Philosophy - Religious Experience Flashcards
Mystical Experience
Experiences of God or of the supernatural which go beyond everyday sense experience
Numinous experience
An indescribable experience which invokes feelings of awe, worship and fascination
Conversion experience
An experience which produces a radical change in someone’s belief system
Corporate religious experience
A religious experience which happens to a group of people ‘as a body’
Mysticism - F.C. Happold
‘Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology’
- World is understood as only a part of an ultimate reality
- The world comes from a ‘divine ground’ which we know intuitively but not rationally
- We are composed of an ‘ego’ & ‘eternal self’, the latter allows our connections to the divine
- Our purpose is to discover our true ‘eternal self’ and unite with the ‘divine ground’
Mystical experiences in the Bible
Vision of Isiah in the temple (Isiah 6)
Voices heard by the boy Samuel (1 Samuel 3)
H.D. Lexperience
Conversion experience - H.D. Lewis
‘Our Experience of God’
- Pattern of conversion experience
–> Dissatisfied, searches for answers, crisis point, following sense of peace, long-term change in direction
Conversion experience in the Bible
Conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9)
William James
‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’
- Could be tested by effects & practical results
- 4 main qualities (PINT)
Rudolf idea Ottoholy
Rudolf Otto
‘The Idea of the Holy’
- ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’
- 3 main characteristics (MUAD)
Swinburne
‘Is There a God?’
- Principle of credulity
- Principle of testimony
Criticisms - Freuerbach
God was an invention of the human mind
Criticisms - Freud
Subconscious layers of the mind led people to believe there was a God - imaginary figure
Criticisms - Persinger
‘Persinger’s helmet’
Religious experience is caused by magnetic fields
