scholarly journals Religious Experience, Pragmatic Encroachment, and Justified Belief in God

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 296-305
Author(s):  
Alex R Gillham
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Awkward Position ◽  
To Come ◽  
Threshold Problem

AbstractThe secondary literature on religious epistemology has focused extensively on whether religious experience can provide evidence for God’s existence. In this article, I suppose that religious experience can do this, but I consider whether it can provide adequate evidence for justified belief in God. I argue that it can. This requires a couple of moves. First, I consider the threshold problem for evidentialism and explain pragmatic encroachment (PE) as a solution to it. Second, I argue that religious experience can justify belief in God if one adopts PE, but this poses a dilemma for the defender of the veridicality of religious experience. If PE is true, then whether S has a justified belief in God on the basis of religious experience depends on how high the stakes are for having an experience with God. This requires one to determine whether the stakes are high or low for experiencing God, which puts the experient of God in an awkward position. If the stakes are not high, then justified belief in God on the basis of religious experience will be easier to come by, but this requires conceding that experiencing God is not that important. If the stakes are high, then the experient can maintain the importance of experience with God but must concede that justified belief in God on the basis of experience with God is less likely to happen, perhaps impossible.

Human Fallibility and Fallibilism about Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Brown
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Knowledge Attributions ◽  
Knowledge Norm ◽  
Concessive Knowledge Attributions ◽  
To Come ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Threshold Problem

This chapter distinguishes between fallibilism and infallibilism by appeal to entailment: infallibilists hold that knowledge that p requires evidence which entails that p; fallibilists deny that. It outlines some of the recent motivations for infallibilism, including the infelicity of concessive knowledge attributions, the threshold problem, closure, and the knowledge norm of practical reasoning. Further, we see how contemporary infallibilists attempt to avoid scepticism by appeal either to a generous conception of evidence or a shifty view of knowledge, such as contextualism. The chapter explains the book’s focus on non-shifty versions of infallibilism which defend a generous conception of evidence. It ends by defending the entailment definition of infallibilism over other potential definitions, and outlining the chapters to come.

What Can Rabbinic Depictions of Ruth’s Conversion Teach Us about the Importance of Belief in Judaism?

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-134
Author(s):  
Maciej ‘Mati’ Kirschenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come

This article examines selected stories of Ruth’s conversion in order to find out whether the belief in God was an explicit conversion requirement in rabbinic Judaism. This examination aims to establish whether there are rabbinic sources that could support the decision to convert non-believers to Progressive Judaism. First, the article examines the story of Ruth’s conversion in bYevamot 47a–b in the context of rabbinic conversion requirements delineated in bYevamot 46a–48b. It proposes that Yevamot 47a–b treats the belief in God as an implicitly necessary requirement for conversion. Second, the article analyses the story of Ruth’s conversion found in Targum Ruth, which includes the description of Ruth’s belief in the World-to-Come but focuses on pious observance of the commandments. Finally, the article posits that the absence of explicit references to faith in God among rabbinic conversion requirements calls for Progressive communal and liturgical openness to contemporary Jewish struggles with belief.

Miracles

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Justify Belief ◽  
Justified Belief

Because miracles have supernatural causes, a justified belief that a given event is a miracle requires that one be justified in believing that its cause is supernatural. But the only way to infer that a supernatural cause exists is through a kind of inference -- inference to the best explanation. Unfortunately, inference to the best explanation cannot justify belief in the supernatural. Thus, belief in miracles is unjustified.

Religious Experience in New Testament Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Batluck
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Information ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
To Come

Initiated by Gunkel in 1888, and again by Dunn in 1970, research on religious experience in the New Testament has developed into four distinct streams, all of which address the matter from a different vantage point. Mystical/revelatory experience examines early Christian texts that are ecstatic or disclose new information to the recipient. A second group equates religious experience with encounters of the Holy Spirit.Thirdly, historical Jesus studies investigates historical dimensions of the religious experience described in the Gospels. Fourthly, others address religious experience categorically, trying to account for the grand scope and effect of religious experience recorded in the writings of the New Testament. Each approach offers a great deal to scholars and will be a fruitful line of inquiry in studies to come.

scholarly journals First Person and Third Person Reasons in Religious Epistemology

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Religious Disagreement

In this paper I argue that there are two kinds of epistemic reasons. One kind is irreducibly first personal – what I call deliberative reasons. The other kind is third personal – what I call theoretical reasons. I argue that attending to this distinction illuminates a host of problems in epistemology in general and in religious epistemology in particular. These problems include (a) the way religious experience operates as a reason for religious belief, (b) how we ought to understand religious testimony, (c) how religious authority can be justified, (d) the problem of religious disagreement, and (e) the reasonableness of religious conversion.

Religious Pluralism as a Problem for ‘Practical’ Religious Epistemology

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-169
Author(s):  
Terrence W. Tilley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Naturalistic Approach ◽  
Rational Acceptance ◽  
Complete Account

After being dismissed for decades in philosophical theology, experiential arguments for the justification of religious belief, including belief in God, have again come to centre stage. One of the most thorough of these is William Alston's recent study, Perceiving God. Alston's purpose is to show that it is rational for someone to participate in what he calls Christian Mystical Practice (CMP) because CMP ‘is a socially established doxastic practice that is not demonstrably unreliable or otherwise disqualified for rational acceptance’ and to hold beliefs which that participation reliably generates. The thesis of this essay is that his individuation of mystical practices is not sufficiently nuanced. Once his naturalistic approach is brought more closely into line with actual practices, what he calls CMP splinters into multiple practices. A more complete account requires a more pluralistic understanding of the Christian traditions than Alston acknowledges.

The myth of religious experience

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICK ZANGWILL
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
Do So

I argue that people do not and cannot have religious experiences that are perceptual experiences with theological content and that provide some justification for the belief in God. I discuss William Alston's resourceful defence of this idea. My strategy is to say that religious perception would either have to be by means of one of the ordinary five senses or else by means of some special sixth religious sense. In either case insoluble epistemological problems arise. The problem is with perceiving God as God, which we need to do if reasons to believe in God are to be generated. To do so, we would have to perceive the instantiation of His essential properties – being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. But perceiving the instantiation of these properties of God, even by some special sixth religious sense, is impossible. Hence, God cannot be perceived either by the ordinary five senses or by a sixth religious sense. Religious perceptual experiences are a myth.

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