Essays in Philosophy of Religion (Jostarhaye Falsafeh Din)

The Common Consent Argument and Religious Disagreement

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Amirhossein Khodaparast

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Research Institute of Iranian Wisdom and Philosophy, Tehran, Iran

Abstract
Introduction: One of the very old and popular arguments for the existence of God is the argument known as the consensus gentium argument/common consent argument. According to this argument, the fact that so many people have acknowledged the existence of God throughout human history, and many of our contemporaries, without colluding with each other or even being influenced by each other, believe in the existence of God, shows that there is a God. In this paper, first, we briefly introduce the Persian writings about the common consent argument, some of which have compared this argument with the innate-based argument on the existence of God. Then, to show a schema of this argument, we track its history back to Cicero and Seneca and get two readings of it: the reading based on inference to the best explanation and the reliability-based reading. Both of these readings are faced with the challenge that one can present a similar but atheistic version of theirs on the non-existence of God and conclude that the fact that so many people have denied the existence of God throughout human history, and many of our contemporaries, without colluding with each other or even being influenced by each other, do not believe in the existence of God, shows that there is no God. After raising this challenge, we look at it from the perspective of religious disagreement between theists and atheists, and considering their epistemic peerhood, we conclude that regardless of the criticisms that have been brought to both readings of the common consent argument, the mere religious disagreement can be a higher-order evidence that none of the versions of the common consent argument on the existence of God can prove their results. In fact, the theoretical framework of the epistemology of disagreement provides a new possibility for the critical evaluation of the common consent argument and shows its inadequacy.
Methodology: This research proceeds according to the method of critical philosophical analysis, and in it, the conceptual and critical analysis of the most important views about the common consent argument on the existence of God will be at work.
Findings: The common consent argument on the existence of God can be examined in the form of two different readings: inference to the best explanation and the reliability-based reading. The inference to the best explanation reading is to show that the best explanation of the preponderance of belief in God throughout human history and in vast geographical and cultural areas is to consider this belief as true. The reliability-based reading it to show that our trust in our own cognitive faculties necessitates our trust in the cognitive powers of others. Since throughout history and in vast geographical and cultural areas, a very large number of people have believed in God, our epistemic trust in ourselves obliges us to epistemic trust in them and believe in God. The dominant form of reading the common consent argument has been reading it in the form of inference to the best explanation, but the criticisms on this reading lead us to the reliability-based reading of it. However, it is not difficult to consider an atheistic version of the common consent argument as opposed to a theistic version of it: Since throughout human history and in vast geographical and cultural areas, a very very large number of people have not believed in God, our epistemic trust in ourselves obliges us to have epistemic trust in them and not believe in God. These two versions are apparently parallel, but one challenge, in particular, threatens the theistic version on two levels: the challenge of religious disagreement. At the first level, the challenge of disagreement with atheists may show that in the conditions of epistemic peerhood, the disagreement of atheists with theists may be considered as evidence against the common consent argument. On the second level, which is more important and influential, systematic religious disagreements between theists destroys the possibility of epistemic trust in their relative consensus. These disagreements show that there are disagreements behind this apparent consensus that make us doubt the way the religious belief-forming process works.
Discussion and Conclusion: The common consent argument on the existence of God, which is essentially based on a kind of epistemic consensus, faces the important challenge of religious disagreement, an epistemic challenge that seems to prevent it from achieving its goal. Therefore, this argument, even in its new versions formed by philosophers such as Linda Zagzebski and Thomas Kelly, is not a complete argument.

Keywords

The Common Consent Argument
Religious Disagreement
Inference to the Best Explanation
Epistemic Peerhood
Pragmatic Encroachment
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