Religious Experience Flashcards
Give the definitions of religious experiences for the following scholars :
Ninian Smart
William James
Dawkins
St Teresa of Avila
include quotes
- Ninian Smart: ‘A religious experience involves some kind of perception of the invisible world’
- William James: religious experiences draw on common emotions that are directed at the divine.
- Dawkins: The God Delusion (2006). There is no such thing as a religious experience. They are merely expressions of a person’s psychological needs: ‘most convincing to those who claim to have had one, “ is the least convincing to anyone else”
- St Teresa of Avila: too hard to define due the profound nature of the experiences ‘ I find it impossible”
Describe direct and indirect experiences
-Direct experiences: the experient feels that he or she is in direct contact with God, a supernatural force, or ultimate truth. It involves a union with the divine (usually mystical experiences)
- Indirect experiences: there is an experience of God’s action in creation (imminence) or the world at large (usually numinous experiences)
Give three ways a religious experience usually affects the experient. ( it’s characteristics )
- Give the experient a greater understanding of God/ the divine
- Are encouraging to the individual - has a positive impact
- Are unique to the individual - even in a group setting
Define a conversion and its differing characteristics
when a religious experiences triggers conversion of the experient from one faith to another , or from no faith to no faith
it can be either :
gradual and volitional ( may be searching for faith or trying to gain experience of God)
spontaneous and non-volitional ( not expected ) e.g. St Paul on the road to Damascus
define revelation
- a particular experience of God where he makes himself directly known.
- crucial element is that the experient acquires new knowledge
Describe the two forms of revelation
- Propositional: refers to god directly revealing truth/facts about his nature to people without error or need of reinterpretation e.g Prophet Muhammad (saw) and the Quran
- Non-propositional: a person comes to a moment of realisation; of divine truth e.g Thé Buddha
Give criticisms of propositional revelation (3)
- suggests receiver is passive however psychologically the human mind does not passively receive knowledge
- there are conflicting propositions from different religions a how do we know which are true and which are false
- no way directly to verify or prove that propositional revelations happen
Give criticisms of a non-propositional revelation
- they do not reveal direct knowledge or God and cannot be consisted infallible
- the context of the revelation is a matter of interpretation
Describe the events which occurred during the Toronto Blessing
include controversy
- a series of corporate religious experiences occurred
- large numbers of people experience God at the same time
- people shook uncontrollable , wept laughed hysterically and made unusual sounds
- some questioned internet validity claiming that the experience are engineered through mass hysteria
Give Rudolf Otto’s description of a numinous experience.
- the experient is in the presence of an awesome power yet feels distinctly separate.
- described numinous to mean a feeling of the divine.
- numinous is something ‘ wholly other’ than the natural world and beyond apprehension.
- ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinas’ meaning fearful and fascinating mystery.
What did Greeley suggest could trigger religious experiences. Name an example
- music , dance Meditation and prayer
- prayer : communion with GOD.
- Believers claim that God answers prayers and that this is a sure sign of his existence -
The Toronto Blessing
Give Teasdall’s interpretation of a ‘mystical experience’
in ‘The Mystic Heart (1999) he describes mysticism as ‘direct, immediate experience of ultimate reality’
Give three characteristics of a mystical experience
- knowledge of the ultimate reality is gained
- a sense of freedom from the limitations of time, space and the human ego is experienced
- a sense of bliss or serenity is experienced
Give the two types of mysticism. Give examples
- theistic: involves an awareness and union of God. It usually involves knowledge of God being gained. This is what Sufi Muslims seek through their various forms of worship
- Monistic: involves an awareness of soul, self, conscience or ultimate reality. E.g. Buddhists use meditation to understand the self as non-existent and enlightenment is a mystical experience
Give the 4 ways which William James identifies a mystical experience ( THINK PINT)
1.Ineffability: The feelings defy expression ; they are beyond description using words.
St Teresa of Avila: ‘ I wish I could give a description (…) but I find it impossible
2.Noetic Quality: States of knowledge which allow insight to the depths of truth beyond human intellect
3.Transiency: These states cannot be sustained
4. Passivity: One loses control to a more powerful being. It is beyond human control.
Describe St Teresa of Avila’s religious experience
GIVE QUOTE
- she claimed to experience series of visions of Jesus ‘ seen not with the eyes of the body but with the eyes of the soul’.
- claimed her visions gave her insights into the nature of God
Describe Saint Bernadette’s religious experience
- claimed to have experienced 18 visitations from Mary over a six month period, not knowing who the lady was until the last apparition
- Mary instructed Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground and drink and bathe in it
- a mystical experience
- a direct experience
- a theistic experience
Describe St Paul’s religious experience
- Prior to conversion, Paul was a zealous Pharisee who “intensely persecuted” the followers of Jesus.
- On his way from Jerusalem, Paul sees a blinding light and communicates directly with a divine voice ‘ I am Jesus, whom you are persecuted’
- Saul was blind for three days and did not eat nor drink - Acts 9:3-9
- Paul converted to Christianity and spent the remainder of his life preaching the gospel
Give the premises of religious experience as evidence of God’s experience
P1: Expérience of X indicates the reality of X
P2: Experience of God indicates the reality of God
P3: It is possible to experience God.
C: God exists
Give the 6 strengths of Religious Experience as an argument for God. Include Counter Arguments and Rebuttals
The centrality of religious experiences to religion - there are examples within religious scriptures ie Moses and the Ten Commandments
ÇA : could mean that modern religious experiences are just a manifestation of pre-existing knowledge
ÇA: could lead to the manifestation of desires to have a religious experience
gain greater knowledge of faith from religious experience.
ÇA: Can’t verify the knowledge gained. No evidence that this it is a genuine truth of the divine.
- if knowlege is not new than ( ÇA.1)
- if new than how can we trust the knowledge of one person over God’s words
Swinburne’s Testimony of Faith
- unless there is evidence of the contrary one should believe what people say/testify
ÇA: Based on personal experience and so perception differs. Cant trust all perceptions
Swinburne’s principle of Credulity :
believe things are as they seem to be unless proven otherwise.
ÇA: Vardy : there needs to be a burden of proof
- subjective to misperception
The sheer number is convincing : as 40% of people have had a religious experience
ÇA : same as ÇA.4 - often religious experiences are in keeping with predisposed beliefs
R: Conversion - St Paul
The transformative effect is convincing - St Paul
ÇA: could be secular moral enlightenment as Buddhists wouldn’t attribute this change to God
- effects could be a result of a placebo experience - manifestation of their own desire
Give the 6 weaknesses of Religious Experience as an argument for God. Include Counter Arguments and Rebuttals
- religious non-empirical
CA should we be holding it to these standards? R: cam it than be used as a universal proof of God’s
existence.
CA2: transformative effect are the empirically verifiable elements - inductive reasoning and so leads to a probable conclusion and not a philosophical proof
CA: Swinburne’s cumulative argument
R: Flew’s 10 leaky buckets - relies on a presupposed belief in the divine
CA: St Paul’s conversion was non-volitional and spontaneous
Ca: may have an RE different to thier own religion - could be an alternative non religious explanation
- see QB AND F24
- conflicting religious experiences
CA: all have an element of the divine ; could be many paths to one god ; John Hick
R: conflicting RE between monotheistic and theistic religions
Give Sigmund Freud’s view on religious experiences
- suggested that theurge that some people felt towards religion was no more than psychological obsession
- he believed that RE were projections of ultimate, oldest and most profound ideas that people had
- referred to them as a mass delusion or paranoid wish fulfillment
Who is VS Ramachandran and what is his view on religious experiences
- a neurologist
- found that those with temporal lobe epilepsy where more likely to claim that they had experiences of God , and had greater physical reactions to religious imagery.
- suggested that St Paul could have had the condition
- he in not unwilling to accept that god exists and has placed the temporal lobe within the brain as a means of communication with humans
Give Micahel Persinger’s view and researchon religious experience
- argues that religious experiences are no more than the brain responding to external stimuli
- he developed a helmet which produced weak magnetic fields across the hemispheres of the brain which stimulated the emotions felt in a religious experience
- when performed this experiment on Tibetan monks and the Franciscan nun, they all reported that the experiment was identical to what they experience in their own meditative practice
What is Richard Dawkins view on religious experiences?
- believes RE are manifestation of psychological needs.
