The Outsider Test For Faith, or Whether Religion Passes The Smell Test (SPOILER: SGI/Nichiren do NOT)

This is an excerpt from John W. Loftus' new book by the same name (except for the smell test part). His focus is Christianity, but his analysis/argument applies equally well to any religion.

The most important question of all when it comes to assessing the truth claims of Christian theism is whether we should approach the available evidence through the eyes of faith, or of skepticism. Complete neutrality, while desirable, seems to be practically impossible, since the worldview we use to evaluate the evidence is already there prior to looking at the evidence. So the question I’ll be addressing today is whether we should adopt a believing or a skeptical predisposition prior to examining the evidence for a religious set of beliefs. I’ll argue that a skeptical predisposition is the preferred one to adopt.

My Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) is just one of several arguments I use to demonstrate that when examining the evidence for a religious set of beliefs the predisposition of skepticism is warranted. There is overwhelming, undeniable and non-controversial evidence for the test itself that can be found in the sociological, anthropological, and psychological data. I’ll start with some of this data that forms the basis for the test. Then I’ll describe the test, provide some examples of what it demands of the believer, and defend it from six major objections.

The basis for the outsider test has been stated adequately by liberal Christian philosopher John Hick: “It is evident that in some ninety-nine percent of the cases the religion which an individual professes and to which he or she adheres depends upon the accidents of birth.” That is to say, if we were born in Saudi Arabia, we would be Sunni Muslims right now. If we were born in Iran, we’d be Shi’a Muslims. If we were born in India, we’d be a Hindus. If we were born in Japan, we’d be Shintoists.

Notice NOT "Soka Gakkai members" O_O

If we were born in Mongolia, we’d be Buddhists. If we were born in the first century BCE in Israel, we’d adhere to the Jewish faith at that time, and if we were born in Europe in 1000 CE, we’d be Roman Catholics. For the first nine hundred years we would’ve believed in the ransom theory of Jesus’ atonement. As Christians during the later Middle Ages, we wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with killing witches, torturing heretics, and conquering Jerusalem from the “infidels” in the Crusades. These things are as close to being undeniable facts as we can get in the sociological world.

Had we lived in ancient Egypt or Babylon, we would’ve been very superstitious and polytheistic to the core. In the ancient world, we would’ve sought divine guidance through divination, tried to alter circumstances through magic, and believed in the dreaded evil eye.

There are a whole range of issues that admit of diversity in the moral and political areas as well, based to an overwhelming degree on the “accidents of birth.” Caucasian American men would’ve believed with President Andrew Jackson in manifest destiny, our God-given mandate to seize Native American territories in westward expansion. Up through the seventeenth century we would’ve believed that women were intellectually inferior to men, and consequently we wouldn’t have allowed them to become educated in the same subjects as men, much less to vote. Like Thomas Jefferson and most Americans, we would’ve thought this way about black people as well, that they were intellectually inferior to whites, while if we were born in the South, we would’ve justified slavery from the Bible. If in today’s world we were born in the Palestinian Gaza strip, we would hate the Jews and probably want to kill them all.

These kinds of moral, political, and religious beliefs, based upon cultural conditions, can be duplicated into a lengthy list of beliefs that we would’ve had if we were born in a different time and place. Voltaire was right: “Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their time.”

Social conditions provide us with the initial control beliefs we use from that moment on to incorporate all known facts and experiences. That’s why they’re called control beliefs. They are somewhat like blinders. From the moment we put them on, we pretty much see only what our blinders will let us see, because reason is mostly used to serve them.

Michael Shermer, a former Christian turned atheist, has done an extensive study of why people believe in God and in “weird things.” He argues: “Most of us most of the time come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, such variables as genetic predispositions, parental predilections, sibling influences, peer pressures, educational experiences, and life impressions all shape the personality preferences and emotional inclinations that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to make certain belief choices. Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming. All of us do this, of course, but smart people are better at it.”

Christian philosopher Robert McKim concurs in some respects. He wrote: “We seem to have a remarkable capacity to find arguments that support positions which we antecedently [already] hold. Reason is, to a great extent, the slave of prior commitments.” Hence the whole notion of “an independent rational judgment” is suspect, he claims. This is not to deny that Christian apologists defend their faith with reasons. Of course they do. These apologists, if they’re good at what they do, will be smart people. But as Michael Shermer also reminds us, “smart people, because they are more intelligent and better educated, are able to give intellectual reasons justifying their beliefs that they arrived at for nonintelligent reasons.”

Hence the way that SGI and other cults are always on the lookout for the easy prey - the vulnerable, the suffering, the lonely. Well-adjusted, happy people don't join.

Psychiatrist Dr. Valerie Tarico describes the process of defending unintelligent beliefs by smart people. She claims, “it doesn’t take very many false assumptions to send us on a long goose chase. ... All that is needed to build such an impressive house of illusion is a clear, well-organized mind and a few false assumptions. Paranoid individuals can be very credible.” In her opinion this is what Christians do and best explains why it’s hard to shake the evangelical faith. Of course, I don’t expect Christians to agree with her that this is what they do, but then they cannot deny that people of religious faith do this. What else can best explain why there is still a Mormon church now that DNA evidence conclusively proves Native Americans did not come from the Middle East?

I’ve investigated my faith from the inside as an insider with the presumption that it was true. Even from an insider’s perspective with the Christian set of control beliefs, I couldn’t continue to believe.

The same thing happened to each of us. If it were truly true, we couldn't have discarded it - we discarded it when we realized that none of it was true.

Now from the outside, it makes no sense at all. Christians are on the inside. I am now on the outside. Christians see things from the inside. I see things from the outside. From the inside, it seems true. From the outside, it seems almost bizarre. As Mark Twain wisely said, “The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

This whole inside/outside perspective is quite a dilemma and prompts me to propose and argue on behalf of the OTF, the result of which makes the presumption of skepticism the preferred stance when approaching any religious faith, especially one’s own. The outsider test is simply a challenge to test one’s own religious faith with the presumption of skepticism, as an outsider. It calls upon believers to "Test or examine your religious beliefs as if you were outsiders with the same presumption of skepticism you use to test or examine other religious beliefs." Its presumption is that when examining any set of religious beliefs skepticism is warranted, since the odds are good that the particular set of religious beliefs you have adopted is wrong.

The OTF is no different than the prince in the Cinderella story who must question forty-five thousand girls to see which one lost the glass slipper at the ball last night. They all claim to have done so. Therefore, skepticism is definitely warranted. This is especially the case when an empirical foot match cannot be had.

The amount of skepticism warranted depends on the number of rational people who disagree, whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, the nature of those beliefs, how they originated, how they were personally adopted in the first place, and the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between them. My claim is that when it comes to religious beliefs a high degree of skepticism is warranted because of these factors.

Surely someone will initially object that this is quite draconian in scope. Why take such an extreme stance? It’s because that’s how religious people approach all of the other religious faiths but their own. If someone claims she cannot do this because no one can test anything without assumptions of some kind, then this test challenges the believer to switch her assumptions. If she simply cannot do this, then let me suggest doing what René Descartes did with a methodological (or hypothetical) doubt, although I’m not suggesting his type of extreme doubt. Hypothetically consider your faith from the perspective of an outsider.

If she refuses to do this then she must justify having such a double standard. Why does she test other religious beliefs differently than her own? For someone to object that what I’m asking is unfair, she has the burden of proof to show why her inconsistent approach to religious faith is justified in the first place.

To the Christian theist the challenge of the outsider test means there would be no more quoting the Bible to defend the claim that Jesus’ death on the cross saves us from sins. The Christian theist must now try to rationally explain it. No more quoting the Bible to show how it’s possible for Jesus to be 100% God and 100% man with nothing left over. The Christian theist must now try to make sense of this claim, coming as it does from an ancient superstitious people who didn’t have trouble believing Paul and Barnabas were “gods in human form” (Acts 14:11; 28:6). The Christian theist must not assume prior to examining the evidence that there is an answer to the problem of horrendous suffering in our world either. And she’d be initially skeptical of believing in any of the miracles in the Bible, just as she would be skeptical of any claims of the miraculous in today’s world supporting other religious faiths. Why? Because she cannot start out by first believing the Bible, nor can she trust the people close to her who are Christian theists to know the truth, nor can she trust her own anecdotal religious experiences, since such experiences are had by people of all religious faiths who differ about the cognitive content learned as the result of these experiences. She would want evidence and reasons for these beliefs.

For the SGI member, the mechanism by which chanting produces results would have to be explained in terms that would allow the process to be empirically tested. We all remember how we were trained to focus exclusively on when we got what we wanted and to simply ignore all the fails - that's called "confirmation bias".

For Nichirenism in particular, the issue of HOW a gohonzon can be anyone's "enlightened life" and how a specific set of sounds (which are pronounced differently by different people, BTW) can effect any change anywhere. And the whole topic of "prophecy" would have to be critiqued (as we've done here)

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