RE: Handling the argument from personal experience
November 16, 2013 at 4:14 pm
(This post was last modified: November 16, 2013 at 4:16 pm by MindForgedManacle.)
I made a thread on this as well a couple of weeks ago. My main point was that personal experience of something alone tells you nothing about the cause or not of that experience. This shows that the argument from personal experience can't even get off the ground, because theists using have to make at least two claims that they aren't (likely) able to justify:
That their personal experience was legitimate
and
Only they and their fellow ideologues are able to correctly ascertain the nature and cause of that experience.
That last one in particular is important. How can theists say that other theists of different religions are wrong about the cause of their experience of their god(s) while they are correct? They can't appeal to their experience itself, because the other theist can do the same just as validly. That's why the argument is completely unusable. I don't doubt theists have these experiences. When I was a Christian, I had them. But claiming deeper knowledge of these experiences because of the experience itself just seems inconsistent.
That their personal experience was legitimate
and
Only they and their fellow ideologues are able to correctly ascertain the nature and cause of that experience.
That last one in particular is important. How can theists say that other theists of different religions are wrong about the cause of their experience of their god(s) while they are correct? They can't appeal to their experience itself, because the other theist can do the same just as validly. That's why the argument is completely unusable. I don't doubt theists have these experiences. When I was a Christian, I had them. But claiming deeper knowledge of these experiences because of the experience itself just seems inconsistent.
