Reply #190: "There is no evidence for God"

[Stunster]

Atheists often say such things.

What do they mean? Do they mean, they personally don't have evidence for God? Or do they mean, nobody, anywhere, at any time ever has evidence for God?

If it's the latter, then this, it seems to me, is simply false. The two most powerful, memorable, transformative experiences I've ever had have been experiences of God. I have met and known a number of other people who would say the same thing.

I reckon Saint Paul, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Augustine et al might have said the same thing if they'd been asked. Certainly they all wrote about them. And there'd be many non-Catholic theists who would say similar things, and have written similar things.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this 'proves' that theism is true. But I'm trying to get a handle on what it would mean to say that I, and all other theists who have had extraordinary experiences of God, don't have any evidence for the existence of God. And if we do have such evidence, doesn't that mean that it is simply false to say, as atheists are wont to say, that there is no evidence for God?

I mean, suppose there was a rare species of polar bear, which only a few Inuit had ever encountered. Would it be true that there is no evidence that such a species existed? Seems to me there would be evidence, even though it was not directly available to everyone.

Now, the objection might be that there is no scientific evidence for God, but there could be scientific evidence for the rare polar bear species. But theism says that God is not a physical entity, so it would not be surprising in the least that there is no scientific evidence for God (if that's the case, which I'm only conceding here for the sake of the argument).

If there is a God, then God is not a physical object. So insisting on God being subject to the kinds of evidence that we have for physical things would be to miss the point, and to beg the question. The question at issue is whether there are realities other than physical ones, and kinds of evidence for the existence of such realities other than physically experimental evidence. So insisting systematically on providing scientific evidence for God would be a clear case of the logical fallacy of begging the question. But the absence of physical experimental evidence for God is consistent with there being tremendously good evidence for God.

Let's imagine, for a moment, that Saint Paul had a profound encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, such that nothing else would be as convincing to him as that experience. Then, St Paul would have a way of knowing, or reasonably believing, that materialism (if he knew what that was) was false and that Christianity was true. But no scientific procedure would be able to establish this. Yet someone (St Paul) would know it. He would have great evidence, from his perspective, of the truth of Christianity. But that would entail that "there's no evidence for God" is a false proposition.

"Ah, but we must use the term 'evidence' in such a way that it is independent of anyone's perspective".

Well, there seems to me to be two problems with this. It seems to me that an attempt is being made yet again to insist that the concept of evidence be restrictively defined to mean evidence yielded by natural scientific method---in other words, to beg the question again. But let's just ignore that for a moment and ask instead, is St Paul's evidence (or mine) purely perspectival? It seems to me that if you placed anyone in St Paul's shoes (or mine), and if anyone had the experiences that St Paul (and me) had, then that would count as evidence for them too---just as much as it would count as evidence for St Paul, me, and anyone else that there is a rare species of polar bear if you placed us in the shoes of the Inuit who had experienced that species. Just because St Paul, me, and most other people would not, ex hypothesi, have actually been in the shoes of those Inuit, surely doesn't entail that there is no evidence for the existence of that rare species of polar bear.

In other words, two points: 1) the concept of evidence is a logically broader category than the concept of evidence deriving from natural scientific method; 2) the concept of evidence is a function of experience. Given the right sorts of experience, then anyone will have the right sorts of evidence.

Have there ever been experiences that count as the 'right sort' to qualify as evidence for the existence of God? Sure there have! I've had a couple, and it seems I'm not alone. Nobody would have heard of St Paul if he hadn't had the right sorts of experiences. It doesn't prove theism to everyone's satisfaction. But an 18th century Inuit couldn't have proved the existence of that rare species to everyone's satisfaction. He'd still have damn good evidence, though, that there was such a polar bear species. And maybe St Paul and I have had damn good evidence that theism is true. And I think this means that the proposition, "There's no evidence for God" is straightforwardly false, unless one insists on committing the logical fallacy of begging the question in favor of scientific naturalism's definition of evidence. Which is a logical fallacy and an error of reasoning...

The difficulty I'm having with an a priori commitment to a universal reliance on naturalistic scientific method is that we have no really solid a priori or experimentally verified reason for thinking that, as science progresses, it will be able, in principle, to uncover the truth about these matters---the truth or otherwise of theism, or Christianity specifically---as long as the above-described scenario regarding Saint Paul seems logically possible (which it strikes me we have every reason to suppose it will always appear to us to be). But what if, it won't be able, even in principle to uncover the truth about these matters by means of using the natural scientific method, and yet St Paul is right, and as justified as he could possibly be (given the nature of his experiences) in thinking that he had met the Risen Christ and that materialism is false and Christian theism is true. Wouldn't that mean that there is evidence that God exists, even though, as in the case with the rare species of polar bear, not everybody had the evidence, or was in a position to experience that specie of bear. (Let's assume that the Inuit and bear species in question all died out 150 years ago).

It seems to me, in other words, that the rational thing to do is to be open to the possibility that science might not be the only way of knowing things, or even the best way, and that science itself may well be systematically incapable of discovering this, and that there may be other ways of discovering it, which a rational person may have access to, or even have had access to in the past. In fact, not only do I think that one should, rationally, be merely open to this possibility. I think it's actually rather plausible that it is the case.

Some will say that we can't even count religious experiences as evidence for theism, because lots of people have strange experiences which are later shown to be associated with certain kinds of cognitively non-veridical brain states. But how does this show that all religious experiences are merely the products of cognitively non-veridical brain states? Isn't that another blindingly obvious logical fallacy? "Some things of type A are the products of F. Therefore all things of type A are products of F." Yup, a fallacy alright.

'Ah, but it's more reasonable to think they are products of F, because being a product of F is more conformable to the worldview of scientific naturalism." Yet again, the objection is logically invalid, because it begs the question at issue---the question being, whether theism, as against scientific materialism, is the correct worldview.

And please name ANY human experience that does not involve some brain event/process or other. There are none? Fine!

Would you then infer that that every human experience was therefore illusory, or non-veridical?

Many years ago, hominid brains evolved in such a way as to enable humans to experience watching a bird fly in the sky, the taste of ice cream, the sound of music, the sound of words, the emotion of fear in the face of wild animals seeking to eat us, etc. That fact says PRECISELY NOTHING about the veridicality of those experiences. Why should a qualitatively similar fact concerning brain processes say any more than PRECISELY NOTHING about the veridicality of religious experiences?

Hence this type of argument---all religious experiences are caused by brain-states, therefore all religious experiences must be non-veridical---is, not to put too fine a point on it, utterly IDIOTIC.

It also has a name. It is called the Genetic Fallacy. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy