2.4.1 Factors that lead to a religious experience

Question 1

What is the importance of God’s existence in a religious experience?

Answer 1

• the arguments about God’s existence operate as though we don’t actually experience God, that God is absent from our experience - why is why we need to prove his existence
• for example, you would say you ‘believe that’ the book is red, more naturally than if you can’t see it; otherwise, you would simply say that you can see it is red; so what about religious experience?

Question 2

How does John Hick interpret the ‘religious experience’?

Answer 2

(by ‘religious experience’, we are not referring to an unusual or mystical experience of ‘communing’ with God, but something more ordinary):

• religious differs from non-religious experience, not as the awareness of a different world, but as a different way of experiencing the same world
• events which can be experienced as having a purely natural significance are experienced by the religious mind as having also & at the same time religious significance & as mediating the presence & activity of God’.

(John Hick, ‘Rational Theistic Belief without Proofs’)

Question 3

What does Hick argue about the broadness of the religious experience?

Answer 3

• Hick argues that religious experiences is a kind of experiencing-as
• the religious persons experiences human life & history as an encounter with God, as well as an encounter with the physical world & other people
• it is an additional layer of experiencing-as, a perspective on life & the world that the non-religious person doesn’t have

Question 4

How does Hick describe personal events playing significance in the religious experience?

Answer 4

• it could be that religious experiences is analogous (comparable) to perceptual experiencing-as or that it is a subjective projection of religious meaning onto natural events
• Hick accepts that there are disanalogies, e.g. religious experience isn’t sensory perception & we aren’t perceiving types of object but the significance of events
• but, he argues, there is an important continuity

Question 5

Explain Hick’s idea of continuity within the religious experience

Answer 5

1. all perception involves making sense of what is perceived (through seeing-as, through applying concepts); part of this involves how we respond to what we see; i.e. to see x as y - e.g. this object as a fork - involves an appropriate response in how are disposed to act in relation to it, e.g. use it to eat with, not to write with. We shouldn’t think, then, that we can contrast religious experience as a projection with ‘neutral’ perceptual experience: no experience is neutral
2. we don’t just recognise objects, we recognise situations, as shown by our immediate appropriate responses to them, e.g. seeing someone hanging off the edge of a cliff in fear initiates a moral response - of helping them. We recognise this a situation of moral significance

Question 6

How does Hick compare religious perception to religious experience?

Answer 6

• religious experience is a matter of recognising the religious significance of events or situation, e.g. having a sense of God in the vastness of beauty of the natural world
• this involves a change in how we are disposed to act; by the logic, Hick argues, all religious experience dispose us to ‘service of God’
• for Christians, this is indicated by Jesus’ moral teaching; this response is not an optional extra - it is just as much part of experience human life & history as an encounter with God as using a fork to eat with is part of seeing it as a fork

Question 7

What weakens Hick’s analogy?

Answer 7

• while Hick is right that all recognition involves applying concepts to experience, we don’t need to accept that all recognition is similar to perceptual recognition
• if recognising the religious significance of a situation was analogous to recognising a fork, then we can ask ‘Which sense do we use? Is there a ‘religious sense’? How does this religious sense detect religious significance (i.e. eyes detect light from the work)?’
• Hick doesn’t suggest we can give answers to these questions

Question 8

If Hick’s analogies aren’t analogous, what could they be counted as?

Answer 8

• talk of ‘recognition’ or ‘experiencing-as’ in these contexts is not analogous to perception; it is metaphorical
• so we shouldn’t defend the claim that religious experience is experiencing the world as an encounter with God by analogy with perception

Question 9

What is an alternative interpretation of the fork/cliff analogy?

Answer 9

• Hick’s emphasis is on the analogy covering the contrast between something ‘experiential’ & beliefs that we form by argument or inference
• to see something as a fork is to disposed to use it to eat with; we don’t infer we should use it this way
• in the situation of the person hanging off the cliff, we don’t infer that we should help, we see that help is needed
• so, he argues, the religious person doesn’t infer that God exists, but experiences life as an encounter with God
• it is immediate, like perception, not inferred, like theoretical beliefs

Question 10

What does the universality of perceptive human experiences suggest about religious experience?

Answer 10

• we can object with perception, we all experience the natural world
• religious experience is much less common & religious people come to different beliefs on the basis of their experience
• if God is ‘there’ in the same manner the natural world is ‘there’, we would all have the same religious experience, just as we the same (or very similar) perceptual experience
• so religious experience may feel immediate, but differences in religious experience suggest that actually it is inferred

Question 11

What is the problem of religious experience being suggested as analogous to perceptual experience?

Answer 11

• this only simplifies the scope of perceptual experience
• as a common example, people who are experts at recognising birds ‘see’ or ‘hear’ hawks, eagles, chuffs, woodcocks, & so on; they don’t have some perceptual experience we could all share & then ‘infer’ the species
• once one has learned to recognise an object, one recognises it immediately - but first one must learn
• so, Hick argues, not everyone recognises events as an encounter with God
• furthermore, if God was as unmistakable as the natural world, this would completely change religious faith - for the worse
• in this way, God has deliberately given us ‘cognitive freedom’ in being able to recognise or not recognise life as an encounter with him
• once one has freely opened oneself to this perspective, then (as with recognising birds) the experience is immediate

Question 12

How can the illusion argument weaken Hick’s?

Answer 12

it could be all an illusion; in the sense that someone who is mad might experience the world in a way that shows that they are being persecuted telepathically by aliens who want to conquer Earth

Question 13

How does Hick respond to the illusion argument?

Answer 13

• religious faith does not seem like a madness i.e. the religious person gives no signs of psychological breakdown or an inability to function in the world
• in the same way, some religious teachers have a very high degree of psychological integration & maturity
• so, as yet, there is no reason to think that experiencing the world religiously is irrational