On Belief in God X

[genkaus]

I think you've made some very important distinctions here and I'm following you all the way on them. I guess the thing I'm left wondering is how one could share their god..? Their subjective experience is in the past and a private matter. The objective entity - god - is most likely a public matter. Does this imply that the theist can control it like a marionette and make it introduce itself to you? I don't think so, or at least it's not directly obvious to me that simply because it's an objective entity, they can manipulate it to satisfy your needs.

That's a valid point - and one that applies beyond the question of god. For example, if I had been lost at sea for days and upon being rescued, tell the wondrous tale of a fish as big as any ship in the world - one that has a fountain on top of its head.

Now, assuming that none of them has seen this thing in the past, there would be many reactions to the story. Some will say "show us picture or a dead body or take us where you saw it - otherwise you must be lying". Others will say, "you had a sunstroke which made you see things". Some may take me at my word. Some may say "there may be such a fish or there may not be, we don't care". Others, may say "Let's go look for this thing." Others may say that they have studied marine biology for years and there is no way such a thing could exist without wrecking the ecosystem.

Now, if you are a reasonable man, you should realize that your claim does sound outlandish. So, while this thing may actually exist, you shouldn't expect anyone else to believe you without solid evidence. As a matter of fact, given the validity of sunstroke explanation, you have a good reason to doubt what you think you saw. So, while we just happen to know that a whale does exist, for this man and his community, there is ample reason not to believe it does.

Let's take this analogy further. Looking for supporters of your claim, you ask around and find another mariner who says he saw a kraken. Since that is not the shared experience, you doubt him and he doubts you. Then, he brings out ten other guys who, when he told them of his experience, also went out to the sea, got sunstroked and now claim that they saw the kraken. Knowing how the power of suggestion works on the mind, you reasonably ask if it is not possible that the first guy hallucinated and the others saw what they expected to see due to the sunstroke. Some of them may even be lying so as not to appear as having taken up a fool's errand. At this point, the guys who went out upon your suggestion return, all of them sunstroked and all of them saying that they saw the whale but none of them with so much as a picture of it. Now, if you are a reasonable man, you'd realize that all the objections you apply to the krakeners apply to you and your whalers as well. You should question what you saw even though you were certain some time ago that you saw it. If you are reasonable, you realize that while this whale might actually be out there, the sunstroke explanation is just as valid and explains the kraken as well. So rather than trying to convince anyone else, you should question your own experience and look for some objective evidence.

The fun begins when the parties involved are unreasonable. The whalers and krakeners both continue insisting that what they saw was real while the others were just sunstroked. Being angered by the others' suggestions, each group builds its entity to more and more until a fight breaks out about who saw what. Meanwhile, all those who didn't take them seriously are standing around, equally horrified and laughing their asses off about these crazy people fighting over imaginary creatures. Seeing this, the whalers and krakeners put aside their differences and decide to attack the bystanders first and figure out which of them is right later.

Agreed, but what I also want to get across is that we need to be more understanding of *their* position. Whether true or not, they say they have experiential justification for their beliefs. This means that by *default* there will be some arguments that you can present to them which they will outright deny because of their circumstances.

Which is why we also present alternate explanations for their experience. Not only do we argue why the entity they claim is illogical - or atleast unlikely - we also give them alternate reasons for their experience. If they are reasonable, they should realize on the strength of these two points how their experiential justification is invalid.

An example closer to home of this might be that you believe in moral relativism. So a theist could say that action x is morally wrong according to divine command theory. The statement *as is* doesn't affect you in the slightest because whatever *your* justification for moral relativism might be leads you to think that statement is false, according to moral relativism. This means the theist can't simply keep asserting the same thing, because to you it's prima facie false. Therefore they need to find a different strategy to undermine your belief in moral relativity.

The theist here would have other strategies. He can try to show that facts contradict moral relativism - by showing there are universal and absolute morals. He can address my basis for moral relativism. He can give alternate explanations as to why I might feel as if morals are relative without them necessarily being so.

And all the same tools are available to me as well. Ultimately, facts will vindicate the one who is right.

This is what I'm talking about! Now you're not resorting to the near impossible task of getting them to show their cards. There's other ways which indirectly tell you something about the cards they hold, and if they're honest enough/your argument is sound, then it will undermine their experiential justification from their *own* p.o.v.

The key requirement you are forgetting is if they are being rational.