Arguments for and against religious experience?

Question 1

What philosopher argue for religious experiences?

Answer 1

-Richard Swinburne
-Frederick Happold
-Aleister Hardy
-Kierkegaard

Question 2

What philosopher argue against religious experiences?

Answer 2

-Michael Persinger
-Sigmund Freud
-David Hume
-Caroline Frank Davis
-Antony Flew

Question 3

Arguments for Religious experience?

Answer 3

-Convinving for the reciptent of the experience.
-Confirms belief in God
-Inductive/A posteriori
-Similar to design/Teleological
-Greater or lesser probability

Question 4

Arguments against religious experience?

Answer 4

-Would a religious expereince convert a non believer [probably not]
-Subjective
-Frontal temporal lobe
-Michael Persinger’s helmet
-Parable of the gardener

Question 5

What is Persinger’s helmet experiment?

Answer 5

It was an attempt to give a scientific basis to ‘religious experience.’

Question 6

What did Persinger do in the experiment?

Answer 6

Persinger stimulated parts of the brain, so it wasnt a religious experience however experimental subjects reported the feeling of another ‘presence’

Question 7

What did Persinger claim about this other ‘presence’?

Answer 7

He claimed that this second presence was our perceived sense of ‘self’ which intrudes on our consciousness- is what reports of angels, closeness of God, ghosts, past lives, aliens etc all have in common.

Question 8

What did Persinger conclude for his experiment?

Answer 8

Persinger concluded that so-called religious experience is nothing more than a product of self-consciousness. It is not evidence for God.

Question 9

What is David Hume’s argument for probability?

Answer 9

Hume argues that because scientific predictions are always reliable, if something happens out of the ordinary, then this should be ignored, not the science.

So the religious experience is an aberration in the regularity of the nature that can just be ignored.

Question 10

Richard Swinburnes response to David Hume was?

Answer 10

Swinburne argues there are two very common-sense reasons, why we should accept reports about religious experience

1. We ought to believe that things are as they seem unless and until we have evidence that they are mistaken [Principle of credulity].
2. Those who do not have an experience of a certain type ought to believe others who say that they do in the absence of evidence [Principle of testimony].