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What My Students Said About Religion and Science
Meet Allama Iqbal: British knight, national poet of Pakistan, author of poetry in two languages (Persian and Urdu), author of philosophy in two languages (Persian and English), and the only major philosopher I know of who has an airport named after him.
Iqbal is an empiricist. Like William James (one of the visible influences on his thought), he strives for a thorough and consistent empiricism. This effort leads him to a neat little analysis of both religious and scientific knowledge. Before moving on, let that point sink in for a moment: Here’s a major philosopher who thinks a proper understanding of experience justifies both religious and scientific … knowledge.
Sound weird? Well, it does go against a host of popular assumptions. But it’s not that weird – nor is the reality of both scientific and religious knowledge a very unusual idea among careful and consistent thinkers.
Iqbal gives us this idea in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, a very good book in which he attempts to integrate the insights of two intellectual traditions: modern science and religious mysticism — especially Sufism.
And Now It’s Time for a Story
The story will be told from my own fallible memories. But it’s a fairly accurate account of what happened.
So there I am in E-121 somewhere between 9 and 10 AM. I’ve just finished giving my students the gist of Iqbal’s argument for the legitimacy of both religious and scientific knowledge. I’d better review the argument for you. Knowledge, Iqbal says, is born of reflection based on experience. Two of the major varieties of knowledge are born of two major varieties of experience: scientific knowledge (born of reflection on sensory experience) and religious knowledge (born of reflection on religious experience). He says on these matters:
The facts of religious experience are facts among other facts of human experience and, in the capacity of yielding knowledge by interpretation, one fact is as good as another.
You can put this into an argument from the reality of scientific knowledge to the possibility of religious knowledge:
1. Science is a source of knowledge.
2. Science derives its warrant entirely from a combination of experience and reflection on experience.
3. So experience and reflection on experience is a source of knowledge.
4. There is such a thing as religious experience that can be reflected on.
5. So religious experience and reflection can also be a source of knowledge.
And Now, My Students Object!
Now my students begin to question Iqbal. Here are a few of the objections and replies (not word-for-word, but in words meant to capture the heart of the matter). My replies are, more or less, given on behalf of Iqbal because, today at least, I work for Iqbal – as on another day I work for Aquinas, Confucius, or Nietzsche.
Objection: But scientific knowledge can be subjected to tests, and religious beliefs can’t!
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Says who? I don’t think Iqbal says that. What makes you think there is no such thing as a religious hypothesis that can be tested? For example, you might be able to confirm someone else’s religious experience by having your own religious experience.
Objection: But religion is based on subjective experiences, and science isn’t!
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Science relies on the experiences of various individuals. Those experiences are relayed from an individual scientist to everyone else by testimony. In this respect religion is exactly the same as science.
Objection: But religious thought is much harder to verify than scientific theories!
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Maybe so. But so what? Iqbal’s analysis doesn’t depend on the ease of verification, or even the method of verification. Maybe it is harder to test a religious belief. Maybe not. (And maybe it varies by religion, and varies from belief to belief in both religion and science.) Maybe religious belief is less reliable than scientific belief, but that doesn’t affect Iqbal’s analysis either way.
Objection: But science is about matter, and religion and ethics are not. So they aren’t about anything real.
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Are you sure about that? Remember what I told you about Plato and Pythagoras! Since triangles are composed of perfectly straight line segments without width, they can’t be made of matter, and you can’t see them. But you’re pretty sure you know what they are, and since you don’t know what doesn’t exist triangles must exist, and they must be non-physical realities known through the mind rather than through sensory experience. So maybe non-physical reality is just as real as physical.
Objection: But scientific thought is concrete, and religion is abstract, and concrete reality is so much easier to know.
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Consider the X beliefs. Science depends on knowledge of them. But try explaining how we know them without being abstract. If you’re going to object to abstract knowledge, you’re probably going to have to object to science if you want to be consistent!
Objection: But what about the conflicts between the evidence of religious experience and the scientific evidence?
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: What about the conflicts between scientific evidence and scientific evidence? These conflicts come up all the time, and scientists manage them on a case-by-case basis, choosing one theory over another based on what evidence is more solid or what interpretation of the evidence is better. There are also conflicts between religious experience and religious experience, and religious believers have to deal with them in the same way. Well, it’s the same with conflicts between religious and sensory experience: If a scientific theory clashes with a religious view, you have to evaluate the experiences and the interpretation of them. In such a conflict, the best combination of solid evidence and good interpretation of the evidence wins! So, you see, this objection counts against science no less than against religion; rather, it counts against neither.
Objection: But moral beliefs are relative because in different cultures people have thought different things about morality.
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Your unstated premise is that whatever different cultures think differently about is not objectively true. Different cultures have thought different things about astronomy. Does that mean that there is no objective truth about whether the earth orbits the sun? If this is a criterion for truth, science is condemned as relative along with religion!
Objection: But scientific knowledge is so much more systematic than morality!
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: Not necessarily. You may think this is necessarily so, but you are mistaken. It’s a good thing you’re taking this class, because later we’ll talk about Kant and Aristotle and Mill! Their analysis of morality is more systematic than science!
(By the way, I may have been mistaken in that last point. Is science, as a whole, less systematic than Aristotle and Mill? Maybe. I’m not sure. It’s definitely less systematic than Kant. Everything is less systematic than Kant.)
I suspect many of my students were all along motivated largely by the tension between evolution and traditional monotheisms — perhaps thinking incorrectly that evolution is a test for rationality. And now, with very little time left before class dismisses at 9:50, one of my students finally asks about evolution directly.
Objection: But what about evolution?????
Reply on behalf of Iqbal: In a clash between scientific and religious beliefs, you evaluate the evidence on which the beliefs are based, and you evaluate the interpretation of the evidence. In this particular case, Iqbal thinks the view that God created the earth in a manner inconsistent with evolution is based on a poor interpretation of the evidence from the Quran, which he happens to read non-literally in this case. So Iqbal is a theistic evolutionist.
And my final remarks, as time in class is running out, are something like this: I’m not saying that religious and scientific knowledge are entirely alike in degree of certainty or in method of verification. I’m not saying they are exactly the same kind or same quality of knowledge. And I’m not saying there aren’t good objections to Iqbal’s view of religious knowledge. But let’s be sure to offer good objections that don’t undermine science while we’re trying to promote it!
The End of This Essay At Last
Many of these objections were old territory for me, for I long ago put them into the mouth of the Grey Robot.
I do concur with Iqbal in this particular argument – though not necessarily in all the material related to the argument in his very good book.
But my goal was not to convince my students to agree with Iqbal. My main goals were to get them thinking, challenge a presupposition richly deserving to be challenged, and introduce them to a neat philosopher.
This was Intro to Philosophy; I’m sure my upper-level students would have given some better objections if they’d tried. For that matter, some of the lines of thinking in the Intro course, had they pressed on with them, might have led to a serious concern with Iqbal. (And I might well have not had any answers.)
Still, it’s amazing how often poor objections and double standards are used against the rationality or knowability of religious beliefs. Well spoken were those words of William James:
Of some things we feel that we are certain: we know, and we know that we do know. There is something that gives a click inside of us, a bell that strikes twelve, when the hands of our mental clock have swept the dial and meet over the meridian hour. The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
Now, I am gradually working towards devoting all of my Ricochet posts for an extended period of time to the topics of a couple of book projects I’ve been working on. I hope this is one of the very last before I get around to that. But here it is, whether or not it be one of the last.
And I plan to give you a sequel later, in which I’ll look at one aspect of this matter a bit more systematically. Specifically: How is religious belief to be verified or falsified?
Author’s notes:
- Edited since initial posting. See comment 32 and comment 66, below.
- The conversation below eventually led to an overview of the philosophy of science and a new presentation of the major issues I discussed with one of my primary interlocutors. See comment 229, below.
Nor do I.
The bolded sentence is a beautiful sentence. Nevertheless, one could know if mystical experience is the experience of perceiving God; and one would then know in much the same way one knows one is not in the Matrix.
But you have available the reply to which I’m not objecting: that there’s no reason to think we have such a faculty for perceiving God.
This is a different objection entirely from the one you’ve been (self-contradictorily) going on about. But you’ve made this objection before, and I have already responded to it.
Well, that’s easy enough.
If I rightly understand what follows the ellipsis, it means something like this: A religious interpretation of experience necessarily involves an inference to the best explanation made using background beliefs that are not themselves empirically derived. Thus the reasoning process here is not empirical. But, you would presumably say, scientific reasoning is empirical.
Now I don’t have any objection to this picture of religious knowledge. But I don’t know why I should think that it is necessarily different from scientific knowledge–i.e., that Iqbal is wrong.
Continued:
(Continued)
Iqbal says that science and religious are both interpretations of experience. It looks like you agree with him this far.
You seem to think that the real difference is that the explanation of experience is not itself derived empirically for religion, but it is for science. But you are plainly mistaken here if the preceding paragraph is correct. For then the scientific interpretation of experience is itself not derived from experience either; and if the whole process is empirical for science, it can be empirical for religion as well.
That leaves you with one available objection that I can see: That scientific theories can be tested in some way religious beliefs can’t. Fair enough. But this doesn’t prevent religious beliefs from being empirically derived, or from being knowledge. It just means that, all else being equal, its empirical sources alone give it a lesser degree of warrant than the empirical sources alone give to scientific knowledge. (And then come into play all those other questions I mentioned the answers to which might show that not all else is equal and that religious empirical knowledge has a very degree of warrant.)
You might add to this objection that empirical knowledge requires that testing. But you can’t consistently make that objection, as we have seen.
How so? This seems like a non-sequitur to me. Meeting the collective standards of empirical explanation is required of all proposed empirical explanations. This in no way means that the standards are to be applied sequentially like a checklist.
Maybe it would help if we just called it one standard with multiple aspects. I’m really talking here about abduction/IBE. When inferring to the best explanation, one of the factors to consider when assessing what explanation is best is robustness, but it isn’t the only factor, and the explanation to be pursued needs to be best overall.
I really think your narrow view of logic is hampering you here. Since you only recognize deduction (the relation of ideas) and induction (inference of a law from repeated tests), you can’t understand the real way scientific inference proceeds.
Continued. (1/2)
Continued from #184. (2/2)
I think you might be falling into the logical fallacy of equivocation. You sometimes define induction as any form of scientific reasoning other than deduction, and sometimes define it as enumerative induction. The result is that you’ve concluded incorrectly that only repeated tests of the same phenomena over and over can count as science. But that’s not correct.
Since repeated tests can’t be made of an event that occurs only once, you think that science can’t address specific events only general laws. But, as I’ve shown, science tells us about all sorts of unique events: the extinction of the Mammoths, the Earth capturing the moon, etc.
Mack the Mike, I’m not bound to the logic terms I prefer. But in any case, you define both induction and deduction differently from me. The way I (and basic logic textbooks) define them leaves me plenty of room to accept what you call abduction, and I do accept it, and I always have.
(I suppose that if it turned out that Popper was talking about induction in only your narrower sense he might be able to withstand the objection I’ve taken him to suffer from. I should look into that at some point.)
By “meeting the collective standards,” do you mean passing several of the relevant tests? Knowledge from religious experience can do that; and you are the one with the non sequitur, and you have been missing my point all along (especially in # 167).
Or do you mean passing each of the relevant tests? But then my analysis is precisely correct: You treat each test as a necessary condition for empirical knowledge.
Here you take the former approach. Well and good: Knowledge from religious experience can satisfy this one standard. Why shouldn’t it? I’ve never seen, conceded, or heard from you any reason why not; you seem to have been missing my point all along.
I’ve never defined induction in either of these ways. I may have referred to both as induction because I use the standard definition of induction from basic logic textbooks–a broader definition encompassing both of these.
I don’t believe I’ve done that (and I remember once yesterday denying any such definition of science), but if I have it doesn’t affect my position in any negative way.
Taking the repeatability of the tests that contribute to what you’ve called robustness to not be a necessary condition for scientific knowledge, and thus not for empirical knowledge more generally, only makes Iqbal’s position stronger. (And my position that knowledge of the Resurrection can be empirical knowledge.)
National Review has an insightful article that bears the topics we’ve been discussing. The author, Pascal-Emmanuel Gorby, makes points that explain my view on this area better than I have, and on at least one point Gorby is firmly in your camp.
Gorby takes the view that the notion of dividing human experience and thought into the categories ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ is specious.
Correct. The problem with Iqbal’s argument (as explained in the OP – I haven’t gone to the source material) is that the distinction between religious and non-religious experience is false in the first place. You say that you are making the distinction for the purpose of comparison not contrast, but of course two things have to be different to compare them. No English teacher has ever assigned her class to write an essay comparing Moby Dick to Moby Dick.
Continued. (1/4)
Continued from #198.
Gorby:
So the specific claims about Tonatiuh are to be evaluated using the same means and methods, and with the same standards as any other empirical claims.
This contrasts Christianity sharply with other, more mystical, traditions such as Iqbal’s Sufism. While there certainly are Christian mystics, all the main Christian denominations hold that no knowledge that cannot be traced back to the public teachings of Christ Himself and of his Apostles are needed for salvation. I don’t think Iqbal’s case can be used to buttress Christian truth claims.
Continued. (2/4)
Continued from #190
The difference between mystical and non-mystical claims is far more significant than any similarities based on labeling two claims “religious.” The mystic’s visions are obtained (or so we are told) by entering a state of mind that is highly unusual. But this simply gives us more cause for doubt. How do we know that the mind in such an altered state is functioning properly? It is precisely our belief that our perceptual faculties are functioning properly that gives us any justification for believing them.
Gorby:
Empirical claims require empirical evidence; logical claims, logical proof; metaphysical claims, metaphysical proof. Belief in God is a metaphysical claim. No amount of empirical evidence, let alone mystical empirical evidence, can advance that claim.
Continued. (3/4)
Continued from #191.
Gorby does agree with you on the scope of science.
I disagree. Much of Science does not employ controlled experiments. Take the entire field of Atronomy for example. No astronomer has ever created a quasar in the lab. The methods of Astronomy are entirely passive. Sure, one can point to lots of activity associated with Astronomy — the construction of telescopes and whatnot – but this is engineering and Optics, not Astronomy.
(4/4)
I walked away from this thread a couple of weeks ago (walked away in something like disgust, if the truth be told) and I was surprised to find it still alive. Since it is alive, though, I am going to add two quick points.
First, Auggie, it was misleading and borderline deceptive for you to use the term “religious experience” to refer to the historicity of biblical miracles. Virtually no one uses that term that way. I did not understand it that way, and I’m sure (based on their objections) that your students did not understand it that way.
It renders moot all of the discussion here about science and scientific method. The tools and standards of historians are entirely different from the tools and standards of scientists. And the fact that you, Auggie, got downright testy when I pressed you for an example of what you meant by the term “religious experience,” suggests that either (1) you were in ill temper on that day; or (2) you wanted to maintain a deliberate ambiguity about what you were saying as (what may have seemed to you to be) a pedagogical device.
Second, the argument you are making about methods seems to me to be indistinguishable from the arguments made by aggressive atheists like Dawkins and Hitchins. They, as you are doing, insist on judging religious assertions by the standards of empiricism and science. If you choose that as your battleground, then my personal verdict is: they win; you lose.
But, of course, that is not at all the proper battleground for this discussion, which is why I find atheism to be the silliest of all religions. Faith should not be judged by the standards of science or history. Atheists who insist that the absence of scientific evidence “proves” the non-existence of God are making fools of themselves. It “proves” no such thing. And I think it is foolish of you, Auggie, as a believer, to accept their premise.
Auggie and MTM, when you’ve resolved this the rest of us would like a summation, if you please. 140 characters or less would be optimal.
Minor point, not important: Iqbal’s not exactly a Sufi. He just draws from that tradition.
Indeed.
This is correct insofar as Iqbal’s analysis pertains only to mystical experience. I don’t see any reason to think it should, however. (And I don’t think he would say so.)
Yes, I read that yesterday. It was an overall very sensible analysis, and I agreed with very nearly all of it.
It seems you take Gorby to be against me and Iqbal. I took him to be for us. Gorby reminds us that the nature of the relevant evidence must fit the claim: metaphysical evidence for metaphysical claims, empirical evidence for empirical claims, historical empirical evidence for historical empirical claims, and scientific empirical evidence for scientific empirical claims. That’s perfectly in the spirit of Iqbal, and I concur entirely with Gorby on this.
What Gorby doesn’t add, Iqbal does add, and I can do without (as I said here and you implied here after giving this nice objection to it) is: mystical empirical evidence for mystical empirical claims.
Now, regarding your charge that Iqbal’s or my case relies on a false distinction between religious empirical and scientific empirical claims: It is actually contrary to Gorby, and I can discern no other reason for it in your comments.
I’ve already responded to this objection. You’ve so far ignored that response.
I’m puzzled that you speak as if Gorby were on your side in this objection. He is, most plainly and most precisely, on my side in this (or perhaps I am on his): Metaphysical evidence for metaphysical claims aside, the historical foundation of the Christian faith is entirely and unambiguously a set of historical and empirical claims.
I might actually be with you rather than Gorby on this (at least by now). We’ll have to wait and see if after I try to give a careful definition of science.
Welcome back!
Well, I wasn’t talking to them about that. We didn’t have time to getinto the differences between subcategories of religious experience. We had less than 50 minutes!
Maybe most people do use the term “religious experience” in a different–perhaps even inconsistent–way. But I don’t. Why should I? Encounters with a miracle-working Messiah and Son of God are experience, and religious. (And in any other relevant respects the term seems to apply well enough–those relevant respects including, in the context of this conversation, knowledge and warrant.)
This is very different from what MTM says, and yet you both are disagreeing with me! The only way to reply is to make a distinction.
I’ve been entirely consistent on this–and probably about as clear as the subject matter and the differing uses of terminology among my interlocutors have allowed.
By the standards of science? No. By the standards of empiricism? Yes, of course!
I am in fact a Christian because (as far as I can tell) the verdict of empirical standards is clearly in favor of the death and Resurrection of the Messiah.
Have you so little understanding of Christian theology? There is no other standard than the historical by which it is proper to judge the truth or falsity of a faith which rests on historical claims and appeals explicitly to historical evidence.
Please provide a reference to this event. I have not engaged in (2). (I have no memory of being testy or of (1), though I suppose they are possible.)
An admirable request! Thanks for asking! I’ll try, but it will be a bit longer than 140 characters.
I say religious experience can be a source of empirical knowledge. MTM disagrees.
He says empirical knowledge must meet certain standards, and religious experience doesn’t meet those standards. He emphasizes the commonality of scientific standards and the standards that would be used to evaluate religious belief which is derived from experience; I emphasize the differences. (If we could get terms like “science” and “induction” straight, our disagreements here might evaporate.)
We’ve also had disagreements on whether religious belief derived from experience can meet whatever standards are proper for evaluating it. He gave a great objection to the possibility of belief derived from mystical experience meeting that standard, and I have not contested it. As far as I can tell, he’s ignored the possibility of knowledge derived from the other relevant variety of religious experience: historical encounters with a miracle-working prophet or Messiah or Son of God (or some combination thereof).
You ask where you got testy in response to my request for an example of a religious experience. At #102 you wrote:
The answer to all of your questions (leaving aside the “when did you stop beating your wife” implicit assumptions therein) is, of course, yes. An example would have illustrated why your version of “religious experience” was not subjective, because it was, instead, historical.
I did not know that you were talking about the historicity of biblical miracles. And, what’s more, you knew I did not know that and you declined to explain. Misleading. Deceptive.
I still reject your use of the term “religious experience” in that context. You did not “experience” the resurrection. No one alive “experienced” the resurrection. You read about it. That is not my idea of experience. You only “experienced” it in the same sense that I experienced the assassination of Julius Caesar or whaling for Moby Dick.
I understand your version of Christian theology. And yes, you can make a theological case that the resurrection is the dispositive historical proof of all Christian beliefs. But if the number of believers in Christianity was limited to those who had examined the historical evidence for the resurrection and found it to be conclusively persuasive, Christianity would be a small cult. And that still wouldn’t explain other believers in God the Father (e.g., Jews and Muslims) who do not adhere to Christianity.
I’m sure you can rattle off a list of theologians who agree with your view of the resurrection. What you cannot do is name a single historian who would certify that the historical evidence of the resurrection meets the standards that would apply to establishing the accuracy of any other historical event.
As I said, by purporting to banish faith from your Faith, and relying instead on empiricism, you meet the likes of Dawkins and Hitchins on their own terms. And, in my opinion, you lose.
Ok, thank you for clarifying.
I won’t say I wasn’t testy. But, whether I was or not, I wonder how else I should respond to persistent misreadings of what I say–and to repeated refusals to take me at my word–than how I did indeed eventually respond.
Oh, good. (But what Iqbal and other mystics are talking about is also not–not–subjective.)
I certainly did not know what you did not know. And please don’t accuse me of intentionally misleading or deceiving. Ricochet is supposed to be better than that.
And what do you mean I “declined to explain”? I did explain in the next comment or so. Perhaps you are referring to some earlier occasion. If so, I can only say: Please provide a reference to accompany your accusation against me.
Apparently you define the word “experience” in personal and individual terms. Any empiricist who talks about knowledge being derived from “experience” and is a sufficiently careful thinker to realize that most empirical knowledge is based on the experience of others will not use the word so narrowly.
But you can use that word that way if you like.
Anyway, the important point is this: The fact that this particular bit of knowledge derives from the experience of others does not mean it can’t be knowledge. It only means you personally don’t want to use the term “experience” here.
It’s not mine alone. That the Gospel is a historical fact is also the position of the Bible and the major theologians and the Catholic Church and the Baptist Faith and Message and any other denomination that fits within the Nicene Creed.
Here you use a rather poor argument. The premise Not all the believers in X have examined the historical evidence for it provides no support at all for the conclusion that X is not a system of belief which depends on historical fact.
Now that premise is relevant to your conclusion!
If the premise is true then an explanation or a defense against this sort of premise would certainly be in order.
The premise might be true. Sir William Mitchell Ramsey comes to my mind, but he was mainly focused on the book of Acts and the New Testament letters. Habermas, Wright, and Bauckham come to my mind, but I’m not sure they qualify as professional historians. However, they might so qualify: You can’t do that kind of theology without being a historian.
Continued:
(Continued)
Now, granting that the premise is (speaking very strictly) true of me (one whose real expertise, if I have any, is only philosophy), here’s one piece of a defense against that premise:
If a majority of professional historians don’t agree on the historicity of the Resurrection, it matters little if at all if the historical case of the sort made by Habermas, Wright, Bauckham, Ramsay, William Lane Craig, et al is a very good case. And in fact it is.
Another possible defense would be demonstrate that a majority of professional historians agree on enough of the relevant facts (like the existence of Jesus and Paul, the early authorship of the Pauline letters, the historical reliability of Luke, the Messianic claims of Jesus, and the beliefs of early Christians about their Messiah) to build a strong case for a historic Resurrection just by putting together all the pieces. (I’m not sure how well this case would work, but it might be worth looking into).