Are conversion experiences reliable - RE

Question 1

INTRO - Define

Answer 1

Conversion - changing one religious position to another

Question 2

INTRO - define both sides of the debate

Answer 2

Life-changing and effects the person ; little/no empirical evidence can be reduced to other more believable explanations

Question 3

Section 1: theme

Answer 3

Psychologically willed by the individual

Question 4

Section 1: AO1

PSYCHOLOGICALLY WILLED

Answer 4

There are certainly those who might argue that life being altered indicates a higher power.

Often an experience in which a person alters their life from one set of convictions to another, indeed suggests the existence of a higher power - the fact someone has been altered, suggests the experience was profound and powerful e.g. St Paul on the road to Damascus

Question 5

Section 1: AO2 FOR

PSYCHOLOGICALLY WILLED

Answer 5

James RE are ‘passive’ and this elevates the credibility of the experience as it is not willed by the individual contrary to the assertions made by the likes of Freud. Equally experiences are ineffable, meaning the recipient cannot articulate their feeling of the transcendent or divine

Noetic Quality: contravene the statement that RE are illusions ‘good disposition’ of the knowledge revealed points to ‘something larger’ (OTTO)
- St. Theresa of Avilla: RE only religious if recipient is left in peace James’ insistence for a “good disposition” pragmatism - value judged on its effects, not its validity; fruits not root

Question 6

Section 1: AO2 AGAINST

PSYCHOLOGICALLY WILLED

Answer 6

The psychological challenge - Freud its chief proponent - asserts that religious experiences are no more than illusions constructed by the psyche most fundamentally to satisfy neuroses

Leary: recorded experiences of LSD users and those who claimed that they had RE and the results were neatly indistinguishable from each other

Question 7

Section 2: Theme

Answer 7

There are those who might discredit the value of conversion on the grounds of considering that corporate experinces must be more valid.

Question 8

Section 2: AO1

CORPORATE

Answer 8

Corporate experiences arguably more reliable than individual, as a multitude of people are claiming to experience the same thing e.g. Toronto Blessing, “holy laughter”, barking, all seen as signs of the presence of the holy spirit

Question 9

Section 2: AO2 FOR

CORPORATE

Answer 9

Swinburne: Principle of Credulity/ Testimony – “what one perceives is probably so”
- People should be believed if they have said they’ve had an experience
This is a logical assertion to make, since reliance on the senses has been instrumental to our functioning for centuries

Passivity/ transience

Question 10

Section 2: AO2 AGAINST

CORPORATE

Answer 10

Critics suggest that people attracted to evangelical worship are pre-disposed to behaviour such as mass hysteria
-Experience more of a group hallucination brought by atmosphere of the Church
-Why would God make people bark like Dogs
-Experience does not fit James’ criteria of having a noetic quality

Corporate situations undeniable that people will be influenced by ideas of conformity – proven in psychological experiments such as people standing in the wrong direction on a lift because other people are
-Influence and desire to conform and ‘see’ God
-Weakens idea they’ve had a genuine experience
Swinburne’s idea better applied to people who are free from outside influences

Question 11

Section 3: theme

Answer 11

Impact on the individual

Question 12

Section 3: AO1

IMPACT

Answer 12

Yet ultimately it must be argued that the epistemological problem of other minds means one cannot prove nor disprove the validity of a religious experience; instead, experiences should be judged in accordance to their impacts and value for the individual, thereby making conversion possibly the most convincing form of religious experience.

Question 13

Section 3: AO2 FOR

IMPACT

Answer 13

Wittgenstein’s notion of “seeing-as” in his ‘Philosophical Investigations’ has been developed by John Hick to explain how people interpret the same things in different ways, demonstrated by the duck-rabbit picture.

John hick uses the phrase “experiencing as” to demonstrate that the world and everything in it can be experienced in different ways - ultimately the veridicality of religious experiences is not something anyone other than the experiencer can comment on.
How can corporate experiences be commented on as more or less valid than individual

Question 14

Section 3: AO2 AGAINST

IMPACT

Answer 14

Most religious experiences fit into the culture of the person’s worship - religious people are predisposed to religious experiences, attracted to the unusual and the bizarre, people search for conversions