Why the Outsider Test had better go big or go home

I have been arguing that John Loftus's outsider test for faith (the claim that people who adhere to a religion are obliged to take a critical test in which they view their faith as an outsider, and if they do they will *see* that it is false) has some pretty serious weaknesses. Here is a recap as well as a note on why John's continued attempt to exempt atheists from his test fails.

John Loftus limits the outsider test to people of religious faith and thus exempts people who do not adhere to a religious faith. Yet he provides no good reason to do so. The main reasons he seems to do so are (a) geographical distribution: religions largely map onto geographic regions which should apparently cause us to suspect all of them, (b) extraordinary claims: religions make claims that strike people as extraordinary.

I showed how these two criteria don't work. There are many beliefs that are geographically distributed including various political beliefs. Yet we are under no compunction to submit our political beliefs to a real outsider test, considering that some other form of governance -- sultanate, monarchy, republic -- might be better than the homegrown sort. Or, in my two-party argument, we are under no compunction as good Oregon democrats or Utah republicans to suspend our political allegiance until we vote.

There are many other problems with this geographic distribution thesis. How does one falsify it? I.e. what level of geographic homogeneous distribution must obtain before the outsider test becomes applicable? Good luck establishing that threshold!

What is more, this suggests that a Christian in the United States would perhaps have to subject their beliefs to the outsider test,but not a Christian in Sweden (where the population is largely secular) or Iraq (where it is Muslim).

What about the Jew who is raised in the United States? The vast majority of people in the USA are not Jews, so are they exempted? What if they were raised in a Jewish enclave in New York? Are they now obligated to follow the OTF? What about if their spouse was raised in New Jersey? Does she get exempted?

As for the extraordinary beliefs, I noted that a universe coming into existence out of nothing and then, through random undirected processes producing organisms that contain the vast stores of biological information in DNA, strikes a lot of smart people as pretty extraordinary. So why don't atheists have to subject themselves to the outsider test based on the extraordinary nature of their beliefs?

(Somebody in the last thread suggested that "extraordinary" should mean "not natural". As I pointed out, that would entail that reports of aliens landing on the White House lawn would be ordinary claims. No, in this discussion extraordinary claims are claims that strike a person as bizarre, strange, very implausible, unbelievable.)

This leads me to conclude that if there is an outsider test it should be applied to all people, atheists included. I hammered the point home by repeatedly coming back to Sweden, a country which can now be described as secular and atheistic. The beliefs of Sweden's atheists are geographically distributed in the same way as Utah's Mormons, and both groups hold beliefs that others find crazy, so why do Sweden's atheists get exempted from the outsider test?

Here's the answer that John Loftus gave in the last thread:

Now, what about people raised as atheists in Sweden? yes, you're correct they learned this on their mama;s knees too. Were they enculturalted? Probably so. Should they test what they were taught by being objective, fair and openminded? Sure, yes. Should they test what they were taught as outsiders? Now here is a problem. How can they? What is the outside perspective for them? Is it from the perspective of a young earth Christian creationist or a young earth Jewish orthodox perspective? 

Here John seeks to exempt the atheist from the test by saying that there are too many perspectives they would be forced to adopt from the outside. Should they become a young earth creationist? An orthodox Jew? Since the atheist cannot reasonably adopt all these outsider perspectives they get exempted from the exercise, I guess.

Wow, doesn't John see that he just blew up his whole argument? A Christian can ask the same thing: which outsider perspective shall she adopt? There are many, many perspectives.

I think that John is ironically distorting what the outsider perspective demands in order to get the Swedish atheist off the hook. The name of his test is the OUTSIDER test. It is not the ATHEIST test. If he is proposing an atheist test in which people of faith assume there is no god or supernatural realm and then consider their beliefs from that perspective, then of course their beliefs will look false because they would have assumed their beliefs to be false in order to take the test. In other words, the test would be a question-begging plea to become atheists.

I am sure John recognizes this so he is more subtle. He doesn't propose an atheist test for faith. Rather, he proposes an outsider test. But then an outsider test doesn't oblige the person taking the test to adopt a new set of beliefs or perspective. It merely asks them to scrutinize the set of claims they do hold with the objective skepticism of an outsider. And this means that the outsider test doesn't require a person to adopt any specific set of beliefs, e.g. young earth creationist or orthodox Jewish. Since the Swedish atheist can suspend and scrutinize their beliefs as surely as anybody else, the Swedish atheist should take the outsider test as surely as the Utah Mormon or the Kentucky Baptist.

Of course, I don't think anybody really needs John's test, Mormon, Baptist or atheist. I think there is a simpler way to being responsible, objective and fair thinkers than a one time, one off test, and that is to develop intellectual virtues that we seek to follow every day in all matters of belief. These virtues parallel in nature and development ethical virtues. And you can pursue them as a Utah Mormon, Kentucky Baptist, or Swedish atheist.

But if you are going to insist on a one-off test for people, it needs to be consistent. As it stands, for John to pose the test to everybody but his own belief community looks like a worrisome form of fundamentalism. All that's missing is a compound in the desert and an electrified fence.