#800 Raising and Lowering the Epistemic Bar

Dr. craig’s response

Atheistic bloggers have been unjustifiably apoplectic about my response to Kyle, so I’m glad for this opportunity to clarify my answer.

The first step is to correctly understand Kyle’s question (which can be found here). He did not say that “he should abandon the faith if high epistemic confidence could not be achieved.” Kyle’s claim was far more radical than that. He implied that in order for Christian belief to be epistemically justified he would need to experience a personal appearance of the Virgin Mary or of Jesus himself! This demand sets the epistemic bar so extravagantly high that it would preclude virtually any person alive today from Christian belief.

I could have responded to Kyle simply by pointing out that we have good epistemic justification for Christian belief (arguments of natural theology plus Christian evidences), and that his standard for rational belief was unrealistically high. But I chose to take a different tack.

In order to understand my answer one needs to distinguish between pragmatic justification and epistemic justification.[1] Epistemic justification seeks truth-directed reasons for some belief. That is to say, it seeks reasons to think that the belief is true. By contrast pragmatic justification seeks for non-truth-directed reasons for some belief. This is usually done in terms of a cost/benefit analysis. One asks what sort of costs and benefits accrue from holding the belief and weigh these against each other.

Sometimes one can be pragmatically justified in holding a belief even though one is not epistemically justified in holding that belief. A well-known example in the literature invites you to imagine that you have been diagnosed with stage-4 cancer. The prognosis is grim: the treatment will probably not be effective, and you do not have long to live. Nevertheless, studies show that cancer patients who believe that they will make it through their illness have a better chance of survival than those who do not. Having a positive, optimistic attitude is actually conducive to health, so that your chances of survival are greater if you believe that you will make it. So what would you do? If you believe only what is epistemically justified, then you doom yourself. Therefore you are pragmatically justified in believing that you will make it, even if such a belief is contrary to the evidence.

Sometimes epistemologists will talk about “pragmatic encroachment” on the epistemic. According to this idea pragmatic reasons can serve to lower or raise the bar for epistemically justified belief. Kyle evidently believes in pragmatic encroachment, for he thinks that in view of the significant costs attending Christian belief, the epistemic bar has to be set extravagantly high in order for Christian belief to be epistemically justified. My tack in responding to Kyle was to accept with him pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic, but to disagree completely with his cost/benefit analysis. My claim is that the costs typically associated with Christian belief are minimal in view of the love, joy, peace, patience, etc. that well up in the life of a Spirit-filled Christian and that, more importantly, any such costs are simply swamped by the infinite benefit of eternal life and a relationship with God, an incommensurable good. This remains the case even for those Christians who do suffer persecution and martyrdom for their faith. If this is right, then pragmatic arguments can serve to radically lower the bar of epistemic justification for Christian belief. In any case they certainly do not raise it (even if, as you say, the evidence for God is extremely good).

Alternatively, even if one thinks that pragmatic arguments do not raise or lower the bar for epistemic justification, nevertheless it remains the case, as the cancer illustration shows, that one can be pragmatically justified in holding a belief that would not be epistemically justified. To alter the illustration somewhat, suppose you were told that there was a new experimental drug that you could take that would give you a one in a million chance of surviving and that there were no significant negative side effects of the drug. Moreover, the drug is free. Wouldn’t you take the drug? Similarly, given the death-sentence under which we live, isn’t one justified in committing one’s life to Christ in faith?

Epistemic justification is conducive to truth because one is seeking truth-directed reasons for belief, that is, reasons to think that the belief is true. But sometimes one can be pragmatically justified in holding a belief in view of the great benefits to be had if the belief turns out to be true. Pragmatic considerations can thus outweigh epistemic ones in certain cases.[2]