Religious Experiences

Religious Experience - when someone claims to have an encounter with the divine

• Mystical Experience - experiences of God or of the supernatural which go beyond everyday sense experience

• Conversion Experience - an experience which produces a radical change in someone's belief system

• Corporate religious experience - religious experiences which happen to a group of people 'as a body'

Different types of religious experiences:

• Visions

• Corporeal - hearing something external

• Intellectual - experience God through gaining knowledge

• Imaginative - Joseph had a dream

Propositional - heard a voice - written down -  an individual may make you realise

Non-propositional - you realise something/something revealed - Bible, Torah

Conversion Experience

• Conversion is the adoption of a new religious belief that differs from a previously held belief.​

• This is when the effects of a religious experience are life-changing.​

• The result of a conversion on a personal level is usually a greater understanding of faith.​

• ‘Religious conversion’ is the process that leads to the adoption of a religious attitude or way of life.​

• These effects can be permanent or temporary.

Type of Conversion:

There are two forms of mental occurrence which lead to a difference in the conversion process:​

1. A conscious and voluntary experience – volitional type (Gradual conversion)​

2. An involuntary and unconscious experience – self-surrender type (Sudden conversion) ​

The volitional type features a gradual change and consists of the slow development of new moral and spiritual habits.​

​

Features of conversion:

• As a rule, there are two things in the mind of the candidate for conversion:​

  1. The present ‘wrongness’ in their life – their sins, perhaps – that they want to change.​

  2. The positive changes they wish to make.​

• While a majority of conversion are clearly gradual, the sudden experience would appear to be the most significant and profound.​

• It often affects people who have no religious faith whatsoever before the experience.​

• In turn, what is most significant about the gradual conversion is the process involved.​

• It would appear that to begin with a person rejects any notion of religious faith, for whatever reason.​

• He or she then reaches a position in which some elements seem acceptable.​

• This continues until such time as there is a ‘climax’, at which point complete conversion occurs.

Examples of Conversion:

• Religious conversion is likely to include a change in belief on religious topics, which in turn leads to changes in the motivation for one’s behaviour within the social environment.​

• As a result, it is appropriate to speak of intellectual, moral or social conversions.​

• Intellectual conversions: A change in the way of thinking about something.​

• Moral conversions: a change in behaviour so that the individual does what is thought to be right.​

• Social conversions: acceptance of a different way of life or worship.

• William James 'the varieties of religious experience 1902' emphasised the 'genuineness' of religious experience as being rooted in its personal transformative impact rather than in  its conformity to doctrine or institutional religion

• James argued that religious experiences are genuine if they are meaningful and transformative to the individual, regardless of whether they can be objectively verified

• He famously said 'the truth of a religious experience lies in its fruits, not its roots' - This means that the practical effects of the experience - such as increased peace, moral improvement, or a sense of purpose - are what make it genuine

He identified four marks of mystical experiences:

Passivity - the person feels as though the experience is happening to them

Ineffable - beyond description or language

Noetic - provides knowledge

Transient - the experience is temporary

• James was pluralistic - believed that many different religious experiences can be genuine - even if they contradict each other

• He applied a pragmatic test (pragmatic validation): if a religious experiences leads to positive, lasting change - it is genuine for that person

• He did not require external proof or theological consistency

• ' the moment we renounce the absurd notion that a religion must be believed in literally to be true, we find ourselves free to judge it by its fruits' - William James

• This reflects his pragmatic approach - religious experiences are genuine if they produce positive, lasting effects in a person's life - such as moral growth

Richard Swinburne -  a prominent philosopher of religion, argues that religious experiences can be genuine and provide evidence for the existence of God especially when assessed using his principle of credulity and principle of testimony

• Swinburne states: ' if it seems to a subject that X is present, then probably X is present'

• If someone has a religious experience - such as feeling the presence of God - we should accept it as genuine unless we have good reason to doubt it

Principle of Testimony:

• 'we should believe the reports of others about their experiences unless we have a good reason not to'

• This means that other people's accounts of religious experiences should be taken seriously and considered genuine unless there's a strong reason to dismiss them

Cumulative case

• Swinburne argues that multiple independent religious experiences, across cultures and time periods, strengthen the case for their genuineness

• He sees them as part of a cumulative argument for the existence of God - not proof but probabilistic support

Feuerbach's philosophy of religion:

1. Projection Theory

• Feuerbach’s central thesis is that religion is a projection of human nature. ​

• In his seminal work The Essence of Christianity (1841), he argues that humans unconsciously project their own qualities—reason, love, will—onto an imagined divine being. ​

• Thus, God is not an external reality but a reified ideal of human attributes.​

• “Man projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject.” — Essence of Christianity

2. Religion as Self-Alienation​

• Feuerbach sees religious experience as a form of self-alienation

• Humans externalize their best qualities and then worship them as divine, losing sight of their own potential and dignity

• This alienation is both psychological and philosophical

Freud - Religion as Illusion:

1. The Future of an Illusion (1927)​

• In this work, Freud argues that religious beliefs are illusions—not necessarily false, but unverifiable and based on wishful thinking

• He defines an illusion as a belief motivated by human desires rather than empirical evidence.​

Key idea: Religion arises from the human need for protection, especially in the face of nature’s dangers and life’s uncertainties

• Freud compares religion to a child’s longing for a protective father figure, suggesting that belief in God is a projection of this psychological need

• “Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.” – Freud

2.  The Role of the Unconscious and Infantile Origins​

• Freud believed that religious experiences are expressions of unconscious desires and conflicts, particularly those rooted in early childhood.​

• In Totem and Taboo (1913), he links religion to the Oedipus complex, suggesting that guilt over unconscious desires (e.g. hostility toward the father) is repressed and later expressed through religious rituals and taboos.​

• In Moses and Monotheism (1939), Freud controversially argues that monotheism emerged from the repression of guilt and trauma, particularly in the context of the Hebrew people's relationship with Moses.

2. Religion as Collective Neurosis​

• Freud often compared religion to neurosis, a psychological disorder involving anxiety and obsessive behaviour

• Just as neurotic individuals develop rituals to manage anxiety, religious communities develop rituals, doctrines, and moral codes to cope with existential fears.

• Religious experiences, in this view, are not evidence of divine reality, but symbolic expressions of repressed psychological conflicts

3. Verification and Truth Claims​

• Freud was deeply sceptical about the epistemological status of religious experiences—that is, whether they can be considered true or verifiable.​

• He argued that religious experiences are subjective and emotionally compelling, but not rationally or empirically verifiable

• Unlike scientific claims, religious experiences cannot be tested or falsified and therefore do not meet the criteria of objective knowledge.

Winnicott + Religion

1. Transitional Phenomena and Religious Belief​

• Winnicott famously described religious faith as a type of transitional phenomenon—a concept originally developed to explain how children use objects (like teddy bears or blankets) to navigate the space between internal and external reality.​

• Transitional phenomena are experiences that help individuals manage the tension between subjective inner life and objective external reality

• Religious beliefs, like art, play, and creativity, exist in this “potential space”—a psychological area where imagination and reality intermingle

• Faith is not judged by empirical truth but is meaning-giving, affect-integrating, and action-guiding, much like a child’s use of a transitional object

Winnicott’s idea of potential space is central to understanding religious experience:​

• It is the intermediate realm between inner psychic reality and the external world.​

• In this space, religion, art, and culture are born and experienced.​

• The “area of faith” is where religious experience resides—not as doctrine, but as a lived, imaginative, and transformative engagement with the world

Neurophysiology:

• Study of the brain and nervous system.​

• Scientists are trying to fully understand the brain and how it works, including experiences.​

• An investigation is underway to try to understand thought, memory and emotion.​

• Aimed towards people who have brain damage and is beginning to shed light on how different stimuli can cause different kinds of mental state, which could aid the treatment of mental health issues and learning difficulties

Neurophysiology + Religious Experience

• Is there a connection between what goes on in the brain and the feelings typical of religious experience, such as feelings of being at one with the universe and feelings of standing in the presence of an overwhelming power.​

• Persinger – 1990's - 'God Helmet'

• Weak magnetic signals put through the brain – this made some have feelings of ‘the other’.​

• Disadvantages – people know what was happening before it happened – not 100% accurate.​

• Advantages – could point towards there being a reason for RE’s. there could be natural causes – not supernatural.​

• People could have been in the presence of some kind of magnetic fields where they thought they had encountered G-d, when in fact it was the effects of the magnetism.

Other Physiological Interpretations

• Near-Death experiences - welcoming light, feeling of bliss,

• Similar experiences – bright light, blessedness, tunnel, voices, familiar people / places, a voice saying it’s not their time. ​

• Mobbs and Watt suggest all elements of such experiences can be biologically explained through observation of the parietal and prefrontal cortices of the brain and through measuring the release of elation-altering hormones in the body at times of stress, such as noradrenaline and dopamine. ​

• Medication used could account for some of the sensations reported in a NDE.​

• Intoxication from drugs and alcohol could also have an impact on individuals and could impair their perception of reality.

Ludwig Feuerbach

• Naturalistic explanation

• RE’s origins in the human mind, rather than a God

• The Essence of Christianity (1841)​

• When people are worshipping God or experiencing the presence of God, they are in fact worshipping only their own human nature.​

• People take the best and admirable aspects of humanity – creativity, hope for the future, heroism, compassion and so on and project these aspects outside themselves – and hold them up for something to worship.​

• They imagine themselves to be standing in relation to these ideals, which they call ‘God’, but there is no real objective G-d existing beyond human nature.

Sigmund Freud

• Founder of modern psychology.​

• Influenced by Feuerbach.

• A naturalistic approach to religious experience.​

• People who feel themselves in the presence of God are deluding themselves

• He recognised how the human ‘psyche’, or mind works on more than one level

• People have an unconscious as well as a conscious mental process to their minds

• This is still valued by psychologists today. There are thoughts in our minds that we are aware of as we get on each day and some, deeper levels of thought that affect who we are. Freud thought that the psyche is made up three layers.

Donald Winnicott

• A paediatrician and psychoanalyst.​

• Extended these ideas of Freud’s in his highly influential studies of childhood.​

• Winnicott was interested in the importance of the bond between a child and its mother in early life and the transitions that needed to be made in order for that child to become a mentally healthy adult.​

• He observed children playing and noticed that many had a ‘transitional object’ such as a teddy bear or a blanket, which the child had a very strong emotional attachment.​

• The child uses it for comfort.​

• This transitional object belongs in a stage between imagination and reality, where the child clings on to the comfort this object brings, imagining that it provides security and taking that illusion seriously, while at the same time knowing that it is just a toy or a blanket.​

• Parents often recognise the importance of these objects and will interact with them.​

• This is important for children who are transitioning from dependence on their parents to dependence on their object.

Evaluation of Religious Experience Examples - Perspective of Richard Swinburne + William James