Refuting Austin Cline's answer to the "Argument from Religious Experience:"

Refuting Austin Cline's answer to the "Argument from Religious Experience:"

Cline

 

I think Cline has actually been attacking my arguments but not directly stating where he got the argument.

Atheist pundit Austin  Cline can often be found pontificating about religion on about.com. He has an article around religious experience as a God argument, [1] his prejudicial dismissal of the argument is tailormade for my new book, The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief, by Joseph Hinman (paperback, soon to be e book available on Amazon) to answer. First I want to clear the way by a knit pick. the phrase "Do we experience God's existence?" is an awkward and odd phrase. It's redundant because the only way we could actually experience God as a reality is if God is real, what we call "existing," thus even though this is a misuse of the term on his part according to Paul Tillich's theology [2] to experience God is to say that God is real and thus the idea that we are experiencing God's existence is just redundant. If we experience God as a reality then God must be real or we are not truly experiencing God's reality. We don't say that we experience the existence of things apart form experiencing those things. I've experienced losing my parents, I don't say 'I have experienced the existence of my parent's deaths.'

Be that as it may Cline opens his argument:

According to the Argument from Religious Experience, people have “religious experiences” — experiences of the supernatural, like heaven or angels or even a god. Because we believe other experiential claims people make — like that they went to the store or own a car — then we should believe these claims as well. It is also argued that when skeptics apply higher standards for claims based on religious experiences than they do for claims based on other experiences, they exhibiting a prejudice against religious claims. This prevents them from understanding and ultimately believing. 

 Here we see a totally inadequate understanding of religious experience. There is no sense here that religious experience is mystical experience or "peak" experience or that it is even a form of consciousnesses. He tries to justify the kind of dismissal tactics atheists use to reduce and mislabel religious experience. He's already demonstrated that he's mislabeling it. The understanding of super nature such that religious experience is "experience of the supernatural" is merely the modern enlightenment misunderstanding of the concept. Super nature is the power of God to raise human nature to a higher level (of consciousness) thus "the supernatural" is mystical experience. See my article "the Empirical Supernatural."[3]

 Cline bases his argument on the work of William James:

William James offers a classic version of this argument in his influential Varieties of Religious Experience. He argues that all normal persons have religious experience and, since experience is the final arbiter of truth, then God — as the object of religious experiences — must be accepted as factually true. James further observes that the religious experiences in question tend to have a profound effect on the lives of people and even whole societies, implying that such effects cannot reasonably be attributed to hallucinations. Instead, it is much more reasonable to believe that a real God is responsible for religious experiences than to attribute the profound effects of those experiences to a mere imaginary being. 

 As profoundly important as James still is in the study of religious experience, and this argument is good in so far as it goes, there are better and more updated versions of the argument. Notice he doesn't  take on William Alston, who is one of the major philosophers of religion of the late twentieth century. Nor does he deal with any of the modern empirical scientific data in favor of religious experience.[4] Cline decides to pick on James as the best example of the argument.

The first problem is in James’ assertion that “all normal people” have “religious experiences.” It is uncertain what exactly he means by this, but it is a much easier assertion to make than to support. If he means experiences of the supernatural — gods, angels, etc. — then he is wrong. If he means something much more vague, like that everyone has experienced awe when contemplating the universe, then he might be right but he isn’t supporting his claim.[5]

 I doubt that James said "normal people" I can't find where he did say it. I notice that Cline doesn't document  it. That could be crucial weather or not he ascribes it to normality. What he actually says is referenced by Wuthnow in his study (this can be seen in my book) where he says there is a continuum in experience that all people (I don't think he says "normal")

As far as the argument itself goes it is perfectly logical. We don't experience things that are not real. We could actually mistake experiences of one thing for another, so that must be answered. We might also have a false experience, that is hallucination or some other trick of the mind. These things are easily disproved in the case of mystical experience. The argument I sustain throughout the Trace of God is designed to answer this argument. The first answer I would give is:

 (1)  that I go to great lengths in my book to show that we habitually use a certain criteria for judging the reality of experience. The studies on religious experience, with the aid of Hood's M scale show us that religious experience of the mystical kind meets this criteria. Thus we must on principle accept it as real and trust it, or doubt our own existences.[6] This arguemnt is made in a simpler way on my lis of God arguments, no. 8 "The Thomas Reid argument," or "Argument from epistemic judgement."[7] The criteria is that we judge experiences real if hey are regular, consistent, shared (inter-subjective) and enable navigation in the world. If other forms of coutner causation are eliminated so that we can be fairly certain that we not expericing falsely logic forces us to conclude that we are experiencing rightly and there is something there to be experinced.

(2) the effects of the experience of are real. I go to great lengths to show (see all of chapter 2) that the outcome of having such experiences is life life transformation, that is a bold dramatic positive long term life changing result. I further argue that long term positive changes consistently are indicative of reality. Pathological states, mental illness and delusion are degenerative, they bring us down and destroy us over time. Nothing false builds us up and is vital too our well being over a long term period. These experiences are transforming over the long term.

(3) At the end of Chapter 7 I present eight tie breakers. The "tie" is conceived of as between brain chemicals as the most likely explanation for the origin of the experience, vs. brain chemistry as merely God's tool for enabling us to experience his presence. That's a stand off it could be either option. The tie breakers tell us it makes much more sense to accept the latter as the most likely possibility.

(4) I also rule out placebo effects in chapter 7. placebo requires that one expect the desired result, but in that chapter I show several ways in which religious experience does not conform to expected norms but often surprises such that it is often unsought, unexpected, a conversion experience, or also it can contradicts cherished doctrines.[8] For some of the studies as much as half the sample received their experiences in childhood. I show that children are not hung up on doctrines so they are not expecting experiences to conform to doctrines. Yet they have these uniform experiences that indicates the experiences are really of  an objective reality.[9]

Cline sticks with his sustained attack against James.In any case his arguments are easy to answer if one knows Jame's  works. My understanding of James is only passing fair. In my book I bring together a much larger body of empirical work which has been done over the last 50 years, armed with this knoweldge it is easy to pick off Cline's bromides. Cline refuses to think past cultural influence  and makes the argument that difference in religious traditions disprove the idea of one reality behind them all. Here's he's trying to play the old atheist divide and conquer game:

The second problem is in the variety of religious experiences: if there is just one God, why is there such wide variety in the reports of religious experiences? Indeed, they are mutually incompatible. They can’t all be true, so at least some must be false. How do we differentiate? What reasons can the religious believer give to accept her reports over the reports made by others? 

 I would argue that the studies on Hood's mysticism scale ("M scale") prove that mystical experience around the world is universally experienced in the same way. They are not conditioned by doctrines, even though they are explained by doctrines and culture that makes them seem different. When the explanation is ignored and the experiences themselves are compared they are the same. That means they have a good reason to assume they are expericing something real, something objectively there (since it's not just a matter of culture of psychology). A more detailed version documented by Hood's M scale studies can be found on The Religious  a priori.[10]

 Cline asserts that there is no criteria that enables us to determine false from true experiences. While I agree that there is no criteria that proves the difference, I have already demonstrated that he's wrong in his assertion:

There are no independent criteria we can use to separate the genuine experiences from false or flawed experiences — not only in the reports of others, but in ourselves. The only criteria which might exist rely upon the validity of some religious system. For example, some argue that a religious experience which does not agree with the Bible is flawed or false — but since this ultimately assumes the truth of what is supposed to be proven, such criteria are unacceptable. 

There is a criteria that we habitually use to assert the reality of experience, we go by that criteria every time: regular, consistent, sheared, navigational. We don't think about it. We dont say to ourselves "I'm going to use that criteria" we just do it. If an experience is anomalous, it's not regular or consistent we assume it's bogus. If we experience things they same way all the time we assume it's normal and its alright. It's only the stuff that stands out as rare or one of a kind that bothers us. If we want confirmation of our view we seek it in others, "is it hot in here to you?" "Did you see that?" If it works we can live by it we assume it's true. Thus we don't stand on the freeway deliberating about Cartesian doubt we get out of the way of oncoming traffic. The studies on religious experience that are discussed in the Trace of God demonstrate that religious experiences fit that criteria thus we should trust them as indicative of reality.[11]

 From there Cline tries to disparage the link between the effects of the experience and an assumption of its truth aptness:

The third problem is in the idea that the profound effects these experiences have is any indicator of the truth. We can grant that people have some sort of experience and we can certainly grant that the experiences have a profound effect; but does this mean we must accept the reported content of these experiences — that they were of a supernatural nature? No. 

 Again he raises the false specter of the hijack version of the supernatural. Real supernatural--the original meaning of the term--referred to mystical experience not to some ookie spookie reality zone that houses all manor of stings that go "bump" in the night. Mystical experience is proved to be real. It is a real phenomena that people have such experiences and those experiences tend to have a certain effect upon the lives of those who have them. The atheists try to turn that phrase "SN" into some kind of badge of dishonor, the fantasy world one dare not believe in. In resorting to that ploy he is dogging the real issue that he himself raised, do these effects of having had such experiences indicate the truth of the object of experience? He says "no" based upon the proviso that it is indicative of the forbidden realm. But if we ask the question in terms of reality and the object of the experience we must say yes.

First of all atheists are inconsistent in that they will argue that the advantage of having an experience is not indicative of truth but then they turn around and affirm this very idea of scinece. Every time I ask atheists how do you know science is true? They always say "because it works, you are using a computer aren't you? Science produced that computer because it works." All hail science! In any case, so saying the affirm the principle that working is related to being true. This is one of my tie breakers in chapter 7. Then Cline dazzels us with more of his fallacious reasoning: "Real experiences that have a profound impact on a person can have completely natural sources without any divine connections."

That just illustrate the atheist misunderstanding of the true concept of SN and the way they use it as a ploy to ward off belief in God by lumping it into the forbidden zone of belief. They make still absurd dichotomy anything natural must lack God and could be the product of evolution. That is an assumption not in evidence. A Gambler getting 100 royal flushes in a row as random chance would be naturalistic but it would not be natural, it would be the greatest of flukes. God created the natural realm and he works in all the time. The assumption atheists make that if it's naturalistic then God can't be in it is absurd. That's why we need the tie breakers, because the naturalistic element of brain chemistry could go either way. It  could be indicative of a Godless origin or it could be God's tool in giving us a sense of his presence.

Yet Cline goes further he makes a foolish assertion that: "Mystical experiences can be reproduced in anyone, both with chemical substances and mechanical equipment. With this being the case, what reason is there to think that other reports actually stem from a supernatural, rather than a natural, cause?" Well if you really want to know:

(1) buy my book and read the end of chapter 7 for the eight tie brakers and you have eight different reasons to assume the answer to that.

(2) The assertion that religious experiences can be reproduced is not proved. There are tons of claims to that effect, but in the book I point out (ala Philosopher John Hick) that those researchers do not have a standard criteria for control in understanding what constitutes religious experience. They do not use the M scale or any other valid scale to determine this. [12] I analyze the Borg study which is hostile to religion and show that their standard is totally unsuited.[13] Because they do not use such criteria they cannot prove that ever produce religious experience. They merely take the presence of cultural icons of religion as indicative of religious experience but there's no sense of consciousness. As I have said dichotomizing bewteen natural and SN is not a valid means of determining God's handiwork since God can work int he natural as easily as he can in the SN. Rather it is God's power to life us up to a higher state of consciousness that is Super nature. The basic state of such consciousness is a matter of fact, regardless of proof about it's origin.

Cline goes on dictonomizing:

If at least some of the alleged religious experiences are wholly natural, how do we separate them from the “truly” supernatural ones? Even if an experience changes the course of a society, that does not testify that the experiences had supernatural origins. At most, it might point to the persuasiveness of the believers or the appeal of the claims. 

 As I said already we do that by buying my book and reading the end of chapter 7 where I list the tie breakers. Then at the end of the article he takes on Swinebrune's argument:

Some, like Richard Swineburne, argue that the degree to which it seems to a person that something has happened should translate into the probability that something has happened. It is true that when people say that it seems to them that a chair is in a room that, therefore, we tend to accept that a chair is in the room. It is not true, however, that every time someone genuinely and seriously believes something, we also accept that whatever they believe is probably true.
We only accept this when it comes to more mundane things which we all have experiences of. When someone says that it seems to them very strongly that an elf is in the room, we do not accept that there is probably an elf in the room, do we?

 I don't argue Swineburne's argument. I've only read it one time. So I wont try to defined it here except to say that the condition of the argument seems to be the extent to which is seem that the person has actually experinced something. We are talking about warrant. If there is a warrant to believe this then there is no logical reason to discount it on face value. That doesn't mean one can't come up with an argument, it does mean the burden of proof is on the sketpic to show that the warrant is invalid and that there is good reason to doubt. Playing dichotomy game and hinting that "O no this leads to the forbidden zone of he SN" is not going to cut it. That is an ideological assumptino that some aspect aspect of reality must be doubted because it is the aspect that it seems to be and and brings too close to God so we must doubt it.

At this point Cline leaves us with the most dubious argument of tall, that failure to obtain mystical experience is a reason to doubt it's validity.

 Even if we accept Swineburne’s argument, we must also accept that when people try to have an experience of a god and fail, that this is good reason to believe that a god probably does not exist. After all, it would be prejudiced to dismiss the experiences of nonbelievers but privilege the experiences of those who already believe.

This argument is open to immediate reversal becasue then one must accept results as indicative of truth. If this is the case then why don't successes reflect that reality of God? The fact that it works has to be understood as truth indicative. Moreover, if results are indicative the fact that the experience is transformative and that being such it fulfills the basic function religion promises to fill in the first place, offers a rational warrant for belief that it is true. I suspect that Cline based his argument upon the arrangements I make because his contains all the basic elements of mine but he didn't bother study how I defend them. Or that may be my own arrogance and conciet.

Either way the Trace of God, my book,  arms the chruch with a power body of scientific data that backs up this and all other experience based arguments. This work injects fiber into the content of experience arguments and no Christian ever need fear the atheists jibes about no facts, no God, atheism has scinece. Atheists have not touched these arguments in five years of battle on CARM. This book serves as a compindium that will enable anyone to defend experience arguments against all commers.

Order The Trace of God On AMAZON in paper back, (soon to be avaible in Hard back and Electronic).

Sources

[1] Austin Cline, "Argument from Religious Experience:Do We Experience God's Existence?" About.com. no date listed. http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/religexperience.htm  accessed 6/27/14

[2] Tillich famously argued that we can' use the term "existence" in relation to God becuase exist is what contingent things do. God is being itself and thus is above the level of mere "existing." see Shaking of the Foundations, by Paul Tillich.

[3] Metacrock, "The Empirical Supernatural," The Religious a priori, no date given.http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-empirical-supernatural.html accessed 6/28/14.

[4] Willam Alston,Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993, no page indicated. see also The Trace of God, the entire book is about this huge body of data that has heretofore been neglected by both atheists and theists.

[5] Cline, ibid.

[6] Joseph Hinman, The Trace of God: Rational Warrant for Belief.  Colorado Springs: Grand Viaduct Publishing.2014, see the whole of chapter 2.

[7] Metacrock, "8, on list of God arguments: The Thomas Reid Argument,"  Doxa, website, http://www.doxa.ws/experience/Reid.html  accessed 6/27/14. 

[8]  Hinman,The Trace of God... op cit., 286-296.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Metacrock, "The M Scale and The Universal Nature of Mystical Experience," The Religious a priori, website, http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-m-sacle-and-universal-nature-of.html accessed 6/26/14.

 [11] Hinman, The Trace of God, op.cit, 103-127

 [12] Hinman, Ibid.,262-3, 306.

 [13] Ibid., 309

 

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Why Atheists Have No Ears

 


Apologetics is not for unbelievers. It's not exactly for convincing oneself either, but it is definitely not for atheists. Its' pointless trying to convince someone of something that is contrary to their paradigm. Paradigms control all. People  are not capable of seeing into a different world. They live in the world they are in, the world of the paradigm. Paradigm shifts only happen when there are too many anomalies to be absorbed by the old paradigm. Until that happens there's no convincing someone his paradigm is wrong. Now you might think this means that we should go about the task of trying pile up anomalies. The problem with that is atheists are able to absorb vast amounts of anomalies into their paradigm and they employ a verity of methods to do so. Kuhn says this is what happens, the ruling paradigm can adsorb a certain degree of anomalies and until you get so many that the paradigm can't deal with them any more and the paradigm starts to shift, they are just all absorbed and don't' seem to matter.

Now I think little by little the paradigm is shifting, it will eventually turn over. It will probably never be non-materialists or "spiritualist." But it is clear that the old paradigm has given way in several areas and ideas that would once have been considered totally loony are now part of the new paradigm. The problem is the new paradigm is packaged as a continuation of the old; in other words, the old materialist paradigm has now given way to the new physicalist. The difference being that under the old paradigm (materialist) only materiel things were possible. Reality was thought of as the "material" realm. Then it was realized that energy is another form of matter, so it's not mater itself and thus more than just mater is possible.So the new paradigm (phsyicalist) says that only what is physical is possible. Spirit still ruled out (except it can come in the back door in the form of energy) but it is recognized that there are two media for existence, rather than just the material there is also energy (which is another form of matter).

Meanwhile, there are many areas through which the evil idealism has seeped into the new paradigm: healing in medicine, the idea of mind over matter, realms beyond that of nature (which is what string membranes are) but they have to be packed as "physical." As long as it all part of "the physical" (which is idealist enough as it goes, then it can have a place. So ideas which never have been considered fifty years ago are now front and center. But the only proviso is we can't acknowledge it. We have to keep up the charade that idealism/spiritualism is beaten and materialism (in the form of physicalism which allows for energy) prevails. But in prevailing it makes room for other realms beyond that of nature (space/time) mind over matter, healing in medicine, archetypes, here's a complete list:

(1) Quantum Theory (no need for cause/effect)

(2) Big bang Cosmology (realm beyond the natrual)

(3) Medicine (healing)

(4) Consciousness (invites concept of dualism)

(6) Maslow's Archetypes (universal ideas)

(7) Miracles (empirical evidence)

(8) Near Death Experiences (scientific evidence)

(9) Esp Research (the fact that they do it)

(10) Validity of religious experince (Shrinks no longer assume pathology)

(11) Mind over matter (pleacebo effect).


For this reason I am willing to think that the paradigm will eventually shift. It probably wont ever allow for "supernatural," but it will contain supernatural-like ideas masquerading as materialist/physicialist. We already see it now in the mind over matter of the placebo effect.

Nevertheless, despite this movement, the materialist/physicalist paradigm can absorb an almost infinite amount things that are anomalous in thier behavior simply because "energy" covers a multitude of idealist propositions. Anything not material can always be sold as "energy." Pure idea can be sold as brain chemistry because it has to be transmitted that way. Thus Dawkins insists there cant' be a mind without a brain. But what's really being said there is that any form of ideal or idea or "mind" or anything not material can always be coopted as "energy" and thus it can never be anomalous under a physicalist paradigm. But there's another reason as well why it will take a long time for a big paradigm shift. There is no end of atheist incredulity. The physicalist paradigm lends itself to incredulity because we know it works. We don't know the range of its limitations because we can't produce evidence under the same paradigm of things beyond the paradigm, so of course we can exclude any hint of actual anomaly. Of course we can't expect evidence under the paradigm that would legitimate anomalies of that same paradigm, then they wouldn't be anomalies. The incredulity factor always allows one to put it in the magic pressure cooker and (whish wish) it's gone!

Here's an example of what I mean. Here's an example of a Saint making miracle from my miracles page. It's no longer found on the URL it once was, so the link doesn't work. But it was there:

Society for the Little Flower (Website) FAQ (visited 6/3/01) St. Theresse of Lisieux

http://www.littleflower.org/therese/faq.html#4

"Regarding St. Therese, in 1923 the Church approved of two spontaneous cures unexplained by medical treatment. Sister Louise of St. Germain was cured of the stomach ulcers she had between 1913 and 1916. The second cure involved Charles Anne, a 23 year old seminarian who was dying from advanced pulmonary tuberculosis. The night he thought he was dying, Charles prayed to Therese. Afterward, the examining doctor testified, "The destroyed and ravaged lungs had been replaced by new lungs, carrying out their normal functions and about to revive the entire organism. A slight emaciation persists, which will disappear within a few days under a regularly assimilated diet." These two miracles resulted in Therese becoming beatified."

The atheists on carm treated this with total incredulity. It has to be a lie. First they said I made it up. then I linked to the site and they could see it was their and howled with laughter. How stupid could I be? It's a religious site dedicated to that saint to of course it's a lie! I gave all the evidence on miracles pages about the rules of miracles in RCC and showed that they use medical evdience, there x-rays of the lungs and so on. But they insisted this is not good because its not in a medical journal. So I emailed a member of the committee, a medical expert who does research for the medical committee, and he vouched for its authenticity. That's no good, he' on that committee so he's lying. I brought up the x-rays, well I don't have the x-rays so its' still lie. I would have to have the x-rays in my hot little hand before it could actually be accepted. If i actually get the xrays from the Vatican, which were taken in the early part of the 20th century, (like that's a fair requirement that I some little guy in Texas, a prot, with no official connections could get these xrays), if I did have them don't you think they would still say its a lie? x-rays can be fabricated. So it's an anomaly and it will always be an anomaly because one may always doubt.

I recently had a discussion on my message boards about my mystical experience arguments (The Trace of God). I was as clear as anyone could be, and i worked several times to meet the evidential burden required by the atheist dialogue "partner." But this guy just played dense. He refused to get it. But I think a Chrsitain poster named "Wordgazer" really summed it up best:

FWIW, I didn't have any trouble following or understanding Metacrock's reasoning, and I do think he addressed each of Marxiavelli's concerns. What it looked like to me was that Marxiavelli was looking at things through his scientific materialist worldview, and was either unable or unwilling to shift to a different perspective. For example, he seemed to think Metacrock was using the religious experience argument to prove one particular set of religious beliefs, and because they didn't do this, Marxiavelli appeared to think that this trumped all rational warrant for a belief in anything non-material at all. But Metacrock was not arguing for Christianity; he was arguing for the interaction between humans and something Divine that was undefined. What I was seeing was something that I myself have experienced-- the challenge by an atheist to prove theism, but only within the atheism box. Invitations to climb out of the box and look further, were apparently misunderstood as not answering the questions. There were a few times that Metacrock got frustrated, but I really don't think he was being "extremely and unnecessarily aggressive."

We live in different worlds. The world of the atheist is not the world of the theist and they don't want to see into my world. They want to reassure themselves that it's ok to deny my world is valid and to secure their own world. One can hide a lot of anomalies that way. As Wordgazer said it's really just a matter of who wants to see what. Of course they would impune my motives for wanting to see the validity of my world, but pat themselves on the back and rationalize their biases as "hard nosed critical thinking." Hard nosed critical thinking that does not want to see.

This is why the realizing God (existential phenomenological who ha) is really the only tenable approach. Until one is willing make a realization, or until one does make such a realization, the anomalies will always be absorbed into he paradigm. "Realizing God" is nothing more than a change in the ground, a shift in consciousness, a paradigm shift. The materialist paradigm is front end loaded with built-in incredulity as a defense mechanism against shifts.

But all of this really biols down to is good old fashioned sin. "5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (John 1:5). No amount of evdience will ever shit them and no amount of logic will ever read them.

Now this doesn't mean that I wont continue the friendships I've made. I have made freinds with some atheists, and some who are good people who I really like. I will continue those friendships and we can discuss anything. But I wont discuss God with them or God arguments. There's no point. The literal reading of the "great commission" (the Bible doesn't call it that) says "where ever you happen to be going, tell them the truth." I did tell them. They didn't want to get it.