Religious Experience

Religious Experience

1. nature and types of religious experiences

   • public
     • people may perceive unusual public objects, such as resurrection appearances of Jesus
     • seeing the night sky as God's handiwork
   • Private
     • can be described to other people e.g. in Matt 1:20 Joseph has a dream in which he is told things by an angel
     • experiences that cannot be put into words e.g mystical
     • having an awareness of God e.g a sense of vocation
   • Conversion
     • encourages his/her to adopt a new approach to life
     • leads to a new found realisation of the importance of faith in life
     • e.g. St Paul on the road to Damascus; blinded by the light from heaven, Saul's sight is later restored physically and spiritually and as if scales fall from his eyes he is baptised and reborn in that moment
     • can be a gradual process e.g. In the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches it is thought that the individual is on a personal journey of moving closer to God through prayer and worship
     • Nicky Cruz
   • Mysticism
     • 'mystic' comes from the greek meaning to 'hide' and 'conceal'
     • describes any experience that enables a person to receive divine knowledge that is beyond human understanding or to have an illumination of the nature or truth or ultimate reality
     • e.g St Pauls conversion before the dialogue starts was surrounded by 'a light from heaven' to which his response was to fall to the ground
       • it is the theme of light which suggests a moment of profound divine revelation that Paul struggles to articulate
     • direct experience of God which is profound, moving and life-changing
     • William James identifies 4 key features that he considers to be an authentic religious experience
       • ineffable - difficult to put into words
       • noetic - they are states of knowledge - carry a sense of authority
       • Transiency - 'mystical experiences cannot be sustained for long'
       • Passive - one cannot bring it about oneself
     • Teresa of Avila’s account that she was “aware of God’s presence”, but that “neither with the eyes or the mind” could she comprehend him
   • Knowledge gained through religious experience
     • propositional
       • knowledge of factual events. Involving a dialogue e.g. God tells Moses to go to Egypt and speak to the Pharaoh
     • non-propositional
       • revelation that takes the form of communicating important truths which may be difficult to put into words e.g. Buddhist concept of Enlightenment. More personal experience i.e introversive
         • opinions about God and feelings of his presence
         • revelation of inner truths gained via meditation and prayer
           • Buddhists believe in monism, the concept that we are all part of the one, absolute, ultimate reality
   • Meditation & Prayer
     • meditation is practiced in the Buddhists tradition as a way to gain inner peace, harmony and enlightenment
     • non-propositional because it is an inward experience which may be difficult to put into words
     • used to access inner truths or ultimate reality
     • meditational practise can lead to a religious experience e.g. some sort of revelation of inner truth
   • Numinous
     • The numinous is the feeling of being in the presence of something greater , yet feeling distinctly separate from it
     • Rudolf Otto He suggests that religion derives from experiencing a being that is totally separate from this world
   • Objective vs Subjective
     • The objectivist viewpoint treats God/universal truths as "objective" - they exists independently of us and which are there whether we experience them or not
     • The Subjectivist view is that it is not necessary to think of religious experiences as evidence for the existence of a personal God or universal truth
       • he important thing is the experience itself and the effect that it has on the experient
         • Religious experiences are personal experiences, not factual experiences
       • The naturalistic interpretations of religious experience all involve viewing religious experience as purely subjective

2. Definitions of God/ Ultimate reality

   • The Bible; all knowing, righteous, loving, judge, forgiving
   • The Creed; one, almighty, creator, ever-living
   • NT; Father and Word (logos)
   • Moses speaks to Yahweh in the burning bush, where the first thing God says to him is take of your shoes as this is holy ground
     • this reflects the 'otherness' of God
   • people understanding who God triggers a conversion e.g St Paul asks 'who are you lord' 'i am Jesus and you are persecuting me'
   • 'wholly other' in the words of Rudolf Otto
   • unknowable and so we can have little idea of what things we say about God actually mean

3. Richard Swinburne

   • The principle of Credulity
     • 1. we readily make deductions from what we perceive with ordinary sense experiences e.g. if we see a table before us then there probably is one
     • 2. Therefore 'in absence of special considerations, all religious experiences ought to be taken by their subjects as genuine'
     • Criticisms
       • we can conclude from past experience that tables exist because they fit with our sensory data (hardness, colour) but it is much harder to prove that religious experience was real in the past and is therefore now
       • the argument needs modification when a person has no experience of 'x' but does have an experience of the properties by which 'x' can be defined e.g. a Centaur - we have not seen one, but we can understand it in terms of a horse and a man
         • like we can understand the properties of God without necessarily experiences
       • someone may be under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs
       • background evidence might make it impossible to believe an experience
     • he argues 'one can recognise someone does not entail that one can describe' e.g a voice over a phone
     • ought to be accepted unless you can prove that God doesn't exist
   • The Principle of Testimony
     • we generally believe what other people tell us they believe or experience e.g. dreams
     • most of our beliefs about the world are based on the claims of what other people have perceived
     • there may however be grounds for doubting some people (lying, exaggerating, misrepresentation)
     • If a person changes his/her lifestyle then this would reinforce the principle of testimony

4. Verification/Authenticity

   • how can we know for example that Abraham was told by God to climb up a mountain and sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis was genuine
   • St Teresa of Avila
     • the experience should be within the traditions of the church
     • the experience should be discussed with a spiritual advisor
     • there will be a noticeable and profound change in the life of a person
   • William James
     • the person is left feeling elevated
     • leaves the person with a change of focus of their life moving towards a more spiritual, more charitable and morally-aware state
   • Objections
     • Karl Marx - believed God is a projection of human aspirations and needs, any kind of experience was illusory, but those who claimed to have some kind of experience of the divine were those who had reflected on the reality of being human most intently
     • Dawkins; religious experience is a non rational activity and that science can explain what might seem like a religious experience
     • A.J Ayer; proposition can only be meaningful if it could be verified analytically or synthetically
       • states that we can't perceive God through the senses therefore the argument that we should trust our senses doesn't apply to God
       • language is inadequate to express religious experience so conclusions drawn from it are meaningless
         • however the language can be interpreted symbolically
         • Hick argues that religious experiences will be proven true or proven false at the Eschaton - after we die or perhaps on Judgment Day
     • Sigmund Freud - Religious belief was a kind of immature neurosis which we had to grow out of, religious experience can not be possible as any religious phenomena must be illusory
     • inductive argument therefore only shows that God is probable but this is insufficient as a proof
       • inductive reasoning faces the Problem of Induction, which was expressed by David Hume
         • This is the problem that an inductive conclusion can always be overturned by a later experience
       • However the powerful effect for good that religious experiences have on people guarantees that they are genuine and justifies us in feeling certain that they are from God
     • Hick
       • argues that the universe is "religiously ambiguous"
         • therefore both believers and non-believers may be drawing valid conclusions from religious experiences because it all boils down to how you interpret your experiences
         • Hick argues that humans exist at an EPISTEMIC DISTANCE from God
           • believes this gap or distance is important for human freewill as if we had a clear awareness of God, we wouldn't be able to make our own choices.
   • The Cumulative Argument - so many
     • so many people have had religious experiences in the past that they simply cannot be making it up
   • There are many examples in the Bible of people having encounters with God. Intense experiences of this kind often lead to deepening religious faith or a dramatic life conversion
     • e.g after Jesus' crucifixion, his followers start having religious experiences in which they encounter him raised from the dead. The first experience is that of Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb
       • perhaps it was necessary for the author of John's Gospel to add this account in to show his readers the correct interpretation?

5. Inductive Argument

   • 1. If an entity is experienced
   • 2. God is the sort of being that is possible to experience
   • people claim to have experience God directly therefor he must exist