camerontigris

I invited some Mormons in for a little discussion. As they proceeded to take out diagrams of their belief system, I started throwing questions at them. They had to dispense with the fun stuff, i.e. anything pertaining to the bible, and get down to the existence of god question. I went pretty easy on them, but it was clear that some of the issues I was raising, such as the POE and Occam's Razor, they hadn't given much thought to. What it came down to for them was that god's existence had to be arrived at by prayer. In other words, I had to pray for an answer in order to know god. It kept coming back to "how do YOU know if you don't pray?"

We didn't get a chance to hash this out much since this came out at the end of the night. Word got out that some atheist was putting tough questions to the missionaries...so tonight I'm meeting with the heavy hitters, including a Mormon lawyer. No doubt the "evidence from prayer" argument will come up again. My own take on this is that this is a sneaky way of shifting the burden of proof back on the atheist. Further, it makes the verifiability of god totally subjective. I talked this over with my Mormon friend. I asked her whether, if I did pray, could I come up with a wrong answer. She simply said, "no." Then I asked whether, if I did pray, no answer would demonstrate that god does not exist. Again: "no." Third, I asked whether prayer can be used to verify any other sorts of claims. This got me a blank stare and the promise that the missionaries will set me straight. Can't wait.

It's a pretty flimsy argument, but I'd be curious to hear any thoughts on this since I haven't come across this argument before. What think you, fellow atheists?

SanDiegoAtheist

It's exceedingly flimsy of course, but is commonly used by theists - especially when using the "never a true Xian" defense against ex-believers who become atheists.

They didn't "pray hard enough" - a defense which, of course, is not subject to refutation, as the believer is the one who decides how hard the praying needs to be, and evidence of "not praying hard enough" to that believer is unbelief.

If God reveals himself thru prayer, and always gives a true answer, how is it that there are so many a) non-Xians (70% of the world), and b) non-Mormons (98%) of the world. Is it LIKELY that THAT many people are not 'praying hard enough'? Why is it that any given theists answer to that prayer is HUGELY influenced by a) their society, and b) their parents. I doubt that any people praying in Iran have come to the "Mormon" God via the supposedly infallible prayer answer.

You can also easily bring up plenty of ex-theists (my favorite against this argument is Dan Barker, an ex-evangelical who was a pastor, and a Christian songwriter), who were demonstrably, by any measure that the theist cares to use, Christian, who attest themselves to their devotion to prayer in the Christian life, and who eventually lost their faith and became atheists/agnostics - you'll almost certainly get the "never a true Christian" response to this one though - they "didn't pray hard enough" I suppose.

Anyway, it's not really an argument....it's a dodge. It attempts to shift the burden of proof to you & your efforts. If you FAIL to find God, it's YOUR fault (a shift that religions are expert at). I'd suggest avoiding that argument altogether and simply attacking their attempt to shift the burden of proof.
Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist

Ensign Steve

It really is a flimsy argument, and it begs the question. You have to pray in order to know that God exists? Well, until you know it, who or what do you pray to? If you are praying to God to reveal himself to you, then you are presupposing his existence. That is really putting the cart before the horse. I agree with what San Diego Atheist has to say, especially:

Good luck, and have fun. Please let us know how it goes!

Jen

beastmaster

This is true.

Willing self-delusion is the only path to god.

Jmaal

I've recently been reading a bit about the work of Alvin Plantinga who has argued that you can be justified in believing in God even if you don't have evidence or a logical argument to support that belief. He claims that a belief in God (and Christianity especially) is rational because it is properly basic in the same way as our beliefs in objects that we can see, touch, hear, smell or taste. He says that all human beings have a sixth sense known as the "sensus divinitas" which allows you to simply "know" that God exists without any need for evidence derived from the other, traditional senses. The details of Christian theology are then "known" by the act of the Holy Spirit.

It seems to me (and I'm hardly an expert on this guy's writing) that his argument is pretty close to the "pray and you will know" argument that you were given.

You might ask how Plantinga can justify the existence of this sixth sense since there are so many people who seem not to have this divine bit of knowledge, or the billions of people with the audacity not to believe in the Christian God. Plantinga doesn't bat an eyelash. It's because people's sensus divinitatis is clouded by sin. If your sensus divinitatis is working properly, i.e., not clouded by sin, you will know directly and basically that the Christian God exists. It will be as direct as the knowledge that you are looking at your computer monitor.

Is there something to this guy that I just don't get? His arguments appear to be taken seriously, but they sure seem light weight to me. "I can't prove God by argument or evidence, so I must know about it through ESP. Therefore, God exists."

Ensign Steve

Hold on a minute! There may be something to the "sensus divinitas" after all. Throughout the last couple of millenia, if you didn't have this sixth sense, you were eliminated by the whole "convert or die" thing that helped that little 12 shepherd cult become what it is today. So those without it were eliminated from the gene pool. Of course this would require one to "believe in" natural selection.

All in good fun!

Jen

beastmaster

Another example of god's poor design: putting our sensus divintus detector next to our sin cloud collector.

camerontigris

Sure, associate this "divine sense" with our other five sense as we don't question much the validity of the other senses. What he's hoping to do is mask that fact that he's requiring a leap of "faith" - always over logic - to accept his proposition.

And then we have to ask for his evidence of this as well. Again, since we don't ask for much proof of our five senses inventing a sixth shouldn't cause much commotion either.


I think you're right, and even being less direct. The effect is a pseudo-science argument and a clever one at that. But cleverness gets no bonus points on the evidence scorecard. I haven't heard this argument before, but it's essentially the same as the "pray and know" argument. Hate to give the Mormon's credit, but at least they were more direct about what was required. This argument is little more than subterfuge.

I have also heard the argument that god is not the kind of proposition that CAN be arrived at by reasoning. After all, the argument goes, we don't go around questioning the feelings we get from seeing a moving piece of artwork nor do we ask the rational basis of poetry. Fine and dandy, but neither art nor poetry make a factual claim requiring evidence. Furthermore, art is entirely subjective to the viewer...just put a Rodin and a Jackson Pollock together and this is pretty clear. So we also need to pay close attention to that fact that something is, indeed, being claimed. All in all I'm honestly not sure whether theists overlook such arguments: do they not understand the signifigence or do they understand it and purposely evade it?

And there's the plan B. If you can't see it, it's because you did something wrong...you're a sinner. Of course this applies the punish/reward motive, giving the non-believer all the more reason to go along with it. After all, who is completely without sin (of course begging the question "according to whom?"). He has to have this backup as his first argument falls apart pretty easily.

JEST2ASK

.... I like it. :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy


also great user name ...

Jmaal

Yes, this seems to be exactly what he's up to. "You don't question vision as a means of acquiring knowledge do you? Well the sensus divinitas (SD) is the same kind of thing. If it's working right, you will have "knowledge" of God." He's actually making an epistemic statement, the idea is not that you have good reason for believing something, nor is it that you're pretty sure something is true. It's that you absolutely know for sure that God exists if your SD is working right.



Well he didn't invent the idea of SD, Acquinas and Calvin both discussed it, although Plantinga is accused of altering it somewhat. It derives from the writings of Paul who suggested that we all have knowledge of God, but that the knowledge is clouded by sin. So..... Plantinga takes this ball and runs with it. We all have this 6th sense, but only the Christians have it working properly. No need for silly arguments or evidence, it's as true as the nose on your face.


Plantinga was attempting to deal with what he calls the "atheological objection" that belief in God is irrational. All in all, his work seems very defensive along the lines of "We Christians is smart too!" Your analogy to art is right on point. He actually offers as evidence of SD the "feeling" of God that folks get when looking into the starry night sky (What the huh? How do you know it's not gas? Were you tired? Drunk? Is ya half stupid?) I've looked into the starry night sky and felt an overwhelming feeling of smallness (if that's a word) in comparison to the rest of the universe. Is this evidence for some internal sensus de minimis? It's laughable, but it appears to be taken seriously.




Well I'm sure he'd just quote Paul and tell you that we have all sinned. But doesn't that imply that everyone should naturally be an atheist and require some strong evidence to get rid of the sin cloud? That seems to defeat his very point that belief in God is properly basic.

But his argument does try to be clever. First, he assumes that Christianity is true. Then he argues like this:

1) Christianity is true.
2) Christianity includes the idea that we have an SD.
3) A properly functioning SD allows direct knowledge of God without the need for argument or evidence.
4) Salvation through Christ removes the cloud of sin from the SD.
5) Therefore, Christians are rational when they believe in God.

He concedes that if Christianity is false, then belief in Christianity is not warranted. This, he believes, puts the burden on non-theists to prove that Christianity is false. Until that time, belief in Christianity is assumed to be rational. Sound like a circle to you?

Ultimately, I agree with you that this is the Mormon "burning in the bosom" (otherwise known as heart burn) in pseudo-intellectual drag. He tries to hide the subjective nature of the claim by simply arguing that the burning bosom is caused by SD.