Implications for theology? We won't have time to go into this right now, but in general I think that if you understand God a little bit--that is, understand how hard God is to understand--the idea that differences in accounts will appear is quite rational. Put a tree in front of 1000 people and you'll get more or less one account. Put a black hole in front of 1000 people and you'll naturally find much more divergence.
It depends on the process they used to reach their conclusions. If you present a black hole to 1000 people who know little or nothing about black holes, you might expect a range of responses. However, as those individuals examine the phenomenon more closely, over time, you would expect a convergence in their thinking that reflects a general understanding of how black holes work.
Sure, make the argument if you like. The burden of proof is yours.
As mentioned previously, I think I can satisfy that burden by pointing to the ramshackle case the religious present in support of their various supernatural claims.
Thanks for the illustration, but allow me to interject. Psychics cannot be globally reliable considered as psychics, only as humans. To speak very strictly, we have a consensus among a group of (globally reliable) humans about the nature of psychic readings. "Globally reliable psychics" just doesn't make sense, as psychic reading is a local area of human activity. This doesn't bear directly on your argument, but it is worth noting.
Sorry about the slight ambiguity in my wording. I didn't mean to imply that there are "globally reliable psychics." Instead, I was linking the example to P1 of your argument, according to which human beings are generally reliable.
When talking about particular groups of humans or areas of study, local reliability is what comes into play. In points 2 & 3 below "reliable" is generally meant as "locally reliable." All humans are globally reliable.
I take this as agreement with (3; emphasis added)?
(3) Again, accepting the argument in its entirety, it's worthwhile considering the 'local' reliability of theology. It may be that, even if human beings are generally reliable, there are particular domains in which their conclusions are notoriously unreliable.
Four points:
- It is possible to establish a burden of proof that favors your position and then be proven wrong.
- In my argument, "consensus" cannot be understood as a consensus in some hand-picked sample, but rather a consensus among all members of a reliable group (or at least a random sample). First let's take scientists, namely young earth creationist scientists (assume science is a reputable discipline and scientists a reliable group). If we have 20 YEC archaeologists and they all say the earth is 6000 years old, does the consensus have rational weight? No, the sample group is flawed. The perfect group would be all archaeologists and lesser groups would be randomly selected.
I don't recall you introducing this caveat in your original formulation of the argument, so I assume that this is an addition. In any case, I think there is something more pertinent to focus on than the composition of the group, and that is the process by which they reached a consensus. You could take a hand-picked sample of YEC archaeologists and argue that the consensus of the group lacks merit because the process by which it was derived is fundamentally flawed. The process is what distinguishes YEC archaeologists from archaeologists and what makes the consensus of the latter group more credible than that of the former.
For the sake of time, I think we both agree that I've successfully established a burden of proof, even though we may disagree on the strength of the burden. For my purposes, this means that the atheist must lean on his arguments. He lives or dies by his arguments, because he has the burden of proof. This is perhaps one reason why atheists are more inclined to argument than religious. (Note that we are talking about a consensus of religiosity)
On this point I would disagree. First, you haven't established that there is a consensus of religious thought. You have conflated the pervasiveness of religion with a consensus among religions. As I noted previously, ubiquity is not equivalent to consensus. Moreover, it seems that theology is plagued by the opposite, by a lack of consensus, with little agreement on the methods and results needed to move toward one. Second, if the composition of the group is important, as you argue above, then what group should we look to for a consensus and why? Should we take the entire body of religious believers as our group, or theologians, philosophers, and scientists? You seem to have opted for the former simply because it is most convenient to your argument, in which you conflate pervasiveness with consensus. You later go on to argue that a consensus becomes "rationally significant" if it is established by legitimate experts. But what makes one a legitimate expert on the supernatural? Third, as I noted previously, I think the atheist can satisfy her burden by pointing to the weak case presented by the religious. She doesn't need to thoroughly discredit claims that are already unfounded.
That may all be true but I don't think even that much is required. From the perspective of my argument, scientific consensus has more merit because scientists are legitimate experts in their domain of study.
This relates to my point about the process by which the consensus is established. I think we agree.
As long as I know that they are legitimate experts in a (legitimate) domain of study, then their consensus with respect to that field will be rationally significant.
This of course raises the question of what makes one a "legitimate expert" on the supernatural.
Maybe that's what you were saying, but "evidence" is an ambiguous word. What if we are polling public speakers, or gymnasts (i.e. experts of practical rather than speculative knowledge)? Or in fields that do not always deal in hard evidence, such as philosophy? You might say "evidence" can mean something like "reasons," but I think legitimate expertise is cleaner.
In the case of gymnastics, for example, expertise is demonstrated in the performance (e.g., the floor routine).
Very good post. Sorry I didn't dig in earlier, but my initial post on this topic was simply not meant to be argumentatively rigorous and I shy away from starting new topics with persons who I am already in dialogue with on multiple other topics.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I think we have at least clarified a number of issues that were ambiguous in the beginning.
