What is meant by having experiential knowledge of God?
Q: What is meant by having experiential knowledge of God?
Hello, Zerish Gulbaz, and welcome to Quora!
What people usually mean when they claim to have “experiential knowledge” of the particular deity they were most likely indoctrinated from a young age to believe in is that that they have, in fact, experienced some aspect of that deity’s presence.
In reality, however, any claims of having “experiential knowledge” of the particular deity somebody was most likely indoctrinated from a young age to believe in are just people interpreting a feeling or experience they have had as being the result of being in the presence of some aspect of that deity.
The problem is that there is a difference between an experience and the explanation for that experience, and people often get the two things confused. For example, if I were to see a strange light in the night sky moving in a way I can’t explain, I might think I have had direct experiential knowledge of alien from a distant star system, when in fact all I have direct experiential knowledge of is a strange light in the night sky moving in a way I can’t explain. It’s the same with experiences that lead people to claim to have had experiential knowledge of a god of some sort — what they actually experienced may have been a feeling, an emotion, a sense of presence, a voice inside their head, etc., but they interpret that experience as evidence of an encounter with a god of some sort.
Which is, of course, why people all over the world who worship completely different gods can all report having direct experiential knowledge with their god, including receiving all sorts of information and confirmation of their particular beliefs, that directly contradicts the claimed experiences of other people.
For more thoughts on this, see:
Many theists are more than willing to admit that they have no evidence to offer to support a rational belief in their particular deity or the truthfulness of the teachings of their particular religion. “God’s existence can neither be proved nor disproved,” they will claim, and it somehow becomes a badge of honor in their minds to have “faith” in their particular deity despite a lack of evidence that it exists.
Other theists, of course, know just how irrational it is to claim to believe something without evidence (especially something as extraordinary as the specific deity they worship), and therefore they claim to have all sorts of evidence that their particular deity exists. Most of this so-called “evidence” is easy to dismiss out of hand, of course, as the sort of thing that wouldn’t even convince them of anything if it was offered as evidence of anything apart from their particular deity. Things like anecdotal evidence, ancient stories written thousands of years ago filled with descriptions of magical events, unsubstantiated claims of miracles and more arguments from ignorance (“Science can’t explain X, therefore my answer is the only possible explanation”) than you can shake a Bible at.
But one particularly pernicious form of “evidence” that sometimes gets offered to support a belief in a particular deity is “personal spiritual experience.” The argument typically goes something like this:
If I experience something first-hand, it is absolutely rational for me to believe in it. If I can't reproduce that experience for you, it is rational for you not to believe in it. In that situation, we are both acting rationally. But claiming that you know that I have not actually experienced what I have claimed - without any contrary evidence - is irrational, and even hypocritical.[1]
And, yes, it is certainly true that I cannot rationally just claim that people have not experienced what they say they have experienced. I mean, sure — they could be lying about it, but the mere fact that I disagree with them doesn’t in and of itself mean that I am right and they are wrong.
What arguments like this completely ignore, however, is that there is an important difference between experiencing something and knowing what the explanation for that experience is.
For example, if I see a light moving erratically in the night sky, it would be perfectly rational for me to claim to “know” (insofar as I can “know” anything in this world) that I saw such a light. Even if others claimed to have been looking at the same part of the sky at the same time and not see anything, I would still be justified in claiming to know that I saw it. The problem comes, however, when I then claim to also “know” that the explanation for that erratically moving light is that it was a spacecraft piloted by a highly advanced technological alien species from another star system, despite the fact that everything we know about physics proves such a thing to be impossible. I “know” I saw a light in the sky, but that doesn’t mean I can also claim to “know” that the light was an alien spacecraft simply because I “experienced” it with my own two eyes. What I “experienced” was a light — I assumed what the explanation for that light is.
It’s the exact same thing with personal spiritual experiences. When somebody claims to have heard a voice in their head or have felt a “burning in their bosom” or have had a sudden sense of calm and peace or awe or joy or what have you, the likelihood is that they really did have such an experience. I mean, sure, they could be lying, but assuming they really experienced what they claimed to have experienced, it’s perfectly rational for them to believe that they experienced it. Just like it’s perfectly rational for me to believe I saw a light moving erratically in the night sky.
The problem comes when theists go on to assume that the explanation for their experience is the particular deity they happen to believe in and then conflate the two things and claim to have directly experienced their deity. No, sorry — they may “know” that they heard or felt whatever it was they heard or felt, but that doesn’t mean they can rationally claim to “know” that the voice or feeling was sent by their particular deity simply because they heard or felt it. What they experienced was a voice or feeling — they assumed what the explanation for that voice or feeling is.
Interestingly enough, those who claim that personal spiritual experiences are a perfectly valid reason to believe in their particular deity run into a wall of solid hypocrisy when faced with claims by theists of other faiths who have had their own personal spiritual experiences that they claim support their conflicting beliefs. On one hand, how dare an atheist assume that their personal spiritual experiences are mere delusions:
It is amazing what you can argue when you begin with the assumption that all experiences to the contrary must be “delusion” even when you have zero evidence of actually showing that your premise is true and that contrary claims are therefore delusion.[2]
And then, on the other hand:
What I know is what I have experienced. Those who make contradictory claims are lying, delusional, or mistaken.[3]
Even if it were true that atheists have “no evidence” that God doesn’t exist (apart from the complete lack of evidence that should be there if it did exist), the fact remains that believers in other faiths claim to have the exact same type of evidence to support their beliefs as theists like Ronald (quoted above) claim to have to support their beliefs. Theists like Ronald are literally claiming that it’s wrong to just assume that others are deluded simply because they have experiences different than yours and then claiming that other people who have experiences different from them must be deluded.
I think this is why, by the way, so many theists focus all their attacks on atheists and not on other theists of different faiths than theirs. They can attack atheists for “believing in something without evidence” and claim that they themselves are far more rational because they have evidence for their beliefs. But when it comes to theists of other faiths, they have to deal with the fact that other theists claim to have the same exact sort of evidence that they do and yet, somehow, have different (and often wholly incompatible) beliefs. Which would just prove that such “evidence” is completely and utterly worthless when it comes to actually providing knowledge or establishing truth (which is exactly what we atheists have been saying all along).
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