Jesus Loves Me This I Know
Interesting thing this week: spoke for the first time to a religious person who cites actual experience of God as their reason for belief.
He stated that he had felt the presence of God during a Catholic ritual, and therefore believed that God existed and that Catholicism was the one true way.
This was mighty irritating, because it flies in the face of the fact that there presumably exist (for example) Anglicans who have felt God during Anglican rituals, and therefore believe that God exists and Anglicanism is the one true way.
He said that whilst it was conceivable he might be wrong about God, he thought it extremely unlikely that so immediate an experience could be wrong (in more figurative terms).
This I think is an example of unwarranted trust in one's own senses. Consider if I believe the sky is blue. Then I have fairly high confidence that I'm right, because everyone I consult agrees. If one person asserts it is green, I think it's more likely that one person is crazy than that everyone else is.
Here we have a more difficult piece of sense data (the affirming presence of God), but a similar assertion: that God exists and Catholicism is right. The problem being that a large proportion of people will inform you they have not felt God at all, and comparable numbers will cite the two True Denominations under consideration. Therefore, by contrast with the "sky is blue" case, one *must* give serious consideration to the two possibilities that, even disregarding all the other religions and athiests, either the Catholics are crazy or the Anglicans are.
Of course, it's not that simple -- the two propositions ("God exists and affirms Catholics" and "God exists and affirms Anglicans") are not mutually exclusive.
Before getting into the possibilities there, a definition: in the following I'll call religious experiences either "real" or "fake". "Real" religious experiences are caused by the presence of an existing God, i.e. by supernatural intervention. "Fake" religious experiences are caused by ordinary earthly neurons doing what they do (and producing the convincing illusion of a "real" experience).
So then, back to the Catholics and Anglicans. Since they're not mutually exclusive, there's a few possibilities:
1) Catholics are right: their experiences are "real," whilst Anglicans' experiences are "fake".
2) Vice versa.
3) God affirms both doctrines to their own adherents, for his own ineffable reasons.
4) God prefers one doctrine to the other, but provides a degree of affirmation to both, providing stronger or more affirmations to the one he prefers.
5) All the experiences are fake: their is no God, or he does not care to influence mortals.
Now I'll assume off the bat that any religious person is unwilling to buy (5).
What about (1) and (2)? These I think are stunningly arrogant positions to take, because they would involve simeltaneously believing that:
a) "fake" religious experiences happen, and
b) they happen often, sufficiently so to account for all the particularly pious members of [other denomination], and
c) My experience was definitely not a fake one.
This is transparently silly; it's head-in-sand without even the common courtesy of a disguise. This being so, I'll assume that no religious person adopts this position.
So we're left with (3) and (4): Godly experiences are real; he may or may not have a preference. In fact my correspondent here took view (4) in favour of his denomination.
At this point we must consider the purpose of picking a denomination: doctrine. If they were just arbitrary camps of Christians then one might as well pick one as the other, but in fact they seperate themselves by preaching markedly different messages which affect the believer's day-to-day life.
Obviously one cannot conclusively determine whether Catholicism or Anglicanism is More Right than the other, but one can have a stab at a related question: can one justify following one doctrine over the other?
If the truth is case (3) (God prefers neither denomination), then it would appear the answer is a simple no: pick a denomination based on whatever you like. This leaves one free to pick whether, for example, condoms are okay without resorting to doctrine at all, since the two camps give contradictory answers.
But what about case (4)? The problem here is that God prefers one of the doctrines (we assume, since he prefers a denomination), but we can't possibly discover which one, because language is inadequate to compare the intensity of religious experience and so measure his relative degree of intervention with the two sects. Without resorting to foolishness on a par with cases (1) and (2) (asserting basically blindly that the intensity of your experience was such that it can't have been your denomination that's the inferior, whilst your companion in the other group asserts to the contrary), one *must* consider the two possibilities, that yours is the inferior and that yours is the superior (and so you had a full-whack or half-whack God-experience).
Since we can't reasonably peg probabilities on the two, you might as well switch from one doctrine to the other as vice versa. In other words, one might as well pick which doctrine one prefers rationally and follow that. The only other possible basis is to pick the denomination in which you had your God-experience -- which denies the validity of the other denomination's equally fervent members, and so is just hubris, plain and simple.
But hang on: why bother with all this ranting? Couldn't I just leave the guy alone to believe the one he feels best disposed to according to whatever process he cares to follow? Well, yes and no. For the individual believer it is more so than for priests; in their case it really does matter, because the Catholic church's positions on a few matters of recent (and not-so-recent) controversy, which don't bear repeating here, have caused great human misery. Thus the priest's ability or inability to justify following Catholic doctrine based on his own religious experiences matters, too.
But religion has a way of turning ordinary believers into micro-priests -- as every believer is expected to teach their children. If they matter, then so too does the everyday believer's ability to justify their doctrine.
If, as I've tried to show above, one can't reasonably use personal religious experience to justify adherence to a particular denomination's doctrine over another's, then one is compelled to choose using good ol' rational debate. Further research might yet show that the Catholics were right all along: maybe widespread condom distribution *does* lead to a casual attitude to sex and so more AIDS. Maybe children really do develop more healthily with parents of both sexes present throughout their development. Maybe some good ol' fashioned childhood sexual abuse builds character (obvious troll is obvious). But at least it'll be within the realm of the rational, where we have a chance of actually figuring out what's a good idea.
He stated that he had felt the presence of God during a Catholic ritual, and therefore believed that God existed and that Catholicism was the one true way.
This was mighty irritating, because it flies in the face of the fact that there presumably exist (for example) Anglicans who have felt God during Anglican rituals, and therefore believe that God exists and Anglicanism is the one true way.
He said that whilst it was conceivable he might be wrong about God, he thought it extremely unlikely that so immediate an experience could be wrong (in more figurative terms).
This I think is an example of unwarranted trust in one's own senses. Consider if I believe the sky is blue. Then I have fairly high confidence that I'm right, because everyone I consult agrees. If one person asserts it is green, I think it's more likely that one person is crazy than that everyone else is.
Here we have a more difficult piece of sense data (the affirming presence of God), but a similar assertion: that God exists and Catholicism is right. The problem being that a large proportion of people will inform you they have not felt God at all, and comparable numbers will cite the two True Denominations under consideration. Therefore, by contrast with the "sky is blue" case, one *must* give serious consideration to the two possibilities that, even disregarding all the other religions and athiests, either the Catholics are crazy or the Anglicans are.
Of course, it's not that simple -- the two propositions ("God exists and affirms Catholics" and "God exists and affirms Anglicans") are not mutually exclusive.
Before getting into the possibilities there, a definition: in the following I'll call religious experiences either "real" or "fake". "Real" religious experiences are caused by the presence of an existing God, i.e. by supernatural intervention. "Fake" religious experiences are caused by ordinary earthly neurons doing what they do (and producing the convincing illusion of a "real" experience).
So then, back to the Catholics and Anglicans. Since they're not mutually exclusive, there's a few possibilities:
1) Catholics are right: their experiences are "real," whilst Anglicans' experiences are "fake".
2) Vice versa.
3) God affirms both doctrines to their own adherents, for his own ineffable reasons.
4) God prefers one doctrine to the other, but provides a degree of affirmation to both, providing stronger or more affirmations to the one he prefers.
5) All the experiences are fake: their is no God, or he does not care to influence mortals.
Now I'll assume off the bat that any religious person is unwilling to buy (5).
What about (1) and (2)? These I think are stunningly arrogant positions to take, because they would involve simeltaneously believing that:
a) "fake" religious experiences happen, and
b) they happen often, sufficiently so to account for all the particularly pious members of [other denomination], and
c) My experience was definitely not a fake one.
This is transparently silly; it's head-in-sand without even the common courtesy of a disguise. This being so, I'll assume that no religious person adopts this position.
So we're left with (3) and (4): Godly experiences are real; he may or may not have a preference. In fact my correspondent here took view (4) in favour of his denomination.
At this point we must consider the purpose of picking a denomination: doctrine. If they were just arbitrary camps of Christians then one might as well pick one as the other, but in fact they seperate themselves by preaching markedly different messages which affect the believer's day-to-day life.
Obviously one cannot conclusively determine whether Catholicism or Anglicanism is More Right than the other, but one can have a stab at a related question: can one justify following one doctrine over the other?
If the truth is case (3) (God prefers neither denomination), then it would appear the answer is a simple no: pick a denomination based on whatever you like. This leaves one free to pick whether, for example, condoms are okay without resorting to doctrine at all, since the two camps give contradictory answers.
But what about case (4)? The problem here is that God prefers one of the doctrines (we assume, since he prefers a denomination), but we can't possibly discover which one, because language is inadequate to compare the intensity of religious experience and so measure his relative degree of intervention with the two sects. Without resorting to foolishness on a par with cases (1) and (2) (asserting basically blindly that the intensity of your experience was such that it can't have been your denomination that's the inferior, whilst your companion in the other group asserts to the contrary), one *must* consider the two possibilities, that yours is the inferior and that yours is the superior (and so you had a full-whack or half-whack God-experience).
Since we can't reasonably peg probabilities on the two, you might as well switch from one doctrine to the other as vice versa. In other words, one might as well pick which doctrine one prefers rationally and follow that. The only other possible basis is to pick the denomination in which you had your God-experience -- which denies the validity of the other denomination's equally fervent members, and so is just hubris, plain and simple.
But hang on: why bother with all this ranting? Couldn't I just leave the guy alone to believe the one he feels best disposed to according to whatever process he cares to follow? Well, yes and no. For the individual believer it is more so than for priests; in their case it really does matter, because the Catholic church's positions on a few matters of recent (and not-so-recent) controversy, which don't bear repeating here, have caused great human misery. Thus the priest's ability or inability to justify following Catholic doctrine based on his own religious experiences matters, too.
But religion has a way of turning ordinary believers into micro-priests -- as every believer is expected to teach their children. If they matter, then so too does the everyday believer's ability to justify their doctrine.
If, as I've tried to show above, one can't reasonably use personal religious experience to justify adherence to a particular denomination's doctrine over another's, then one is compelled to choose using good ol' rational debate. Further research might yet show that the Catholics were right all along: maybe widespread condom distribution *does* lead to a casual attitude to sex and so more AIDS. Maybe children really do develop more healthily with parents of both sexes present throughout their development. Maybe some good ol' fashioned childhood sexual abuse builds character (obvious troll is obvious). But at least it'll be within the realm of the rational, where we have a chance of actually figuring out what's a good idea.