religious experience Flashcards
(11 cards)
what is religious experience
people sometimes refer to it as any kind of experience that happens in a religious context however most people refer to it as a specific life changing religious event
they are often solitary and personal but can be in b ig groups
types include - conversion, mystical , numinous, near death and visions and voices
what is the Toronto blessing
During a sermon given by the Pastor, R. Clark, eyewitnesses gave strikingly similar accounts of a ‘blessing’ that was given.
What was experienced was ‘like an explosion’ as people were ‘knocked off their feet by the Spirit of God’.
About 80% of the congregation were felled. Some lay still; some trembled or shook; some danced; others laughed; some shouted and others cried.
The event was viewed as an ‘outpouring of the Holy Spirit’
the experiences set out here are experienced corporately by congregations – and there is clear consensual evidence from eyewitnesses as to the accuracy of what has been observed.
what was the ideas of Friedrich schleiermacher and why is the argument weak
thought religious experience was at the heart of faith
he believes religious experience is self-authenticating - requires no other testing to see if its genuine
he called religion ‘a sense and taste for the infinite’
weak Argument- need evidence for validity - this becomes clearer when you look at the case of the lockness monster - why would we believe someone had saw it based on there statement alone especially when the background knowledge of such a creature is minimal (same with God)
Richard Dawkins agrees with this and argues along these lines in his book ‘the God Delusion’ - ‘God is like the tooth fairy : you can dismiss anyone who tells you they’ve experienced them because there is no evidence for such a creature’
what does Richard Swinburne believe
‘basic principle of rationality’ - those who do not have a certain type of experience ought to believe others when they say they have (barring evidence which would make us disbelieve them like they are a known liar or have schizophrenia) - even says if we didn’t do this we would have almost non-existence knowledge of geography, history or science.
links to principle of testimony - ‘all other things being equal, other peoples experiences are likely to be as they report them to be”
Swinburne along with William Alston believe that religious experience has a prima facie evidential force - true unless disproved
overall arguing that we need evidence to disprove a Religious experience not evidence to prove one
“what one seems to perceive is probably so” - Swinburne
however, is a mere experience of God sufficient evidence to justify belief in God? Arguably the existence of God is an extraordinary claim which therefore might require extraordinary evidence.
what does William James believe
he wrote the book ‘the varieties of religious experience’
which aimed to take as objective stance as he could where he would look at first hand accounts of Religious experience and assess them
he identified 4 main qualities of Religious experiences
ineffability ( hard to express in normal language), noetic quality (important truths not found through reason), transience (short) and passivity (feels as though experience is being controlled by something outside of themselves)
R experiences can be more valid if they fit these and also have a lasting positive effect on someone eg becoming less selfish
he concluded that it was reasonable to believe in these religious experiences and claimed that it was not reasonable for people to reject the clear evidence of them
James pointed to the case study of an Alcoholic who was unable to give up alcohol but then had a religious experience, after which he was able to give up the alcohol. After the experience, they had gained power which they lacked before. James would argue that this is evidence for the validity of the experience
however, James might be right about most hallucinations, but sometimes they actually can be life changing. If a hallucination happens to fit with certain beliefs a person might have then it might be life-changing even though it isn’t real. If an Atheist hallucinates a person walking down a road, that won’t change their life, but if a theist hallucinates an angel, it might be life changing. Yet, it would still be a hallucination
what does Rudolph Otto believe
he was a protestant theologian and in his book ‘the idea of the holy’ tried to identify what is was about religious experiences that made them religious
criticisms of Religious experience
Schizophrenia- medical condition that causes detachment from reality, hallucinations and delusions - many religious experiences have been down to schizophrenia- 1 in 300 people have schizophrenia
a study done in Germany showed that around 60% of schizophrenic people have gone through something that could be described as a Religious experience- reporting god speaking to them, being told they are a prophet ect
Ludwig Feuerbach - german philosopher - religious experiences have origins in the human mind rather than actually being from God - in his book ‘the essence of christianity’ he argued that when people think they are experiencing the presence of God they are in fact worshipping only there human nature as ‘christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling mans unattainable desires’
people take the best of human nature - kind compassionate ect and project them outside of themselves - Religious experience is with a god they created themselves in there mind
sigmund freud - furthered Feuerbachs idea -
freud= founder of modern psychology
he was first to recognise that human mind works on more than one level - people have conscious as well as unconscious mental processes.
Religious experiences are actually unconscious mental processes projected by ourselves for coming up with God and the desire for a perfect father figure
thought people who think religious experiences are real were fooling themselves -
Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’.
person lost in a desert can be so desperate for water that they hallucinate it. This is called a mirage.
however - Freud’s theory might work well against mere visions, which we know can be created by the brain due to desperate wish-fulfilment such as in the mirage case but in other cases like the toronto blessing this is harder
Donald winnicott - psychologist who studied childhood and in particular the attachment children have to a ‘transitional object’ like a teddy where a child clings to the illusion of a toy eg thinking the teddy is hungry while still knowing its just a toy. he argued people cannot do without illusions like this even as adults however some people have trouble making the distinction between reality and illusions and have what he calls ‘hallmark of madness’ and these are the people who often experience religious experiences
Marx - ‘religon is the opium of the people’ - stops people seeing the reality of there situation mean religious experiences are peoples minds trying to deal with there Situation.
who is Theresa of Avila
women who had a series of Religious experiences which were so profound she actually felt pain ‘the pain was so great, that it made me moan’
however she was known to have temporal lobe epilepsy and hallucinations is a symptom
what is conversion experience
they can be dramatic or they can be gentler and slower develop
Volitional Conversion: This is where conversion is a gradual process
Self-Surrender Conversion: This is where in a more dramatic manner the individual is aware of some other force or power at work
it is when someone abandons there old way of living and adopts a new one based on an inner experience where they are convinced it comes from God
William James - ‘to say that a man is ‘converted’ means…that religious aims for the habitual centre of his energy’
for him if the experience had a positive effect on the person then it is valid
conversion of Saul - ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? - he then becomes Paul
Edwin Starbuck (studied with James) looked at 14- 17 year olds who went through conversion experience and came to the conclusion the move through adolescence is one that naturally involves a form of conversion experience, as the individual negotiates a route from childhood through to the wider horizons and yet more specific targets of adulthood.
Starbuck’s research suggested that religious conversion tended to shorten the period of stress and anxiety. - therefore is a mental change not god reaching out
James - believed that conversion experiences is Something that was experienced as being very real by those who had them –with divine agency being the effective power that causes the conversion commitment
thought that whether a conversion was seen as a natural process or not, it was a consequence of divine agency.
strengths of religious experiences
research by the religious experience research centre as the university of Wales found that up to 40% of people report having experiences that have some kind go higher power - not everyone can be lying
Persinger’s physiological challenge to religious experience
Persinger is a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulated people’s brain waves and sometimes caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings.
This seems to show that religious experiences originate from the brain, not anything supernatural like a God. Religious experiences are just an unusual state of the brain.
However, maybe that brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience. Also, we know we can cause hallucinations by manipulating the brain with drugs like LSD. This shouldn’t necessarily count against the validity of religious experiences that occur without such manipulations.
His God helmet cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural causes for regular religious experiences, but it can show that they could have a naturalistic cause. In cases like this where we have naturalistic and supernatural explanations competing, we can use Ockham’s razor. The naturalistic explanation is the simpler option. If we can explain religious experiences naturalistically, we have no reason to suppose that they have a supernatural cause.
