topic 2: religious experience

What does Schleiermacher define religious experience as

An experience that offers a sense of the ultimate

How does Tillich define religious experiences

Experience that involves a feeling of ultimate concern that demands a decisive decision

How does James define religious experience

An experience that gives a person an overwhelming experience of joy, reverence and a desire to belong to God

How does Copleston define religious experience

An experience that hugely changes a person spiritually or morally suggests something that brings about such a great change.

What is a synopsis of the definition of religious experience

An interaction or encounter between a human and the divine either directly or indirectly which gives some insight into the ‘unknown’ and has an impact on the individual's life

What is the Jewish understanding of religious experience

Religious experiences are believed to be part of the natural order of the world. This is because the OT contains many incidents of God revealing himself through natural and supernatural phenomena (eg. Moses and the burning bush)

What is the christian understanding of religious experience

Direct personal revelation continues into christianity with Saul/Paul’s conversion experience, a vision which became the starting point for the development of revelation within the faith

What is the Islamic understanding of religious experience

There are the visions that were experienced by the prophet Muhammad in the cave outside Mecca

What is the Sikhism understanding of religious experience

The founder, Guru Nanak, had a religious experience while bathing in a river in India

What are direct experiences

Where the experiencer feels that they are in contact with God (eg. during prayer)

What are indirect experiences

Where there is an inner experience of God’s immanence, a feeling of God acting on the world (eg. during meditation)

What are corporate religious experiences

Experienced by 2 or more people at the same time

What are near-death experiences

When someone ‘dies’ and is then resuscitated

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (A)

Awareness- seeing the work of God when looking at the world

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (Q)

Quasi-sensory- having a vision or an inner experience of God

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (N)

Numinous- encountering the holiness of God

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (Reg)

Regenerative- dramatic/ conversion experience

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (I)

Interpretative- having prayers answered

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (M)

Mystical- having a sense of the ultimate reality

What are the 7 types of religious experience that Caroline Franks Davis identifies (Rev)

Revelatory- receiving enlightenment from God

What ‘classic’ phenomena of religious experience does Saul / Paul demonstrate

Both a visual and auditory experience. Saul himself was convinced that he was in the presence of God (numinous). The man travelling with Saul heard the voice, although they saw noone. Saul was left with temporary blindness. Saul experienced a complete conversion to the Christian faith

How does William James define religion

(The feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine): something about individuality and individual understandings of an ultimate being

What did James accept about religious experiences

There is some type of psychological phenomena occurring in the brain during these experiences but this does not mean that they are psychological phenomena alone

What is James’ pragmatism

We can never establish what is true in an absolute and infallible way; rather, we decide what is true according to what dits or what works for us in practical terms

How do religious experiences express truth in pragmatic terms (James)

they are true to the extent that they help us individually improve and make sense of our lives in the world- in this, they support the existence of God for those who benefit from such beliefs.

What is the importance of religious experience according to James

Religious experience lies at the heart of religion and constitutes the true religion; the practices, teachings and attitudes associated with religion are ‘second-hand’ religion. The best way to judge the validity of a religious experience is to observe the long-term effects on the recipient

What are James’ 4 core characteristics of religious experiences (P)

Passive- comes to the recipient unbidden, with the experiencer feeling overwhelmed by the power of God (experience controls the experiencer)

What are James’ 4 core characteristics of religious experiences (I)

Ineffable- cannot be described by ordinary language. The experiencer is aware if what the experience means but cannot describe it

What are James’ 4 core characteristics of religious experiences (N)

Noetic- believer gains some kind of knowledge which could note have been reached by reason alone, only by the revelation of the experience

What are James’ 4 core characteristics of religious experiences (T)

Transitory- it is fleeting or momentary, meaning that the experiencer experiences time in a different way

What are mystical experiences (In a non-religious sense)

they are experiences of an inner/ deeper self/ oneness with nature

What are mystical experiences (In a religious sense)

they are experiences in which believers become at one with Ultimate Reality/God- the Transcendent. The subject feels they are in the same level of understanding and being as the ultimate reality/God while still retaining an awareness of self as a distinct entity

What did James believe about mystical experiences

They are the primary experience of humanity. His case studies provide empirical evidence of the effect of religious belief. They led James to conclude that mystical experiences in different faiths are essentially the same: subjects experience the same ultimate reality which they then interpret within the ‘second hand’ belief structure that they are familiar with

What was Otto’s argument about religious experience

All religious experiences are numinous in nature as they all produce a ‘sense of taste for the infinite’. A person will feel that they are in communication with another level of reality (God/ the absolute). This provides a reference point from which the believer interprets the world through the experience and the beliefs attached to it

What were the two elements of religious experience that Otto identified (MT)

Mysterium tremendum/ fearful mystery- tendency of religious experiences to cause fear and trembling and a sense of dread

What were the two elements of religious experience that Otto identified (MF)

Mysterium fascinans/ mystery of fascination- tendency that mystical experiences have to attract, fascinate and compel

What are revelatory experiences

God makes himself directly known, often in visions or dreams, and the person having the experience acquires new knowledge

What are the two types of revelatory experience (P)

Propositional revelation- God communicates his divine message to a human

What are the two types of revelatory experience (NP)

Non-propositional revelation- a person comes to a moment of realisation about a divine truth. This is the believer’s recognition of God acting in human experience

What were Teresa of Avila’s tests to determine whether an experience is genuine

Does it fit with Christian teaching and does it leave the individual feeling at peace

What is an example of a corporate experience

Toronto blessing- 1994- toronto airport vineyard church, a large number of people were affected by a divine spirit

What are Swinburne’s 5 types of religious experience (O)

Ordinary, (for example a sunset interpreted in a religious way)

What are Swinburne’s 5 types of religious experience (E)

Extraordinary (for example water into wine) (elements are ordinary but result goes beyond this)

What are Swinburne’s 5 types of religious experience (D)

Describable (for example a dream)

What are Swinburne’s 5 types of religious experience (ND)

Non describable (for example St Teresa of Avila’s mystical visions)

What are Swinburne’s 5 types of religious experience (NS)

Non specific (for example a strongly held feeling of forgiveness from God)

What is the principle of Credulity

Our experience is normally reliable, so on the balance of probability, experience can be trusted as being more likely to be true than not. Therefore, we should trust our perceptions about our experiences of God

What is the principle of testimony

People normally tell the truth. If someone tells us that they have had a religious experience, then we should accept the balance of probability and believe them (unless they have a history of lying/ substance abuse)

What are the strengths of Swinburne’s arguments (evidence)

Based off of empirical evidence to work with probability

What are the strengths of Swinburne’s arguments (religion)

Matches the religious framework that believers carry- religion comes with religious experiences

What are the strengths of Swinburne’s arguments (presence)

religious experience generates a sense of presence and closeness to God/the divine, a sense that is invariably so overwhelming to the experient that the cognitive fallout is irrelevant to them (links to Otto)

What are the strengths of Swinburne’s arguments (Swinburne)

combining religious experience with the design, cosmological and ontological arguments then we have strong cumulative arguments for God’s existence.

What are the weaknesses of Swinburne’s arguments (Atheists)

could deny Swinburne’s views on the probability of God’s existence as they have an equally strong conviction that there is no God, so therefore why shouldn’t we accept their testimony

What are the weaknesses of Swinburne’s arguments (trust)

People are not generally trustworthy. They often have a good reason to lie and even when they believe that they are telling the truth, there is no guarantee that they haven’t misunderstood the experience they have had- people could have unintentionally deceived themselves

What are the weaknesses of Swinburne’s arguments (empirical)

We can’t compare statements about everyday empirical experiences with statements about non-cognitive, mystical experiences. We have no means of verifying non-cognitive experiences, so we cannot evaluate testimony about them in the same way

What are the weaknesses of Swinburne’s arguments (Aquinas)

Aquinas’ arguments against the ontological argument say that we would have to be omniscient to understand an omniscient God (God is above our understanding)

What did Freud believe about religious experience

The urge some people felt towards religion was no more than psychological obsession.

what did Freud believe religious experiences were

projections of the ultimate, oldest and most profound ideas that people had (eg. concepts of the father/ mother)- therefore just illusions

what does Freud see religion and religious experience as

a mass delusion or paranoid wish-fulfilment

Who is a scholar against Freud’s psychological challenge to religious experience

Psychologist Carl Jung argued that the development of our spiritual aspect is essential for psychological wholeness- each of us has an idea of God within a collective unconscious

What is Persinger’s physiological explanation for religious experiences

developed the famous ‘God helmet’, which tests the effect of electrical stimulation on the parts of the brain associated with a sense of God arising from religious experience. (Targeted the forty hertz component of the brain, which is responsible for giving humans their sense of self-identity. Suppressing this part of the brain, caused their sense of individuality to be temporarily lost. The right and left temporal lobes feel separated from each other, with each part experiencing that there is ‘something there’ but not knowing what it is.). He concluded that the feelings caused by ‘religious experiences’ were simply down to ‘a few seconds of electrical activity in the normal human brain’

What is Kant’s objection

We can only experience things in the empirical realm. Reality beyond this may exist but it cannot be logically proved. Therefore a religious experience us undermined by empirical evidence and cannot provide satisfactory evidence for the existence of God

What does Hick say about religious experience

People see things in different ways depending on how they interpret what they see

What is Wittgenstein’s argument

Drew a distinction between ‘seeing’ and ‘seeing as’. When we ‘see’ we see shapes, lines and textures but when we identify what we are looking at we are ‘seeing as’- interpreting the shapes and lines

How did Hick expand Wittgenstein’s argument

Expanded to include all our everyday experiences and suggested that when we experience the world through our senses, we are ‘experiencing as’. Anything we experience in life is interpreted by us according to what we understand about the world: it is shaped by our beliefs, cultures and upbringing. All experiences are subject to individual interpretation

What is Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis

the world is religiously ambiguous with no compelling proof for or against any one religious or nonreligious interpretation of the world. This hypothesis makes religious experiences meaningful without insisting that one religion is right while all the others are wrong.

What are the strengths of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (A posteriori)

There have been countless testimonies of religious experience across all cultures. For religious believers they are not random, instead, they are messages from God that require a response from the experiencer. This could result in a change in their life.

What are the strengths of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (Swinburne)

Supported by Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony (generally people tell the truth and we should believe the truth of their experience)

What are the strengths of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (omnipotence)

If you believe in the omnipotence of God, then Hick's ideas are plausible. (has the power and want to contact us)

What are the strengths of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (meaning)

Hick’s pluralistic hypothesis makes religious experience meaningful, without insisting that one religion is right and the others are wrong.

What are the weaknesses of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (interpretation)

He thinks that anything we experience in life is interpreted by us according to what we understand about the world, however, this does not help us prove whether they actually happen or are just manifestations of the divine.

What are the weaknesses of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (evidence)

Does not provide evidence of the existence of god to every individual as not everyone is going to have the same beliefs and understanding of the world

What are the weaknesses of Hick’s arguments for the existence of God (validity)

There are problems with the validity of religious experiences as it relies on the testimony of the believer who most likely would be interested in accepting their experience as a religious one. This makes religious experience a difficult form of evidence for the existence of God.

What are Dawkins’ critiques of religious experience

Compares religious experiences with psychosis, picturing religious experiences as signs of mental illness or psychological needs.

how does Dawkins picture religious experience

as a hallucination, Dawkins believes that within a religious experience our brain creates a perception of sight and sound in the world outside of our own head.

why is Dawkins a militant atheist

Religion undermines the power of scientific processes, as he believed that religious experience provides no empirical evidence about God's existence.

what is Dawkins' scientific explanation for religious experience

The idea and feeling of having a religious experience was something built into the mind through natural selection, and for humans it is a coping mechanism specifically for dealing with danger which would lead to belief in God (religious meme)

What is Dawkins’ religious meme argument

He thinks religious belief is widespread because it stresses faith over reason (making it resistant to disproof), threatens hell (giving it deep psychological impact) and commands its bearers to replicate it (through testimony). Dawkins thinks the religious meme survives because it travels with other rather more important memes, like moral values and community feelings.

What are the strengths of Dawkins’ arguments (similarities)

Examples of relating religious experience to hallucinations isn’t something that he invented, and it is accepted by some who don’t believe in religious experiences (not a completely unreasonable point). For instance we lack any evidence of the soul, which helps relate to picturing religious experiences as hallucinations

What are the strengths of Dawkins’ arguments (science)

Links to science to disprove religious experience (based on genes and natural selection)- supported by the facts of biology

What are the strengths of Dawkins’ arguments (proof)

Believes that we should expect a very high standard of proof for religious experiences for them to be accounted as real, preventing false religious experiences becoming mainstream and widely accepted

How do Dawkins’ arguments echo the ideas of Hume

(Hume argues that a miracle is so unlikely that it's always more likely that the person reporting it is mistaken or dishonest than that the miracle really happened, therefore a reasonable person will disbelieve all miracles stories.) Dawkins is almost less harsh than Hume, saying that there is a possibility that a person’s mind is fooling them, which is greater than the possibility that they really encountered God

What are the weaknesses of Dawkins’ arguments (reasoning)

Dawkins employs circular reasoning, by initially assuming the unlikelihood of God’s existence and therefore continuing to saying that religious experiences are equally unlikely to be true, concluding that overall religious experiences do not prove God’s existence.

What are the weaknesses of Dawkins’ arguments (Swinburne- T)

(Dawkins’ argument might be discredited through the rejection of all hallucinations based on few being illusory. Someone could rebuke that just because some examples have been illusory doesn’t necessarily mean all are and should be assumed as such.) Denying the principle of testimony, the idea that we should automatically disbelieve some accounts regardless of the state of mind.

What are the weaknesses of Dawkins’ arguments (Swinburne- C)

Richard Swinburne's Principle of Credulity states that we should believe experiences are real if there are no "special considerations" (eg. previous examples of lying) and this involves first ruling out the sort of illusions that Dawkins describes

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