Abstract
For people with no religious beliefs, it is not clear what reasons can be given for why they should convert to any particular religion, particularly in the face of many competing claims. This book will employ William Alston’s doxastic-practice epistemology to argue that religious experiences can be grounds for rational religious belief, and that the evidence provided by Theravada Buddhist meditation provides better evidence than Christian religious experiences.
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Notes
- 1.
If we were to be completely candid, we would also have to admit that there are possibilities that no one has ever thought of, and they are just as possible as those that have been thought of. But there is no epistemic obligation, in general, to consider the possibility of views that have never been formulated or believed, and so have no evidence in their favor. On the other hand, a person who makes an argument based on the claim that evidence doesn’t matter, like Pascal ’s Wager, then all possibilities are back on the table. This is the force of the Many Gods Objection, discussed below.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
See Goldman (2001) for a useful discussion of this problem.
- 5.
This assumption will be argued for in the next chapter.
- 6.
Or warranted, or whatever. I don’t propose to make any hay from the various kinds of positive epistemic status short of the factive ones.
- 7.
Especially in his Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and Inquiry into the Human Mind. A useful selection of the relevant passages can be found in Beanblossom and Lehrer (1983).
- 8.
I am inclined to go a bit further than James and assert that there is nothing, or nothing interesting, that all religions and no non-religions have in common. See Webb (2009).
- 9.
Wall (1995) makes a case for a universal religious practice. While the universal practice is pretty thin, as there is so little in common to all religions, he is right that there is enough to warrant discussion of religious experience in general.
- 10.
Or, better, figures centrally in the doctrines of some practice commonly called ‘religion.’ Henceforth I will use the term ‘religion’ and its cognates without this cumbersome locution, but it should be understood as if the cumbersome locution had been used.
References
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Webb, M.O. (2015). The Diversity Problem. In: A Comparative Doxastic-Practice Epistemology of Religious Experience. SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09456-4_1
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