Religious Experience Flashcards
Mystical experiences
Experience of something beyond normal awareness, experience of the divine was at the heart of religion and came before theology.
Common core of mystical experiences
Passive - feeling of not being in control
Ineffable - can’t be explained in words
Noetic - provides new insight or knowledge
Transient - short experience but has a long lasting significant impact on the person
Julian of Norwich
Had visions of bleeding Jesus but experienced feelings of unconditional love and came out of her state of being close to death afterwards
Schleiermacher on mystical experience
Argues more to existence than physical so if one stops and reflects they will find something other
Criticisms of mystical experiences
- could all be in the mind as it reacts the same way shown in common features.
- passivity is unconscious mind deluding the conscious self, linkers god helmet people think electromagnetic fields are the divine
- change in perspectives could be due to other factors not religious like a book
- subjective experiences as they can’t be tested by another
Conversion
Change of heart or priorities following a new direction in life after an experience. Inner self becomes unified and happy, religious ideals become more centred .
William James four fruits of conversion
- conviction of something beyond the material world
- immense feelings of elation
- feeling of having met a friendly power
- change in emphasis of life , more spiritually and morally aware
S Hadley
A dying drunkard homeless and friendless who considered suicide but after a conversion became sober and never drank again as his sick soul was healed.
Story of Paul
On his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, he saw a vision of Jesus, paralysed and went blind he then went on to spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.
Volitional
Gradual change and development of new moral habits like cs lewis
Self surrender
Sudden experience leading to change in life like Saul’s conversion to Paul.
Criticisms of conversions
Starbucks - normal adolescent phenomenon, as they struggle to search for personal identity and conversions provide psychological answer
Kant - logically impossible to experience god in a noumena reality as humans are in phenomenal world
William James in pluralism
All religions experience experiences with similar vocabulary and a higher power. Teachings and beliefs of different religion show different interpretation of experiences, but all religions collectively have a higher power and common feature sis evidence for god
William James conclusion
Nothing that unequivocally supports belief in god or infinite divine reality but he doesn’t rule it out as there is a higher power that helps people find peace
William James in Empiricism
He gathered extensive observation of religious experience and the effects of the experience on the person afterwards.
Support of William James
Frank davis - cumulative argument tips balance in favour of god with religious experience
Criticisms of William James
- rationalists argue senses can deceive and James examples have use of mind altering substances
- Hume interpretation of one divine could discredit experiences as Christian’s experience Jesus and Hindus krishna.
- flaw has all arguments for god having flaws by adding them together doesn’t make argument more reliable, 10 leaky buckets are no better than 1.
Freud on religious experience
Religion is a neurosis, conflict between the ego trying to balance super ego and id. Religious experiences are illusions if religion is just wishful thinking. Humans fear death and danger so construct a father figure for protection in god.
Feurbach on religious experience
God is man writ large as it is a powerful construct in minds of unmans by their desires of a supreme being.
Inattentional blindness
Misled by minds as brains overlook details, could be sincere in belief of experience but sincerely wrong.
Jung psychological explanation for conversion
St Paul’s conversions is emotional breakdown due to guilt of killing Christian’s, resurface of guilt in the form of religion is the Oedipus complex.
Criticisms of the psychological argument from Hick
Many experience the same but perceive or describe things differently, subjective and only known by the subjective person.
Newbury on religious experience
Brains are easily capable of religious experience and neurons show religious people are more inclined to have them
Mind altering effects causing religious experience
St Francis Xavier had heavenly visions but he lacked vitamin b due to his fasting which can result in hallucinations, Russell’s quote
Neurological factors - Persinger
Persingers god helmet stimulated temporal lobe and found sensations similar to religious experience suggesting they are just events in the brain.
Criticisms of physiological argument
- reductionist as materialism can’t explain other power James found
- if god was to communicate with humans it seems probable he would use natural processes in the brain
- Doesnt explain changes in behaviour after experience
- Persingers experiment was poorly executed
Toronto blessing
Started at Toronto airport church spreading worldwide a move of the Holy Spirit descended upon the service as people spoke in glossolalia and animal noises, danced. There was immense joy and terry Virgo marriage improved. People at Pentecost spoke in glossolalia.
Criticisms of the Toronto blessing
- caused by mass hysteria as people get swept up in emotion - Hanegraff
- social conformity as people fake it to want to fit in
- why would god make people bark if he could help save staring people
- Can normally be explained psychologically as social conditioning
Swinburne principle of credulity
Things should be believed unless there is good reason to believe otherwise, black cat is real unless there is known cat painter in the area
Swinburne principle of testimony
Assume people are telling the truth unless there is reason to believe otherwise like a pathological liar
Criticisms of Swinburne principles
- naive to trust everyone as humans can lie
- Hume has miracles as humans being prone to exaggerate and drawn to the unusual
- senses may deceiving like inattentional blindness.
Winnicott psychological argument for religious experience
Children make connection to a transitional object theat they hold onto for comfort, religious experience is transitional, it is imagnative for comfort
Rudolph Otto on religious experience
Religious experiences aren’t unifying but more numinous, they are mysterious, fascinating, otherworldly
Physiological explanation for Pauls conversion
Epilepsy
Physiological explanation for Theresa
Schizophrenia
Strengths of individual experiences
- Not subject mass hysteria
- person ally authenticated
- less likely to be socially conditioned
Weaknesses of individual experiences
- No external verification
- No empirical evidence
- Ayer - Anything unverifiable or uneffable is meaningless
Strengths of corporate experiences
- Numerically valid
- Shared feelings
- Suggests experiences come from god not individual imagination
