People in Religious Experience

People in Religious Experience

1. ST. TERESA OF AVILA

   • A Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint who had several religious experiences and wrote about the importance of mystic prayer.
   • She believed the purpose of life is union with God through prayer, wrote the interior Castle and the garden analogy.
   • A severe illness left her partially paralysed for 3 years and she became disillusioned with prayer. A vision of the wounded Jesus inspired her life of mysticism.

2. WILLIAM JAMES

   • The first person to carry out major research into religious experience. From a psychology background.
   • Decided on four main characteristics of religious experience. Transient, Passive, Ineffable and Noetic.
   • Believed some religious experiences could be induced (similar to substance abuse) and saw the behavioural effects as a by-product of the whole experience.
   • The hallmark of a religious experience is in the actions of the person after the experience.
   • All religious experiences indicated the probability of God. The validity of a religious experience rests upon the effects it produces.

3. RUDOLF OTTO

   • Calls direct experiences the 'numinous' meaning 'of the Divine'. An experience which offers evidence of the 'wholly other' nature of God.
   • The central element of direct experiences of God was an 'apprehension of the wholly other', meaning the world beyond the physical observable universe. Direct experiences with God are outside of our possible knowledge.
   • The actual nature of experiences is ineffable (beyond human powers and abilities to fully describe)

4. KANT

   • Distinguished between the phenomenon (an experience of the empirical) and the noumenon (an experience of something beyond empirical).

5. CAROLINE FRANK DAVIS

   • Description related challenges focus on why the reliability of the description may be doubted.
   • Subject related challenges focus on why the reliability of the person having the experience may be doubted.
   • Object related challenges explore why the reliability of the claimed experience may be doubted.

6. SIGMUND FREUD

   • Argued against the idea of a metaphysical existence.
   • People's urge towards religion was no more than 'psychological obsession' and experiences are illusions.
   • Discusses 'Wish Fulfilment' - the satisfaction of a desire through an involuntary thought process.

7. MICHAEL PERSINGER

   • Cognitive neuroscience researcher agrees about temporal lobes having a link to religious experience
   • Argued that he could stimulate a religious experience in any person (The God Helmet). Over 900 people who did these experiments claimed to have religious experiences.

8. RICHARD SWINBURNE

   • Suggested that there are five recognisable types of religious experience, divided into two groups: Public and Private Experiences.
   • Came up with the suggestion that there is no reason why claims to religious experience should be treated any differently to ordinary perceptual claims. He put forward the principle of credulity and testimony.