We live in a religiously pluralistic world. Taking into account all human cultures and societies around the world, there are thousands of mutually exclusive religious worldviews and belief systems. Furthermore, most people hold to the religious or metaphysical beliefs which they believe because of how they were raised and the influence of their particular surrounding culture.
Religious skeptics try to argue that this reality of religious pluralism points to the conclusion that, no matter what religious beliefs one has, they are most likely false. Atheist John Loftus argues that, in order to objectively evaluate the reasonableness of their religious faith, Christians must adopt an “outsider test for faith.”[1]John W. Loftus. Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, Revised and Expanded Edition (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012), 64-78. This outsider test for faith begins with religious skepticism, assuming that no supernatural entities exist, and assumes that Christian faith has the burden of proof in proving to a religious skeptic that it is true.
At first glance, it may seem like this “outsider test for faith” provides a consistent, neutral standpoint from which to judge the reasonableness of various religious faiths. However, what it actually does is to demand that everyone assume that one particular religious/metaphysical worldview, philosophical naturalism, is true, and then judge the reasonableness of all other worldviews based on the preconceived notion that this one particular worldview is true. This is not a neutral or objective standpoint at all. The outsider test for faith is self-refuting, since it itself assumes one particular religious perspective in order to evaluate the reasonableness of other religious belief systems.
Loftus argues that presuming religious skepticism is not self-refuting, since there is a big difference between confidently affirming the “bold and ambitious metaphysical beliefs” of major world religions and modestly affirming continued skepticism.[2]Loftus, 73. However, as I argue in this previous series, there is a lot of good evidence that miraculous, supernatural events occur. Given this, it is actually the position of religious skepticism, believing that nothing supernatural at all exists, which is a “bold and ambitious metaphysical belief.” Religious skepticism is not a privileged epistemological position; if anything, it requires even more faith than many other religious belief systems. If there were any truly religiously neutral position, it would be a position which acknowledges the existence of supernatural beings, but is agnostic about what the exact nature of these beings is and how to properly relate to them.
We do live in a religiously pluralistic world, and most people do believe the religious beliefs which they believe because of how they were raised and the influence of their particular surrounding culture. But atheism is just one particular religious perspective among many within this reality of religious pluralism. Most Christians are Christians because that is how they were raised. But most atheists are atheists because that is how they were raised. We simply cannot draw any conclusions about which particular religious worldview is true or false from the fact of religious pluralism.
Most people believe what they believe about every sort of topic simply because that is how they were raised. As Loftus points out, “we are overwhelmingly products of our time” with regard to “moral, political, religious, and cultural beliefs.”[3]Loftus, 66-67. It would be unreasonable to conclude from this that everyone must immediately adopt a skeptical position of being amoral, apolitical, and lacking any culture. And it is just as unreasonable to conclude from this that everyone must immediately adopt a skeptical position of irreligion.
The argument against Christian belief from religious pluralism ignores the fact that many intelligent, educated people do convert to Christianity from other religious perspectives, including atheism. We may be deeply influenced by our upbringing and culture, but we are not determined by them. It is possible for people to seek the truth and to change their minds about important things when they have good reasons for doing so.
Loftus argues that most Christians do not assess the reasonableness of Christianity in an objective manner, since humans have immense cognitive biases and our brains are not very well designed for arriving at objective truth. However, he himself acknowledges that, in this, “we are all in the same boat.”[4]Loftus, 71. Cognitive bias is just as much a problem for atheists as it is for adherents of any religious worldview. Recognizing this, we all should just try our best to be reasonable people and to seek the truth, rather than assuming that only those who disagree with us do so because of their cognitive biases.
So, there is no genuinely neutral, objective outsider test for faith. Everyone is always viewing the world from one particular perspective among many, none of which has a privileged status. In order to reasonably believe Christanity, Christians do not need to assume it is false and then prove it to be true using the standards of reasonableness of some other particular worldview. They just need to demonstrate that, overall, it is a more reasonable way of looking at the world than the alternatives.