Atheist Argument: Origin of Knowledge

This is an epistemological (theory of knowledge) argument against the varsity (likelihood of truth) of religious belief. I think it is one of the strongest general arguments against religious belief. It is not a deductive argument in that it proves the truth or religion or not. It is an inductive and abductive argument saying that says it is very unlikely that that religious belief is true.

Epistemology is a complex topic in philosophy, but my argument makes an appeal rooted in pragmatism which claims that the most trustworthy and highest quality knowledge is measured by how useful it is for pragmatic tasks. Basically, if you can put it to test and see if it works, then you can trust it. If you cannot test it, and cannot see if it proves true in practice, it is at best a guess, an uncertain claim you cannot rely on to be true. So if I have a theory about how air works and how birds fly, the best way to know if it is true is to try and make something that uses that theory to fly. If you can succeed using that knowledge and make something fly, then you have a strong case for that knowledge being true and useful. If it proves unable to achieve the task, then it is either false, or at best, unreliable and useless.

With that in mind, we will look at two type of knowledge: Empirical, and Revelation.

Empirical Knowledge

Empirical knowledge is gained through observation. To gain it, you observe the world around you in detail. You might also interact with the world, say by throwing an apple, and then observe what happens. This kind of knowledge is the foundation of the Scientific Method, which involves controlled observation and experimentation.

What makes empirical knowledge so valuable to a pragmatist is that it is highly reliable, especially when coupled with a discipline like Science which tries to resolve possible errors like faulty observation, logical fallacies, and other issues that can happen when you try to turn an observation into a logical truth claim. The phrase, “seeing is believing” expresses how deeply we tend to trust empirical knowledge. It is the foundation of our justice system and its means of presenting evidence. First hand eye-witnesses, physical evidence, and other types of empirical knowledge are the most trusted and most relied upon in dispensing justice. That is because we have the most trust in these. We know they are not faultless, but they are the best we have.

Revelation

Revelation is knowledge imparted to a person by a god. This includes divine messages, divine visions, divine whispers, and divinely inspired feelings. If you close your eyes and pray for an answer to a question, whatever conclusion you come to is revealed knowledge. This kind of knowledge is the key to nearly all religious belief. The Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, are all said to be from divine revelation. It is the source of knowledge for prophets. Preachers and practitioners usually place this knowledge above all other types.

So how trustworthy is revelation? For a pragmatist, not very. Most of its claims are difficult or impossible to test. The differing faiths each claim divine revelation and their claims are often contradictory. Even within one faith, the interpretation of the same revelation differs in meaning. There are no industries built upon putting that knowledge to some practical purpose like flying a plane or lighting the darkness. Practitioners of revelatory knowledge rely on faith, which represents belief without proof, or even despite proof to the contrary.

Tests of Knowledge

We can do a test of these sources of knowledge. Lets say we have a black velvet bag. We want to know what is in the bag. We could use Revelation to pray to god to know what is inside. Alternatively we could use empiricism to look inside the bag and see what might be there. We all know which of these methods is most likely to give us an accurate result. While our effort to look inside could give a wrong answer and the prayer could give the right answer, our pragmatic experience in life tells us that looking in the bag is the more reliable way to go.

We can up the stakes and have a contest between revelation and empirical knowledge when building a parachute. Would you trust your life to a person with know knowledge of aerodynamics to design a device based on divine revelation or someone who has practiced building parachutes and has tested many prototypes to determine if they work or not? Again, we all know the answer to that.

The Argument

So here is the actual argument now that we have laid the foundations.

Religious knowledge is almost entirely based on divine revelation. Divine revelation is not a trustworthy way to gain knowledge we can trust. It produces poor and contradictory results and either cannot be tested or usually proves no better than a guess when it is tested. Therefore I have no trust or faith in religious beliefs as a category of knowledge.

The Caveat

It should be noted that there are limits to empirical knowledge. By definition it cannot be used to test intangible or unobservable phenomena or claims. You cannot use empirical knowledge to say whether an invisible or intangible being exists who’s power is so great it can change our perceptions and thoughts at will. Such a thing could not be reliably observed and so we can know nothing about it with empirical means. That said, neither does that strengthen the trustworthiness of revelatory knowledge. We have no reliable or practical means to differentiate one revelation from another. So while empirical evidence is of little practical use, so is revelation.

For the pragmatist, its just useless to speculate about things you can’t interact with in any practical way. It can be a fun topic of speculation or imagination, but not one for making knowledge claims.