The Common Consent Argument for Hinduism

Most people are very convinced!

You’ve only just exited the birth canal. Crying from the light and the cold, you know nothing about the world. Suddenly, the doctor slaps you and says: “There are 10 billion people on this planet, and 95% of them think the capital of Spain is Madrid.”

Question: given this information, do you get evidence that the capital of Spain is Madrid?

Plausibly, you do. The fact that 95% of people have converged on this belief doesn’t make it true, and nor does it prove that it’s the case—for all you know, Spain’s capital might be North Carolina; but this convergence of popular opinion—the common consent of the masses—does give you some evidence that Madrid is the Spanish capital.

Frequently, in other areas of our lives, we rely on common consent reasoning to form beliefs. To swipe an example from Thomas Kelly, “if I initially believe that this week’s recycling is scheduled to be picked up tomorrow, but I subsequently learn that everyone else on our block thinks that the pick-up is scheduled for today (perhaps I observe that others have already placed their recycling bins on the curb this morning), then I will change my view.”¹

In general, this is a responsible way to think—and if you don’t think this way, you’re a dolt. It’s more likely your neighbours would think the recycling is collected today if it is than if it isn’t. Thus, the fact that everyone’s putting their recycling out is evidence today is the day it’s being collected.

According to the Common Consent Argument (a once glorious argument that’s now fallen out of favour among philosophers) the fact that most people believe in a God is, almost trivially, some evidence for theism.

If God exists and he loves us, he’d have some reason to want people to believe in him. After all, in general, its hard to form a loving relationship with someone who doesn’t believe you exist. So if God wants a relationship with us—something he plausibly would want, if he loves us—odds are high he’d ensure that belief in his existence was widespread.

But if there is no God, there’d be no fact about reality that’s as invested (metaphorically speaking) in ensuring that belief in God’s existence is widespread. Thus, widespread belief in God is somewhat more surprising on atheism than on theism. (And so, yada yada, widespread belief in God is some evidence favouring theism of atheism.)

This is a good argument. Widespread theistic belief is some evidence for theism. But, I believe in giving credit where credit is due. While widespread theistic belief is evidence for a generic form of theism—one that spans across religions—common consent considerations favour Hinduism more than any other religion. (Well, not quite: the common consent considerations I’ll defend might buttress other Indian religious traditions. But since Hinduism is bigger than, say, Jainism, Hinduism wins out overall.)

In his article, “The Common Consent Argument for the Existence of Nature Spirits”, philosopher Tiddy Smith blows the lid off the traditional Common Consent apologetic, which arrives at the existence of a High God—that is: a supreme creator God, who is reality’s ultimate governor—but goes no further than that, wimpishly hanging on to monotheism.

According to Smith, Common Consent reasoning gives its strongest support not to a High God, but to animism: the belief in nature spirits. More specifically, according to animism (an idea which—admittedly—is pretty nebulous theological category), “some natural phenomena have spirits or an interior life akin to our own. There may be something that it is like to be a particular boulder, or mountain, or river. And these spirits are to some degree causally efficacious.”²

Why would this be so? Well, plausibly, while widespread belief in X is some evidence for X, there’d be even stronger evidence for X if that belief was arrived at independently, by societies that had nothing to do with one another.

Think about it: in daily life, if two people independently arrive at the same belief, that gives you more evidence for said belief than if one of those two people had adopted it on the say-so of the other. The same is true in science: if most biologists accept some theory about the evolution of wings, for instance, that’s a good reason to take their word for it. But the evidential situation would be even better if, say, the consensus had formed after 33 scientists independently arrived at that theory, without checking each others’ notes beforehand.

Given this, the Common Consent evidence is at its strongest when gathered from historically independent religious traditions. But according to a recent analysis of the religious beliefs of 33 geographically isolated hunter-gatherer societies (pooled from Sub-Saharan Africa, Austronesia, Far Eastern Russia, and The Americas), all of them—100%—believed in nature spirits³.

Thus, since animism is the religious belief most commonly arrived at by geographically and historically independent societies, Common Consent reasoning supports animism better than it supports the existence of a High God.

At this point, the gods are getting angry. We haven’t mentioned them yet at all. In between belief in nature spirits and belief in a High God, there are a range of minor deities humans have believed in, and still do. Some of these gods might be classable as nature spirits, but some transcend the limits of particular trees, rocks, and waterfalls. Such polytheism (or henotheism, if paired with belief in an ultimate, capital-G God) is extremely widespread, and has been arrived at by different societies independently of one another.

But now consider Hinduism. In the Hindu tradition, there is widespread belief in a High God (Brahman) and in subordinate devas, or deities, who are thought to be incarnations, or manifestations, or emanations, or creations of the High God. Animistic belief and practice is also widespread.

In most other religions, belief in at least one of these sorts of divine beings is absent. The fact that Hinduism has bagsied all three means that Hinduism hoovers up more common consent evidence than most other world religions.

Here’s an analogy for my Christian readers. Suppose nearly every society from the dawn of man to the present day had independently arrived at at least one of the following three beliefs:

1. That God exists, and is a Trinity.

2. That God exists, and will at some point become incarnate as a man.

3. That God exists, and sees vicarious sacrifice as the most fitting prerequisite for the forgiveness of sins.

Even if no societies before Christendom had affirmed all three of these propositions at once, I think you’ll agree that that would be evidence for Christianity over other religions.

As it turns out, though, this is not the world we live in. The Common Consent evidence we have best supports, not Christianity, but Hinduism.

1. Kelly, T. (2011). “Consensus Gentium: Reflections on the ‘Common Consent’ Argument for the Existence of God.” In K. J. Clark and R. J. Vanarragon (Eds.), Evidence and Religious Belief. New York: Oxford University Press: p. 38.

2. Smith, T. (2020). The common consent argument for the existence of nature spirits. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98(2), p. 342.

3. Peoples, H., P. Duda, and F.W. Marlowe 2016. Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion, Human Nature 27/3: 261–82.