1.3A- Religious Experiences Flashcards
What is a religious experience?
-In the 21st Century, religious experience are more about how someone feels, which is hard to see and explain due to the 21st Century obsession with empiricism.
Moojan Momen
-They have found several general features that most kinds of religious experiences haave in common.
-They are universal: occur around the world, surveys have shown people past and present and in secularised societies can have religious experiences.
-They are diverse: wide variety, each experience is unique to the individual.
-They are important in a fundamental way: often result in a transformational life, people evaluate their lives.
Friedrich Schleiermacher
-Brought up in Moravian community: Protestant group who emphasised individual faith.
-Conclude that humans are intrinsically religious beings.
-The role of religion, in his view, was to foster an awareness.
-In his book ‘On Religion: Speeches to it’s cultured despisers’ explains his view that religious experiences are ‘self-authenticating’.
-Should be accepted as genuine. This ‘feeling’ superceeds any doctrine.
-Whilst he removes religion from constraints of reason, he is criticised as his view is too subjective.
Bertrand Russell
-Suggested that some people drink too much and see snakes, whilst others fast too much and see God.
Ludwig Wiltgenstein
-Developed the concept as ‘seeing as’ in his book.
-We interpret our own experiences in a particular way.
-references the ‘duck-rabitt’ drawing.
The four types of religious experiences
-Corporate
-Conversion
-Personal
-Mystical
Corporate religious experiences
-If when different people all have the same, or similar, religious experience at the same time. It’s quite unusal.
-A biblical example would be pentecost.
-Toronto blessing
Conversion religious experiences
-When there is a change or transformation in the subjects religious beliefs and lifestyles.
-The transformation could be between theism from atheism, or between religions.
-Significant sense of regeneration, of being made ‘new’.
-Muhammad Ali is a famous example.
-A volitional conversion is one in which the subject gradually develops new religious beliefs, can be seen as rational.
-A self-surender conversion tends to be one in which the subject becomes bery suddenly and in many cases involutionarily, often occurs before the subject has sufficient knowledge of the religion.
-E.D. Starbuck suggested this type of religious experience was a ‘normal adolescent phenomenon’.
-Nicky Cruz and The story of the soul of Tarsus in the Bible are famous examples.
Personal religious experience: Rudolf Otto
-argued that religion is essentially the apprehension of the numinous (things we don’t know) that people can understand. Viewed the world as a mysterious place that could be appreciated and understood with the aid of the ‘non-rational’ dimensions that humans can access through the ‘idea of the Holy’. Explored the idea of the numinous to describe an encounter with God- an encounter with the wholly other. Describes meaning as a kind of seduction uses ‘fascinaitng’ as a synonym for ‘interesting’. Describes the experiences as immensly powerful.
Mystical religious experiences
-Quite a broad term covering many iterations of religious experiences, where people feel an overwhelming sense of being with God, or an equivalent figure in their denominations, and times where people feel that in some way they have encountered and perhaps been united with God.
-feel like they have reached an understanding of a spiritual truth.
-still a relatively new term
William James and religious experiences
-Wanted to put some scientific analysis on religious experiences.
-believed that up until a certain point, you could test religious experiences up to a certain point for validity.
-puts emphasis on feeling.
-suggests mystical experiences have a common core: are passive, feeling of not in control, ineffiable, difficult to put into words, noetic, the experience provided insight or knowledge, a ‘revelation’, and transcient, didn’t last long but has a big impact.
-argues that conversion experiences are perehaps the strongest evidence for the divine.
psychological effects of religious experiences
-We know our minds play tricks
-Some children have imaginary friends
-Some people believe they hear voices
-Some people with no psychological conditions sometimes have a sudden sense of foreboding
-Some people fear something so much they believe it’s real
-We are prone to so many perceptual erros, that perehaps those who want God and think so hard about him see him in their imaginings.
-Carl Jung, a psychologist, considered spirituality and religion as essential to a healthy mind. He interpretated St. Paul’s conversion experience and argued that Paul exivited symptoms of an emotional breakdown.
-Ludwig Feuerbauch argued the appeal of religion is the concept of immortality.
-Sigmund Freud believed that religion is an illusion based on human wishes, and that it is a form of neurotic illness.
physiological effects of religious experiences
-Bertrand Russell tells us in his autobiography that he remarked to Beatrice Webb, a socialist thinker, wo was apprently keen on fasting “If you eat too little, you see visons; and if you drink too much, you see snakes”. Things like drink, drgues, tiredness, illness, depression, fasting and dehydration all change the ways we think and experience the world.
-Mystics throughout history have claimed that visons and trance-like states have come directly from God. However, as science and out understanding of the brain have developed, so has our understanding og the brain. It can be cargued that these experiences are entirely subjective.
-Micheal Persinger used the God Helmet to stimulate temporal loss and found that participants has sensations similar to religious experiences in 1997. However, Persinger;s experiements are not widely accepted because the results were inconclusive.
-Further suppport for phsyiological explantations for religious experiences use Paul’s conversion. The effects Paul felt, such as seeing a bright light, becoming unconscious and temporary loss of sight, are also symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy. Later in his writings, Paul refers to a ‘thorn in his side’, which could be a metaphor for a recurring illness, such as epilepsy.
A union with a greater power, and how their effects of religious experiences
-Part of many msytical experiences seems to be a union with some being or power infinitely greater than ourselves. The philosophical question is what would be such a union, and the extent to which it is genuine. To feel oneself in the presence of God is not like being in the presence of another human being- the mode of sensation must be different. I do not ‘see’ God as I see my friends or partner. Nor is there the sense of this as a union between equals, for I am not God’s equal. Nevertheless, people feel a sense of closeness, even though in doing os, they report their sense of being overwhelmed by something infinitely greater.
Sociological effects of religious experiences
-Many sociologists have suggested that the origins of religion and religious expereince are to be found in society. A religious experience thus reflects the society in which you live and have grown up. Hence it is no surpise that Catholics experience visons of Mary and Hindus of Shiva- this reflects the thought world of the society in which they live.
-Karl Marx, in particular, has been associated with sociological challenges to religious claims. Marx was influenced by a philosophical movement knows as the young Hegelians, who suggested that religion was a form of ‘alienation from one’s true self. By this he emant that religion was about mythological beliefs and an unreal god that distracted people form their own reality in the physical world. Hence, he called religon ‘the opium of the people’- religon for Marx was like a drug that stopped people seeing the reality of their situation and the world. Religious experiences in this sense create alienation- by which Marx meant that you are unable to be yourself and to relate, as you should be able to, to the world. He saw religion as a form of opression and control of people in society. He also saw the church as a form of social control of behaviour. He also argued the Christian teaching about life after death were like the drug opium. He argued if people are judged after death, Marx suggested it was easier to cope with being treated badly in life. Marx’s analysis of people’s situation was shaped by the economic realities of the time in which he lived. Hence, for Marx, a religious experience would be the product of the culture in which a person lived. It would not be from God but a product of the desperate situation of a person. The origins of the experience would be traceable to teh teachings and beliefs of the church.
