Religious Experience, Pragmatic Encroachment, and Justified Belief in God
Open Theology 1 (6):296-305 (2020)
Abstract
The secondary literature on religious epistemology has focused extensively on whether religious
experience can provide evidence for God’s existence. In this article, I suppose that religious experience
can do this, but I consider whether it can provide adequate evidence for justified belief in God. I argue
that it can. This requires a couple of moves. First, I consider the threshold problem for evidentialism and
explain pragmatic encroachment (PE) as a solution to it. Second, I argue that religious experience can
justify belief in God if one adopts PE, but this poses a dilemma for the defender of the veridicality of
religious experience. If PE is true, then whether S has a justified belief in God on the basis of religious
experience depends on how high the stakes are for having an experience with God. This requires one to
determine whether the stakes are high or low for experiencing God, which puts the experient of God in an
awkward position. If the stakes are not high, then justified belief in God on the basis of religious
experience will be easier to come by, but this requires conceding that experiencing God is not that
important. If the stakes are high, then the experient can maintain the importance of experience with God
but must concede that justified belief in God on the basis of experience with God is less likely to happen,
perhaps impossible.
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2020-10-17
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2020-10-17
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18 ( #41,989 of 69,135 )
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