After yesterday’s
discussion, I've been really curious about what precisely Christians believe
about what practical difference the fact of God's existence makes in this world.
As Shawn pointed out, it seems that Christians do, at least in unguarded
moments, refer to empirical evidence to support their belief in God, e.g.,
apparent answers to prayer, etc.
Even if we
disagree with some of the particular ways in which Christians tend to employ
prayer, there’s no question that the Bible affirms the practice within the
appropriate boundaries. James 5:16, for example, encourages Christians to
“confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be
healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
But can anyone
offer any insight into what actual hypothesis is supposed to be receiving
confirmation in these situations?
Is it
something like “If God exists, and I pray for x to happen, then the probability
that x will happen will be increased to some nonnegligible degree above
statistical randomness”?
…Or,
recognizing that even the placebo effect can explain nonnegligible increases of
a thing’s probability above statistical randomness (at least in the appropriate
contexts, like prayers concerning someone’s health), do they hypothesize that
“If God exists, and I pray for x to happen, then the probability that x will
happen will be increased to some nonnegligible degree above what the placebo effect
could reasonably account for”?
Although I’m
confident that many Christians actually do approach prayer in these ways
(probably the former more so than the latter), I don’t think either of the
above are hypotheses that serious Christians should endorse. So what other
possibilities are there?
Presumably, if
Christianity is true, we should only expect a positive statistical correlation
to obtain between certain prayers aimed at certain targets. On this view, it’s
not just the probabilities that are significant to confirming hypotheses
regarding the effectiveness of prayer, but also the broader context in which the
prayer was offered.
In other
words, the truth of Christianity is in principle compatible with a situation in
which there were no significant statistical correlation between prayers for x
and occurrences of x, at least as long as the entire set of prayers offered was
taken into consideration. This could happen, for instance, if the total sample
contained more of the wrong sorts of prayers than the right ones, so many more
that it masked whatever effect the right sort of prayers might have otherwise had. Presumably,
though, if we removed all the wrong sorts of prayers from the sample, the truth
of verses like James 5:16 predicts that we should be able to detect some
nonnegligible statistical correlation between prayers for x and occurrences of
x.
So then, which
sorts of prayers should we expect to be effective, i.e., to produce an empirical effect? Here are a few
options, which are not taken to be mutually exclusive from one another:
- Those offered in unusually high stakes situations (when we really need God)
- Those that play some especially significant role in the furthering of God’s kingdom (when God really needs us, so to speak)
- Those that correspond to some promise made in scripture (which may serve no other function than to facilitate relationship between man and God)
Does anyone
else have any other suggestions?...
Since we're on an off week this week, I thought I'd go ahead and suggest some discussion questions to give us something to talk about in the interim. No pressure for anyone to respond, but they're here if the topic interests you.
Q1: Do you agree with my statement above, that if we removed all
the wrong sorts of prayers from our sample, then the truth of verses like James
5:16 predicts that we should be able to detect some nonnegligible statistical
correlation between prayers for x and occurrences of x? Why or why not?
Q2: If you don’t think that James 5:16 makes any empirical
predictions, do you think that there may be other scriptures that do? If so,
could you suggest one? For any passage you suggest, could you speculate concerning the nature of the prediction(s) it makes, and what its verification conditions might be?
Q3: If you don’t think there are any scriptures that make
empirical predictions, what do you think of the practice often observed among
Christians of referring to empirical evidences to justify their belief in God?
Should they give it up? Why or why not?
Q4: If you don’t think there are any scriptures that make
empirical predictions, how else might religious belief be epistemically
justified?
Q5: Finally, does this new standard of epistemic justification
impose any additional constraints on what kinds
of beliefs might be justified, e.g., does it rule out the possibility of having
justified beliefs about empirically fine-grained facts, such as God was
incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, born of a virgin, etc., etc.? If not, why not? If so, how useful do you think the beliefs it permits (being empirically thin, or even vacuous) would be in guiding our practical affairs?
