Philosophy 1600 - Honors Seminar

 

Topic 6: Religious Experiences and the Existence of God

Louis Pojman's Criticism of Gutting's
Argument from Religious Experience

1. Pojman's Overall View

1. Pojman distinguishes between (1) the claim that there are religious experiences that justify belief in God for those who haven't had such experiences, and (2) he claim that there are religious experiences that justify belief in God for those who have had such experiences. ('Strong justification' versus 'Weak justification'.)

2. Pojman will not address the question of weak justification.

3. He will argue against the strong justification claim.

4. Pojman will advance three main criticisms of Gutting's argument:

(1) "Religious experience is too amorphous and disparate to justify generalizing from it . . . " (149)

(2) "Justification of belief in the veridicality of religious experience is circular, so that such belief rests upon premises that are not self-evident to everyone." (149)

(3) "When taken seriously as a candidate for veridical experience, religious experiences has the liability of not being confirmable in the same way that perceptual experience is." (149)

2. Pojman's First Criticism: An Argument from the Disparate Nature of Religious Experience

1. Pojman lists 15 experiences, all of them actual experiences.

2. Some are theistic, others not. Some are of a god being, others of a neutral being, or of an evil being. Some are monotheistic, others are polytheistic. Some are of gods, others are of dead humans. Some involve morally edifying messages, others not. Some are experiences of religious people, others re experiences had by atheists.

3. Pojman's Second Criticism: The Problem of Different Worldviews and Explanatory Frameworks

Pojman's main point here is that different worldviews and explanatory frameworks make it very hard to see how one can show that certain religious experiences are veridical.

4. Pojman's Third Criticism: Prediction and Checkability

1. Ordinary perceptual experiences give rise to predictions that can be checked.

2. Gutting criticizes Swinburne's argument from religious experience, but in the case of experiences of God Gutting does not require the types of evidence that he says he would require in the case of his dead aunt. Pojman asks why one shouldn't require, in the case of experiences that purport to be of God, "information about the future or even the past that we could check out". (153)

3. Pojman points out that in the Bible experimental support for religious beliefs is cited.

4. Pojman's story about an experience he had as a student at an evangelical Christian college: students pray that someone will be healed, and feel that presence of God, and form a conviction that their prayers have been answered, only to learn that the woman in question has just died.

5. Pojman describes a possible, publicly verifiable experience that would strongly confirm the existence of God.

6. Pojman then asks:

"Would you be helped by such an experience? If so, and if you believe in God, why do you suppose such an experience doesn't occur?" (154)

7. Pojman mentions what he calls the standard response, to the effect that this would be "a case of God's forcing faith", and he says that this response won't do:

(1) "All believing is, in a significant sense, forced upon us"

(2) Such an experience would at most force belief: it would not force faith.

(3) "one would still have to choose whether to accept God or not. There would be more incentive to accept God, but wouldn't it be the right kind, that is, based on good evidence?" (154)