Justified Faith

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

In the essay “The Ethics of Belief,” W. K. Clifford states that it is immoral to believe without sufficient evidence. Belief motivates action, and wrong beliefs can lead to harmful actions. For Clifford, this is an argument for a skeptical view of religious claims. Religious beliefs frustrate the skeptic by regularly asserting that surprising, out-of-the-ordinary things exist with little material evidence. By Clifford’s principle, one might think that without an indubitable proof to cinch the existence of God, one must presume atheism. However, in his essay “Rational Theistic Belief without Proof,” John Hick argues that even without proof, some people can have sufficient evidence for religious belief just as we have sufficient evidence to believe in the physical world simply by experiencing it, a much more permissive view of faith. Hick is right that many spiritual beliefs can be justified by religious experience, but it’s unwise to discard Clifford’s concern entirely. Some religious beliefs cannot be justified by experience alone, and wrong religious beliefs can have harmful consequences.

For Hick, experience of religious truth is analogous to the experience of an external world. Hick states that the belief in an external, physical world is “a belief on the basis of which we live and the rejection of which…would so disorient our relationship to other persons within a common material environment that we should be accounted insane.” For someone who experiences the external world, no proof of its existence is needed. Hick argues that the same holds true for religious experiences. To demand that believers discard their convictions about the things they experience until they can provide proof is to demand that they deny a core way in which they experience the world.

The nature of our knowledge of the external world can be understood as follows: I undeniably have a perception of an external world. That external world is important to me, so I believe in it. Those who object to Hick’s analogy might point out the many differences between material and spiritual experiences, but these differences don’t actually challenge the way this kind of belief works. Even if the external world were overtly mechanically inconsistent, even if people regularly disagreed about seemingly straightforward facts about it, even if many others lacked the senses needed to observe it, we would still believe in the existence of an external world if we perceived it and lived in it. Our working belief in the external world, then, can be understood as a spiritual relationship with that world. When we act within the physical world, we declare that it is important to us, and thus that we functionally and justifiably believe in it—by rational faith. This is perfectly analogous to Hick’s religious knowledge: I undeniably have an experience of religious truth. Religious truth is important to me, so I believe in it. For Hick, she who believes in God by personal experience already has sufficient evidence.

Then, is the skeptic’s criticism totally unfounded? In his essay, Clifford does not specify what constitutes sufficient evidence for a belief, but it is easy to imagine a skeptic following Clifford’s principle who denies that experience as defined by Hick is sufficient evidence for religious belief. But such a skeptic must then have a standard for belief that is incompatible with our everyday lives. The beliefs which ground us and enable us to live aren’t always achieved by proof or even material evidence. For example, the belief in the concept of the self as an entity is certainly not without any doubt and is not rooted in material evidence, but many people hold that foundational belief because they experience the world through the idea of the self and because they cannot live without it. It’s ridiculous to withhold the license to this belief from anyone who has not yet rationally grappled with every reasonable doubt.

If “it is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,” and anything short of a fully-considered proof or hard material evidence cannot qualify as sufficient, then most of our operating beliefs are held immorally. Clifford acknowledges that his standard may be seen as harsh, but under this interpretation, his standard is impossible. Clifford understands that beliefs are “that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being,” but if we each become the man with no time to believe by our inability to rationally evaluate the underlying reality of all of our experiences, then can our will not make decisions? Do the compacted energies of our being become entirely unknit?

So we have good reason to reject this extremely uncharitable interpretation of Clifford and to accept the notion that religious experience can justify certain beliefs even in the absence of proof or material evidence. But it would be unwise to disregard Clifford’s motivating concern, that insufficiently justified belief can mislead our actions and cause real harm. Religious experience is a valid source of knowledge, but we do not have reason to think that religious experience is a valid source of any knowledge. Throughout history, incompatible views rooted in deep religious conviction have led to bloody conflict. If we claim that any religious belief supported by religious experience is justified, then it becomes difficult to resolve or challenge this kind of conflict as well as other sources of harm.

Clifford opens his essay with a clear expression of this concern about an overly permissive standard of belief with the example of a shipowner. Though the shipowner has reason to doubt the seaworthiness of his ship, he is fully convinced that Providence will carry her safely on its voyage, so he casts out doubt from his mind. The ship, of course, is not in working order, and ends up at the bottom of the sea with its passengers. The notion that the shipowner’s personal experience of the nature of Providence justified his belief that Providence would protect the passengers is, at the very least, quite unpalatable. So, if we admit religious experience as a valid kind of evidence, we should take care with how we answer this question: Which kinds of rational believings can be justified by religious experience?

In his essay, Hick primarily considers the theist’s rational believing in the existence of God, but he doesn’t outline any clear limitations to rational religious believings. This lack of imitations might mislead us into accepting any religious convictions as rational. Hick’s view most clearly defends beliefs about how one relates to God by means of religious experience. When someone says, I spiritually dialogue with God about my personal growth, for example, we should not dismiss her as irrational. Her believing follows the pattern by which we believe in the material world: She has a meaningful experience of a dialog with God and so she reasonably believes that this dialog is real. She can be certain because her belief is in the actuality of her experience as she experiences it. Just as our perceptions of the material world inform us about what can be perceived within the material world, her experience of a spiritual world informs her about what can be experienced in that world.

But now consider the shipowner’s belief that Providence will guide the ship to safety. For the sake of argument, suppose the shipowner’s believing is not motivated by simple wishful thinking but by a profound experience of a providential God, one who would certainly not allow an occupied ship to sink. This shipowner, then, does not only assert that his experience is real but also proclaims a certain relationship between the spiritual and material worlds he perceives. He proclaims that the spiritual experience of the reality of Providence guarantees that God will intervene in the material world. This does not actually fit our model for experiential belief. Simply by perceiving an external world and then living within it, we are able to justify certain beliefs about that external world. But our experiences of the material world cannot by themselves justify beliefs about things which are not perceived materially. In other words, it’s just as irrational to expect Providence to preserve one’s ship as it is to expect God to fall down from heaven due to our perception of gravity in the material world. Hick cannot defend this shipowner.

So, people can come to know religious truth by way of religious experience, but the kinds of spiritual beliefs which can be rationally justified from spiritual experience are strictly limited. This limitation does not only exclude the reckless shipowner. Many very common religious views do not meet the standard. For example, the belief that God created the real, material Earth in six days asserts a relationship between spiritual and material perception which cannot be confirmed from religious experience alone. Other kinds of evidence are needed to support this claim. Clifford’s standard for justified belief is untenable if his demand for sufficient evidence is interpreted as a universal demand for proof or material evidence, but an appropriate skeptical view of religious claims enables us to avoid the harm that wrong religious beliefs can cause.