Challenges To Religious Experience Flashcards
What are Davis’ three challenges ?
- Caroline Franks Davis listed three distinct forms of challenged to the validity of claims of religious (mystical) experiences
- description related challenges
- subject related challenges
- object related challenges
Description related challenges
- they are logically inconsistent
- behaviourally inconsistent
- lies, misremembrance, misinterpretation
- when an event is described that claims itself to be an experience of God then a claim is being made for which there is no
- This description is therefore not valid
-Furthermore the claim is inconsistent or contradictory with normal everyday experience and for this reason should be rejected - It is not a claim that is in any sense valid, merely a misunderstanding of the experience on the part of the recipient
How could a description be logically inconsistent
- an encounter with a transcendent God is logically inconsistent since the definition of a transcendent God is being outside of space and time therefore unreachable
How could a description be behaviourally inconsistent?
- The description may contain vivid imagery, yet the person may carry on with their lives as if nothing has changed despite such a profound experience
How could a description be a lie, misremembrance or a misinterpretation?
- religious experiences are subjective and only truly revealed to that recipient
- because human nature allows lying, misremembering and misinterpreting and also because these experiences leave no evidence to be evaluated they cannot be fully trusted
Subjected related challenges
- in this challenge, the recipient of the religious experiences put under suspicion
- It may be claimed that they are unreliable as a source, they may be considered to be suffering from a mental illness. I’ve been suffering the lesion but about by some sort of substance misuse.
- in such cases they are not in a position to properly understand what they’ve experienced and as such must have their claims dismissed
What are the subject related criticisms?
1- dreams/hallucinations are unreliable
2- subject could be unreliable if they’ve been using drugs or fasting (these are connected with altered mental states which have the capability to induce religious experience- esque delusions)
3- subject is also unreliable if the testimonies are inconsistent
Object related challenges
- unlikely
- uncorroborated
- The challenge is that the likelihood of having experience something such as the recipient claims is so unlikely as to be entirely and true
- The suggestion of God(the object) haven’t been experienced his name more likely than having a claim of having seen an 8 ft green alien or flying antelope
- as we are unlikely to believe anyone that claimed experience of the latter to examples, why then should we believe the claim of someone who was said to have experienced God
When would a religious experience be likely according to Davis?
- The religious experience includes and an ethical demand as this contradict the existence of a benevolent God
- When Davis says that religious experiences are uncorroborated she means that they cannot be verified by science
When would a religious experience be likely according to Davis?
- The religious experience includes and an ethical demand as this contradict the existence of a benevolent God
- When Davis says that religious experiences are uncorroborated she means that they cannot be verified by science
Why are Davis’ challenges convincing?
1- they are simple alternative explanations which involve a smaller assumption than an encounter
2- they are plausible: alternative explanation seem more likely than encounters with the divine
3- they are cooperated: alternative explanations are supported by empirical evidence (E.G.studies or various illnesses which precipitate psychological delusions)
What is the problem in trying to establish the reliability of a mystical experience?
- criteria must be formed to establish truth/reliability regarding a religious experience
- however, due to the very nature of mystical experiences, most philosophers agree that such criteria virtually impossible to verify
- for example, Gray believes that this is due to the fact that, by their very nature, mystical experiences of subjective and not objective
- if something is objective and verifiable, it is something that relates to the external facts that can be agreed upon by the observers
– it is possible to prove by one or more of the five senses, it is something that can be described and multiple observers will come to the same conclusion about the same thing - however in this case if something is subjected then it tends to be based upon opinion, personal judgement, belief or assumption and is more difficult to verify.
- It is likely to be interpreted in different ways by multiple observers and these views may change according to time and context.
Why are experiences considered a subjective experience?
- our knowledge of the mystical experiences depends entirely on the perception of the experience by the recipient – or in some cases the witness of the Recipient
- as Scientific empiricism tends to reject subjective accounts out of hand, then this presents a serious challenge to the truth of any mystical experience
- however equally the experience remains valid for the individual, or groups of individuals, even if it’s by it’s very very subjectivity, it is non-verifiable
- this would also extended the idea that the claim for the one of experience can still be valid – a repetition of events is not required for it to retain its validity
Antony flews falsification principle
- came up with a falsification principle, which stated that propositions could be made meaningful if there were some evidence that could come against them
- However stated that as religious believers allow nothing to count against their believes then all religious statements including those of the Mystic were ultimately meaningless
- used johns wisdom parable of the gardener to support his pout.
