religious experience Flashcards
william james
Ineffable – the experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words
Noetic – some sort of knowledge or insight is gained
Transient – the experience is temporary
Passive – the experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen.
“defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words”
eg. of St Teresa of Avila
James believes the best way of defining mystical experiences is based on the impact that they have on the recipient, not the cause(s) of them.
unlike hallucinations, religious experiences can have positive and profound life-changing effects, which we can observe
- argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects
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
as Russell argues, this pragmatic theory of truth is not a good alternative to empirical verification: “The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence in favour of its truth.”
Otto = Concept of the ‘numinous’ as a unique, ineffable, and non-rational encounter with the divine, characterised by awe and majesty.
pluralists
James’ explanation is that religious experiences really are coming from a higher spiritual reality. Writers such as W. Stace developed this argument much more explicitly, claiming that the universality of certain features of religious experiences is good evidence that they are real.
hume + mackie - each religion’s experiences are cancelled out by the force of the other religions’ evidence that that religion is not true. Mackie explains this with an analogy of 20 defendants each of whom accuses the other 19 of committing the crime
Paul Knitter is a pluralist who makes a similar argument about religious experiences. He points to a classic metaphor. Each religion is a well. 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
swinburne
Religious experience can be evidence for God that justifies belief in God, so long as it survives standard empirical testing.
this doesn’t prove God, but it is evidence that by itself does give a rational reason to believe in God.
The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to.
The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to
If someone dismisses those experiences, when there is no reason to not believe them, then they are irrational because they are dismissing evidence without reason
these principles should apply to religious experiences, as to deny them would be to deny epistemic principles we use in daily life. Alston agrees, and argues that religious experiences are just like any other perceptual experiences, so these principles should apply to them as well
‘An omnipotent and perfectly good creator will seek to interact with his creatures’. E.g. answer prayer, give support, encourage love, make himself available.
consequence of swinburne
the overwhelming force of these experiences make them ‘self-authenticating’ for those who have had them. For the subject of the experience, it may well be irrational for them to deny that this experience is good evidence of a higher power
consequence - There are many religious experiences that we have evidence are caused by someone being a known liar, or by psychological/physiological influences.
If we do have evidence for a naturalistic cause of a religious experience, such as that someone was fasting, on drugs or mentally ill etc, then we have evidence against their experience counting as evidence for God
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: is a mere experience of God sufficient evidence to justify belief in God?
As Kant argued, God is not an object in space and time, he is part of the ‘noumenal’ reality. Humans, by contrast, are limited by their senses, meaning they can only experience ‘phenomenal’ reality. Therefore, humans cannot access God through their senses, meaning religious experiences cannot be understood as unions with God.
freud psychological challenge
Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’ and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces.
We have an instinctual animalistic fear of death which we can’t control but we can control our human thoughts and cognitions.
humans can be so desperately afraid of death and the difficulties of life that they can delude themselves that there is a God who will take care of them and an afterlife.
Also, Freud argued that the reason Christians call God ‘father’ is because they have a desire to be a child forever. It’s a desire for eternal innocence in the face of the painful reality of the world.
Freud thought these psychological forces were so strong that they resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience.
V. Frankl argues that REs are part of a natural and subconscious healing process that help people to deal with trauma and crisis. Richard Dawkins agrees, and argues that the infinite capacity of the mind to fill the gaps and make up fantastic explanations for our ignorance of the straightforwardly natural.
Jung - Religious experience as a manifestation of the collective unconscious, embodying archetypes and the self’s quest for wholeness.
freud criticism
The problem with psychological arguments is that while they could be true for many maybe even the majority, it’s hard to argue they are true for all
Freud is currently regarded by most psychologists as being too unempirical in his methods - unscientific, overgeneralised and overly-reductive + impossible to verify them
conversion experiences from one religion to another can’t be explained away as wishful thinking or a fear of death. The person having the experience already believed in a God and an afterlife, so whatever wishful thinking for an afterlife they might have had would already have been satisfied by the religious beliefs of the religion they were already in.
E.g. St Paul on the road to Damascus heard Jesus and was converted from a Jewish persecutor of Christianity to a Christian.
Antony Flew’s conversion from atheism to deism
corporate religious experience
The strengths of corporate experiences is that they can’t be explained by physiological or psychological causes that could only apply to individuals – like mental illness, drugs, alcohol, fasting
The Toronto Blessing is another example. The congregation of a Toronto church felt unusual emotions, some falling around crying, others laughing hysterically. They attributed this to the presence of the holy spirit
+ seeing the Virgin Mary on the Battlefields near Ypres in 1914
there are peculiar psychological dynamics to crowds or groups of people such as mob mentality, mass hysteria and social compliance.
In the middle ages, an entire village would form an angry mob who were all convinced they had seen a witch cast a spell, and would then execute some poor woman. So clearly group delusion is possible.
- the simplest explanation in the case of corporate religious experience.
fundamental theological issues for some corporate experiences.
For example, is God overriding human free will and autonomy by compelling large groups of people to believe in Him via some extraordinary experience? Wouldn’t it be better for us to come to know God on our own? (SEE Epistemic Distance). Alternatively, if it is loving to give groups of people experiences which compel faith, why do some groups get these experiences and not humanity as a whole? - (elitist - Nicholas Lash)
persinger
Persinger poses a scientific challenge to religious experience through his discovery of a physiological explanation of them.
Persinger is a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulated people’s brain waves where they felt the presence of unseen beings.
- doesnt exlude theistic explanations
Arguably Persinger at least demonstrates that religious experiencescouldhave a naturalistic explanation.
V.S. Ramachandran showed through a series of experiments that those prone to TLE tend to be much more receptive to religious experiences. Indeed, some would argue that St Paul’s references to an ‘illness’ in 2 Corinthians 12 and Galatians 4 could have been epilepsy.
use occam razor - searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. 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.
conc
if God’s existence is judged to be unlikely, then the prior probability of religious experiences is low, so they should be rejected in favour of scientific alternative explanations.
However, if God’s existence is judged to be plausible or even likely, then religious experiences can either act as the evidence that ‘tips the balance’ towards God existing (Swinburne) or they can help reinforce and illuminate one’s pre-existing faith.
