William Alston on religious experience & the rationality of religious belief

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