False Argument #25: What Have We Learned From Religion, Revelation, Prayer?

Often in discussions of (a)theism, an atheist or unbelieving skeptic will say, "We've learned tons of things from science. What have we learned from religion, revelation or prayer?"

I've heard several variants of this argument that are more or less categorically identical, and much like the first move of a pawn influences the outcome of a game of chess, the subsequent responses also tend to follow with a uniform predictability: The believer either answers unsatisfactorily or not at all, or if the believer does answer, the atheist or unbelieving skeptic will typically deny that what the believer offered was actually learned from religion, revelation or prayer.

This is where I've seen most discussions on the matter come to a screeching halt. This is unfortunate, as the believer need only to realize that what's going on is an rhetorical farce, then rebut the atheist or unbelieving skeptic with a few quick and sturdy replies.

Let's take a look at an actual atheist's position in more detail:

What have we learned from religion? Doing science, even by theologians is not learning from religion. If one is doing science, it doesn't mean that religion can take the credit simply because the person in question is a theist… What have we learned by imploring god for an answer to something? What have we learned through prayer or divine revelation? These are all pretty much the same question and they all hinge on what we as humans can say has advanced our knowledge. I contend that our knowledge has never been advanced by prayer or revelation. That people have come away from such things and simply made stuff up, and sometimes they gotten a lucky guess, but we still couldn't say that we knew the thing they asserted until we went and did the hard scientific work of actually finding out how the world really works.
Anon, Answer Bearer, April 21, 2009 10:34 AM & 11:24 AM

It's important to note that there are really multiple claims going on here. The first is that we've learned nothing from religion. The second is that revelation has never advanced human knowledge. The third is that prayer has never advanced human knowledge. Given the difficulty in proving many negative claims, especially unfalsifiable ones, I wonder why Anon is willing to offer an unfalsifiable three-tiered negative such as this, but that's a different story.

There are at least two methods of defense a believer can embark upon when met with this argument, and many valid responses can be made. Let's address the first claim first, that we've not learned anything from religion.

The first method of defense the believer might attempt is to simply provide what the atheist or unbelieving skeptic asks for. This seems easy enough, because in reality, like anything else out there, religion has taught us much, both positive and negative. I used to work with a Chaplain who had no shortage of stories detailing the many positive things religion taught inmates over the weekend. My own mother has shared in great detail how reading the Bible taught her how to better handle angry people. Another person remarked that reading scriptures from Buddhism taught her how to be a better, more ethical human being. In history, the Babylonians made important advances in astronomy that cannot be separated from their religious cosmology. In the positive, religion has taught us about the importance and depth of love we might have for ourselves and one another. In the negative, it has also forced us to confront the penultimate stubbornness of the human spirit, a stubbornness that can run so deep as to obscure our very perceptions of the universe we live in – and hopefully we've learned. 

We could go on, but there's really no use, as answers like these typically fail to convince the atheist or unbelieving skeptic, who will often simply deny that religion was ever the source of the learning offered. At this point, it can become a game of semantics. To me, reading and studying the Bible counts as religion, as does meditating on Buddhist scriptures. Regardless, there's a very logical and insurmountable reason why it is impossible to stray from this formula without one side acquiescing to the other.

Atheists and unbelieving skeptics already disbelieve in the main object of religion, revelation and prayer, which is God. So what possible benefit could become of suggesting an advance in knowledge was bestowed upon us by a being the interlocutor doesn't even believe exists? This seems good for little more than argument, and not the type of argument that's likely to resolve logically or without strong medicine. The atheist or unbelieving skeptic can simply take any examples offered, denounce that religion was their source, and just re-attribute them to something else. Ironically, this strategy can backfire in a way that is really most unfortunate for the atheist or unbelieving skeptic, but we'll get to that another day.

As far as the second and third claims, they are annoying flankings, but fortunately they lead us directly into the second line of defense. If the first claim was good for little more than an argument, the challenge to prove that revelation or prayer have actually provided advances in knowledge is good for little more than a laugh. If the primary line of defense is to adequately answer the challenge, the second line of defense is complementary and exposes the challenge as unscientific.

If Lister gave divine revelation the credit for his ideas on the use of carbolic acid in the scientific practice of antiseptics, how on Earth can that claim possibly be falsified? If Whewell gave prayer the credit for any of his interesting studies on ocean tides, how can that ever amount to anything beyond a just-so story?

The believer's complementary line of defense is to ask the atheist or unbelieving skeptic for an explanation of how we might prove that an advance in knowledge resulted from revelation or prayer. Since the closest they can possibly hope to get is to concede that a certain advance in knowledge is unexplainable, the atheist or unbelieving skeptic proposes an unfalsifiable challenge. This is the nail in their coffin.

Really, why would any atheist or unbelieving skeptic ever accept anything some believer claimed was revealed by God in prayer? These are the very same people that consistently and vehemently denounce attribution of unexplainable healing to God as superstitious and unscientific. On that logic, why should they accept the attribution of an unexplainable advance in knowledge to God? Such intrinsically demands that they believe God exists. Hence, I can only conclude that the argument here is an rhetorical device suffering from the same set of currently insurmountable epistemological challenges inherent in MiracleQuest, and I find that interesting.

Why do so many atheists and unbelieving skeptics sustain their disbelief by the believer's failure to provide currently epistemological impossibilities? Might this represent the converse phenomenon of the intrepid believer who keeps his or her religion safely tucked away in a little glass box?