Outsider Test for Faith Examined

Recently I began think­ing about John Lof­tus’ Out­sider Test for Faith (OTF), and I have seri­ous doubts that it’s the ‘tool’ he believes it is. As a reminder (or intro­duc­tion), the OTF asks believ­ers to, “test [their] beliefs as if [they] were an out­sider to the faith [they] are eval­u­at­ing”… That “if your faith stands up under muster, then you can have your faith. If not, aban­don it…” In other words, the OTF asks reli­gious believ­ers to test their beliefs as objec­tively as pos­si­ble, with the pre­sump­tion of skep­ti­cism.¹ My ini­tial thoughts are as follows:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

(1) If as a Chris­t­ian (or a Jew, or Mus­lim, etc.) I take the OTF and find my beliefs lack­ing, and as a result of tak­ing the OTF reject these beliefs, then to what posi­tion will I ‘con­vert’? Sup­pos­ing my aim was to ver­ify the claims of the Chris­t­ian reli­gion, then I will have found the Chris­t­ian God to be false. But I have not found other for­mu­la­tions of god to be false. Per­haps Judaism is cor­rect, or Islam, Hin­duism, Zoroas­tri­an­ism, or some other reli­gious sys­tem. If I’m to be intel­lec­tu­ally hon­est, I must choose between the­ism or agnos­ti­cism, while con­tin­u­ing to exam­ine other reli­gious claims. Of course, this is dif­fer­ent than the aim of ver­i­fy­ing if God exists per-se; in this case, ‘dis­prov­ing’ some for­mu­la­tions of god will be eas­ier than oth­ers, some much harder (such as a deist god or the ‘god of the philoso­phers’). In this lat­ter case two things seem most imme­di­ately appar­ent: (a) such a test requires inti­mate famil­iar­ity with dif­fer­ent for­mu­la­tions of god and related the­ol­ogy — it will take a while, in other words — and (2) that if arriv­ing at athe­ism, this sort of ‘athe­ist’ will have to acknowl­edge that there is the pos­si­bil­ity of some for­mu­la­tions of god exist­ing, though he doesn’t believe in these god(s) per­son­ally. He must still acknowl­edge the legit­i­macy of some forms of belief. If not, then pre­sum­ably the ulti­mate argu­ment against the­is­tic belief must have been dis­cov­ered, and he ought to share it.

In the case of the for­mer aim, I sus­pect that here it will be said that I have already taken the OTF with regard to these sys­tems of belief (as a Chris­t­ian I was pre­sum­ably an out­sider), and my find­ing them false still holds. But con­sider that in giv­ing up Chris­tian­ity, I will have expe­ri­enced an enor­mous par­a­digm shift: it is my new belief that the Chris­t­ian God no longer exists, where I pre­vi­ously thought he did. It is most likely the case that in exam­in­ing other reli­gious sys­tems as a Chris­t­ian, part of the rea­son I rejected them was because they con­tra­dicted the Chris­t­ian for­mu­la­tion of God (i.e. I was work­ing under the assump­tion that ‘X’ is false because the bible is true). With this for­mu­la­tion removed, part of my crit­i­cism has also gone miss­ing and is oth­er­wise invalid. If my con­cern is for the truth of my belief, then I am oblig­ated to re-examine my crit­i­cism of these faiths fol­low­ing my rejec­tion of Chris­tian­ity. I’m not sure Lof­tus gives ade­quate weight to the change that occurs here between world-views.

In the case of the lat­ter aim, I sus­pect it will be objected that such a course of action is impos­si­ble. One can­not pos­si­bly go around test­ing every claim indi­vid­u­ally. My reply is only this: if your con­cern is for the truth, you will do what­ever it takes to find the truth. This does not require test­ing every reli­gious claim — I didn’t say it did — we could arrive at the truth before then. But as we only know truth through con­trast, we are at least required to test a few sys­tems of belief. Oth­er­wise if truth isn’t the pri­mary con­cern, it will be objected that such a course of action is impossible.

(Keep­ing in mind that the OTF isn’t a guide­line for what to do after one has rejected their faith, pre­sum­ably one would keep tak­ing the OTF if necessary.)

(2) Arriv­ing at a new belief through the OTF, I am now required to take the OTF with my new posi­tion if (a) I did not exam­ine my new belief pre­vi­ously, only reject­ing it them of hand or (b) my pre­vi­ous crit­i­cisms are no longer valid as a result of my new par­a­digm. To say it another way; my new posi­tion is a result of find­ing Chris­tian­ity false, rather than find­ing my new posi­tion true.

(3) Which leads me to my next thought — that athe­ists ought to take the OTF as well, an objec­tion Lof­tus believes to have answered. He says:

The sci­ences are the paragon for out­siders. Show me the math and we agree. Show me the exper­i­ment and the argu­ment is over. Show me the sci­en­tific poll and the case is closed. Show me what we learn from brain sci­ence and there can be no dispute…

Should these athe­ists test what they were taught by being objec­tive, fair and open­minded? Sure, yes.

Should they test what they were taught as out­siders? How can they? What is the out­side per­spec­tive for them? Is it the per­spec­tive of a young earth Chris­t­ian cre­ation­ist or a young earth Jew­ish ortho­dox per­spec­tive? Any sci­en­tist would scoff at it because sci­ence pro­duces repeat­able evi­dence that con­vinces. Is the out­side per­spec­tive that of a Wic­can, or a Sci­en­tol­o­gist? How can athe­ists choose the cor­rect out­sider per­spec­tive from the many avail­able? Which reli­gious per­spec­tive do objec­tors to the OTF pro­pose we use when being out­siders? ²

This is where the name Out­sider Test for Faith does more harm than good (we end up argu­ing seman­tics). If our aim is to ver­ify our own beliefs as true or false, then we ought to ver­ify those beliefs no mat­ter what they are. Per­haps it might be best just to call the OTF the ‘Test for Truth’ (TFT), and the only require­ment of the TFT is to ‘exam­ine your beliefs as objec­tively as pos­si­ble to see whether or not they are true’. This new for­mu­la­tion doesn’t require the pre­sump­tion of skep­ti­cism; it merely pre­sumes one is going to be hon­est in their self-examination (skep­ti­cism isn’t nec­es­sary, only hon­esty is). After all, it is only ‘fair’ that the athe­ist, who is an athe­ist because they grew up in an ‘athe­ist home’, test their beliefs. If this turns out to be objec­tion­able, and the claims of the OTF be main­tained, then I would sim­ply sug­gest that the athe­ist choose the per­spec­tive of an out­sider, that is, some­one who doesn’t share his beliefs. It doesn’t mat­ter which, so long as they, “test [their] beliefs as if [they] were an out­sider to the belief [they] are eval­u­at­ing”. Mak­ing no mis­take, there are meta­phys­i­cal beliefs that are tan­ta­mount to ‘faith’ for even the athe­ist. The sci­ences aren’t always the paragon they are believed to be; they only go so far. It is here that I believe Lof­tus’ unnec­es­sar­ily restricts his test to reli­gious faith. There is no need to, and it should be required of the athe­ist (not all athe­ists are crit­i­cal, just as not all reli­gious believ­ers are uncritical).

(4) Which brings me to Lof­tus’ for­mu­la­tion of the OTF in The Chris­t­ian Delusion

1) Ratio­nal peo­ple in dis­tinct geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions around the globe
over­whelm­ingly adopt and defend a wide diver­sity of reli­gious
faiths due to their upbring­ing and cul­tural her­itage. This is the reli­gious
diver­sity thesis.

2) Con­se­quently, it seems very likely that adopt­ing one’s reli­gious
faith is not merely a mat­ter of inde­pen­dent ratio­nal judg­ment but
is causally depen­dent on cul­tural con­di­tions to an over­whelm­ing
degree.1 This is the reli­gious depen­dency thesis.

3) Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted reli­gious
faith is false.

4) So the best way to test one’s adopted reli­gious faith is from the per­spec­tive
of an out­sider with the same level of skep­ti­cism used to
eval­u­ate other reli­gious faiths. This expresses the OTF³

Some thoughts on this formulation:

–> 1) It is true that many peo­ple adopt their faith from their par­ents and cul­tural her­itage, but it is also true that peo­ple (these same peo­ple who adopted their faith) reject it, which can take the form of con­ver­sion and / or out­right denial. It is like­wise true that peo­ple can and do adopt faiths which are not ‘native’ to their geo­graph­i­cal area. These peo­ple did not nec­es­sar­ily engage in the OTF. I per­son­ally would not use the word ‘overwhelmingly’.

–> 2) Depends what is meant by ‘over­whelm­ing degree’. As anec­do­tal evi­dence, I don’t know many adults who believe some­thing sim­ply because their par­ents do. But again, it’s not objec­tion­able to say that there are a vari­ety of rea­sons why one may arrive at a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious belief.

–> 3) This does not fol­low from (1) and (2). What does fol­low­ing is this: “Hence, the odds are highly likely that a reli­gious believer has not crit­i­cally exam­ined their adopted reli­gious faith”. The given con­clu­sion over­states the reach of this for­mu­la­tion of the OTF. Else­where Lof­tus has said:

The pre­sump­tion of The Out­sider Test would be that since there are so very many reli­gions, and with so many peo­ple believ­ing in a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion because of “when and where they were born,” that when exam­in­ing any reli­gious belief, skep­ti­cism would be war­ranted, since the odds are good that the one you are inves­ti­gat­ing is wrong. ⁴

A lot of gen­er­al­iza­tions, but are the odds that good that the faith you have adopted is wrong? Let’s pre­tend there are 100,000 sys­tems of belief which posit a god or gods, and 1 sys­tem of belief which posits no god — athe­ism. Are the odds that there is a god or gods, or that there isn’t? If I had to side with the dis­dained argu­ment from con­sen­sus, I’d have to go with say­ing that the odds are that there is some sort of god. The fact that they dis­agree over what god does not over­rule the fact that they agree there is a god.

–> 4) My only thought here is that hav­ing the per­spec­tive of an out­sider, or tak­ing on the pre­sump­tion of skep­ti­cism, isn’t nec­es­sary. It may have been how Lof­tus exam­ined (and left) his belief, but it won’t be how all peo­ple exam­ine their beliefs.

(5) I’m not sure how hon­est (or objec­tive) the OTF is, given Lof­tus’ regard of Evan­gel­i­cal intel­lec­tual hon­esty. Or the real­ity that he has a blog com­mit­ting to Debunk­ing (Evan­gel­i­cal) Chris­tian­ity. Lof­tus pro­vides the fol­low­ing exam­ple of what it means for a Chris­t­ian to take the OTF:

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.

T think this misses the point, and is itself biased. If I am to exam­ine Chris­tian­ity from a skep­ti­cal posi­tion, my sec­ond ques­tion should be, “what does Chris­tian­ity teach” fol­lowed by “where does it teach this?”. These would be ques­tions which fall under the umbrella — the first ques­tion — “is Chris­tian­ity true?”. In answer to these ques­tions it could be said that “Chris­tian­ity teaches that Jesus’ death on the cross saves us from sins” and the “where does it teach this” would direct me to the applic­a­ble verses. This is part of a ratio­nal exam­i­na­tion of the claims. As an out­sider I would be required to quote the bible, even as just a point of ref­er­ence for the claims being made inside Chris­tian­ity (my quot­ing scrip­ture should not be con­fused as defend­ing the claim made by scrip­ture). My next ques­tion would be, “are these claims true?” and I would pro­ceed to exam­ine the claims from there — which is itself a com­plex process, one I don’t believe Lof­tus gives full appre­ci­a­tion to.

What I would not do, is try to ratio­nally explain why Jesus died on the cross for our sins with­out recourse to the bible. The same is true of the other exam­ples pro­vided. After all, if I’m to be skep­ti­cal towards Chris­tian­ity, I must exam­ine the Chris­t­ian scrip­tures. Oth­er­wise, how will I know if they do not make sense, do not con­tra­dict each other, etc.? What Lof­tus sug­gests strikes me as being some­thing of a Thrasymachus:

What is this non­sense that has pos­sessed you for so long, Socrates? And why do you act like fools mak­ing way for one another? If you truly want to know what the just is, don’t only ask and grat­ify your love of honor by refut­ing what­ever some­one answers–you know that it is eas­ier to ask than to answer–but answer yours and say what you assert the just to be. And see to if that you don’t tell me that it is the need­ful, or the help­ful, or the prof­itable, or the gain­ful, or the advan­ta­geous; but tell me clearly and pre­cisely what you mean, for I won’t accept it if you say such inani­ties.⁵

Thrasy­machus has already made up his mind as to what the just isn’t, so he won’t accept those answers even if that’s what the just is. In the same way Lof­tus won’t accept quotes from the bible, because he has already made his mind up that it is false. But this is not the posi­tion a skep­tic should take. A skep­tic may doubt the claims of the bible, but that does not entail believ­ing those claims to be false from the get-go (at least, my idea of skep­ti­cism… Which may be another prob­lem with the OTF). God rais­ing peo­ple from the dead is a pretty fan­tas­tic event, and one a skep­tic will find doubt­ful. But it is an event that takes on new life when you con­sider the ques­tion, “If God exists, is it pos­si­ble”. And in that sense, the skep­tic ought to be ask­ing ques­tions, rather than assum­ing doubt.

Con­clu­sion

In the end I think it bet­ter for the OTF to be either the ‘Out­sider Test for Belief’ or the ‘Test for Truth’. There is no need to limit this test to reli­gious belief, other than hav­ing a vendetta against reli­gion. There is every rea­son for every­one to crit­i­cally exam­ine the beliefs they hold, assum­ing they are con­cerned with truth. As for Lof­tus’ cur­rent for­mu­la­tion of the OTF, I think it’s severely gen­eral, giv­ing almost no weight to the con­sid­er­a­tions nec­es­sary to engage in the OTF. It acts as if mov­ing from ‘A’ to ‘B’ is the result of a few sim­ple steps. Oth­er­wise I think Lof­tus has some­thing on his hands, but it’s a some­thing we’ve all known about for a very long time.