Obsolete Philosophy: The Role of Revelation in Religious Epistemology

As I mentioned in the kickoff post, I wrote a lot of papers in college.

This is one that talks about how there are religions are incompatible and claims to special knowledge are even more so.

Religion has long claimed to have special knowledge of the universe. For every one of the territories claimed by metaphysics: ontology, ethics, aesthetics; religion has a map detailing many, if not all, of the nooks and crannies within them. The problem is this: if knowledge is justified, true belief, how does one measure the statements made regarding religion? Does the universe give information to some and not to others? How can one measure truth when it comes to revelation? This paper will look at the problems intertwined with religious epistemology and the problems of claiming (or denying) that revelation has a valid role in knowing things about God and the universe.

Even before we begin, it seems we are sunk. The number of religions in the world is legion, and not all of them agree with each other (quite the contrary, really). If Christianity claims that one gains an eternal life of bliss when one does all that is required of one to do, while Buddhism claims that ideally one stops living altogether, they both can’t be absolutely right. It seems implausible is the claim that all religions are equally valid paths to enlightenment or salvation and the religion that is correct is the religion fits most comfortably. But there is always the nagging doubt that, perhaps, there is special knowledge of the universe that is available to some. How should one deal with the claims regarding this special knowledge? Beyond that, how should one deal with a mystical experience that leads one to believe that one has received special knowledge of the universe? What is the role of revelation in religious epistemology?

Knowledge And Faith

Knowledge, in the traditional philosophical sense, has been defined as justified, true belief. For this definition of knowledge to apply to religion, we must discuss faith. Walter Kaufmann defines faith as “intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.” But what are the specific faith issues? They range from the simple (God is the first of an infinite string of causes) to the complex (God sent his son, in form of man, through virgin birth, to save the world by dying and then coming back to life, so that we can live forever in heaven, and so on). This paper doesn’t dare take on the more complex beliefs about God, but will take as its example the basic belief that God exists at all. For the purposes of this paper, we will not limit ourselves to the idea that the knowledge must be received by each person on an individual basis, but also that another person, or a book, has access to information about the universe that has been revealed to them by God.
At first, the most obvious thing to do is to give an a priori proof of the existence of God. That way no research need be done, justification lies solely in the truth of the soundness of our logic, and the proofs can be achieved from one’s own easy chair. When one looks at the various proofs, however, one encounters various problems. Bishop Anselem’s Ontological proof for the existence of God seems like word magic and was shown to be fallacious by many philosophers. The Cosmological argument, made ever so popular by Aquinas also has its own problems as it could be argued that it is just as easy to believe in an infinite regress of causes as it is to believe in a God. The Teleological argument was the best of the bunch but even in its most convincing formulation, it was found to be fallacious because even if the premises of the argument are all true, as an inductive argument, the strength of the conclusion rests in its probability, and not its analytic truth.

Given that the a priori proofs are fallacious at worst and insufficient at best, our knowledge of God must deal with more than pure logic. It is at this point that the “justification” portion of our definition of knowledge comes into play. How does one justify knowledge of God? We have no recourse but to go to a posteriori evidence, and make the case that the evidence is sufficient to claim that what we claim to be knowledge of the existence of God is justified. Knowing that we cannot use one singular air-tight argument to make the case, we must make a case through a preponderance of evidence, but there is a fine line between the logically valid amassing of evidence until a case can be made and having not just one argument that is fallacious, but many fallacious arguments.

We must first turn to experience. William James, the great American Pragmatist, wrote a series of lectures that he titled The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this one of a kind book, he discusses not only the experiences of the mystical that people claimed to have, but also the professed conversion experiences of people not only to Christianity, but also from Christianity. There are well over fifty examples in his book, and mentions several times that he has more, but for the sake of brevity he will give only a few. How, epistemically, are we to deal with an example such as: “I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period of intimate communion with the divine.” It is far too easy to say that the person in question is mistaken, for they themselves are absolutely certain of their experience with God. Another example says “God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person.” To claim that these examples (of which James has literally dozens more) are all false, or imaginary, or socially based, or what have you, seems to not take the people seriously, as they themselves are absolutely certain. Indeed, their belief in God is claimed to be one of those self-justified occurrences much like the foundationalists claim sense datum to be, if not of a more self-justified nature than mere sense data. There are, of course, any number of arguments that make the claim that the reasoning behind such “mystical” experiences is faulty and the cause is not God but anthropology, or psychology, or any number of physical causes, but that is not the issue. The issue is this: are the people who experience such things justified in trusting their own experiences?

The most obvious argument against these experiences is that of the skeptic who claims that we can not only not trust our so-called mystical experiences, but we cannot trust our experiences period. We all can think of times where we were (or someone else was) certain that we were in love when in reality it was nothing more than something our hormones or coping mechanisms were doing to us. Or a time where we thought we saw a friend in the distance and called out to them, only to realize that it was merely a similar hairstyle or jacket that we recognized and not the friend. As we cannot trust our experiences of things so mundane as seeing a friend, we cannot trust our feelings when it comes to such things as the mystical.

There is a problem with this argument, however. For every time we called to a person who we mistakenly thought was someone else, there are very probably 24 times that we called out to a person and were correct in seeing who they were. As for the love example, it is only when one looks back upon the emotions after they are long gone that one can see them as they truly were. If the object of one’s desire was to return love, and a relationship blossomed as a result, there would be no question as to whether the emotions one felt at the beginning of a relationship were genuine (immature, perhaps, but not something other than love). It seems unavoidable to come to the conclusion that if one has a mystical experience of God, then one is justified in believing that God exists.

How then should those who have not had a mystical experience deal with whether or not God exists? The answer must rely on how much we can trust the testimony given us by our religious texts and mentors.

Dr. Elizabeth Fricker of Oxford has an article entitled Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony in which the argument is made that, like it or not, the majority of our knowledge comes not from a priori sources, but from assimilating what we are told. To be true, the writer of this paper does not know that Plato wrote the Symposium, but has taken it on good authority that he did. When anyone reads a translation of a work from a language that they do not speak, they are assuming that the translator does know both languages and that the translation is an accurate one. Fricker makes the point that testimony is the font of our knowledge of things outside of our direct experience. How should one apply this fact to religious epistemology?

It could easily be imagined that the majority of adherents to a theistic religion would never have a mystical experience, but for that reason alone can it be claimed that their beliefs are unjustified? It seems that we cannot say that such beliefs are. If a person has in fact had an experience of God and goes out to talk about it, then they are giving true information (or as true as they can put a mystical experience into words). The similarities of mystical experiences across times can be explained in two ways: That the universe does have a God and that He has a preferred method of dealing with people, or that people assimilate quickly the natural conclusions of believing in a God, and act as if they have been visited by this phantom. Again, it is impossible to distinguish between the two in practice if one has not had a mystical experience oneself. Moreover, even if one has had what one claims to be a mystical experience, perhaps it is nothing more than a biological function that occurs when a certain set of circumstances has been achieved. But, in either case, if one cannot trust one’s own experiences, one cannot trust anything at all in this universe. If one cannot trust the testimony given by respected mentors and books, one must rely solely on one’s own a priori experiences, and that does not leave a person with much that can deal with the posteriori world. It seems that the role of revelation in religious epistemology is to pick up where the a priori leaves off, by giving experiences that are self-justified and can provide a foundation for other beliefs. The role of trusting the testimony of other in religious epistemology is to pick up where revelation leaves off. Of course, whether or not the claims of religion are true is what decides whether we can call the justified beliefs knowledge, but we have no skyhook that can allow us outside of the framework to see what really is going on. Unless, of course, a mystical experience is just that.

Bibliography

Fricker, Elizabeth. “Telling and Trusting: Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony.” Mind, Vol. 104. 414. April 1995

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1963.

Kaufmann, Walter. The Faith of a Heretic. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1963.

Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Steup, Matthias. An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.