:
: : So they're all models, Gotch, and you ultimately have no demonstrable way of knowing that Christianity is any more 'true' than Islam of Buddhism.: Piper: Just as experience can demonstrate that grass is green or the sky is blue, so too can experience demonstrate the existence of God (see my 'by minerva's shield' post to floyd). Although holding such a belief may be epistemoligically dubious and perhaps irrational it is still an arguable position. (epistemology is inherently dubious and whoever said faith was rational?).
However, to assume the existence of God requires an a priori assumption that is utterly and eternally untestable (and indeed any testing is expressly forbidden in the Christian church).
The a priori assumptions on which science and logic are founded are still assumptions, but they are subject to experimental testing. Even if an experiment cannot provide you with the ultimate confirmation of a theory, it can falsify it (unless you hold to the Quine-Duhem Thesis).
The difference between a mystic's perception of God and a scientist's perception of s=ut + 1/2at2 is that the equation can be demonstrated and falsified. I will agree that it ultimately doesn't mean that a mystic's perception is necessarily more 'true' than the scientist's; but define your criteria for what constitutes a 'rational' belief...
Is the belief in Bigfoot as rational as the belief that water flows downhill?; from a very simple glance it is; but there is a wealth of evidence to support the idea of water flowing downhill; and almost nothing verifiable for Bigfoot.
Also, returning to the question of the mystic's perception; it is only rational if you accept the mystic's inherent assumption that there is a non-physical world which may not be perceived by normal means. In what way are these perceptions reliable?
Are our belief-forming processes reliable or not?
The problem with Alston's argument is that he assumes non-sensory perceptions (M-experiences) are of a similar form to sensory perceptions, and that they are imposed upon the viewer;
"...it is both necessary and sufficient for a state of consciousness to be a state of perceptual consciousness that it involve something's presenting itself to the subject, S, as so-and-so..."
You could say exactly the same thing about toothache; or a wet dream; it ultimately doesn't make reliable evidence for God.
Gideon Hallett
(And, to be frank, you're wasting your time with Gotch; he's a teacher at a seminary school; and has never been known to produce an argument that isn't part of orthodox Christian dogma; I'm not saying, of course, that this makes him a bad person or anything, but his faculties vis-a-vis free-thinking philosophical inquiry have been limited. For Gotch, there is right and there is wrong; and he is right...though, of course, the same could be said of many people including eminent scientists like Hawking...)
