Religious Experiences- Philosophy

Corporeal Visions

A religious experience involving the physical senses- e.g. St Bernadette at Lourdes and Moses and the Burning Bush

Imaginative Visions

A religious experience that takes place within a dream/ doesn’t use the physical senses- eg. Joseph’s dream from the angel

Intellectual Visions

A religious experience that illuminates the soul with knowledge eg. St Teresa of Avila

Walter Stace- Extrovertive and Introvertive Mystical Experiences

Introvertive- lose sense of the rational ‘I’ and become one with the ‘pure consciousness’

Extrovertive- can still perceive physical objects, but can see the inner life that connects them

William James’ Characteristics of a Religious Experience

Ineffability- experience can’t be described in words

Noetic Quality- gain knowledge that can’t be gained through human reasoning

Passivity- the person has no control over the experience

Transiency- the experience doesn’t last long

Rudolf Otto & the Numinous

Religious experiences are numinous- presence of the ‘wholly other’, sense of awe and inadequacy

Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans

Rudolf Otto said the essence of a religious experience are that they are a ‘Tremendous and Fascinating Mystery’

William James’ Primary and Secondary Religion

William James believed religious experiences are primary and organised religion is secondary, religious experiences aren’t unique to any one religion

Swinburne’s Principle of Testimony

It is reasonable to believe other people’s religious experiences

Swinburne’s Principle of Credulity

We should trust our own religious experiences

The God Helmet

Way in which religious experiences can be induced

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Argument that it is the way God gives people religious experiences

Freud’s Wish Fulfilment

Religious experiences are a result of wish fulfilment