claims that the fact that one person does not see an object O while another one does is not enough to say that O is not present and we can still maintain that O was there (see Swinburne 1991: 263). In fact, when there is a disagreement about a perceptual belief of this kind, the result can be exactly the opposite of what Swinburne proposes, that is, it may be more sensible to believe that O was not present. As McKim correctly observes, the resolution of this kind of disagreement will depend on the context of observation, on the relative expertise of the observers and on some other circumstantial elements (see McKim 2001: 212). In other words, if the person who claims O was not present had a better functioning perceptive apparatus or was an expert in that type of object or was better placed for observing O, then we had better believe O was not present, despite the fact that another person has affirmed he saw the object. Martin’s point, however, is that if we do not know the conditions under which we could expect to perceive God, then this affects the evidential value of purported experiences of both God’s absence and presence (see Martin 1986: 84). So, if we do not know in which circumstances God will manifest himself to someone then how can we ascertain that that experience was really of God? According to Martin, the inductive inference from the appearance to me of a table, to the hypothesis that the table was present given certain conditions C only becomes strong if we can assume that if the table were really not present and conditions C obtained, then the table would not appear to me. In sum, the inference from the perception of an object O to the existence of O is only inductively strong if we know the sufficient conditions for the appearance of O so that we can determine whether the perception was authentic. William Rowe has a similar point to Martin’s when he says that Since we don’t know what circumstances make for delusory religious experiences and we don’t know what the conditions are which, if satisfied, one would have the 1 ‘Epistemically’, as we saw in Chapter 4, means a use of verbs like ‘seem’, ‘look’ and ‘appear’ according to which they describe what the subject is inclined to believe on the basis of his experience (see Swinburne 1991: 245-6). experience of God if there is a God to be experienced, we can’t really go about the process of determining whether there are or are not positive reasons for thinking religious experiences to be probably delusive (Rowe 1982: 90-1). As a result, Rowe concludes, the application of the principle of credulity is not warranted in the case of religious experiences, and if the argument from religious experience depends on the application of credulity principle, as Swinburne claims, then this argument fails as evidence for the existence of God (see Rowe 1982: 91) 2. This important distinction between sense perception and religious experience is spelt out by Richard Gale when he argues that the latter does not fulfil the ‘epistemological requirement’ that he believes is crucial for the evidential value of any sensory claim. This prerequisite for considering a perceptual statement genuine is basically that in order to have an initial plausibility conferred by the principle of credulity, experiences ‘[…] must be subject to defeaters, tests or checks, failure of which lowers this prima facie probability’ (Gale 1994c: 59). According to Gale, there are three tests that are crucial for the evidential value of a sense perception claim that religious experiences cannot meet. The first one is what he calls the ‘causal test’, which requires that in order to generate rational belief, a perceptual claim must have been caused in the right way to the perceiver. In other words, the perceiver must have been positioned in the correct place and with his perceptual apparatus working properly. We can only claim that there is a table in the room based on our perception if we are correctly positioned for discerning that and if our capacity for observing it is in good order. This test, however, does not apply to religious experiences, because, since God is by definition a non-spatial being and is said to appear to anyone He chooses, it does not matter where the perceiver is or whether his perceptual mechanism is working well, for God can overcome any of a perceiver’s limitations (see Gale 1994c: 60). The second test is the agreement among different observers, by means of which a perceptual claim can be falsified by either a better positioned and trained witness or by a larger number of observers with the same capability. The position and the number of 2 Jerome Gellman has interesting replies to both Martin and Rowe (see Gellman 1997: 59-60 and 68-9). However, since Gellman does not ground his case in the idea that scepticism directed to theistic experience is as irrational as scepticism directed to sense perception (see Gellman 1997: 49-50), his arguments do not apply to the point I am discussing here. people standing in the same place where a purported religious experience occurred, as we saw above, cannot disconfirm the authenticity of an experiential claim of this kind, because God can choose to appear to only one person in a group of people standing in the same place. As to the level or type of training required for testing a statement like this, Caroline Franks says: […] we have little idea of the sort of training which would enable one to have veridical experiences of God or other supernatural forces. The kind of training which might seem appropriate – theological training, engaging in religious rituals, guidance in meditation by a spiritual master or guru – does not by any means guarantee that one will have veridical experience of God, if he exists; and theists agree that genuine religious experiences may occur spontaneously to theologically naïve and even irreligious subjects (Franks 1985: 28). The problem for religious experiences, Gale argues, is that the agreement of other observers regarding the content of a purported theistic perception cannot be used as confirming it either. We cannot rationally admit the very employment of a criterion that is only useful to prove but not to disprove (see Gale 1994c: 60). This asymmetry observed in religious experience but not in sense perception is another important difference between them, Gale claims. The third type of test that is fundamental for ascribing veridical status to religious experience is what Gale calls ‘the prediction test’. According to this criterion, a sense perception claim is considered authentic as long as we can predict who will have the experience and the circumstances that will confirm the content of that mental occurrence.