Christian Apologist Vincent Torley Says I've "rendered a service to philosophy"

We've been discussing private miracles. [See tag below]. I’ve argued private miracles must pass the same tests that third parties require. People—I didn’t say children—who claim to have experienced a private miracle—I didn’t say a mere extraordinary event—can only say it was real after rigorously verifying it, by asking a whole slew of honest questions. They need a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence for them. This is what reasonable adults should require when it comes to a miracle of the private kind, just as they should require with a miracle claimed by a multitude of people—which happens never.

Torley is arguing that there are private miracles people should believe despite the requirement for sufficient objective third-party evidence. In the course of this debate Torley rewards me with a backhanded slap instead of praise when saying I've "rendered a service to philosophy". He wrote about an Indian Prince who experienced frost for the first time:

There's a famous passage in Hume's Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1777) where he writes:

The Indian prince, who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly; and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts, that arose from a state of nature, with which he was unacquainted, and which bore so little analogy to those events, of which he had had constant and uniform experience. (Section X, Part I.)

Hume was willing to "bite the bullet" and acknowledge that people following his epistemic principles would sometimes reject as absurd things that later turned out to be genuine - nevertheless, he insisted, they "reasoned justly." Perhaps John is willing to "bite the bullet," or perhaps he wishes to reconsider his views. But what he has done, albeit inadvertently, is show that Humean skepticism, when taken to its logical conclusion (for that's where John's epistemology is derived from) leads to a reductio ad absurdum. And for that, I thank him: he has rendered a service to philosophy. Cheers.

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Private Miracles Must Pass the Same Tests That Third Parties Require

In a previous post I made the claim that private miracles must pass the same tests that third parties require. People who claim to have experienced a private miracle can only say it was real after rigorously verifying it, by asking a whole slew of honest questions. They need a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence for them. If there's no objective evidence to convince others, there would be no objective evidence to convince oneself either. Rather than being an experience of a real private miracle, the experience could come from an accident, hallucination, brain malfunction, wish-fulfillment, sleep deprivation or a drug. So whether private or public all miracle claims should be able to show a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence.

Consider an example of an extraordinary kind, one that might be within the realm of possibilities. Let's say you experienced an alien abduction while walking home from a birthday party, in the afternoon on a clear day. The aliens take you to their planet in a different solar system of the Milky Way Galaxy to do experiments on you, 10 light years away. When done with you they bring you back. You are convinced this really happened. So you immediately run to tell everyone what you experienced. But no one saw the alien space-ship pick you up, or drop you off. No one has aged either. No astronomer can confirm the solar system with its star exists. You have no scars from their experiments. You have no scientifically advanced artifacts from your travels. You have no scientifically advanced information to share.

Should YOU continue believing it?

Another Case Study In How To Defend Obfuscate The Christian Faith, Part 2

Previously I had written a post titled, Subjective Private Religious Experiences Prove Nothing! Randal Rauser objected to it, so I wrote another one titled, Another Case Study In How To Defend Obfuscate The Christian Faith, Part 1. I'm finally getting around to Part 2, where I offer four tests for the veracity of private subjective miracle claims.

Darren Slade wrote an Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion entry on Miracle Eyewitness Reports, containing a wealth of information packed into a small entry. It speaks to what remains of any attempt to say someone experienced a private miracle. There are way too many distortions and psychological variables that the so-called witness himself should question his own judgment on the matter. If the so-called eyewitness himself cannot find any independent third party objective corroboration of the alleged miracle, not even he should believe it occurred.

Quotes from Slade on weighing the accuracy of miracle reports:

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Another Case Study In How To Defend Obfuscate The Christian Faith, Part 1

As readers know I wrote a book on this topic, titled, you guessed it, How to Defend the Christian Faith (subtitled, Advice from an Atheist). The book has received some good recommendations including those from Christian scholars Karl Gilberson, Chad Meister, and Gary Habermas who has recommended it for his PhD apologetics students.

Our case study today is from apologist Randal Rauser, who objected to a recent post of mine, titled Subjective Private Religious Experiences Prove Nothing. The first question is why Rauser the apologist would even care? Surely he has the goods, the objective evidence, a sufficient amount of it, such that he doesn't need to bother with subjective private religious experiences. Right? So by dealing with what I wrote he tacitly admits that a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence does not exist. For if it did, he could ignore what I said. My stated requirement for "a sufficient amount of third party independent corroborative objective evidence", while clumsy and a bit redundant, says it all. The two parties involved are the person claiming to have subjective private religious experiences and a god who provides them. We need sufficient independent evidence, corroborative objective evidence, that has the potential for reasonably convincing third parties.

I'll call these alleged subjective religious experiences private miracles since they cannot be adequately explained by the natural processes of the brain alone, just as biblical miracles cannot be adequately explained by the natural processes of nature alone. Sufficient objective evidence of miracles, the kind we're looking for, the kind we need, is independent corroborative evidence that has the potential for convincing reasonable informed third party adults, whether they're privately experienced in the mind or publicly experienced in the world outside the mind. So all by themselves subjective religious experiences of a private miracle prove nothing to reasonable informed third party adults.

To be clear, I don't deny that these private subjective religious experiences have the potential for convincing people who have experienced them. Sadly, they can and they do convince childish uniformed ignorant gullible superstitious people. What I deny is that they have the potential for convincing reasonable people. That's because to convince a person they should also have the potential for convincing reasonable informed third party adults. To be additionally clear, I'm not talking about some hypothetical fictionalized story of a private miracle experience created to obfuscate actual testimonies. No, I'm talking about the kinds of testimonies people actually claim of private miracles. They are no more able to convince reasonable informed third party adults than ancient biblical testimonies to miracles can.

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Subjective Private Religious Experiences Prove Nothing!

Watch this!! Come on, come on! Come to your senses! Subjective private religious experiences provide no evidence at all that your religious faith is true. I've read the special pleading type of arguments attempting, but failing to show, these experiences are veridical, that if a god exists he can give you one. Sure, I'll say it. If a god exists he can give someone a direct experience that he exists and his religion is true. But this gets you no where. It still doesn't show that one particular god gave you the experience you claim to have had. The argument ignores the actual way people get these experiences and how they are used to defend all kinds of crazy religious faiths. The only way to know if your supposed religious experience is true is according to objective evidence evaluated dispassionately without any double standards, as an outsider.