Religious Disagreement, Religious Experience, and the Evil God Hypothesis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Believer ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemic Peer ◽  
Religious Disagreement

Conciliationism is the view that says when an agent who believes P becomes aware of an epistemic peer who believes not-P, that she encounters a (partial) defeater for her belief that P. Strong versions of conciliationism pose a sceptical threat to many, if not most, religious beliefs since religion is rife with peer disagreement. Elsewhere (Removed) I argue that one way for a religious believer to avoid sceptical challenges posed by strong conciliationism is by appealing to the evidential import of religious experience. Not only can religious experience be used to establish a relevant evidential asymmetry between disagreeing parties, but reliable reports of such experiences also start to put pressure on the religious sceptic to conciliate toward her religious opponent. Recently, however, Asha Lancaster-Thomas poses a highly innovative challenge to the evidential import of religious experience. Namely, she argues that an evil God is just as likely to explain negative religious experiences as a good God is able to explain positive religious experiences. In light of this, religious believers need to explain why a good God exists instead of an evil God. I respond to Lancaster-Thomas by suggesting that, at least within the context of religious experience, (i) that the evil God hypothesis is only a challenge to certain versions of theism; and (ii) that the existence of an evil God and good God are compossible.

James and Religion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen S. Bush
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
William James ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Social Lives

William James made signal contributions to the philosophical and psychological study of religion. One of James’s greatest contributions to the study of religion is his defense of the permissibility of religious beliefs. In his essay “Will to Believe,” he argues that it can be permissible (morally and epistemically), if certain criteria are met, to hold beliefs for which one does not have conclusive evidence in support (provided there isn’t conclusive evidence against). This applies to religious beliefs, but also to moral beliefs and certain beliefs that are essential to our social lives and to the scientific enterprise. His second-greatest contribution to the study of religion is his methodological focus on individuals’ religious experiences, which we see most extensively in Varieties of Religious Experience. In addition to these two contributions, he has important things to say on the relation between religion and other aspects of culture, such as ethics, politics, science, and philosophy.

scholarly journals Transformative Experience and the Problem of Religious Disagreement

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-141
Author(s):  
Joshua Blanchard ◽  
L.A. Paul
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 6 considers how peer disagreement over religion presents an epistemological problem: How can confidence in any religious claims including their negations be epistemically justified? Here, it is shown that the transformative nature of religious experience poses a further problem: to transition between religious belief and skepticism is not just to adopt a different set of beliefs, but to transform into a different version of oneself. It is argued that this intensifies the problem of pluralism by adding a new dimension to religious disagreement, for we can lack epistemic and affective access to our potential religious, agnostic, or skeptical selves. Yet, access to these selves seems to be required for the purposes of decision-making that is to be both rational and authentic. Finally, the chapter reflects on the relationship between the transformative problem and what it shows about the epistemic status of religious conversion and deconversion, in which one disagrees with one’s own transformed self.

scholarly journals RELIGIOUS DISAGREEMENT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY AMONG ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHERS

Episteme ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen De Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
Professional Context

AbstractReligious disagreement is an emerging topic of interest in social epistemology. Little is known about how philosophers react to religious disagreements in a professional context, or how they think one should respond to disagreement. This paper presents results of an empirical study on religious disagreement among philosophers. Results indicate that personal religious beliefs, philosophical training, and recent changes in religious outlook have a significant impact on philosophers' assessments of religious disagreement. They regard peer disagreement about religion as common, and most surveyed participants assume one should accord weight to the other's opinion. Theists and agnostics are less likely to assume they are in a better epistemic position than their interlocutors about religious questions compared with atheists, but this pattern only holds for participants who are not philosophers of religion. Continental philosophers think religious beliefs are more like preferences than analytic philosophers, who regard religious beliefs as fact-like.

Disagreement-Motivated Religious Skepticism and the Commitment to Impartiality

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-49
Author(s):  
John Pittard
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Religious Believer ◽  
The Face ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
Internal Reason

This chapter begins by clarifying the focus of the book, which is what may be called the “higher-order argument for disagreement-motivated religious skepticism.” A key premise of this argument is that a suitably informed religious believer lacks justification for thinking that his or her process of religious belief formation is significantly more reliable than the collective reliability of the processes that otherwise epistemically qualified people use to form religious beliefs. Arguments for this premise that appeal to the rational symmetry of competing processes of religious belief formation are shown to be inadequate. It is argued that a viable argument for the key premise must posit three constraints on the factors that may justifiably ground epistemic self-trust in the face of religious disagreement: an “internal reason constraint,” an “agent impartiality constraint,” and a “reasons impartiality constraint.”

Psychology of Religion

1997 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
O. Karagodina
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Psychology Of Religion ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Religious Studies

Psychology of religion as a branch of religious studies, in contrast to the philosophy and sociology of religion, focuses attention mainly on the problems of individual religiosity - the phenomena of religious experience, religious beliefs, mechanisms of the emergence and development of religious experience. The psychology of religion studies the experience of the supernatural person, the psychological roots of this experience and its significance for the subjective. Since a person is formed and operates in a society, the study of religious experience must include its social sources.

scholarly journals The Epistemic Value of Deep Disagreements

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
Argumentation Theory ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemology Of Disagreement ◽  
Epistemic Peer ◽  
Deep Disagreement ◽  
The Face ◽  
Deep Disagreements

In the epistemology of disagreement literature an underdeveloped argument defending the claim that an agent need not conciliate when she becomes aware of epistemic peer disagreement is based on the idea that there are epistemic benefits to be gained from disagreement. Such benefits are unobtainable if an agent conciliates in the face of peer disagreement. I argue that there are good reasons to embrace this line of argument at least in inquiry-related contexts. In argumentation theory a deep disagreement occurs when there is a disagreement between fundamental frameworks. According to Robert J. Fogelin disagreements between fundamental frameworks are not susceptible to rational resolution. Instead of evaluating this claim I argue that deep disagreements can lead to epistemic benefits, at least when inquiry is in view. Whether rational resolution is possible in cases of deep disagreements, their existence turns out to be epistemically beneficial. I conclude by examining whether this line of argument can be taken beyond research-related contexts.Dans la littérature sur l'épistémologie du désaccord, un argument sous-développé pour une approche non conciliatoire se fonde sur l'idée qu'il y a des bénéfices épistémiques à tirer du désaccord. De tels bénéfices sont impossibles à obtenir si un agent se concilie face au désaccord avec ses pairs, du moins dans les contextes liés à la recherche. Dans la théorie de l'argumentation, un désaccord profond se produit lorsqu'il y a un désaccord entre des propositions cadres. Je soutiens que des désaccords profonds peuvent mener à des avantages épistémiques, du moins dans le contexte de la recherche. Que la résolution rationnelle soit ou non possible en cas de désaccord profond, leur existence s'avère être bénéfique sur le plan épistémologique.

scholarly journals PENGALAMAN KEAGAMAAN PARA GURU PENDIDIKAN AGAMA ISLAM

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-103
Author(s):  
Fuad Nashori ◽  
R. Rachmy Diana
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Positive Behavior ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study intends to get an overview of the themes and processes of religious experience in Islamic religious education teachers. Data disclosure of research respondents, namely religious teachers, was carried out using in-depth interviews. The results showed that the research respondents had a variety of religious experiences, both physiological, social-psychological, parapsychological, and spiritual. Among the various experiences above, the most prominent theme is the themes of experience of the mind. Various spiritual experiences take place through a process that involves socio-cultural conditions, opportunities, difficulties and challenges of life, worship such as praying, tahajjud prayer, diligent prayer, timely prayer, positive behavior or attitude towards others, and the nearest social environment such as brothers, uncles / mother, and so on.

Is There Something Special About Religious Disagreement?

2021 ◽  
pp. 108-126
Author(s):  
Richard Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Disagreement

Chapter 5 considers the question: Is there something distinctive about religious disagreement that makes it a suitable topic for examination? Religious disagreement may seem to differ from other disagreements, at least to the extent that devoting specific attention to religious disagreement does seem warranted. Yet, it is argued here, that there is nothing special about disagreement as compared with other cases of mixed evidence, and further, that there are no principles governing religious disagreements that differ from those governing other disagreements. Typically, one should be conciliatory toward those who disagree by reducing one’s confidence, because learning about others who disagree tends to shift the weight of one’s evidence, even if only slightly, away from what one already believes. Nevertheless, the chapter examines complications concerning how difficult it may be to discern such evidential pressure, particularly when it bears on one’s fundamental or “core” religious beliefs.

Affective Rationalism and Religious Insight

2019 ◽  
pp. 182-228
Author(s):  
John Pittard
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Religious Disagreement ◽  
A Minor

This chapter considers further what implications rationalist weak conciliationism has for religious belief. Rationalist weak conciliationism may seem to imply that justified religious belief is a philosophical accomplishment reserved only for the analytically sophisticated and that personal religious experience plays at best a minor role in accounting for the rationality of religious belief. Resisting these alleged implications, the chapter argues against an “austere rationalism” that sees all rational insight as a product of dispassionate analytical faculties. A case is made for an “affective rationalism” that emphasizes the essential role played by the emotions in facilitating insights into evaluative questions, including evaluative questions that bear significantly on the plausibility of competing religious and irreligious outlooks. The chapter concludes with a discussion of examples that illustrate more concretely how rationalist weak conciliationism applies to situations of religious disagreement.

Disagreement, Deep Time, and Progress in Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-313
Author(s):  
Kirk Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemology Of Disagreement ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Philosophical Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Peer ◽  
Contingent Fact ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sceptical Conclusion

The epistemology of disagreement examines the question of how an agent ought to respond to awareness of epistemic peer disagreement about one of her beliefs. The literature on this topic, ironically enough, represents widespread disagreement about how we should respond to disagreement. I argue for the sceptical conclusion that the existence of widespread disagreement throughout the history of philosophy, and right up until the present day indicates that philosophers are highly unreliable at arriving at the truth. If truth convergence indicates progress in a field, then there is little progress in philosophy. This sceptical conclusion, however, need not make us give up philosophizing: That we should currently be sceptical of our philosophical beliefs is a contingent fact. We are an intellectually immature species and given the existence of the deep future we have some reason to think that there will be truth-convergence in philosophy in the future.

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