religious experience

Question 1

4 features that william james says is fond in all religions

Answer 1

• ineffable (beyond language)
• noetic (knowledge gained / insight)
• transient (temporary)
• passive (happens to the person they dont make it happen)

Question 2

what word does williams use to describe relig experiences

Answer 2

mystical

Question 3

what is at the core of religion and what is second hand according to william james

Answer 3

religious experiences
teaching and practcies

Question 4

what does william james say about religious teachings and practices

Answer 4

they are second hand and not what religion is really about

Question 5

What does Paul Knitter, a pluralist, say about religious experience and wells

Answer 5

metaphor of wells - each religion is one and If you get to the bottom a well (through mystical experience) you get down to the underground water that you then realise is also sourcing all the other wells, i.e. all the other religions.

Question 6

alternative, naturalistic explanation for the cross-cultural similarity of the features of religious experiences

Answer 6

human brains hallucinate similarly since we have evolved together

Question 7

how does william james respond to the idea that they are hallucinations

Answer 7

they cannot be since they have profound and life changing effects

Question 8

what did james think the validity of religious experience relied on

Answer 8

the effect they had on people (hes a pragmatist)

Question 9

def of pragmatism

Answer 9

a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us or works, then that is evidence of its truth

Question 10

what case study does william james use to prove the effects of religious experiences

Answer 10

the alcoholic who was unable to give it up until after
- had gained the power to do it
- came from higher spiritual power

Question 11

william james on conversion experiences

Answer 11

-transformation from an unhappy divided or imperfect self with a guilty conscience to a more unified happy state.
- strong evidence of validity
- life changing impact

Question 12

eval on james saying experiences are life changing so must be valid

Answer 12

The reason for it being life-changing would only be because of their beliefs about its significance which their own mind is supplying.
It’s not coming from some higher spiritual reality, it’s just a hallucination. This does seem like a simpler explanation.

Question 13

state swinburnes two principles

Answer 13

testimony and credulity

Question 14

explain Swinburnes principles of testimony and credulity

Answer 14

credulity - that your religious experience should be believed unless any reason to suggest otherwise such as psychological influences

testimony - should believe what others tell you unless reason not to such as - known liar

Question 15

what religious experiences does Swinburne reject

Answer 15

those that have sufficient reason to believe they may not be real
- known liars, psychological influences, fasting, drugs or alcohol etc

Question 16

which scholar has an evidence analysis approach to religious experiences

Answer 16

Swinburne !

Question 17

what would Swinburne say to those that dismiss religious experiences without any evidence

Answer 17

that by doing that they are dismissing evidence themselves - irrational

Question 18

evaluation of Swinburne

Answer 18

extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence - a mere experience of god is not enough evidence

Question 19

what two reasons do people believe in god according to freud

Answer 19

• fear of death
• desire to be a child again (god is father)
  the desires are so strong we hallucinate

Question 20

Freuds argument on religious experience (parental figure and moral commands)

Answer 20

• argued people who believed in God were fooling themselves - unable to cope with the idea of adult life so invent a parent figure
• mistake moral commands of the super-ego as the voice of God – which is ‘infantile neurosis’ and something which people should grow out of for better mental health

Question 21

criticisms of freud (5)

Answer 21

• small sample size
• regarded as unempirical by many
• regards religion in a unscientific and overgeneralised way
• fails to explain mystical experience which is unlike no other and goes beyond wish fulfilment
• the need for a father could be an in built mechanism by god to make us closer to him

Question 22

who talked about the god helmet

Answer 22

Presinger !!

Question 23

Presinger on the naturalistic cause of religious experiences

Answer 23

built machine ‘god helmet’ that manipulated brain waves and caused ‘religious experiences’
- many felt presence of unseen beings or god
demonstrates that these experiences do not originate from god they are just a dysfunction with the brain

Question 24

according to presinger religious experiences are not caused by divinity but the…

Answer 24

temporal lobe

Question 25

criticisms of presinger :( 2

Answer 25

Unbiased researchers repeated them without getting the same results. -he got his “sensed presence” effect because his participants were SUGGESTIBLE
- (influenced by him because they knew what was supposed to happen
This means his theory doesn’t explain REAL religious experiences.
- If God exists, he might have created the temporal lobe in order to communicate with us. The fact that our brains are “wired for God” might itself be proof God exists.

Question 26

the argument of negative credulity by Michael Martin and swinburnes response !

Answer 26

An atheist who experiences the absence of God can argue that the world is probably as this experience represents it as being (ie. Godless). The negative experiences of atheists cancel out the positive experiences of religious believers.

response:
only works for positive situations because the absence of evidence does not mean that it doesn’t exist.

(it doesn’t follow that, if you don’t experience something, it probably doesn’t exist.)

Question 27

describe St Pauls religious experience

Answer 27

conversion experience from a jew persecuting christians to a defender and apostle of christianity
- road to Damascus had a religious experience - blind for 3 days after

Question 28

Freuds explanation clashes with conversion experiences - why?

Answer 28

cannot be wish fulfilment if they believed in a religion prior to this that promised an afterlife etc

Question 29

What are corporate religious experiences?

Answer 29

experiences that are shared by a number of people

Question 30

Examples of Corporate experiences: Toronto Blessing

Answer 30

in the 1990s, this phenomenon began at Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship and subsequently spread worldwide. The most widely reported part of this was uncontrolled ‘holy laughter’ as well as crying, shrieking, falling on the floor and barking like a dog.
- Christians claim they were acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit

Question 31

psychological explanations for corporate experiences such as the Toronto blessing

Answer 31

One psychological objection where a group of people can spontaneously start to generate physical symptoms in response to a psychological stimulus such as fear e.g. in history there have been a number of cases where a large number of people have become convinced they caught some serious illness and have displayed symptoms that upon analysis were purely psychological
It’s suggested that the style of worship in evangelical Christian Churches might trigger this

Question 32

evaluation of Toronto blessing and other corporate experiences

Answer 32

why would God want to make someone bark?
Seems strange that if God were to intervene in the world or directly communicate with humans that these events would take place, rather than more useful miracles or messages
– However, could argue that we should not try to understand God or his methods of working but accept his offerings

Question 33

explain the issue of all religions having religious experiences

Answer 33

if all religions have religious experiences and yet most religions cannot be true, then they must be generally unreliable.
- since religions all contradict so Any principle that identifies a religious experience as evidence, inevitably also brings far greater evidence against it.

evaluate with pluralism !! hick would say all experiences are true

Question 34

What does Phillio (Hume) mention in his play
P.. p…

Answer 34

Prior Probability