Religious experience Flashcards
religious experience
competent adult
- a posteriori
A02: Is it a problem that R.E are generated by the mind?
RESPONSE
1) God is personal, her relates to people in many ways, through prayer, through incarnation of Jesus etc.
2) Christians thus, don’t have to sit + wait for God to reveal something to them; they can reach out to God. Those who experience God through nature see God’s power, glory,majesty, love in nature itself - James says “the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living presence” humans can reach out to this presence” humans can reach out to presence.
3) Equally, James says no difference how experience is arrived at. It could happen by TLE/drugs, experiencer takes what need from it.
William James
Huh
Walter Stace
I
Nature of religious experiences
He
Swinburne’s principle of credulity + testimony
- rejected attempts to prove God’s existence through logic, so based his argument on probability that God exists.
- 2 principles that verify R.E:
- Credulity: in absence of special considerations, how things seems to a person is how they really are. Essentially about believability of individuals own personal +private experience.
- Testimony: in absence of special considerations; should believe what people tell us. Essentially about reliability of what others claim about personal experiences.
Swinburne’s special considerations
For testimony
S.C
If person claiming experience has been know to tell lies in the past
Rejection of S.C
Having lies in the past doesn’t necessarily mean person is lying now
S.C
Credulity
-S.C
If claim seems beyond realms of possibility
-Rejecting S.C
Just as one claim is false doesn’t mean all are.
S.C
Credulity + testimony
-It’s very difficult to show God was present
Rejection; God is everywhere, burden of proof is with the doubter, not experient
- There are other ways of accounting for experience, eg: Hildegard’s mingrane’s
Rejection; As God underpins all processes, there is no reason why he should not work through intense electrical activity of the brain
FActs
R.E contribute to probability arguments and increase likelihood of validity to more than 50%
Challenges of verifying religious experiences
1) We have onl
Religious responses to verifying R.E
-Confirms Abrahamic faith; + is the founding of religions
Abraham “Believed the lord + he credited it to him as righteousness” Genesis 15
-Inspirational; leading people to God. Abraham’s loyalty, even when hard to understand. Willingness to sacrifice his son through auditory experience.
-life changing; Abraham left Haran at God’s command to go to Canaan,he encouraged his wife to trust + help inspire.
-pilgrimage sites
Challenges of RE from science
- Neurotheology uses R.E can be stimulated through God helmet
- Taking entheogens can produce similar results to G.H
- Ramachandram found evidence to link TLE to R.E, Compared brains of people with + without TLE. Measured patients skin resistance change. “Science of neurotheology has revealed it’s too simplistic to see religion as spiritually inspired or result of social conditioning”
- TLE suffers are more susceptible to R.E
- Suggested figure St. Paul, had R.E could’ve been TLE
- Micheal Persinger
Responses to challenges R.E from science
- Ramachandam only suggests TLE sufferers can have R.E. He believes our brains have developed to believe God (such a being) has influenced these experiments for communication. He doesn’t completely disregard God’s existence.
Strengths of R.E
- They are ubiquitous (occur in every culture in history) . It’s life-changing + brings out the best in people. Healing that William James calls “sick souls” + producing saintliness.
- Religious experiences differ from culture to culture but only because those experiences are ineffable and beyond language; the experient has to express what they have seen in culturally-specific ideas, symbols and images. Besides, mystical experiences are far more common: what Schleiermacher calls “a sense of absolute dependence”
