1 / 10

William Alston on religious experience & the rationality of religious belief

William Alston on religious experience & the rationality of religious belief. From William Alston. “Is Religious Belief Rational?” From The Life of Religion. Ed. Stanley Harrison & Richard Taylor. University Press of America, 1986.

avent
Download Presentation

William Alston on religious experience & the rationality of religious belief

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • From William Alston. “Is Religious Belief Rational?” From The Life of Religion. Ed. Stanley Harrison & Richard Taylor. University Press of America, 1986. • Will defend the rationality of religious belief by appealing to their basis in religious experiences. • Is this circular? • Clarifications: • Readily admit that more (e.g., coherence, valid inference) is involved in rationality of beliefs than their basis in experiences. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 1

  2. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • Am talking about central religious experiences – e.g., God comforted me, God guided me. Am not talking about vague experiences – e.g., felt peace during prayer • And am not claiming that religious experiences suffice as a basis for a religious belief-system. Need other factors, such as history, the experiences of the lives of other persons. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 2

  3. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • Is not necessary that all persons have these experiences. Must allow for the sharing of experiences. • Defense of religious experience (RE) is based on a comparison with sensory perception (SP). • What are some of the features of SP? • Tells us about the regularity of nature Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 3

  4. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • Typically vivid, detailed, & insistent • What about RE? • Does not allow for prediction • Is often only fleeting and much of the experience is dim & obscure. • Do these differences make RE unreliable? No, we would expect that reliability is different for different kinds of experiences. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 4

  5. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • If subject matter is relatively stable, e.g., mathematics, the reliability would be based on sameness, repeatability. • If the subject matter is in flux, e.g., human persons, then we would expect reliability to look different. • If subject matter is God, difficulties are compounded. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 5

  6. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • Other attempts to show that RE is unreliable • 1. RE can be explained entirely by natural factors. • Alston: Even if RE can be explained naturalistically, this does not rule out a causal connection with God. • And even if the experiences are not directly of God, the may still have a value for information about God. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 6

  7. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • 2. In RE, people are simply imposing preconceived theological schemes on their experience. • Alston: Often RE challenge one’s preconceived theological positons. • If RE is colored by background knowledge, same is true of SP. Is part of the human condition. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 7

  8. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • 3. Beliefs of RE are often incompatible between different religious communities. (Cf. Hume’s pluralism argument against miracles.) • Alston: May not be that the different religions have care beliefs which are incompatible. • Two incompatible belief-systems may each be rational. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 8

  9. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • Perhaps religious beliefs-systems will, like science, eventually converge. • Final argument for the rationality of religious beliefs based on RE. • Appeal to fruits; fruits are judged by function of the beliefs yielding the fruits • The function of SP is “to be a provision of a map of the environment for the guidance of our action in that environment” (427). Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 9

  10. William Alston on religious experience& the rationality of religious belief • And SP does indeed give us a map. • The function of RE is the “transformation of the person into what God intends us to be” (417). • Now if RE produces these fruits, we can say that the religious beliefs based on them are rational. Alston on rationality & religious beliefs ~ slide 10

More Related