John Loftus claims that we should adopt a skeptical predisposition prior to examining the evidence for a set of religious beliefs. He admits that he prefers this stance even to one of complete neutrality, for the seemingly spurious reason that "complete neutrality, while desirable, seems to be practically impossible." (Still, one has to wonder: why not aim to be as neutral - i.e., as impartial, as fair, as focused on the truth - as possible? Why opt for doubt as such?) In adopting a skeptical predisposition towards our own religious faith and then critically examining that faith, we are accepting the challenge of what Loftus calls 'the outsider test for faith' (OTF).
I have addressed Loftus' attempt to present a real argument for the OTF here and concluded that his argument is purely ad hoc and appears to be based on rather absurd assumptions. Loftus also attempts to defend his 'test' from what he takes to be six objections to his OTF here. Let's analyze these and see if he is any more successful in providing a coherent articulation of his position and a plausible argument for it.
1. The first point Loftus addresses - and which he refers to William Lane Craig - is just that the existence of other people with false religious beliefs does not imply that my religious beliefs are false. While Loftus admits that this is true, he nonetheless points to a 'troubling' possibility: "After all, someone can be right if for no other reason than that she just got lucky to be born when and where she did." In other words, someone might hold a true belief without having any rational justification underlying that belief. But in this case, Loftus asks: "how do you rationally justify such luck?" Hmmm... good question? No; in fact, Loftus' question is a silly red herring. There is no suggestion, in the objection under consideration, of rationally justifying luck; rather the point is that what we must be interested in rationally justifying is the truth of the lucky person's religious beliefs, since that is what we would like to know about: are these religious beliefs true? - and this question obviously cannot be answered by pointing out that if religious beliefs B are true, then religious beliefs not-B must be false. This is straightforward logic; and it has nothing to do with basing beliefs "on luck alone," as Loftus suggests.
2. The second objection is essentially that people convert - so explain that! (Apparently Loftus isn't in the habit of troubling to think through strong objections to his highly cherished beliefs.) Well it turns out that Loftus thinks he can explain it (albeit in a highly schematic and tendentious way - he mentions the fact that converts almost universally fail to read his pro-scepticism book before converting to some other faith). But so what? This 'objection' was never a real objection to begin with: people are just as culturally embedded when they convert as otherwise - whether this conversion is to a religious faith or to scepticism -, and even if there were some way to show that the 'cultural-dependence factor' had been minimized in a given conversion, the only relevant consideration would still be the actual cogency of the individual's reasons for converting. Again, Loftus seems quite clueless in regard to the actual issues his argument needs to address.
3. Third, Loftus flat-out denies the claim that the mere disagreement of rational people about some belief does not justify skepticism about that belief. He presents no argument against this objection; he simply rejects it. He writes: "It’s objected that merely because rational people disagree about something [this] does not justify skepticism about a particular claim. On the contrary, I think it can and it does." But obviously mere disagreement of rational people justifies skepticism only if I am unable (or unwilling) to examine the grounds of that disagreement. (To deny this would obviously be to open the door to near-universal skepticism.) If, however, I am willing and able to examine the grounds of disagreement, there is no reason to default to skepticism; instead I should decide which belief is the most plausible and the best justified.
Loftus continues: "The amount of skepticism warranted depends on the criteria I mentioned earlier. Rational people don’t bet against gravity, for instance, because there is evidence for it that was learned apart from what she was taught to believe in a geographically distinct location." But this is nonsense: the geographic location of my classroom has nothing to do with the truth of what is taught in that classroom, and in any case, all learning and all apprehension of evidence - including in regard to gravity - obviously does take place in some geographically distinct location or other - but that is irrelevant.
In any case, in lieu of argument for his strange claim, Loftus does carry on with some unrelated claims (a.k.a. red herrings). For example: "I’m claiming that religious beliefs warrant probably the highest skepticism given the sociological facts." This is perhaps an impressive-sounding claim, until one realizes that Loftus hasn't actually explained how any 'sociological facts' are actually relevant to his claim about the 'highest skepticism' that he supposes to be warranted in the case of religious beliefs.
4. According to the fourth objection, if the believer is unable (or unlikely) to transcend her cultural conditioning when embracing her particular beliefs, then the skeptic is just another 'believer' and his skepticism is just as culturally dependent. Loftus' solution to this problem is to assert that, because the skeptic knows about the cultural dependence of his beliefs (and because he knows various other irrelevant 'scientific' facts, about EMR, sound waves, molecules, and the like), he is thereby freed from that cultural dependence, he transcends it. How? Because he learns to doubt what he believes! In other words, mirabile dictu, the skeptic is able to transcend his own cultural conditioning, simply in virtue of being a skeptic. And of course a believer is unable to do this, even if she is aware of the cultural dependence of beliefs, simply because she is not a skeptic. Of course, generally speaking, this kind of argument is known as begging the question, but Loftus seems to be okay with that. (Perhaps he believes that his skepticism also absolves him of the need to follow the most basic rules of informal logic - although one would hope that, being a sceptic, he wouldn't place too much faith in this point.)
5. Fifth, Loftus writes: "In arguing that one’s religious faith is overwhelmingly adopted by the “accidents of birth,” have I committed the informal genetic fallacy of irrelevance? This fallacy is committed whenever it’s argued that a belief is false because of the origination of the belief." Here Loftus is confusing things right out of the gate: The informal genetic fallacy of irrelevance is not just committed whenever it’s argued that a belief is false because of the origination of the belief; it is committed whenever it's argued that a belief's truth or falsity depends on its origin. In any case, Loftus clarifies his position: "I’m not arguing that these faiths are false because of how believers originally adopted them. I’m merely arguing believers should be skeptical of their culturally adopted religious faith because of how they first adopted them." Again, however, Loftus is mistaken about the real issue and commits a version of the genetic fallacy in spite of himself: it is simply not a matter of how one first adopted one's beliefs that matters when it comes to assessing their truth or their warrant; what matters is the reasons that actually exist for holding those beliefs. To ignore this fact is indeed to commit the genetic fallacy.
6. Finally Loftus addresses the complaint that he has simply begged the question: "One final objection asks whether this is all circular. Have I merely chosen a different metaphysical belief system based upon different cultural factors?" Naturally he denies it: "I deny this, for I have very good initial grounds for starting out with skepticism based upon the sociological, anthropological and psychological facts." - But as we have seen, Loftus' sociological, anthropological and psychological (not to mention geographical) facts are in fact irrelevant to, rather than supportive of, the OTF and its a priori skepticism. So his claim that he has "very good initial grounds for starting out with skepticism" is simply false. Rather he has very ad hoc initial grounds.
It seems, then, that Loftus' OTF indeed has very little going for it. Even if someone wanted to, it is unclear how he would go about taking the test; but more importantly there seems to be no good reason for wanting to take the test in the first place. If Loftus wanted to clarify his thinking on this subject, I would suggest that he begin by focusing his energy on thinking about the first objection here, and this time restrain himself from wandering off, dragging a red herring behind him. Of course, it seems to me that virtually all of his arguments are such tissues of confusion that there doesn't seem to be much reason for optimism regarding the eventual outcome of his reflections - but that is no excuse for him to not begin where he can and at least give a (more) honest effort next time around.
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