Key Ideas

Question 1

James criteria for the roots of an experience

Answer 1

Passivity, ineffability, noetic, transient

Question 2

Jame’s criteria for the fruits of an experience

Answer 2

Does it fit with religious teaching?

Does it leave a person changed for the better?

Question 3

The first of James’ conclusions

Answer 3

We can experience a union with something larger than ourselves and within this find our greatest peace

Question 4

The second of James’ conclusion

Answer 4

We can experience higher powers but we can’t say this points to God

Question 5

An example of a radical conversion experience

Answer 5

Davy falcons who overcame his addictions and became a church minister at 33

Question 6

James’ definition of religion

Answer 6

Men in their solitude with whatever they consider to be divine

Question 7

Paul’s conversion experience (Act 9:1-16)

Answer 7

Suddenly he saw a light from heaven and he fell to the ground hearing a voice saying ‘Saul Saul why are you persecuting me’

Question 8

C.S Lewis’ conversion experience

Answer 8

‘Unrelenting approach of him whom I most earnestly desired not to meet’

Question 9

Russel

Answer 9

‘No distinction between a man who eats little and sees God and a man who drinks much and sees snakes’

Question 10

Hobbes

Answer 10

‘When a man says God spoke to him in a dream it is no more than to say he dreamed God spoke to him’

Question 11

Swinburne

Answer 11

‘If there is a God one would expect him to interact with us on a personal level’

Question 12

Pragmatism

Answer 12

Focus on consequences

Question 13

Toronto blessing 1994

Answer 13

People overcome with fits of laughter and roared like animals, some spoke in tongues

Question 14

Three criticisms of the Toronto blessing

Answer 14

Mass hysteria or conformity- working of the subconscious mind.
Engineered through multimedia
Bizarre behaviour, could God not have interacted in a better, more useful way?

Question 15

Feuerbach

Answer 15

‘God is man writ large’

Question 16

Explanations for saint Paul’s experience

Answer 16

Epilepsy (Thorn in the flesh)

Guilt

Question 17

What was the aim of M.Persinger’s God helmet

Answer 17

Electrical charges to create a feeling of God.

Question 18

E.D Starbuck

Answer 18

Conversions as just normal teenage phenomenon

Question 19

C.S Lewis and the fruits

Answer 19

‘If he is just as snobbish, spiteful of envious as before, we must suspect his their conversion was largely imaginary’