Religious experience

Question 1

What is a Religious experience?

Answer 1

A person’s experience of a thing or a presence beyond themselves which can change their beliefs and ideas. It is spiritual and often subjective.

Question 2

What is a miracle?

Answer 2

An event which seems to break the laws of science.

Question 3

What are examples of miracles?

Answer 3

There are many examples in the bible for example the feeding of the 5 thousand with 5 loaves and 2 fishes.
Lazarus being healed and rising from the dead.

Question 4

What are the evaluation points for miracles?

Answer 4

There is no scientific explanation for this, so it is hard to disprove. There is lots of evidence in the bible by lots of different people.
However it is hard to prove, as the bible is written millions of years ago. Some would argue people are just telling stories and are isane.

Question 5

What is a conversion?

Answer 5

The act of changing one’s religion or beliefs or the action of persuading someone else to change theirs.

Question 6

What are examples of conversions?

Answer 6

St Paul didn’t believe Jesus was ressurected and killed people who believed. He saw the light and Jesus spoke to him when he was going to damacus to arrest some hebrews, but he changed his ways and preached in favour. Davey Falcus: reputation for violence and taking drugs. Went to church and heard a voice challenging him, Picked up a bible and prayed, the light came in and found peace. Filled with joy and stopped taking drugs. Now praying and preaching all over the world.

Question 7

What are the evaluation points of conversions?

Answer 7

It is difficult to change someone’s whole philosophy, so it seems plausible God influenced it. Many people have experienced his, strength in numbers an evidence from the Bible.
Possibly only have authority for the individual. Could have psychological causes as Freud suggests.

Question 8

What is a corporate experience?

Answer 8

When a group of people say they have experienced God at the same time in the same place.

Question 9

What are examples of corporate experiences?

Answer 9

Toronto blessing- Jan 1994 at Toronto airport vineyard church - drunk on the spirit, laughing, crying and barking in congregation. Holy spirit entering peoples’ bodies, spread across states. Miracle of the sun in Fatima Portugal 1917, roman catholic church accepted that the sun changed colours and danced in the sky as a miracle.

Question 10

What are the evaluation points of corporate experiences?

Answer 10

Suggests experiences form God not just individual imagination.
More numerically valid and shared feeling sand experiences.
Hank Hanegragf - mass hysteria.
William sergeant - down to conditioning.

Question 11

What are prayers?

Answer 11

An attempt to contact and have a conversation with God.

Question 12

What are examples of prayers?

Answer 12

Praying for someone to be converted and they are. Praying you will pay your bills and you do.

Question 13

What are the evaluation points of prayers?

Answer 13

Very common - happen every day.
Many people feel spiritual after praying and things that happen seem to a direct answer to prayer.
Hard to prove effect of prayer, healing could just be down to science.
Answer to prayer could be coincidence.

Question 14

What are visions?

Answer 14

When you see to the future or see a vision with God.

Question 15

What are examples of visions?

Answer 15

Noah had a vision that God was going to flood the world Joseph while being engaged to Mary had a dream telling him not to be afraid although she was pregnant and he was no the father.

Question 16

What are the evaluation points of visions?

Answer 16

Breaks laws of science. lots of examples in the Bible.

Could be in your imagination.

Question 17

What is revelation through scripture?

Answer 17

God making himself known when people are reading the Bible, making them feel he has made a special revelation to them.

Question 18

What are examples of revelation through scripture?

Answer 18

An angel of God revealing his intentions with Mary to Joseph. God revealing how and why Jesus would die.

Question 19

What are the evaluation points revelation through scripture?

Answer 19

Can help believers make decisions and see his will for their lives.
Doesn’t happen to everyone and surely it should.

Question 20

What did Stephen Evans think the 3 elements of religious experience were?

Answer 20

A sense of unity with God and the world. Sense of dependence on God. Sense of separateness. Otherwise it is just in the religious dimensions of experience and is not a religious experience.

Question 21

What did Otto think about religious experiences?

Answer 21

Numinous and contain deeper source of religion. Feelings prior to reason and argument. Unclear if claims true of we have reflections later.

Question 22

What did Wayne Proudfoot think about religious experiences?

Answer 22

Defines religious experiences or events which one takes as religious going round the problem, ordinary events called religious, Believers gives it a supernatural explanation, but not necessarily one, The truth of it is a question.

Question 23

What is a numinous experience?

Answer 23

A feeling of intense awe, wonder or peace. William Wordsworth: Tintern abbey - “ a sense sublime”, looking at nature like the “blue sky” overwhelmed by the beauty of nature.

Question 24

What is the formal argument for religious experience?

Answer 24

People have religious experiences. If somebody experiences something then that entity exits, God exists. A posteriori - after experience.

Question 25

What is the basic form of the argument for religious experience?

Answer 25

The personal experience of God gives rational grounds for an individual to believe in God if that person has experienced God.

Question 26

What is the complex form of the argument for religious experience?

Answer 26

The testimony of other peoples’ experience of God gives rational grounds for anyone to believe in God. The historical argument states the experiences of key individuals have been so great and impressive that they must be true: Muhammed, St Paul. Huge influence after religious experiences. Can’t be making it up, God has to be the cause of some. But always striving for scientific development, world was flat, errors in judgement. Noah saw rainbow thinking it was God, din;t know what rainbows were.

Question 27

What re the key features of Swinburne’s argument?

Answer 27

A posteriori. Subjective, based on own feelings, Deductive - subjective reasoning arrive by reasoning, draw as a logical conclusion.

Question 28

What was Swinburne’s argument of credulity and testimony?

Answer 28

Innocent until proven guilty - William Alston agrees. There are 2 measures that mean experiences are real and God is real, experiences help prove his existence. Start off doubting it, but be open to it. Concludes: “ on our total evidence, theism is more probable than not.” Cumulative - all of the evidence and argument for the existence of God, put together e.g. experience, cosmological and design. If we experience something , we tend to assume that his experience is genuine, same with experiences. God has reason to make himself known and enable humans to bring about god, so wants to make res makes sense. If God exists we should expect religious experiences to take place.

Question 29

What book did Swinburne write?

Answer 29

The existence of God in 1991.

Question 30

How did he define religious experiences?

Answer 30

An experience which seems to the subject to be an experience of God or some other supernatural thing.

Question 31

What was Swinburne’s theory of the principle of credulity?

Answer 31

Credulity = state of willingness to believe in 1 or many people or things in the absence of reasonable proof or knowledge. Those experiencing God should believe intuitively what their senses tell them. I’ve seen it so it is probable it is true, summarise: If it seems to a subject that X is present, the probably;l X is present, what one perceives is probably so. This is what I experiences and you must believe me unless you can prove otherwise.

Question 32

What is Swinburne’s principle of testimony?

Answer 32

We should trust those who give accounts of experiences, if there is no reason to doubt then why should we. Admits we shouldn’t trust known liars, those influenced by drugs. The assumption here is people usually tell the truth there may be examples where you don’t accept the case e.g. jungle example - explorers travel into the depths of jungle and discover an unknown creature, second group do the same and don’t find it, no reason to believe they didn’t see it, but also could be wrong.

Question 33

What are the criticisms of the principle of credulity?

Answer 33

Senses can be deceived. Memories may be reconstructed, Circumstances leading to unreliable reports e.g. drugs. The recipient of the experience didn’t have the ability to correctly interpret it e.g. young child. It is possible prove what you thought was there wasn’t. Possible to show that was supposedly experienced was there, but didn’t cause the experiences e.g. nde and being on drugs, doctor telling you drugs are causing an out of body experience.

Question 34

What are the criticisms of the principle of testimony?

Answer 34

If a subject’s description is suspect it is no basis as evidence, If the subject is not reliable the testimony is weakened.
S isn’t showing the irrefutable proof of God’s existence, it is a cumulative case to be made for the existence of God.

Question 35

What was Anthony Flew’s criticism?

Answer 35

Accusing hum of adding uo theories to create a cumulative case, Using the analogy of the leaky bucket, stated the arguments for God made a bucket, but the flaws of all these arguments put holes in the buckets, pointless to try and fill up a bucket with holes in it.
Caroline Frank Davis suggests you can arrange the buckets so the holes don’t overlap.

Question 36

What are the problems of verifying religious experiences?

Answer 36

Usually 1 witness, might be unreliable and only true to them.
Very personal emotional experiences, might be wanting to see/hear something and have high expectations.
The vision is usually form their religious background, so the argument is biased and more difficult to prove. Science can induce a similar experience, so disproves the logic and shows origin.
They are subjective, so hard to prove logic.

Question 37

What was William Alston’s view on religious experiences?

Answer 37

It is logical to talk about a person experiencing God and gaining knowledge from experience. Explored many people having them and these experiences were what they seem to be. Argued in normal life the evidence of something is what you can gather from experience e.g. red car, observed using your sense, people don;t doubt it, as they have had similar experiences using their senses. If many people suing their minds have a religious experience is it right to immediately doubt their observation when we wouldn’t in other situations? If our sense perceptions are generally reliable, why not believe them in an experience .

Question 38

What are criticisms of Alston’s argument?

Answer 38

Can explain REs naturalistically e.g. sociology. Alston said this was ‘double standard’ as REs are also sense perceptions, No reason to reject an explanation of something just because the explanation is unusual.
REs are unverifiable, the way you check things is by making other sense observation and other peoples’ Res are also sense observations. Doesn’t show Res are experience of God, but not fair to reject REs as illogical and irrational.

Question 39

Who was William James?

Answer 39

He was psychologist and philosopher from New York City.

Question 40

What book did he write?

Answer 40

The Varieties of Religious experience: a study in human nature based on Gifford lectures where he lectured on reason and ordinary experience given in 1902 in Edinburgh. Called the most important book on religious experience.

Question 41

Who was James influenced by?

Answer 41

Teresa of Avila who thought that the acid test of religious experiences is the actions of a person following the experience. God exists, because your life is changed by mystical experiences. She had visions.

Question 42

What did James focus on when looking at religious experiences?

Answer 42

The effects religion had on people’s life’s: the hallmark of a religious experience is a movement from’ tenseness, self responsibility and worry’ to ‘ equanimity, receptivity and peace’. Involves a sense of inner peace, sense of a higher order and revealed truth.

Question 43

What did James think a person’s experience should be marked by?

Answer 43

Saintliness and holiness which rises from the personal or maybe interpersonal, 2 way traffic in the experience.

Question 44

What does PINT stand for?

Answer 44

Passitivty - out of the control of the person, sometimes possessed and bizarre behaviour. Ineffability - beyond words. Noetic quality - insight into deep and meaningful truths knowledge from intuition not reason, been revealed. Transciency - experience can be fleeting less than 2 hours, but effects can last forever.

Question 45

How did he define religious experience?

Answer 45

At the heart of religion and are true religion as opposed to religious teachings, practices and attitudes which are second hand practices. He called conversion the transformation from a divided/imperfect self to a unified conscious.

Question 46

What did he conclude?

Answer 46

So many people have had a religious experience that it is probable there is a high order of reality maybe God and if there is it is plausible there would be experiences as he is interested in the world. Experiences don’t prove anything, but it is reasonable to use them as evidence of there being a personal God. It is not reasonable to reject the argument for religious experience as they started from the point of skepticism.

Question 47

How did he think Freud was wrong?

Answer 47

The spiritual value of religious experience can’t be undone even if there is a physiological explanation, as it is based on feelings. He rejected the view of Freud that experiences were repressed or perverted sexuality.

Question 48

What did he think a mystical experience was?

Answer 48

Experiences felt or experienced beyond the realms of ordinary consciouness that might involve ineffable or indefinable awareness of time, space and physical reality. Universal and usually similar, spiritual not necessarily religious. All personal religious experiences derive from mystical states of consciouness and all Mes are part of religions.

Question 49

What he call the 4 fruits of religious experience?

Answer 49

1) The experience leaves the person with a sense of an awareness of something beyond the trivial material world. 2) Elation - person left feeling high.
3) Experience leaves the person with the feeling of having come into contact with a benevolent power, respond by self surrender.
4) Experiences a change in the emphasis in their life, move towards a more spiritual, charitable and morally aware state, characterised by a sense of awe and wonder at the universe.

Question 50

What are the strengths of James’ argument?

Answer 50

First hand testimonies are given, strong reliability.
High quantity of experiences throughout time, David Hay implies they are widespread.
Effects are positive and powerful, changing the community.
Many similarities between experiences, suggest true.

Question 51

How did Bertrand Russell criticise him?

Answer 51

“the fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth” arguing it could be possible for someone to be so affected by good in a story about a great hero, but this could happen even if the story were a myth and the hero was fictional.

Question 52

How did Anthony Flew criticise him?

Answer 52

He wrote in ‘Theology and Falsification’ that statements not verifiable by empirical evidence are meaningless, so James’ study doesn’t work. He thought his study was too subjective focusing on the individual rather than a link to God in the real world.

Question 53

What are weaknesses of his argument?

Answer 53

He doesn’t demonstrate that there really must be a God, he could have looked at other possible causes of a religious experience.
Believers in different faiths claim that their experiences prove the truth of their faith however, they cannot all be right.
Believers tend to interpret experiences in the light of their particular traditions, making them subjective and personal.
Doubtful if the voice in your head is telling you to do wicked things - Yorkshire ripper God told him to kill prostitutes.

Question 54

What is a psychological criticism of religious experience?

Answer 54

Result of things that happen in the body or brain. Often dehydration e.g. if you have brain tumor, making you hallucinate or if you have been poisoned.

Question 55

What is the lack of evidence argument stating as a criticism of religious experiences?

Answer 55

Just because someone changes their life doesn’t mean God exists , making a leap in judgement to suggest this and so not enough evidence to reach the conclusion God exists.

Question 56

What psychological challenge did Freud propose?

Answer 56

Freud linked religion with neurosis and noticed a lot of patients in the Salpetriere mental hospital who suffered from mental illnesses showed obsessive behaivour similar to religious practices like formal prayer. He thought religion was an illusion, expressing people’s desires and fulfilling their psychological needs e.g. dependence what they want to believable. REs comparable to wishful thinking, derived from our desire to place God as a strong father figure. They aren’t real and don’t prove God exists.

Question 57

What are the problems with Freud’s challenge?

Answer 57

We know little of the relationship btween the conscious and unconscious mind and it gives no explanation for religious experiences without God as a father figure e.g. buddihism.

Question 58

What did American psychologist Abraham Maslow think about religious experiences?

Answer 58

He studied them calling them peak experiences. He found they can be experienced in any culture and at any time and they have common features e.g. loss of space and time. The person is overwhelmed with feelings of awe, wonder, joy, love and gratitude. Feelings generated from the mind and interpreted as spiritual by the person having them or society.

Question 59

What was Karl Marx’s sociological challenge?

Answer 59

He saw religion as an illusion, blurring our vision of reality; the ‘opium of people’ dulling the pain of everyday life and alters our consciousness and perception. Mystical experiences are outward manifestations of this drug induced state. REs often reflect the society which they live and have grown up in e.g Catholics have visions of the Virgin Mary and Hindus experiences of God Shiva. REs a form of alienation from one’s true self and aimed for religion to be overthrown. Believed heaven, hell and punishment after death gave comfort and coping mechanism.