1.4 Religious Experience Flashcards
COMPLETED
1
Q
What is a brief overview of William James’ approach to religious experience?
A
- there may be a scientific explanation to religious experience but it isn’t necessarily the whole explanation e.g. Paul’s conversion may have been an epileptic episode but also had a big effect on his life
- the importance of experiences is not the root but the fruit
2
Q
What are three different views on mystical experience?
A
- Happold, English 20th century, said our purpose is to discover our eternal selves and unite with the divine
- St Teresa of Avila said that experiences should produce a positive effect, they should feel at peace and should fit with the teachings of the church
- Rudolf Otto, German C20 talked of numinous experiences, one of awe and wonder in the presence of the divine, experiences should me mysterium, tremendum and fascinas
3
Q
What are two views on conversion experience?
A
- William James: conversion involves someone altering their beliefs and way of life. religious beliefs should come to be at the centre of a person’s consciousness. could be psychological explanation but it’s not the whole picture
- Edwin Starbuck: drew parallels to finding our identity in adolescence when we go through uncertainty and anxiety before finding happy relief
4
Q
Who are four wider scholars on conversion conversion experience?
A
- Freud: conversions are hallucinations, wishful thinking
- Antony Flew: conversions are almost always to a religion a person grew up with
- Peter Donovan: there is a distinction between feeling certain and being right
- Bertrand Russel: ‘the fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth’
- Swinburne: principle of credulity and testimonty (accept what appears to be the case and what someone tells you unless you have strong evidence otherwise)
5
Q
What is the arguments that religious experience could have a psychological explanation?
A
- Feuerbach C19 thought God was a human invention of projecting our qualities onto the divine
- Freud adapted this to say that religious behaviour was neurosis caused by childhood insecurities. God is attractive as we can be forgiven for our sins. Relgious experience is just hallucinations from our subconscious
- Hobbes said that ‘to say god hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say he dreamed that God spake to him’
6
Q
What are two criticisms of corporate religious experience?
A
- mass hysteria: groups generate physical symptoms in response to psychological stimulus. throughout history groups of people have been convinced they’ve caught serious illness when it was purely psychological
- trivial acts: some claims seem to be trivial, why would God interact in the world in this way and make people act so weirdly?
7
Q
What are three examples of individual religious experience?
A
- Ian McCormack: near death experience after being stung by jellyfish, out of body experience, had profound effect and he changed his way of life and became christian, wrote book, dedicated life to missionary work etc.
- CS Lewis’ conversion to christianity: after his conversion his work focused on religion
- Saul on the Damascus road
8
Q
What are three examples of corporate religious experience?
A
- Fatima, Portugal: 1917 a crowd of 30,000 gathered in response to visions that claimed a miracle would occur that day, claimed they saw the sun dancing
- Medjugorje: 1981 six children claimed to have experienced visions of the Virgin Mary
- the Toronto Blessing: 1990s caused holy laughter, crying, shrieking and falling to the floor
9
Q
What four features did James say were common to all religious experiences?
A
- ineffable - cannot be put into words
- noetic - gain of a deep and direct understanding of God
- transient - passes with time
- passivity - something is acting upon you, it cannot be summoned
10
Q
What three principles did James establish about religious experienc?
A
- pragmatism - truth is not fixed, just what works in real life therefore religious experience is ‘true’
- empiricism - the result of the experience must be empirical data
- pluralism - experiences in different faiths all produce positive effects despite being interpreted differently therefore are all true
11
Q
What is the argument that religious experience could have a physiological explanation?
A
- Physiological: Dawkins, religious ideas are memes used for our survival. Persinger’s God’s helemt where there was a magnetic field around the brain that people reported to being similar to a religious experience
12
Q
What scholar has criticised corporate religious experiences
A
Christian psychatrist John White refers to corporate experiences as “learned patterns of behaviour” - saying that corporate religious experiences are not real
13
Q
James
A
- emphasised the variety and individuality of spiritual experiences, highlighting their personal nature
14
Q
Otto
A
- talked of ‘numinous’ experiences: a unique, ineffable, and non-rational encounter with the divine, characterised by awe and majesty
15
Q
Jung
A
- Religious experience as a manifestation of the collective unconscious, embodying archetypes and the self’s quest for wholeness
- connect religious experience with deeper psychological structures
