Is There Something Special About 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.

The Loyalty of Religious Disagreement

Chapter 10 addresses how religious disagreement, like disagreement in science, stands to deliver important epistemic benefits. But religious communities typically think believers should be loyal to God; and since engaging with religious disagreement opens oneself to considering negative beliefs about God, doing so is disloyal. The chapter discusses two arguments that aim to show that religious disagreement is typically disloyal. It then argues that religious disagreement is not typically disloyal, and can in fact be loyal. Finally, the chapter argues for a superior form of loyalty that is epistemically oriented: concerned with knowing the other party as she really is.

Transformative Experience and the Problem of Religious Disagreement

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.

Disagreement, Testimony, and Religious Understanding

In Chapter 2, questions about appropriate responses to religious disagreement are related to questions about appropriate responses to religious testimony. If it is appropriate to alter one’s credence on the basis of encountering a disagreeing peer, it is also appropriate to alter one’s credence in a religious proposition on the basis of encountering a testifier who is at least as competent and informed as oneself, when one is antecedently unopinionated on the matter at hand. However, recent literature on moral testimony should give one pause; there is distinctive value or importance in acquiring not merely knowledge but understanding. It is argued in this chapter that it may often also be inappropriate to adjust one’s credence on the basis of religious disagreement, for the reason that in so doing one would threaten or disincentivize one’s religious understanding.

Religious Disagreement Is Not Unique

Chapter 4 addresses the fact that in discussions of religious disagreement, some epistemologists have suggested that religious disagreement is distinctive. More specifically, they have argued that religious disagreement has certain features which make it possible for theists to resist conciliatory arguments that they must adjust their religious beliefs in response to finding that peers disagree with them. The chapter considers what its author takes to be the two most prominent features which are claimed to make religious disagreement distinct: religious evidence and evaluative standards in religious contexts. It argues that these two features fail to distinguish religious disagreement in the ways they have been taken to. However, it shows that the view that religious disagreement is not a unique form of disagreement makes religious disagreement less, rather than more, worrisome to the theist who would prefer to rationally remain steadfast in her religious beliefs.

The Apologist’s Dilemma

Chapter 7 considers how, in an intellectual setting that calls for humility, the religious apologist faces a dilemma about the rational force of her arguments. She will typically think that they render her own beliefs rational, even in the face of disagreement. Should the apologist think that those who disagree with her—even after hearing her arguments—are rational in denying her beliefs, or in suspending judgment about them? Both affirmative and negative answers to these questions come with potential costs—thus, the dilemma. One path subjects the apologist to charges of arrogance, suggesting she has “knockdown arguments” for her views. The second path threatens to make the apologist’s enterprise incoherent, undermining the very beliefs for which she argues. The chapter aims to show that the apologist cannot sensibly isolate her views about religious disagreement and apologetic strategy from her views about other issues in epistemology and the philosophy of religion.

Religious Disagreement, Mystical Experience, and Doxastic Minimalism: Critical Notice of John Pittard’s Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment

In his recent book, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment, John Pittard challenges J.L. Schellenberg’s rejection of mystical experience as worthy of enjoying presumptive doxastic trust for two main reasons. First, Pittard holds that Schellenberg wrongly focuses only on avoiding error while placing no emphasis on gaining truth. I argue that, contra Pittard, Schellenberg’s account nicely balances the competing epistemic goals of gaining truth and avoiding error. Second, Pittard thinks that Schellenberg’s criteria for presumptive trust in that of universality and unavoidability are arbitrary. I counter that Schellenberg’s criteria are not arbitrary since they are the best way of achieving these goals. I conclude that despite not enjoying presumptive doxastic trust, this in itself does not entail that mystical experiences are never trustworthy.