by Nash Yielding

If you have spent much time trying to talk to religious people about philosophy, you have no doubt had someone tell you that they believe in God because of a “personal experience.” It doesn’t seem to matter what rational arguments you bring to bear on the conversation, or what evidence you present. At some point they will tell you that they just believe in God because they have had an “experience” and that since you cannot disprove their experience, you cannot disprove their belief.

I have spent countless hours and conversations running in circles around this question. I have tried asking religious people how, if they expect me to believe them based on their self-reported personal experience, they don’t believe people from other religions who claim to have entirely different personal experiences. I have asked why, if their entire belief system is based on personal experience and has nothing to do with what other people told them, they bother talking to other people about their beliefs; why not just let God reveal himself? I have tried pointing out that it is not valid for them to make generalizations about the universe based only on anecdotal personal experience, especially if that personal experience contradicts all other experiences and all other evidence. I have tried to ask how a vague and mysterious “experience” that they often have difficulty even putting into words somehow translates into a validation of the very concrete and specific stories and dogma found in the Bible.

But the conversation never works; it’s all too abstract. I can never connect with them at an emotional level. In order to do that, we need a metaphor.

I am not the first to draw a connection between religion and racism, but I hope to put forward something you can use proactively in a debate.

When a religious person tells you that her “personal experience” is proof that God created the world and sent Jesus Christ to be your personal savior, that is fundamentally no different from a racist who tells you that his “personal experience” is proof that all black people are criminals or that all Jews are cheats.

When it comes to race, we accept that generalizations about a group based merely on reports about individuals within that group are not valid. We also understand that because such generalizations are so obviously unreasonable, the anecdotes upon which they are based cannot truly be the reason for the beliefs. Instead such anecdotes are merely justification masquerading as evidence. When a racist tells you about the lazy Hispanic man he used to know and proceeds to use that acquaintance as “proof” that all Hispanic men are lazy, it is obvious that he began with the racist belief and that his story about his lazy acquaintance is merely an attempt to justify that belief to himself and to you.

In the same way, generalizations about the universe, society, or human nature that are based only on individual self-reports and personal anecdotes are equally invalid. Your religious friend would have you believe that she started with a blank slate and worked from the ground up, that the power of her experience made her particular conclusions about the existence of God inescapable. But, just as with racism, the belief comes first. Once the bigotry has been firmly established in her mind, she begins to look for “proof” to justify it.

You can apply this analogy to debates in multiple ways. If a religious person starts to tell you how their belief in God is based on “personal experience,” then you can start by asking them whether the principle is universal. Do they accept all beliefs that are supported by individual personal experiences? If it is valid for them to assert a belief about God based on their self-reported personal experiences, then they must accept all forms of religion, racism, or political beliefs that are “supported” by personal experience. (They must also, by the way, accept your assertion that they are wrong based on your personal experiences.)

You might also try changing the subject a little by asking them how they would confront a racist. What tactics would they use to persuade the racist that his personal experiences did not validate his conclusions? Will the religious person accept that the racist’s use of “personal experience” to back up his racism is invalid?

A note of caution: making such a clear and undeniable analogy between religion and racism is going to make the conversation extremely volatile. I suspect that even the best-case scenario for this interaction will be that the conversation comes to an immediate end, and that the person you were talking to experiences a personal crisis over the coming days and weeks. It’s okay to bring the conversation to a close at that point so they can think; if you pressure them for an immediate response they will probably become too defensive for any productive resolution to be achieved. If in the end their integrity outweighs their bigotry, then they may come around. But if they cling more tightly to their bigotry even after you have exposed it as such, then I doubt they will ever talk to you again.

If you use this analogy in conversations with people, please let me know how it works for you. Also let me know if you think of any other ways to deal with the problem of “proof by personal experience.”

Nash Yielding is a student at North Carolina State University studying Science, Technology, and Society. Visit his blog.