RELIGOUS EXPERIENCE

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

  • its an experience of god or the divine

  • mystic experience - a direct experince of god or ultimate relaity a sense of oneness of all things

  • numinous - an experience of awe and wonder in the pressence of an allmighty god

  • conversion - an experience which causes a sudden change in someones belief system

  • corporate - an experience surronded by a group

  • william james - defines religion as a personal experince, primary expreince of the divine is at the heart of religion. RE can be defined as PASSIVE (not in control) INEFFIABLE (difficult to describe) NOETIC (knowledge which you cannot occur by themselves) TRANSIECNT (short lasting but has long lasting impact) 

  • RE → st berndite saw the virgin mary at lourdes over 18 times, they use the falseification principles to test… meaning that a scientist or doctor cannot explain as to why something has happened, thus meaning it must have some kind of divine power behind it. and nicky cruz as well a ganster who after spitting on a priest had a numinous expreince and then became a devot christian

  • for RE - can provide some evidence of the proof of god as he is interacting with us - its empricical (based on sense expreince) - 4 varities of re means that there are many ways to expreince god, this fits with it being too subjective - science cannot describe inffeability (the what but not the why)

  • agaisnt RE - still need faith for these events to happen - cannot be verifyed so cant be proven true or false, the problem of evil (this is a weak arg) - can be tricks of the mind , derren brown and richad dawkins in agreement - confirmed mircles happening so long ago its difficult to test them to prove them right.

  • MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE - exprience of something beyond our awareness (mysteruinm tremendum et fascinsum’ ), the roots of religious expereince can be found in the common feautres of mysteical expriences, he also put empthasis on the fruits (the effects) of religous expreince as they can cause a change in the way in which a person lives there life. usually have cosmic unity, transcient, sacared, ineffability, paradoxicalty, fleeting quailty, transformative, noetic

  • example - teresa of avila → (ME) visions of jesus christ, and her most famous was of a golden speer with its tip on fire percing her side making her feel an intense amount of love

  • julian of norrich - visions of JC whilst he was close to death, she saw christ bleeding infront of her and felt gods overwhemling sense of unconditional love - she used motherhood to describe JC.

  • ‘fruits’ of RE refer to the effects in which occur, the impact in which it has on someones life. (change) (new understanding)

  • fruits = conviction of something beyond this world, an immerse feeling of freedom, having met a friendly power and responding through self sacarfice + a change in the empathsis in life.

  • revelation = knowledge is gained about god which otherwise wouldnt have been known

  • corpate exprience - anthony flew, collecting togehter a series of weak arguments doesnt always make a strong argument ‘ten leaky buckets