Influence of religious experience as an argument for the existence of god

Question 1

What is the three point a posteriori argument for the existence of god through religious experience?

Answer 1

1. There are strong reasons for believing that claims of religious experience point to spiritual realities that exist beyond our physical understanding. 2. According to physicalism, nothing exists beyond our physical understanding. 3. According to theism, god gives humans the ability to perceive religious realities through religious experience. 4. Ergo, theism is more plausible then physicalism.

Question 2

Give four reasons for supporting the argument for the existence of god through religious experience

Answer 2

1. People across all times and cultures have reported them. 2. They are a posteriori and rely on empirical evidence. 3. They are very real to the people involved and are sometimes experienced by multiple people. 4. They often have significant effects on people’s lives and lead them to acts of self sacrifice.

Question 3

What are the first two parts of Swinburne’s five part classification?

Answer 3

1. Experiences mediated through a public sensory object like a sunset. 2. Experiences mediated through an uncommon sensory object, like Moses and the burning bush.

Question 4

What are parts 3 and 4 of Swinburne’s five part classification?

Answer 4

3. Experiences mediated through a private object that can be described- peter and the vision of kosher foods. 4. Experiences mediated through a private object that can’t be described- St. Theresa’s experiences of the Holy Spirit.

Question 5

What is part 5 of Swinburne’s five part classification?

Answer 5

5. Experiences not mediated through any empirical object- Nicholas of Cusa claiming to have experienced god as a non bodily spirit.

Question 6

What is Swinburne’s principle of credulity?

Answer 6

Our experiences are normally reliable, so on the balance of probability, they are more likely to be true then false, ergo, we should trust our perceptions about the existence of god.

Question 7

What is the principle of testimony?

Answer 7

People normally tell the truth, so if someone tells us they have had a religious experience, we should accept the balance of probability and believe them.

Question 8

Give three weaknesses of Swinburne’s argument

Answer 8

1. We can’t compare everyday statements about the empirical world with statements about non cognitive experiences as we have no means of verifying such statements. 2. People are not trustworthy and often have good reason to lie, they may have even deluded themselves. 3. Atheists deny that it is more probable that god exists, if atheists have an equally strong conviction that god doesn’t exist, why shouldn’t we believe them?

Question 9

What does Hume point out as the issue with religious experiences relying on witness testimony?

Answer 9

Even if we accept them as true, we can’t be sure the witness is not lying, or mistaken, they may have deceived themselves. Even if they have no deceived themselves, there is still no guarantee that the experience came from god.

Question 10

What is the problem with the cumulative argument?

Answer 10

Adding lots of low probabilities together does not make one high probability, Flew explained this using the analogy of leaky buckets, when added together, they don’t hold more water. Also, Swinburne assumes god wants to interact with his creation and does this through religious experiences, but he has no proof of this.

Question 11

How did Feuerbach challenge religious experiences on a psychological level?

Answer 11

The idea of god is a human projection and all the attributes we give him are in our own nature, we have created god in our own image.

Question 12

How did Freud challenge religious experiences on a psychological level?

Answer 12

Religious behavior is caused by childhood insecurity and the desire for a father figure. Religious experiences are hallucinations and are a product of our subconscious need for security and meaning.

Question 13

Give two psychologists who support religious experience

Answer 13

1. Jung- the development of our spiritual aspect is essential for psychological wholeness and each of us has an idea of god within a collective unconscious. 2. James- they have a psychological dimension, but are more then just psychological events.

Question 14

Give three physiological explanations for religious experiences

Answer 14

1. Brain scans on mediating Buddhist monks show a causal operator within the brain that triggers the experience. 2. Patients who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy are far more likely to have strong religious sensations. 3. The limbic system of the brain has been linked to mystical feelings, raising the idea that religious experiences could all be to do with the way the brain functions and have nothing to do with god.

Question 15

What is persinger’s physiological challenge to religious experience?

Answer 15

Using his helmet which stimulates the temporal lobes, he argued that religious experiences could be simulated by properly tuned magnetic fields.

Question 16

How can you argue against physiological challenges to religious experience?

Answer 16

1. We don’t yet know if the brain produces, or simply process, the experience. 2. God could have hardwired our brains to process religious experience. 3. God might use the hardware of the brain to give humans religious experiences as this is all he has, we have no other way of processing such experiences and this does not take away from their impact.

Question 17

What is Kant’s objection?

Answer 17

We can only experience things in the empirical realm, we can’t logically prove the existence of god and as religious experience is undermined by empirical evidence, it is not satisfactory proof for the existence of god.

Question 18

What is the problem of interpretation?

Answer 18

Religious experiences rely on subjective experience rather then objective truths which can be tested. They tend to be described in terms of the person’s existing faith. If religious experiences really are objective truths, they ought to go beyond such distinctions.

Question 19

How can you argue against the problem of interpretation?

Answer 19

All experiences are interpretations, whatever experiences we have in life, we merely describe them in terms of what we already know and understand.

Question 20

How does John hick see religious experience?

Answer 20

1. People see things in different ways depending upon how they interpret them, perception is not simply registering what is out there neutrally. 2. Wittgenstein argued that there was a distinction between seeing (lines, shapes, textures) and seeing-as (when we identify what we are looking at, ie, a square.) 3. Hick expanded this idea to include our experiences and argued that when we experience the world through our senses, we are ‘experiencing as.’

Question 21

How else did John hick see religious experience?

Answer 21

4. Anything we experience is interpreted by us in terms of what we understand about the world. 5. Religious experience is a kind of experiencing as, the believer sees human life as an encounter with god as well as with the physical world and others. 6. Religious experiences are an additional layer of experiencing as and a perspective on life atheists lack.

Question 22

How does John hick explain his views?

Answer 22

If a believer sees a light at the end of their bed, they may take it as a sign from the divine. A non believer may see it as someone having entered their room and is now shining a torch at them. They interpret it differently and will have different emotional responses, the believer may feel joyful and at peace whilst the atheist may feel annoyed at being woken up.

Question 23

What was the name of hick’s paper on religious experience?

Answer 23

‘Religious faith as experiencing as’ 1968.

Question 24

How does Richard Dawkins see religious experiences?

Answer 24

They are just a psychotic mindset, the mind is immersed in what it thinks is true, but the observer without mental illness clearly sees the belief as untrue.

Question 25

What is the problem with Dawkins’ view?

Answer 25

It only proves that theists and Christians may be psychotic, not that they share an inter subjective psychosis.

Question 26

How does Russell oppose religious experiences as valid?

Answer 26

“From a scientific point of view, he can make no distinction between a man who eats too little and sees heaven and a man who drinks to much and sees snakes.” Religious experiences caused by fasting are mere hallucinations

Question 27

How can drugs explain religious experiences?

Answer 27

Drugs like LCD and psilocybin are called entheogens as people who take them often experience deep religious experiences as they effect the prefrontal cortex.

Question 28

How does the objectivist view see religious experiences?

Answer 28

They express something real, the person comes into contact with something outside of themself which really exists.

Question 29

What is the subjectivist view of religious experiences?

Answer 29

They are personal, not factual, they don’t count as proof for anything and god is merely a metaphor for a certain attribute to life, like Santa.

Question 30

What is the problem with the objectivist and subjectivist views?

Answer 30

O- religious experiences can’t be tested scientifically, so how can we be sure that the divine is what’s causing the experience? S- leads to a slippery slope, once you see some experiences as subjective, you end up giving up on the idea of any objective reality at all.