You’ve probably noticed along the way that there is a wee bit of disagreement when it comes to religious issues. Christians disagree with nonchristians on a host of fundamental issues, and (I know this will come as a shock) but Christians disagree with other Christians too. In fact, we disagree with great variety, creativity, and regularity!
What are we to make of this disagreement?
This can be seen as a challenge to religious belief. The rough idea is that religious belief is unjustified given the wide, varied, and regular disagreement amongst people who are all equally competent in forming their views.
Let’s unpack this. The first point is, no matter how smart and educated I am, there seem to be adherents of other faiths who are equally smart and educated. These are, what are called, my epistemic peers. According to Thomas Kelly, epistemic peers, as it relates to some specific question, are “equals with respect to their familiarity with the evidence and arguments which bear on that question.”[1] It is also often added that peers are, on the whole, equals in terms of intellectual ability. So the epistemic peer in view here is one who has considered all the same evidence as us, is equally intelligent, and yet rejects the truth of Christianity.
The objection is that, given the radical disagreement among epistemic peers, the evidence for Christianity cannot be compelling. If epistemic peers are looking at the same evidence and coming to radically different views, then the evidence must not be definitive. The Christian has a broad set of defeaters then for her claims. What are the defeaters? The defeaters are all the epistemic peers across all the different religious views. That’s a lot of defeaters!
In response, it is important to point out that the diversity of opinion is not simply a phenomenon of religious inquiry. There is incredible diversity among epistemic peers in disciplines, such as philosophy, science, economics, morality and politics. Most people don’t seem to mind holding a minority position in these areas. That is, it is common for there to be epistemic peers looking at the same evidence and deciding to affirm a different position and we don’t lose sleep about this. Why should it be different for religious topics?
Moreover, one will be hard pressed to find beliefs for which there is no dissent whatsoever from someone who looks to be an epistemic peer. For example, suppose that Smith believes that white supremacy is false and a morally abhorrent view. Let’s say that Smith has arrived at this view as a matter of careful reflection and it is a matter of strong conviction. However, suppose one points out that there are white supremacists out there, some of whom are presumably epistemic peers. Should this diminish Smith’s conviction that white supremacy is false? Hardly! He might (as I am) be at a loss to understand why someone would find white supremacy plausible. But it would seem to be intellectually irresponsible of him to lesson his conviction on the mere fact that there are white supremacists.
What seems unclear is whether there are clear epistemic peers, those who are truly looking at the same evidence in the same way as I am. There are many who I encounter who have clearly not worked very hard to fully appreciate the Christian arguments. There are definitely some who have carefully and thoughtfully considered some of the evidence, but even these are few and far between. The writings of the so-called New Atheists are a good example of this. In fact, atheist philosopher Michael Ruse makes this very point:
I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery…There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.[2]
The point here is not to return the favor and merely ridicule Dawkins and company. It is to say that there are few who take the time and care to understand the opposing view. If that’s right, then my rationally justified belief shouldn’t suffer at all from existence of someone who disagrees in an uninformed way.
But what about those who thoughtfully reject Christianity? Michael Ruse says that he has given effort to understand what Christians are claiming and why they are claiming it. And so he doesn’t simply dismiss in the way of Dawkins, but he still definitely disagrees.
Are these who carefully consider Christianity epistemic peers? I think there is reason to say no, not at least in a strict sense of being an epistemic peer. This is of course not to say that unbelievers are epistemically inferior to Christians. Rather the point is that there is so very much that goes into forming our fundamental beliefs that it is at least plausible that no two people share a strictly identical epistemic situation. To see this we should first emphasize our limitations as knowers. There is only so much one can carefully consider in a lifetime. So though Ruse has given effort to understand certain Christian claims (and this is commendable), when I have heard Ruse speak, it seems clear to me that he has hasn’t fully considered all of the nuances of the Christian position. We have a limited bandwidth and no single person can carefully consider all alternative view. This is especially true when we consider the complex but important subtleties of arguments.
There are also many non-epistemic factors that affect our belief formation. We are not mere logic machines. Our upbringing and prior experiences certainly figure in to our belief formation, as does our hopes, fears and desires. The atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has said:
I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.[3]
Now I don’t think that Nagel is irrational in his atheism just because he wants it to be true. As a world-class philosopher, he still presumably holds to his atheism on the basis of evidence. But the point is I don’t share his desire for atheism to be true. Thus his approach to the world is very different from mine.
These kinds of factors undoubtedly affect how we form our beliefs. I grew up at a Christian addiction recovery center. I grew up seeing the gospel change the life of guys who were so thoroughly broken by their addiction that if the recovery center didn’t “work,” then suicide was the only other legitimate option. I’ve also seen the gospel affect the lives of many, many people (including my own) during the course of my life and ministry. Presumably Nagel lacks this sort of experience. But I can’t shake its effect on me. Given this, could we ever be considered epistemic peers on this issue? It seems not.
Where does this leave us? I’d like to suggest that given the subtlety of the evidence and the way that we bring our desires and background to bear on what we believe, there are no identical epistemic peers. We might be equals in our general ability to discover truth, but this need not mean that we are identical epistemic peers. Rather it seems we all have a limited but nonidentical view of the world. Does this leave us condemned to skepticism? No because skepticism, as a view, has the very same issues! The skeptic has a limited view of the world too.
The point of all of this is to say that we can do no better than doing our level best to believe in accord with our evidence. After careful inquiry and reflection, we should believe those things that are best supported by the evidence that we have. If our best evidence points to atheism, then we should be atheists. If our best evidence points to Christianity, then we should so believe. I myself have a hard time seeing how one can look at this world and not see a wide variety of evidence for God. However, presumably my atheist friends think similarly about their atheism.
This brings up one last point in closing, the radical diversity of the world should, it seems to me, foster an attitude of intellectual humility in the realization that we may be wrong about some of what we believe. If I’m right, we have a very limited view of the world and so our engagement with others should reflect our limitations (i.e., treating others with respect, having genuine curiosity about what they believe, etc.). However, it seems to me to be an over-correction to think we cannot rationally believe something in the face of disagreement.
[1] Thomas Kelly. “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement” in Oxford Studies in Epistemology (New York: Oxford, 2005), p. 174.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/02/atheism-dawkins-ruse
[3] Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word, pp. 130–131, Oxford University Press, 1997.