Why Religious Experience Cannot Justify Religious Belief
D. Johnson
October 1, 2020 DOI: 10.33929/sherm.2020.vol2.no2.03 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that both the diversity of religious experience and natural explanations for religious experience undermine and completely deflate the epistemic justificatory power of religious experience, so that religious experience cannot justify religious belief. The diversity raises an inductive problem, and natural explanations are claimed to be more adequate than religious explanations. |
Abstract
It is often claimed by theists that neither the diversity of religious experience nor natural explanations for religious experience can threaten the ability of religious experience to justify religious belief. Contrarily, I argue that, not only do they threaten such an ability, but they completely deflate the epistemic justificatory power of religious experience. Put simply, both the diversity of religious experience and natural explanations for religious experience entail that religious experience cannot justify religious belief. To establish this, I first define the supposed role of religious experiences in justifying religious belief. Then I show how the diversity of religious experience raises an inductive problem that negates religious experience’s ability to justify religious belief. I then show that available natural explanations for religious experience do the same, by simply providing better explanations of religious experiences (i.e., explanations that are more adequate than religious explanations of those