I don't know whether Jim's father's testimony would be sufficient to change Jim's mind. Certainly we wouldn't expect it to do so overnight. After all, people don't typically change their worldviews quickly. But even so, his father's testimony clearly has some weight, and, from an evidential perspective, it is stronger than that of his grandmother. Given all this, I think you need to be open to the extent to which testimony based on things like an individual's personal experience or their evaluation of evidence can be a catalyst for others acquiring the rational belief that God exists.
Justin: I don't believe that I’ve said anything suggesting otherwise. Of course, different qualities or contexts of different testimonial assertions will likely differ in strength.
Randal: I am heartened to say that I think we really have made progress here. To summarize, it is possible that people can rationally come to believe God exists, and to accept a range of doctrinal claims about God, all based on the testimony of others. Moreover, if those doctrines are true, then a person could potentially come to know them through testimony.
I would also add that all that you’ve said about atheists being reluctant to accept Christian testimony applies equally to Christians being reluctant to accept atheist testimony. So that definitely cuts both ways.
Justin: I think it's important to note that I’ve consistently maintained that, if testimony is to count as evidence for God at all, then, for most of those without belief in God, mere testimony will not suffice to bring them to rational belief in God. Nothing I’ve said here should be interpreted as anything remotely resembling a lack of openness to or an in-principle dismissal of the ability of testimony, in some specific circumstances, to rationally bring about belief in God.
Randal: We agree on that.
Justin: But perhaps that's enough testimony talk for now.
Randal: We agree on that too. Or perhaps I should say I accept that testimony! (Ha ha! I crack me up!)
Justin: Oh, brother.
Randal: Anyway, I vote for a topic change. Any ideas?
Justin: Well, remember my claim about massive theological disagreement? Now is as good a time as any to unpack my thinking on this.
Randal: That sounds like a fine idea. It builds nicely on our faith and rationality conversation. And, even better, now I get to criticize one of your arguments!
Justin: Go easy on me, will you?
Randal: Not likely, pal.
WHAT IS EVIDENCE?
Justin: Now, before we go diving headfirst into that argument in particular, it might be worth getting clearer on the concept of evidence more generally.
Randal: Excellent suggestion. That's another one of those words we use all the time, like God and faith, but we rarely stop to explain or define it. The floor is yours.
Justin: Philosopher of science Colin Howson writes, “To say that a body of information is evidence in favor of a hypothesis is to say that the hypothesis receives some degree of support or confirmation from that information.”1
Randal: Good definition. So how does that work in our conversation?
Justin: Well, in our conversation about God, it means that evidence favoring God will be observations that we should expect to observe if God exists but less so if God does not exist. If we come across new-to-us observations that fit that description, we should adjust the probability we currently place on God upward. Particularly strong evidence for God would be observations that are very likely on the assumption that God exists but very unlikely on the assumption that God does not exist. Strong evidence requires more of a shift in our probability estimates about God than does weaker evidence.
Randal: Makes sense.
Justin: Moreover, for us to talk about evidence in a conversation about God, we need to be able to be in a position to say something about what God is likely or unlikely to create, allow to happen, or prevent outright. We must be able to say that, if God exists, X is likely to be observed and Y is unlikely to be observed. This is an important point to which we will almost certainly return.
For now, allow me to give a nontheological example of how this might work.
Randal: Hmmm, okay I’ll allow the example, but only because I'm in a good mood.
Justin: Mark becomes hungry for a snack, only to realize that the chocolate chip cookies he bought from the store have gone missing. He looks around and can't seem to find any sign of them. Mark then considers the possibility that Seth, his four-year-old son, ate them.
Randal: Ahh, yes, I bet Seth did it. The Cookie Monster T-shirt is a dead giveaway.
Justin: This hypothesis seems plausible enough—it's not unlikely on his current information. After all, Mark is aware that Seth has a bit of a sweet tooth. But he also knows that Seth can be a sloppy eater, so when Seth returns from playing in the yard, and Mark notices cookie crumbs on Seth's clothing, those cookie crumbs count as strong evidence in favor of Seth's guilt here for at least two important reasons. The first reason is that observing crumbs on Seth's clothing would be very surprising if Seth did not take the cookies. The second is that observing cookie crumbs on Seth's clothing would be expected if Seth did take the cookies and, well, gave into his cookie fandom.
Randal: And don't forget that Cookie Monster T-shirt.
Justin: Hah, yes. There's that, too. How could I forget?
Randal: But anyway, keep going. Now that we’ve got a sense of the meaning of evidence, perhaps you can draw a picture to set up your argument.
Justin: That sounds fair.
Consider then, Tom and Mike—new neighbors living within the same apartment building—sorry, there are no snacks to be found in this story. For business reasons they’re told, the landlord only communicates privately with each tenant. However, the tenants communicate casually with each other on occasion and, as a result, they’ve discovered some big incompatibilities in their beliefs about the landlord.
Randal: Like what?
Justin: Well, for example, Tom says the landlord wants all residents to pay rent by check. Mike insists that the landlord commands all residents pay their rent in cash. Tom says the landlord is a woman, but Mike insists the landlord is a man.
Randal: Okay, this is starting to get weird.
Justin: Right, and that's exactly the point: it's unexpected.
In addition to that weirdness, Tom claims that the landlord assures him that all residents pay $700 for their rent, and Mike says that the landlord only demands $500 from all. These disagreements—some important and some admittedly trivial—would understandably create a tension between new neighbors as well as between them and their landlord. Such disagreements will assuredly have a negative effect on the residents forming good relationships with their landlord.
Randal: Wow, that certainly would be a strange situation. I'm guessing Tom would be especially miffed because he's paying $200 a month more than Mike.
Justin: I know I would! This kind of disagreement between persons convinced of their own experiences is ripe for an escalation of conflict with even the best and most genuine of intentions. At the very least, it's going to negatively affect the relationship they have with their landlord, as it will raise all sorts of suspicions.
Moreover, it suggests a number of flaws in the landlord and his/her business practices. After all, a fair and efficient landlord (if there be such a thing) has many reasons not to allow such confusion to persist in and about his/her place of business and would intervene to correct discrepancies or misinterpretations of his/her words and policies. And yet there are no reasons for the landlord not to intervene and correct misunderstandings. These hostilities are antithetical to the fulfillment of the basic goals of a landlord. As it stands then, for Mike and Tom, their perpetual disagreements and confusion are evidence against their landlord being both efficient and fair.
Randal: I’ll agree with you on that. Although I’ll add that in this scenario at least part of the problem could be competency. That landlord could be well intentioned but simply incompetent for the task.
&nb
sp; Justin: Yes, it could be an issue of competency, but, presumably, competency is assumed within the definition of a fair and efficient landlord.
Randal: True enough.
Justin: Anyway, I want to suggest that a parallel argument can be made here with respect to disagreements and confusion about claims of considerably greater importance to theists.
Randal: Darn, I was hoping we could keep talking about the Mike and Tom story. Landlord and tenant law is one of my burning passions.
Justin: You must never have rented. The kinds of disagreements I'm wanting to bring an argumentative light to are disagreements over how one might become morally reconciled to God, what God is like, or what God wants us to do. Which of the revered ancient texts, if any, has God authored or inspired? These questions are central to the lives of most theists. However, these same questions are subjects of wide disagreement and confusion among theists. Disagreements like these can and often do lead to profound acts of violence between individuals and populations.
DOES RELIGION LEAD TO VIOLENCE?
Randal: Sorry, but I need to interject.
Justin: See what I mean? You’ve just inflicted a profound act of religious violence on my word flow, zealot!
Randal: Yeah, I apologize for my fanatical barbarism. But I still need to challenge the assumption that religious disagreements often, as you put it, “lead to profound acts of violence between individuals and populations.” That's a popular idea in the skeptic and new atheist literature, but I don't believe it is accurate.
Justin: Well, you’ll have to forgive me for raising a particularly skeptical brow here. What you’ve just said seems like a claim more easily asserted than supported. What is your thought process here?
Randal: Not going to accept my testimony, eh? Well, I’ll see your skeptical eyebrow and raise you a double brow of quizzical incredulity.
Nothing captures the perceived link between religion and violence more starkly than 9/11, a horrific terrorist act in which the terrorists all held to a form of radical Islam. This event was so shocking that it provided the catalyst for new atheists like Sam Harris to take up their rhetorical arms against the religious foe.
So let's consider the phenomenon of suicide terrorism, a type of act that constitutes for many the purest and most disturbing expression of the link between violence and religious dogma. In his 2005 book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, political scientist Robert Pape investigates every act of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003. And Pape concludes, “The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion.”2
Justin: That's pretty interesting.
Randal: Right. And it invites the obvious question: if most suicide terrorists are not driven by religion, then what is it that motivates them? Pape observes that almost all acts of suicide terrorism are motivated by a geopolitical goal, namely “to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.”3 While Pape recognizes that religion may serve as one tool of this nationalistic drive to expel the foreigner, it is “rarely the root cause.”
Justin: Well, okay, but it's certainly no secret that violence is a much broader category than the particularly modern form caused by suicide terrorism. Just because religious disagreement may not be the primary cause or rationale for one form of particularly modern violence, that alone does not render false the claim that religious disagreements can and do often lead or contribute to violence between individuals and populations.
Randal: Fair enough. However, I would add that the type of violence represented by contemporary suicide terrorists has ancient antecedents. Consider, for example, the story of Samson's suicide in Judges 16:23–30 in which he destroys a temple filled with civilians.
Justin: Fair point. I should also say that my claim is perfectly compatible with the related and obviously true claim that there are other factors (nationalistic, political, etc.) that can and often do contribute to violence in important ways. But let me be clear in that I certainly agree with you that, in general, claims tying religion to violence are particularly susceptible to exaggeration and oversimplification from persons with an axe to grind against religion, but I don't believe I’ve made that mistake here.
Randal: At the very least, I'd advise caution against simply labelling a particular instance of violence as religious to the exclusion of a myriad of geopolitical, cultural, social, and economic factors. On this point, the new atheists have cast a lot of heat, if not a lot of light, with their grossly reductive analysis of events like 9/11 as being generated solely or primarily by religion. Generally there is a multiplicity of factors that lead people to participate in this kind of violence.
Having said that, might I add that the same goes when religious folk try to draw simple associations between atheism or secularism and some negative social effects. Either way, axe grinding fits rather poorly with generous and nuanced dialogue!
Justin: Amen to that, you violent word-flow-interrupting extremist.
Randal: Christians united can never be defeated! Christians united can never be defeated! Woot woot!
But perhaps that's enough cheering for now. Where were we?
DISAGREEMENT ABOUT LANDLORDS, PARENTS, AND GOD
Justin: The purpose of my tale of two tenants is that, just as the perpetual disagreement between tenants on certain questions counts as evidence against a fair and efficient landlord, massive theological disagreement between theists on certain questions counts as evidence against God.
It seems quite clear to me that a perfectly loving God, in seeking relationships with those willing and eager for relationships with the divine, would prevent profound theological disagreements and confusion to persist among his loved ones—especially to the point of violence. Given how surprising this widespread theological disagreement is on theism and how entirely unsurprising, expected even, it would be on an atheistic hypothesis, it should count as strong evidence against theism.
Do you agree?
Randal: First off, I love the title “The Tale of Two Tenants.” It sounds like a story from Grimm's Fairy Tales!
Justin: Like the Bible! Did you hear that rim shot?
Randal: Whoa, that's a low blow.
But while the title is great, it seems to me that your analogy doesn't quite accomplish what you want. After all, disagreement between Mike and Tom does not provide evidence for either one of them to doubt the existence of the landlord. As you note, at best it provides reason for them to doubt some aspect of the landlord's character or competence.
Justin: Right, it would be pretty silly for them to doubt the very existence of the landlord outright. The purpose of my story was in arguing that such disagreement provides evidence against a fair and efficient landlord specifically. In the parallel case of God, it counts as evidence against the existence of God as we’ve specifically defined her earlier in our conversation, as all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect.
Randal: That's a good point.
Justin: Thank you. Well, this has been a nice chat, Randal. However, I’ve got a train to catch.
Randal: Hold up there, grasshopper. It's still not clear to me that this scenario would provide grounds to doubt the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, morally perfect God.
Justin: Whaaaat?
Randal: Consider Tom's epistemic situation for a moment. Based on his experience, he is firmly convinced that the landlord is, in fact, a woman, and that the landlady wants the payments made by check. When Tom then hears Mike insisting that the landlord is a man who demands cash payments, Tom could conclude many things. He might think, for example, that Mike is simply mistaken or confused. Or he might suspect that Mike is lying. Or it could be that the landlady has ambiguous
gender characteristics, which he misinterpreted, and that the landlady gave special instructions to Mike to pay by cash given his poor credit history. There are many possibilities Tom might consider before he rejects his beliefs about the landlady's gender or that she has requested payments by check.
Similarly, when two people report having different experiences of God and different beliefs about God, there are all sorts of explanations one might consider to explain the divergence (e.g., personal error, divine accommodation) before concluding that no God exists at all.
Justin: Okay, okay. I'm afraid I haven't been as clear as I could have. I am not making the general argument that any disagreement between two persons about some matter should lead them to doubt their respective convictions. There are situations in which it is possible for them to continue in their disagreement in a rational way.
Randal: I'm glad to hear that. So then can you unpack your critique of theism a bit more? Things are still a bit blurry.
Justin: Well, the point is that the disagreement itself counts against the hypothesis of a fair and efficient landlord and that this is relevantly similar to the problem with massive theological disagreement.
That said, perhaps a better analogy for my argument can be found in a parent/child relationship. Let's now say that Mike and Tom are young children, brothers even, being raised by a single parent. Let's also say that they have key disagreements about how their parent wants them to act and how best to have a relationship with their parent. Unsurprisingly, these disagreements on important details lead to some tension and even the occasional fight between the children. Each child is as certain that they are right as they are that the other is dead wrong. These disagreements, and the conflicts birthed from them, could be easily prevented by their parent simply clarifying the point of contention and notifying them both of who is right and who is wrong so that nothing stands in the way of relationship between the children and their mother. But, unlike a normal, loving parent, this parent remains utterly silent. The parent allows sizeable disagreements and deep confusions about important relational matters to persist and even boil over into violence occasionally.
An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar Page 7
