Speaking from Experience

So, back to religion…

You know, an argument has been put forward more often than one would hope, but as often as can be expected, giving the altogether dismal state of the average person’s way of thinking. The argument is traditionally called “the argument from personal experience”, and it goes a little something like this: “It is possible to know that God exists, based on personally experiencing the witness of the holy spirit”… or some such nonsense. Now, you may be thinking to yourself that surely that’s an argument only used by lay people who perhaps aren’t all that well educated or well versed on philosophical or scientific thinking or process. However, this is an argument that has been seriously used in debates by none other than the messiah of Christian apologetics himself…

Dr. William Lane Craig

The man who has two PhDs in Philosophy and Theology, the man who even many atheists admit has an impeccable debating record, Dr. William Lane Craig has actually used the argument from personal experience many times, in serious debating formats… am I the only one who can’t help but think “if this is the best the Christians have to offer, then boy, might as well declare God non-existent right now and save humanity another millennia of religious wars, poorly educated children, pastors earning more money in a year than many will earn in a lifetime, and many Christians attempting to propagate the idea that unless you’re a science hating, gay bashing bigot who’s afraid of his own brain, lest he accidentally start thinking and subsequently stop believe that there is an Genocidal, infanticidal, megalomaniacal, all knowing and all powerful but completely undetectable being, pulling the strings of fate behind his iron curtain of a cloud, then when you die you will be sent to a place of fire and burning and smoke and torture and choking where you will writhe and scream and wail and cry for eternity”


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...But he loves you :)

Anyway, where was I…

The main problem with this argument (among the innumerable amount of them) is the fact that Christians tend to overlook the fact that this argument is actually a bigger problem for them than for an atheist. Most atheists are more than happy to chalk up any so called “experiences” to the overwhelming power of the mind, particularly after recent studies indicated that it is now possible to induce these alleged religious experiences, in an objective scientific environment, with special equipment. However, if you are to take the Christian approach to these episodes, then you must, as the religious are so often unwilling to do, ask the obvious next question in the chain: what about everyone else? What about every Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist etc. who has ever claimed to have had a religious experience, and there have been many. As the great Christopher Hitchens once said “if you are to claim it for one, you must accept it for them all”. If you are to claim that your experiences that you chalk up to “the power of the holy spirit” are valid, then you must also grant the same validation that you think are false.

It’s a fairly simple train of thought to follow actually, when it comes to the faith ideology, there are three logical positions one can take. One is that all of the worlds religious people are deluded and are hallucinating, the traditional atheists position. The second is that none of the worlds religious people are deluded and hallucinating, a position that I don‘t think anyone takes. The third, the monotheistic position, is that every religious person in the world is deluded and hallucinating… except for those individuals pertaining to one particular denomination of one particular faith. Now, if the ridiculousness of the third position is not self-evident then no amount of persuasion will make it any more convincing. After all, I can’t prove that the third position isn’t in fact correct. But what I can say is that be it scientifically or philosophically, it is an ideology that is rationally and logically indefensible.