The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True by John W. Loftus

Author:John W. Loftus [Loftus, John W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism, Books & Reading, General, Religion & Spirituality, Atheism, Criticism & Theory
ISBN: 9781616147389
Google: xtfUAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00CGHRDPU
Barnesnoble: B00CGHRDPU
Goodreads: 17835158
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2013-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

As any good teacher knows, a less than fully accurate statement will sometimes reveal more to beginning students, or do more to nudge them in the right direction, than a fully accurate statement will when the latter would be unintelligible to them. As I have elsewhere put it: “Like many teachers, I often find myself saying things to beginning students that I would prefer them to reinterpret (perhaps even to discard) as they mature into more advanced students.”11

Being pedagogical just won’t do here. Either Talbott thinks there is a material world or he does not. If he does, then why bother with this objection at all? Christian philosopher Mark Hanna thinks there is a contradiction in my reasoning: “It is patently contradictory to say, on the one hand, as Loftus does, that the scientific method is our ‘only’ sure way for assessing truth claims and to say, on the other hand, that we know certain things, such as the existence of a material world and the essential reliability of our senses, which are not the results but the pre-requirements of implanting ‘the scientific method.’”12

My reasons for thinking there is a material world are similar to Dr. Samuel Johnson’s kicking a stone and declaring he had refuted George Berkeley’s idealism. They are also similar to G. E. Moore’s assertion that he’s more assured he has a pencil in his hand than that the skeptical arguments to the contrary are correct.13 There are plenty of other reasons. One of them is simply that it makes no difference at all if there isn’t a physical universe. There ought to be some sort of difference between propositions if we are to make sense of them as different propositions. Ockham’s razor does the requisite work after acknowledging this. Another reason is science itself. How can we conceive of it working without a materially existing world? Why do we need brains, a liver, lungs, and organs of any kind? Why does surgery save us from death if these organs are not real? How does a doctor prescribe a pill to heal us if there is no material body? What then causes us to be healed if the pill doesn’t do it? Where’s the mechanism for producing a healing effect from a nonphysical cause? To argue there is a spiritual reality that heals us means we do not need to take the prescribed pill at all. Why not just pray instead? Why bother with medicine or surgery at all?

Additionally, why do I have the experience of moving from place to place? Who is moving if I am not the one doing this? How can there be a change of scenery if I do not have a physical body that moves? And who or what guarantees that when I step outside my house day after day the house has the same physical characteristics when I return? Why should our experience be the same every time we look at a given object unless there really is a physical object

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