Secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong. Discuss [40]

February 19, 2023April 21, 2024 / vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Many secularists claim that Christianity is a source of unhappiness, both to individuals and to societies. For examples, Freud claimed that religion is an “individual obsessional neurosis” which has the potential to cause great unhappiness, causing people to repress their feelings and urges in an unhealthy way. Dawkins and Hitchens claimed that religion is at what Dawkins called “the root of all evil” in the world, causing conflict between individuals, groups and even whole countries, leading to death and destruction. Nevertheless, Christian apologists and social scientists have defended religion, claiming that – on balance – it is a source of happiness and not unhappiness. Feuerbach pointed out how religion makes people and societies happier, being a form of wish-fulfillment. History has shown that irreligious societies are even more subject to social unrest and conflict than religious ones; take communist Russia and China as examples of that. Further, Pascal and James argued that faith provides hope and benefits in this life sufficient to make it worth being religious without evidence of the object of faith. Recent social surveys agree, suggesting that faith adds years to healthy life-expectancy, while also lowering one’s chances of divorce and other misery-inducing experiences. It follows that it is fair to say that secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.

Firstly, Freud did argue that religion is an “individual obsessional neurosis” which has the potential to cause great unhappiness, causing people to repress their feelings and urges – and particularly their sexuality – in an unhealthy way. Yet even Freud acknowledged that religion can be positive for individuals, helping to develop their conscience so that they can function in society, and for societies as a whole in ensuring that people work together and observe rules which can’t be enforced. In The Future of an Illusion (1927) Freud referred to religion as “perhaps the most important item in the psychical inventory of a civilization”, arguing that Religion provides a defence against “the crushingly superior force of nature” Later, in Civilization and its Discontents (1930) Freud develops Feuerbach’s argument, suggesting that religion could be explained by the subconscious fulfilling the human desire for “a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded…” which stems from a childish fear of the unknown and things ending. This shows that even for Freud, a secularist, religions like Christianity perform a valuable function for individuals and societies in helping people to cope with the human condition. While Freud concludes The Future of an Illusion by stating that all religious beliefs are “illusions and insusceptible of proof…” he examines the issue of whether, without religion, people will feel “exempt from all obligation to obey the precepts of civilization”. He notes that “civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers” in whom secular motives for morality replace religious ones; but he acknowledges the existence of “the great mass of the uneducated and oppressed” who must be “held down most severely” unless “the relationship between civilization and religion” undergoes “a fundamental revision”. This suggests that religions like Christianity also increase social happiness in avoiding the need for punitive law-enforcement and subjugation of the working classes. As Marx had suggested, “Religion is the opium of the masses” but for Freud, drugging the masses and using their addiction to religion as something that makes them happy (albeit temporarily and at a price) to manipulate them may well be kinder than the alternative! It seems that Freud did argue that Religion causes some individuals great unhappiness, but acknowledged that on balance most individuals and societies benefit from it. Further, Freud’s methodology has been widely rejected as pseudo-scientific, meaning that his claims and theories carry little weight today in any case. Therefore, secularists who rely on Freud in saying that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.

Secondly, Dawkins did claim that religion is at “the root of all evil” in the world, causing conflict between individuals, groups and even whole countries, leading to death and destruction. He also claimed that it is religion’s tendency to encourage people to accept authority and ignore reason which makes it dangerous. The fact that it is “anti-intellectual leads young people to grow up with an “impoverished world-view” and “false-hope” while also making them susceptible to being radicalised and manipulated by unscrupulous leaders. Nevertheless, Dawkins is guilty of building up a “straw man” in his presentation of Christianity, in order to make his task in attacking it easier. Few Christians are, as Dawkins suggests, Biblical Literalists, Young Earth Creationists or deniers of evolution… most embrace reason and deny Dawkins claims about their world-view being in any way impoverished. For John Polkinghorne, it is Dawkins’ world-view that is impoverished, given that he closes his mind to all aspects of reality that can’t be measured through the empirical senses. As Terry Eagleton pointed out in 2006 “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology” He continued, criticising Dawkins for relying on “vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince” and claiming that “Dawkins has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both parties agree pretty much on what religion is… Dawkins rejects it while Oral Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.” Eagleton points out that Dawkins makes a series of unevidenced assumptions, such as: “Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly.” Also, as Alister McGrath pointed out in “The Dawkins Delusion” (2008) “either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs.” It seems that Dawkins’ claims and theories about religion are no more credible than those of Freud, so those who rely on his arguments in saying that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.

Of course there are more credible arguments to support the claim that religions like Christianity are a source of unhappiness. For example, the Secularization Hypothesis, which suggested that the less religious a society becomes, the more socially liberal and economically developed it becomes, was supported by a wide range of sociologists and their research through the 20^th century. In 1994 Jose Casanova wrote ‘The secularization theory may be the only theory which was able to attain a truly paradigmatic status within the modern social sciences… ‘ which goes some way to explain why countries such as Turkey embraced Programmatic Secularism as a means of developing their economies and so increasing social happiness. Nevertheless, more recent studies suggest that societies lose-out when they abandon religion. Charles Taylor in “A Secular Age” (2007) points out that secular belief effectively closes off whole areas of human experience so that “The door is barred against further discovery…” (p. 769) agreeing with John Polkinghorne that the spirit of scientific enquiry should lead people to be open to all sources of information, not only the five empirical senses. Taylor also argued that “our age is very far from settling into a comfortable unbelief” because “The secular age is schizophrenic, or better, deeply cross-pressured.” (p. 727) Against the freedom from “unreasoning fears” there is a feeling of malaise, of something lost. Heroism is lost in the leveling down of aspiration through the adoption of shallow utilitarianism and there is no room for death. In 2010 Jurgen Habermas agreed, in his essay “An Awareness of what is Missing”. Habermas also described the effects of secularism as “a world flattened out by empiricism and rendered normatively mute” (p134) For Habermas, people in secular societies endure a particular form of anxiety, an “awareness of what is missing” which has a significant effect on their individual and social happiness. This anxiety manifests itself in being unable to deal with death; our lack of belief in an afterlife makes us easy to manipulate. We act in the short-term and for immediate gain, feeling that what we do and are doesn’t really matter. We struggle with loyalty and commitment and to be unable to feel in solidarity with other human beings outside our immediate group. This makes acting together for the common good, such as to promote human rights or tackle climate change, increasingly difficult. The arguments of Taylor and Habermas show that religions like Christianity are more a source of happiness than unhappiness.

In conclusion, secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong. Neither the old arguments of Freud nor the newer arguments of Dawkins stand up to scrutiny and even the secularization hypothesis, which once suggested that societies would be made happier – at least in narrow economic terms – by the decline of religion, is beginning to crumble. A Taylor and Habermas observe, religions like Christianity are crucial components in both individual and social happiness, so that if they decline we quickly gain “an awareness of what is missing.”

Critically assess the claim that human beings have an immortal soul. (40)

November 18, 2019April 21, 2024 / vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

The claim that human beings have an immortal soul is certainly ancient. It is clear that Plato’s dualism was built on the foundation of Socrates’ belief in immortality and possibly reincarnation. In addition, evidence from the Bible suggests that belief in an immortal soul predated Christianity – though the belief is not represented consistently in the Old Testament – and became increasingly important as hopes for an immanent eschaton faded with the 1st Century. Further, the idea that personal identity can survive trauma, aging and ultimately death fits with human experience and supports both morality and hopes for life after death which many of us want if not need to maintain. Nevertheless, despite the persistence and appeal of these beliefs, claims that human beings have immortal souls lack credibility in the 21st Century.

Firstly, as Aristotle observed, “the soul is inseparable from its body” [On the Soul, Book II] He used the analogy of wax and a seal impression to make his point, writing “we must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.” [Aristotle “Psychology” translated by E. Wallace, p. 61, 1882] While he accepted that human beings have PSYCHE, and that these come in three parts, unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle rejected the idea that this could ever be separated from the body or survive death. As Brian Davies OP has noted, just because I consider myself to be sober doesn’t mean that I am. The fact that I feel separated from my body doesn’t mean that I am. GEM Anscombe agreed, arguing that the feeling of having a separate soul is not a proper argument for the soul’s separability. Further, as Gilbert Ryle suggested, the soul is the product of the parts and functions of the body operating together. When we speak of “the soul” it is much like speaking of “the university” in Oxford or “team spirit” in cricket… these things are an undoubtedly part of our experience, but they cannot be separated from the components which make them up. As Ryle wrote in “The Concept of Mind” (1949) Chapter 1, belief in a separate, separable and possibly immortal soul is the result of “that a family of radical category mistakes”… continuing, this “is the source of the double-life theory. The representation of a person as a ghost mysteriously ensconced in a machine derives from this argument”. To claim that human beings have separable souls, which – not least given our certain scientific knowledge that bodies decompose – is a precondition of having immortal souls, is to build assumptions on top of gut feelings in spite of the evidence, to make a “category mistake” and to take what is essentially a metaphor literally.

Secondly, as Richard Dawkins has argued, the theory of evolution can account for the impression of consciousness which contributes to the claim that human beings have immortal souls. In The Selfish Gene (1976) he wrote “we are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” In 1993 he speculated that the impression of consciousness and a separate soul has become an essential part of being human because it confers a survival advantage to our genes, suggesting that “brain hardware has co-evolved with the internal virtual worlds that it creates. This can be called hardware-software co-evolution.” The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993) Dawkins’ reductive materialism is supported by the famous case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and then experienced a complete transformation of personality and identity as a result. The mind, consciousness or “soul” is nothing more than the impression given off by the normal operation of the brain. Change the brain, change the “soul”. Kill the brain, destroy the soul. Basic biology shows that the soul is far from being immortal and that any claim that human beings have an immortal soul lacks credibility in the 21st Century.

Further, Peter Geach agreed with the evolution argument, arguing that human beings are sophisticated animals and that our belief that we are somehow different is no more than “savage superstition” [God and the Soul (1969),quoted by John Haldane in Anscombe and Geach on Mind and Soul (2016)]. It is undoubtedly convenient that human beings claim to have a “soul” where other – genetically similar – animals do not. For Christians, the existence of the soul explains the unique connection between human beings and God, in whose Image they are made. Further, the existence of a soul both justifies our preferring members of the species homo sapiens in moral decision-making and supports the religious principle of the Sanctity of Human Life. If human beings have no separable soul or any claim to immortality then it becomes more difficult to justify decisions which ignore the claim of tribes of orangutans on Indonesian rainforests or which deprive blue whales of their habitats for the benefit of a few human capitalists with financial interests in palm oil or Krill. As far back as the 18th Century Immanuel Kant highlighted the importance of believing in immortality for moral philosophy. As he argued, without believing in God, freedom and immortality it would be impossible to explain our duty to follow the moral law as there would be no reason to suppose that the law which appeals to us has authority, that we have the ability to do what we feel called to do or that there could be any ultimate point in doing so. Without the possibility of immortality, which the separable soul supports, there is little reason to do what is right in a world where goodness is rarely rewarded in this life. Nevertheless, the undesirability of the alternative conclusion is not a proper argument for the existence of an immortal soul in human beings, so the claim that human beings have an immortal soul lacks credibility.

Clearly, there are arguments in favour of dualism.

Plato used his famous slave-boy in the Meno to argue that we have memories of the forms, either from past lives or from our soul’s previous home in the world of the forms, which best explain our ability to “learn” mathematics and logic quickly. For Plato, learning is really remembering. Today, Noam Chomsky’s work on language acquisition makes this idea more interesting than it might have seemed a few decades ago, however even nativist accounts of language and research evidence indicating that the human brain is somehow “hardwired for language” does not take away from the possibility that this hard wiring could be explained by evolution, without the need to hypothesize the existence of an immortal soul.

In addition, Descartes built on Plato’s scepticism about sense-data, pointing out the many ways in which the evidence of eyes and ears turns out to be mistaken. A stick put in water surely does appear to bend. Nevertheless, Descartes’ radical conclusion, that the only thing of which I can be certain is “cogito ergo sum” seems to go well beyond the evidence. In 1968 Norman Malcolm poked holes in Descartes reasoning on a technical level, however even in the most obvious way it is apparent that while the senses do lie, conceptual analysis just as often deceives us. As Aristotle himself pointed out, “if, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail…” [Metaphysics Book 1:1] Further, Descartes’ arguments for substance dualism, with the seat of the soul in the Pineal Gland, can only in the light of 21st Century science, be seen as uninformed speculation. Descartes is far from being justified in his conclusion that “it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it.” [Meditations Book VI, 54] and the claim that human beings have an immortal soul continues to lack credibility.

Finally, paranormal experiences and particularly Near Death Experiences have been used to support claims that human beings have immortal souls. For example, in 1991 American singer-songwriter Pam Reynolds had a powerful experience of being separated from and looking down on her body and of spending time in “heaven” during a stand-still operation for a brain aneurism. Nevertheless, most of these experiences fail to stand up to careful scrutiny. Susan Blackmore described her own journey to this realisation, writing

“It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena—only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic” The New Scientist (2000)

Further, those experiences which resist explanation in simple physiological or psychological terms, such as those highlighted by Dr Sam Parnia in his Aware and Aware II studies, are few in number and may still be explained by scientific progress. Just because we cannot explain a few experiences with current scientific models doesn’t give us a reason to ditch scientific materialism and regress to a primitive dualistic world view predicated on supernatural entities for which there is no evidence.

In conclusion, the claim that human beings have immortal souls lacks credibility in the 21st Century. While the claim speaks to the experience of being human and supports the convenient belief that human beings are ontologically different from animals, there is no proper evidence or sensible argument to support substance dualism. Those with religious faith will, of course, continue to make the claim that human beings have immortal souls. The claim is central to their world-view and it is difficult to imagine how Christianity in particular could function without it. Yet in making the claim believers emphasize how far in faith they are willing to stray from what can be supported through evidence and argument.

Bibliography

Class Notes on Soul, Mind & Body
Gilbert Ryle “The Concept of Mind” Chapter 1
Susan Blackmore “Consciousness: An Introduction”

Secularism does not pose a threat to Christianity. Evaluate this statement. [40]

December 17, 2018April 21, 2024 / vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Programmatic secularism is the policy of separating religious and public life, ensuring that the state is free of religious influence and leaving religion as a purely private matter for citizens. Both the USA and France are secular republics, which means that religious leaders have no place in government, religious holidays do not necessarily coincide with national holidays, religion is not taught in public schools and religious values are not necessarily reflected in legislation. By contrast, in the UK the Monarch is both the head of state and the head of the established Church. Bishops (and more recently other religious leaders) are represented in the House of Lords, giving them the opportunity to influence legislation. Religious holidays coincide with national holidays; Christmas Day will always be a Bank Holiday, as will Easter Monday. Religious broadcasting is protected by law; it only recently started to include non-Christian broadcasting and still does not feature Humanists. Under the terms of the Education Act 1988 as amended, schools are actually required to organise acts of collective worship of a broadly Christian character and to teach about Religion for 5% of curriculum time and 50% of what they cover is reserved to the “main religious tradition of the UK” i.e. Christianity. In 2018 NatCen’s British social attitudes survey demonstrates the difficulty with this approach; 52% of people now claim to have no religion and only 14% now identify with the established Church of England. If the state seeks to represent the people, there is now a clear case for programmatic secularism, as “no religion” is now the belief of the majority of UK people. However there is resistance to policy changes designed to reduce or remove the influence of religion in UK public life and this resistance comes, for the most part, from Christians. To what extent, therefore, does secularism pose a threat to Christianity in the UK? The answer very much depends on how “Christianity” is defined. If “Christianity” refers to following Jesus’ teachings – to loving God and one’s neighbour (Mark 12:31-32), then secularism poses little threat.

Secular states like the USA and France permit citizens to practice their religion privately, so there would be no bar to baptism or worship or indeed to charitable giving and good works. In Matthew 6:1 Jesus taught his disciples: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” He praised the widow for making her offering to the Temple treasury quietly and with total sincerity and devotion, contrasting her with the rich men making a show of giving only what they could easily afford. Arguably, Christians could better practice their religion when that practice is limited to being in private. In that case, there could be no confusion that engaging in worship might yield worldly rewards, whether legal, social or otherwise. Further, Jesus taught that ethical action is more important than religious ritual. Jesus made a point of healing people on the Sabbath (Mark 3), he made himself ritually impure by eating with sinners – saying “it is not the well who need a doctor, but the sick” – and he challenged the Pharisees who criticised the disciples for picking ears of corn on the Sabbath, pointing out that in their zeal to enforce the letter of the law they were ignoring its spirit, which is to protect life (Mark 2:23ff). For Jesus, the essence of Christianity lay in loving God and showing this by loving our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:31-32). In no way would being prevented from making a public show of ritual worship pose a threat to Christianity as understood like this.

Certainly, phasing out faith schools would take away some options from religious parents in terms of educating their children in a faith, yet American Christian parents seem to have coped with the challenge of organising religious instruction outside school, whether in the home or through the Church, or paying for private education. Arguably, putting the responsibility for planning and overseeing the process of educating children in a faith back onto parents (and Churches) would cause them to take a greater interest in the efficacy of the process in terms of forming faith. This done, it might do something to stem the decline in Church attendance which is charted dramatically by the Brierley Institute’s Church Statistics research, which covers the period from the early 1980s to the present day. One of the key findings in the 2018 Faith Survey reads: “UK Church membership has declined from 10.6 million in 1930 to 5.5 Million in 2010, or as a percentage of the population; from about 30% to 11.2%. By 2013, this had declined further to 5.4 million (10.3%). If current trends continue, membership will fall to 8.4% of the population by 2025”[1] While there are obviously other factors contributing to this and while this trend does not follow through to France, Church attendance is far higher in the USA, where religion cannot be taught in schools. At least programmatic secularism could lead some Christians to practice their faith more actively, even if it leads others to abandon their nominal faith altogether. In addition, while actual research data is difficult to find, it seems likely that UK Faith schools do not have much effect on the religiosity of young people after they leave school. According to NatCen’s British Social Attitude Survey 2018, some 70% of 18-24 year olds in the UK claim to have no faith at all, a figure which has been rising steadily, despite more than 1/3 of UK schools having a faith designation[2]. Humanists UK point out the incongruity in designating so many schools as Faith Schools, when they do not reflect even the nominal faith of those in their areas. Further, in the UK, Faith schools have struggled to recruit Headteachers and RE teachers who are practicing members of their faith tradition and Faith schools have struggled to form faith when forced to admit 50% of their students from outside their religious tradition anyway, to facilitate multiculturalism and prevent ghettoization. Nowhere in the Bible does it suggest that Christians should expect the state to subsidise and/or facilitate the process of parents educating their Children in a faith. Nowhere does it suggest that the Roman state does or should even respect Christianity. In the Temple Jesus taught people to “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s; give unto God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17) Which suggests that he envisaged peoples’ religious lives existing in parallel to their civic responsibilities. It follows that programmatic secularism in the UK would not pose a threat to Christianity if it is defined by the Bible and Jesus’ teachings. Rather, it would offer Christians the opportunity to experience their faith as early Christians did and force them to decide whether to commit or not.

Cases like the famous “Gay Cake” case involving Asher’s Bakery and its Belfast owners the MacArthurs may seem to point to the weakness of this argument. If laws conceived out of programmatic secularism make acting (or not acting) on religious principles illegal, then it seems that peoples’ ability to be Christian is under threat as a result of secularism. Nevertheless, Christianity was born into adversity, as a minority faith within a remarkably plural Roman Empire. Jesus taught his followers to… “take up your cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24) always recognising that being a Christian was a brave choice that would entail significant hardships or even death. The whole point of Christianity was to do what is right, not what is easy, and earn an eternal reward in heaven. Almost all of Jesus apostles were martyred, along with innumerable early Saints. Coming into conflict with the authorities as a result of one’s Christian faith seems almost to have been a mark of a true Christian within the early Church. While secularism will lead to larger numbers of Christians finding that their faith brings them into conflict with the law, this is not necessarily a threat to Christianity. Indeed, during the early centuries of Christianity the sacrifices Christians had to and were willing to make for their faith drew attention to the religion and advertised its fundamental beliefs and benefits as nothing else could. In a sense, without opposition from the state, it seems doubtful whether Christianity would have spread as quickly and as far as it did. The fact that cases like those of the MacArthurs have attracted widespread publicity and have caused even non-Christian commentators to admit respect for the sincerity of peoples’ faith, suggests that the relationship between Christians coming into conflict with the state and the religion growing is not only a thing of the past. Further, data showing that Christianity is growing fastest where it encounters most opposition from the state supports this argument. Looking at the International Bulletin for Missionary Research (IBMR) for 2015, Christianity is growing most quickly in African countries like Nigeria and South Sudan where Christians are being persecuted by Muslim militia. In the 15 years to 2015 Christianity in Africa grew by a staggering 51% to 541 million. Similarly, in China Christianity exploded in popularity at a time when any form of religious practice was banned by the secular Communist state under threat of “re-education” in camps. The same pattern can be seen in North Korea today. In the Middle East, in countries where Bibles are banned, Christianity is experiencing exponential growth. By contrast, in Europe, where the state is either actively Christian or only procedurally secular, Christianity is in long-term and significant decline, Islam is the fastest growing religion and increasing numbers of people have lost faith altogether. While Christianity can justly complain that secular laws impede peoples’ ability to act on their religious principles – when it comes to matters as diverse as mission and discipleship, denouncing homosexuality or gay marriage, wearing visible symbols of their religion or refusing to condone or facilitate what they perceive to be sinful behaviour – the suggestion that these laws or the conflict they cause threatens the continued existence of Christianity is misplaced. On the contrary, secular laws and the conflict they cause are likely to be the cause of growth in Christianity.

In conclusion, it seems that if “Christianity” refers to following Jesus’ teachings – to loving God and one’s neighbour (Mark 12:31-32), programmatic secularism poses little threat to its continued existence and might in time lead to renewed growth in the UK, where it has been in decline. Of course, if Christianity is defined in terms of Church institutions and particularly as the Church of England, then the threat posed by programmatic secularism would be real. A Church founded to facilitate a King’s divorce (and resolve a royal cash-flow issue) will obviously struggle when its privileges and protections are withdrawn. Antidisestablishmentarianism has always been a minority movement in the Church of England because of the certainty that divorcing Church and State would be traumatic and the difficulty of advertising the benefits succinctly on the side of a bus! Nevertheless, the growth in Evangelical Protestant and conservative Roman Catholic Christianity demonstrates that it is possible for Churches to thrive outside the UK establishment. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the Church of England were liberated from their establishment positions they would be able to speak out freely against social injustices and thus give witness to the true Christian message. While basic calls for tolerance and compassion from Justin Welby (such as in his recent speech to the TUC) always attract a barrage of press criticism for political meddling (as if that wasn’t always the job of an Archbishop!) if the Church was disestablished there would be no basis for such. While Church leaders would have a smaller platform – one commensurate with the numbers sitting in their pews – they would have the ability to represent Christian teaching and opinion on that platform, which is more than can be said at the moment. Similarly, without forcing families to confess beliefs they don’t have to secure a good education for their children, without forced acts of communal worship in Schools and without teaching about Baptism and Communion in classrooms, there might be less hostility for religion in general. Similarly, without a protected position in BBC schedules, the Church might lack prime time coverage of acts of worship… but would it really miss the bland, vanilla portrayal of what it means to be a Christian? Constant reinforcement of the (false) idea that Christianity is all about community singing, forced happiness and boring “thoughts for the day” read out by people nobody wants to listen to is far from being a help to the religion! It is fair to say that programmatic secularism in the UK would lead to further sharp decline within the Church of England – and particularly in the numbers of people who claim to be “CofE” but rarely attend Church – but whether this “threat” would harm the longer-term prospects of even this Church is uncertain.

[1] https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html

[2] Parliamentary Briefing on Faith Schools, 2018.

“Religious faith requires belief in a separate soul” Discuss (40)

January 4, 2018April 21, 2024 / vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Assuming that the statement refers to Christian faith, through the history of Christianity there have been Christians who have believed in a separate soul (e.g. Descartes) and others who have not (e.g. St. Matthew) but the crux of the issue is whether such a belief is required. This begs the question “by who or what standard?” Obviously, belief in a separate soul is not required by the Creeds; the Apostles’ Creed affirms “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” which suggests that Christian faith requires not a dualist but an avowedly monist position. Further, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church 1059 affirms that “The holy Roman Church firmly believes and confesses that on the Day of Judgment all men will appear in their own bodies before Christ’s tribunal to render an account of their own deeds”. It is clear that no belief in a separate soul can be required by orthodox Christian faith, although I will argue that belief in a separable soul might make it easier to sustain faith in the face of life’s challenges and apparent inequities.

Christian faith promises salvation; union with God and restitution for the injustices apparent in this life. Nevertheless, the New Testament is unclear about how this salvation will come about and whether the afterlife will entail bodily existence or be purely spiritual. The Synoptic Gospels suggest an immanent eschatology; descriptions of heaven and hell are earth-like and seem to suggest that people will have resurrected bodies to experience reward or punishment much as we experience these in the coming Kingdom of God. Matthew 25 (the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) suggests that the evangelists expected that Jesus will soon return to judge the living and the dead and supports a physical understanding of hell ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41) Luke 16:23-24 also supports this view “So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ Other references to the final judgement are similar “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) and this vision of the end-times seems consistent with Old Testament references, such as those in Ezekiel and Isaiah. Christian faith supported by references in the synoptic gospels would require no belief in either a separate or a separable soul, only a belief in physical resurrection. Nevertheless, belief in physical resurrection is difficult to sustain in the modern world. There is a complete lack of supporting evidence and it is difficult to see how it could deliver the promised reward (or punishment) in a fair and just manner. Surely, those who died hundreds or thousands of years before the final judgement would be at greater risk of their bodes having disintegrated. Surely, those who died as infants, after losing limbs, in extreme old-age or whose bodies were destroyed utterly would seem less likely to get their just deserts. While “all things are possible with God” (Matthew 19:26) and Christian faith requires a belief in God’s omnipotence, it is clear that this cannot extend to God doing the logically impossible, or else most theodicies would collapse and God could not also be all-good. While God resurrecting people out of nothing by reassembling them from dispersed dust into their ideal form may not be logically impossible, it comes close to being so in some cases.

It is obvious why many 21st Century Christians prefer to believe in an eternal life, reward or punishment which begins soon after each person’s death. A belief in immediate reward and punishment would work either with dualism, belief in a separate soul, or with a belief in re-creation into a parallel dimension.

Immediate reward or punishment through dualism, in a purely spiritual sense, is superficially easier to reconcile with science and reason. There have been many reports of Near Death Experiences which, if credible, would to support belief in disembodied existence immediately after death. Pam Reynolds’ experience during standstill surgery in 1991 is often seen as one of the best documented cases. More recent research conducted by Dr Sam Parnia at the University of Southampton might suggest that the soul could continue after death without a body. In addition, a spiritual interpretation of the afterlife would be more rationally defensible than physical resurrection. It is easier to see how a soul could survive eternally; a risen body would still be physical and so subject to aging, sickness, disability and other associated limitations. It is easier to see how a soul could come “face to face” with God, who is not normally seen to have a physical existence as human beings do. Further, parts of John’s gospel, the Johannine letters and Paul’s letters seem to support a more spiritual interpretation of eternal life. Verses such as “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18) and “So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:8) seem obviously Platonic in their influence and are closest to dualism. However, although faith with a purely spiritual eschatology seems easier to reconcile with science and reason, it comes with significant problems and has been relatively rare through the history of Christianity. Belief in a separate soul – dualism – is difficult to defend in philosophical or scientific terms and suggests other beliefs and practices which are incompatible with Christian theology. Descartes argued for a Christian dualism, but struggled to provide a coherent account of why the soul would be enfleshed, how soul and body interact and how a disembodied soul could experience reward or punishment in the way that would be necessary for Christian promises of eternal life to be meaningful. The Catholic Church never accepted the idea that eternal life could be purely spiritual and disembodied because this might seem to dilute the punishment of hell – annihilation or distance from God would scarcely seem a disincentive to people who have decided to commit mortal sins after all. Further, by the Middle Ages the Church realized that dualism supports an utter contempt for the physical body, which can lead people towards extreme and unhealthy asceticism or towards a disregard for the sins of the body and the belief that its sins – sexual sins included – are less significant.

Belief that the body can be re-created in a parallel dimension after death to receive reward or punishment is far preferable. Seeking a middle-way between the difficulties of basing faith on a future physical resurrection and basing it on dualism and a purely spiritual eternal life, St Thomas Aquinas developed his Theology on the basis of Aristotle’s Philosophy. Rejecting the dualism proposed by his teacher Plato, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle had set out how all beings have four different types of cause; material causes (physical ingredients), efficient causes (agents), formal cause (what makes something what it is, its definition) and a final cause (the purpose or end to which its existence pertains). Aristotle understood that the soul is the formal cause of the human being, what makes it what it is and defines its existence. Unlike Plato however, Aristotle did not see the form of a being having any separate metaphysical existence. The form depends on the materials it specifies, and the end towards which it works. The soul is, in effect, the function of the body – what Gilbert Ryle later described as “the ghost in the machine” – it gives the impression of being a separate entity but in fact it depends entirely on the physical body for its existence. This is where Aquinas departed from Aristotle; he argued that on death the body is re-created in a parallel heavenly dimension and that the new unity of soul and heavenly body is subject to punishment and reward. Arguably, this idea of re-creation has a basis in scripture; references such as “They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44) can be interpreted as Biblical support for Aquinas’ “modified dualism”. Further, John Hick developed a defense of re-creation into a parallel dimension through the “replica theory” which he developed in Death and Eternal Life (1976). As Hick argued, provided that the replica retains the memories of the original, difficulties with spatio-temporal continuity can be overcome. When Captain Kirk said “beam me up Scotty!” there was no doubt that Kirk remained Kirk although there was a break in his spatio-temporal existence. Aquinas’ theory of re-creation supports Christian faith far better than either monism and physical resurrection or dualism and purely spiritual reward/punishment. It avoids both the challenges presented by science and reason to belief in physical resurrection and the theological pitfalls of dualism, while straining credulity to a lesser extent because it requires only that the soul could be briefly separable, not that it must be sustained in a separate state. For this reason, Aquinas’ theory was adopted into the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in the 16th Century.

In conclusion, it is clear that orthodox Christian faith does not require belief in a separate soul. Christian faith can be sustained through a belief in physical resurrection, either in the future starting with the final judgement as the Synoptic Gospels, Creeds and Catechism suggest, or through re-creation into a new body in a parallel dimension as St Thomas Aquinas suggested. Re-creation does not require belief in a separate soul, but does suppose that the soul is separable.

“Religion will have no place in 22nd Century Britain!” Discuss (40)

October 30, 2017April 21, 2024 / vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Religion is in decline in 21st Century Britain. This does not seem to be due to an increase in peoples’ understanding of science and acceptance of it as a complete explanation for life. As Richard Dawkins has observed, even non-religious people remain wedded to unscientific beliefs and the battle for science and reason is a long way from being won, even in Britain which is one of the most secular countries in the world. In a “post-truth” era, people are increasingly willing to question scientific method and accept “alternative facts” on the strength of little more than popular opinion or convenience. Further, there is no clear correlation between supernatural beliefs and religiosity in Britain. For examples, a YouGov poll in 2017 suggests that only 19% of British Christians have any difficulty accepting the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection as a full explanation for human life and a YouGov poll in 2015 suggested that only 55% of self-identifying Christians actually believe in God! Clearly, some people claim religious affiliation and even attend a place of worship, while not subscribing to the most basic doctrines of that religion. Further, it is probably fair to say that a lot of people who do not attend a place of worship maintain religious beliefs. Nevertheless, NatCen’s Social Attitudes Survey of September 2017 made headlines when it reported that 53% – a majority – of the British public now describe themselves as having “no religion”, up from 48% in 2015 and 31% in 1983. From a straightforward statistical perspective, it would probably be fair to say that Religion will have a much smaller place in 22nd Century Britain than it does in 21st Century Britain.

Of course, statistics do not provide a complete picture; they need to be contextualized and interpreted, as well as to be tested for validity.

Firstly, it is wrong to infer that because the number of people with a particular characteristic in a society is small that that characteristic “has no place” in society. Consider; the percentage of people who identify as transgender or even homosexual in Britain is small. Estimates suggest that around 1% of people are gender nonconforming to some extent and the 2013 ‘Integrated Household Survey’ undertaken by the Office for National Statistics found that just 1.1% said they were ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ and 0.4% said they were bisexual on a sample of 178,197 British adults. This suggests that there are about 545,000 homosexual and 220,000 bisexual adults in the UK but relatively few people would accept that this is evidence for gays, lesbians and bisexuals, their issues or culture, having “no place in” our society.

Secondly, the headlines of the data conceal the fact that both the religious landscape and the intensity of religiosity in Britain are changing as a result of evangelism and immigration. The numbers of evangelical Christians, of Muslims is rising and is projected to rise further in the coming decades according to Pew Research in 2015. Reasonable estimates suggest that the proportion of Muslims in Britain will increase towards 10% by 2050. Further, Pew Research in 2015 suggested that Religion is very important to more Evangelical Christians and Muslims in the US than it is to members of more traditional Churches. If the same is true in the UK, then the shift from traditional Churches towards Evangelical Churches and the increase in numbers of Muslims could signal an increase in how important religious people think religion is in their lives. While the raw number of religious people might be much lower in the 22nd Century Britain than it is in the 21st Century Britain, these people might well see religion as more important than many religious people do today. Possibly, the influence of religion will not decline as as sharply as the raw percentages might suggest it should. On this basis, Religion might still have a place in 22nd Century Britain.

Thirdly, the sample size used by NatCen to gather religious affiliation and attendance data is small and its conclusions are contested. NatCen’s surveys typically draw on fewer than 2000 responses, so the margin for error on projections of proportion across the sample would be just less than 3%, with a substantially higher margin for error on projections for age-cohorts, which are sometimes dependent on excessively small samples such as the 20 responses available for the before 1920 cohort in 2008. Further, UK Census data suggests that the NatCen figures for religious affiliation may be significantly lower than the actual figures. For example, in 2001 NatCen suggested that 54% of the British population was Christian whereas the Census suggested 72%. In 2011 NatCen suggested that 47% of the British population was Christian whereas the Census in the same year suggested that the figure was 59.3%. Further, by the same comparison, NatCen seems to inflate the numbers of people who are not religious even more dramatically. For example, in 2001 NatCen suggested that 41% of British people were not religious whereas the Census in that year suggested that the figure was just 15%. In 2011 NatCen suggested that 46% of the British population was not religious while the Census suggested a figure of 25.1%.

Despite significant issues with the statistical evidence, it is clear that both NatCen and the Census data support the principle that religious affiliation is declining steeply and that the number of people with no religion is increasing rapidly. Projecting forward it might be inferred that religion will have died out in Britain by the 22nd Century. Indeed, NatCen’s figures suggest that the percentage of religious people has been falling by approximately 1% per year and that 71% of 18-24 year olds claiming to have “no religion” in 2016, compared with only 27% of those aged 75+. Although the margin for error in these statistics is quite sizable, on this basis it might seem reasonable to argue that the % of religious people will be negligible by the mid 21st Century and that Religion will indeed have no statistical place in 22nd Century Britain.

Such a conclusion might seem to ignore the effect of age on religiosity. It is clear that as people age they tend to become more religious. Argue, Johnson and White documented this in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion back in 1999. They stated that… “The results show a significant, non-linear increase in religiosity with age, with the greatest increase occurring between ages 18 and 30...” (Abstract) This would make sense given analyses of Religious belief put forward by scholars from Feuerbach through Durkheim to Freud. As Feuerbach and later Durkheim noted, Religion fulfills societal needs and seems to be projected and shaped by societies for their own purposes, such as to promote conformity or a collective moral conscience. As Freud noted, a similar pattern applies to individuals, with religious beliefs and practices fulfilling psychological needs and desires for most people and so, arguably, being projected by the subconscious mind to quell anxiety. If religion is a man-made phenomenon, a natural response to personal and social needs, then it would make sense for religiosity to be more apparent in older people who are more likely to have experienced the need for community, conformity and comfort. If, as Freud suggested, God acts as a father-figure for those without a father it would make sense that belief in God would be more apparent among those who have lost their parents and are generally more lonely and isolated. If, as Durkheim suggested, religion comes into being and is legitimated through moments of what he calls “collective effervescence” then it would make sense for older people – who are more likely to have had experience of such “moments” – to believe and belong.

However, once adjusted for aging, the statistics still suggest a real and significant decline in Religious affiliation and attendance. D. Voas and A. Crockett, ‘Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging’, Sociology (2005), vol. 39, pp. 11-27 analyse British Social Attitudes by age-cohort, noting that affiliation and attendance declined markedly from cohort to cohort, but remained relatively steady in both measures across a 23 year period from 1984 to 2007 for each cohort born before 1970. In addition, for the 1970s cohort however, affiliation declined from an average 46% in 1990 (when most of the cohort would have been teenagers) to an average 28.1% in 1997 (when most of the cohort would have been starting their careers). Why the 1970s cohort were particularly susceptible to secularization during the 1990s is an interesting area for research, as is what the effects of this on the children of those in the 1970s cohort will be. However, as it stands this research suggests that both on the basis of the lower rates of religious affiliation and attendance seen in successive age-cohorts through the 20th Century and into the 21st Century and on the basis of a further decline in religious affiliation and attendance seen during the 1990s within the 1970s cohort, it is reasonable to project that in the absence of other factors, religious affiliation will decline towards zero over the next century.

Yet what might these “other factors” be and how might they still affect the place of religion in 22nd Century Britain?

One factor might be apparent in NatCen’s figures for the 1980s cohort rates of affiliation, which rose from 32.6% in 1997 (when the cohort were mostly teenagers) to a high of 39.2% in 2001, before returning to 32.3% by 2007 (when most of the cohort would have been in their 20s). The short-lived spike in religious affiliation within the 1980s cohort around 2001 is mirrored within the 1950s and before 1920 cohorts, but was not evident in the attendance figures… apart from for the before 1920 cohort, who seem to have attended places of worship in 2001 and again in 2005 in significantly higher numbers. It is tempting to interpret the correlation between higher church attendance among elderly people and big terrorist attacks as having some sort of causative explanation. Going back to Feuerbach and Freud, perhaps the shock of 9/11 and 7/7 caused people to seek solace in religion? Going back to Durkheim and thinking about Marx, perhaps the trauma of the attacks and the “war on terror” can explain the need for a collective religious response, both practically and politically. If religion is the “opium of the masses” it would be reasonable to see more of it being used – rightly or wrongly – when the masses are in real pain! Nevertheless, if the breakdown of the statistics is anything to go by, the statistical spike was not demographically uniform and nor did changes in affiliation rates translate into attendance. Only the oldest people actually attended a place of worship more often in 2001 and in 2004-5; there is no apparent change in NatCen’s attendance figures for younger people and the attendance of the 1960s cohort actually dropped in that year and in 2005. Perhaps the statistical spike in affiliation in 2001 and around 2005 is more to do with expressing solidarity, cultural and moral identity and to do with asserting hope in a seemingly hopeless situation, than it is to do with any actual change in what people believe or do in terms of religion. In part, this seems to confirm Max Weber’s suggestion that religion emerges out of peoples’ need to respond to the injustice of evil and suffering and out of their need to believe in salvation and that something they can do could lead to a righting of this injustice. What might the principle that people might be willing to state religious affiliation in greater numbers at times of social stress suggest about the place of religion in 22nd Century Britain? Just that religion will probably continue to have a place in 22nd Century Britain and that then, as now, that place will be more apparent at times of national crisis and when people feel the need to assert control over their fates.

Further, the population is aging. This trend might be interrupted or even reversed by the reduction in antibiotic efficacy, the increase in cancers, the growing likelihood of pandemics as well as by decades of under investment in health and social care etc, but if it continues even at a slower rate, the proportion of very elderly people in the 22nd Century Britain might well be larger than it is today. Sadly, a higher proportion of very elderly people is likely to result in a higher proportion of people suffering from poverty, loneliness, isolation and depression, all of which are indicators for higher rates of religiosity. In “Religion and depression: a review of the literature” (1999) McCullough and Larson found that… “some forms of religious involvement might exert a protective effect against the incidence and persistence of depressive symptoms or disorders.” Surveying more than 440 pieces of research, in “Religious and Spiritual Factors in Depression: Review and Integration of the Research” (2012) Raphael Bonelli et al found that “Religious beliefs and practices may help people to cope better with stressful life circumstances, give meaning and hope, and surround depressed persons with a supportive community.” According to a 2008 study, people who are lonely are more likely to become religious while rates of loneliness in the UK among older people are high and arguably rising, perhaps as a result of families dispersing and the long hours worked by British people. These studies seem to support Freud’s suggestion that Religion can often help people to cope with voids in their lives and Jung’s suggestion that religion is about much more than a world-view or a set of rituals and is better understood as a process of working out our relationship with reality.

In addition, Gallup research in 2009 found that Religion is typically far more important to the population in poorer countries than it is in richer countries and that there is a direct correlation between economic prosperity and religiosity. If rates of religiosity in Britain have a relationship with the economy, then the place that religion has in 22nd Century Britain may depend on the long term economic future of the country. Of course, the relationship between religion and economics was charted more than 100 years ago by Karl Marx and then by Max Weber, who both understood how religion can function as a tool of capitalism which keeps ordinary people motivated and engaged with the market and the political system which puts it first when it singularly fails to benefit them. Of course with Brexit on the immediate horizon, continuing problems with managing the deficit and the housing market, the national debt and the longer term effects of world population growth, climate change and resources depletion, it is difficult to forecast what the economy will be doing in five years time, let alone into the 22nd Century. It could be that Capitalism will collapse before that time; Marx predicted that it will. Suffice it to say that there is a real possibility that Britain will be poorer in the future, and that with the decline in its finances the country could see an increase in the number of people expressing religious affiliation… and even attendance (assuming that places of worship continue to function for long enough to benefit from an upturn in numbers that is).

In conclusion, the claim that religion will have no place in 22nd Century Britain is exaggerated. While religious affiliation will probably continue to decline, part of this effect may be offset by an increase in religious intensity among those believers who are left, by temporary increases in religiosity at times of national crisis and by the probable effect of a potentially aging and in any case stressed, sick and impoverished population. Further, even with a small proportion of religious people, there will continue to be a place for religion in British society as there are places for other minority ways of life. Clearly, the decline in religion will raise questions about the established status of the Church of England, the representation of religions in the House of Lords and about the protected status enjoyed by religions in relation to tax and education for examples. How these questions are handled will have some effect on the place religion will have in 22nd Century Britain.

Charlotte Vardy will be proposing the motion “This house believes that religion should have no place in 22nd Century Britain” as part of Candle Conferences’ “Outstanding A Level Religious Studies” events across England during November 2017.

Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God! Discuss (40)

March 12, 2017April 21, 2024 / vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

Religious experience, whether that is the general experience of living a religious life or specific, direct experiences of the divine, is very commonly cited as the basis for religious faith. Nevertheless, William James and William Alston have both argued that although Religious Experiences are reasonably authoritative for the people who have them – and for those people may serve as more than a pointer to the existence of God – because of plausible non-religious explanations there can be no duty on other people to accept the authenticity of religious experiences or see them as pointers to anything supernatural. Richard Swinburne went further, noting that whether one accepts religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God will depend on one’s assessment of prior probability. Responses to the claim “Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God!” depend to some extent on one’s own relationship with religious experience(s), whether one has had a direct experience or must rely on others’ reports, but depend mostly on one’s world-view. Atheists and materialists are unlikely to accept the claim, even if they have had an experience that might otherwise be categorized as religious, whereas those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds are more likely to accept the claim, even on the strength of anecdote.

Direct religious experiences are notoriously difficult to define or categorise. William James identified four marks that most experiences seem to have – transiency, a noetic quality, ineffability and passivity – and yet there are well-known experiences which do not have these marks. Thomas Merton had relatively regular experiences over a long period. Teresa of Avila’s experiences were sustained and seemingly the result of practices designed to provoke them. Further the Religious canon is packed with descriptions of religious experience. Other scholars have defined religious experiences in different ways. Scholar of mysticism Rudolph Otto took a more general approach, saying only that authentic religious experiences are those of mysterium tremendum et fascinans. In some ways Otto’s definition accords with Martin Buber’s description of religious experiences as I-thou encounters. Walter Stace excluded classic visions and voices altogether and argued that genuine religious experiences are non-sensuous and mystical in character. Richard Swinburne, on the other hand, listed five different types of religious experience in two categories, public and private, in an attempt to be inclusive. The difficulty in defining religious experiences is a seemingly insuperable obstacle to using them as the basis for an inductive argument for the existence of God.

Direct religious experiences are also open to alternative, non-religious explanations. Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud both noted how religious belief tends towards wish-fulfilment. Some religious experiences fit in most conveniently with the wants and needs of the person who has them and could be explained as creations of the subconscious mind. For example, Joan of Arc’s experiences fit in with the French nationalistic mood of the time and provided Joan with a credibility that she could never otherwise have had. Might she have invented the experiences – or have interpreted them creatively – for her own (side’s) political advantage? The Emperor Constantine’s vision before the battle of Milvian Bridge and the visions leading to the discovery of the True Cross on the First Crusade could be seen in similar terms. Alternatively, other religious experiences might be explained in physiological terms. It is more common for those experiencing extreme physical stress or hormonal change to claim religious experiences – could the physiological changes associated with puberty or the suffering involved in a life-threatening illness be causing out-of-body sensations that are later interpreted as religious? Julian of Norwich experienced visions while close to death, St Paul seems to have been an epileptic subject to grand-mal seizures and many other visionaries and mystics have exhibited physiological symptoms which might account for their altered state. Of course it is difficult to disprove religious experiences in these ways – not least because an account of HOW the experience might have happened does not rule out God as the reason WHY it happened. Nevertheless, the existence of non-religious explanations for religious experiences does undermine their status as a good pointer to the existence of God, both individually and otherwise.

Although Swinburne incorporated an argument from Religious Experience into his cumulative case for God, set out in “The Existence of God” (1991), he accepted that unlike accepting the natural observations that other inductive arguments start with, accepting religious experiences as even a pointer to the existence of God depends on prior probability. People who already accept the possibility of God’s existence will accept that religious experiences are a feature of the world which require explanation while those with an atheistic world-view will reject religious experiences as delusions or at least claim that psychology and/or physiology explain away the phenomenon without any need to suggest a supernatural cause. It is fair to say that religious people, or at least those who are open-minded, will be more likely to accept that Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God than those who are committed to an atheist or materialist world-view and this suggests that there will always be disagreement on whether Religious Experiences constitute a good pointer to the existence of God that is little to do with the experiences themselves or what causes them.

Swinburne went on to argue that it is reasonable to accept reports of religious experiences – defined very broadly so as to include both public and private experiences – and to take them as pointers to the existence of God because of the principles of credulity and testimony. In everyday life we believe what we see or experience ourselves and believe other people unless we have a good reason not to. Why should these principles not apply to religious experiences? Given the large number of people who claim to have had experiences that might be classed as religious experiences – around 1 in 3 people according to Alister Hardy Centre research – they need to be explained. What reasonable grounds are there for dismissing either the occurrence of these experiences or the explanation proffered by those who have had them when we have no clear reason to doubt? Nevertheless, Swinburne’s principles do little to advance his argument beyond prior probability. Those with an atheistic or materialist world view are likely to respond to Swinburne by arguing that the very fact that somebody claims to have had a religious experience is evidence of their irrationality and good reason to be suspicious of their testimony. As Carl Sagan said “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – by their nature religious experiences are out of the ordinary and demand more rather than less evidence both to support their authenticity and their interpretation.

In conclusion, the claim “Religious experiences are good pointers to the existence of God” will only be accepted by those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds and is unlikely to persuade non-religious people of God’s existence. As Anthony Flew wrote in God and Philosophy (1966), responses to religious experiences… ‘seems to depend on the interests, background and expectations of those who have them rather than on anything separate and autonomous…” Take AJ Ayer’s conversion experience. Even the medically documented experience of a committed atheist and expert Philosopher is explained away in physiological and psychological terms by those who see it as impossible. Ayer eventually denied his own experiences, attributing them to the effects of cerebral anoxia or shock, rather than change his prior assessment of probability. In “The Blind Watchmaker” Richard Dawkins wrote that if he witnessed a marble statue waving its hand at him he would prefer to check himself into the nearest psychiatric hospital than accept that he had witnessed a miracle. What better demonstration can there be of the effects of prior probability on the likelihood of people accepting religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God?

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