Religious Experience Flashcards
What did William James claim about Religious Experiences?
Claimed that religious experiences occur in different religions and have similar features. People who have and try to have religious experiences are often called ‘Mystics’ and their experiences are intense and totally immersive.
What is the definition of ineffability?
The experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words to accurately described.
What does the term Noetic mean?
Some sort of knowledge or insight is gained.
What is the definition of Transient?
The experience is temporary.
What is the definition of Passive?
The experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen.
What is the quotation taken from William James’ claim about Religious Experience?
The most useful descriptor of a mystical experience is that it “defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words”. It is ineffable. It has to be directly experienced to be appreciated.
What did William James suggest Religious Experience is like?
It’s like music or love in that regard. If someone has never felt love or heard music, they might find a musician or lover weak-minded or absurd, but that’s just because they lack the required experience. James saying this is true of those who dismiss religious experience too.
What is William James’ pluralist argument?
James’ explanation is that religious experiences really are coming from a higher spiritual reality. Writers such as W. Stace developed this argument much more explicitly, claiming that the universality of certain features of religious experiences is good evidence that they are real.
What is the Naturalist approach to Religious Experience?
Cross-cultural similarity of the features of religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation, however. It could be that all human brains hallucinate similarly because they evolved similarly.
What is James’ Pragmatic argument?
James was most interested in the effects religious experiences had on people’s lives and argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects.
What was James’ argument on Conversion experiences?
Conversion experiences are clearly a strong example of James’ point about the life-changing impact of religious experiences. He viewed conversion experiences as a transformation from an unhappy divided or imperfect self with a guilty conscience to a more unified happy state.
What is a counter argument to James’ Pragmatism?
The reason for it being life-changing would only be because of their beliefs about its significance which their own mind is supplying. It’s not coming from some higher spiritual reality, it’s just a hallucination. This does seem like a simpler explanation.
What is Swinburne’s view on Religious Experience?
Religious experience can be evidence for God that justifies belief in God, so long as it survives standard empirical testing. Swinburne doesn’t favour any particular type of religious experience. Any type could be valid evidence for God, so long as there is no reason to not believe it.
What does Swinburne consider to be evidence?
If we experience something or someone tells us they have experienced something, then that is evidence for that thing probably being true.
Of course, this doesn’t prove God, but it is evidence that by itself does give a rational reason to believe in God.
What is the Principle of Credulity?
The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to.
What is the Principle of Testimony?
The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to.
Why does Swinburne believe it to be irrational when dismissing evidence for God?
All the other religious experiences that we have no evidence against are evidence for God. If someone dismisses those experiences, when there is no reason to not believe them, then they are irrational because they are dismissing evidence without reason.
Why does Religious Experiences require extraordinary evidence?
However, is a mere experience of God sufficient evidence to justify belief in God? Arguably the existence of God is an extraordinary claim which therefore might require extraordinary evidence.
What is Freud’s psychological challenge to religious experience?
Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’ and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces.
What is the first psychological force proposed by Freud?
The first is the fear of death. We have an instinctual animalistic fear of death which we can’t control but we can control our human thoughts and cognitions. While animals only have their fear of death triggered when in a dangerous situation, humans are the only animal that constantly are aware that they are going to die. So, the solution is to manipulate those to believe that death is not the end.
What is the second psychological force proposed by Freud?
Freud argued that the reason Christians call God ‘father’ is because they have a desire to be a child forever. It’s a desire for eternal innocence in the face of the painful reality of the world. Freud thought these psychological forces were so strong that they resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience.
Why does Freud’s theory fail to explain Religious Experiences?
Mystical experiences are ecstatic, immersive, and totally unlike any ordinary sensory experience, making them harder to dismiss as hallucinations caused by delusory wishful thinking.
What did Freud argue intense Religious Experiences were a result of?
It is the reliving childhood experiences before the ego or ‘self’ had formed. This explains the dissolving of the sense of self and resultant unity with everything in mystical experiences. Freud argued that reliving experiences of selflessness is simply a feature of the mind and only later came to be arbitrarily associate with religion, but in essence has nothing to do with it.
Why is Freud’s argument overly reductive?
The problem with psychological arguments is that while they could be true for many maybe even the majority, it’s hard to argue they are true for all and even if they don’t work for one person, that’s one person they can’t explain.
What is Persinger’s psychological challenge to Religious Experience?
Persinger is a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulates people’s brain waves and sometimes caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings.
What does Persinger’s ‘God Helmet’ explain?
This seems to show that religious experiences originate from the brain, not anything supernatural like a God. Religious experiences are just an unusual state of the brain. Regular religious experiences could just be examples of that caused by some unknown brain process(es) that can happen without a machine.
What is a Religious response to Persinger’s ‘brain helmet’
Brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience. Also, we know we can cause hallucinations by manipulating the brain with drugs like LSD.
What does Persinger demonstrate?
That religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation. Therefore, supernatural explanations are unnecessary. His God helmet cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural causes for regular religious experiences, but it can show that they could have a naturalistic cause.
What is a Conversion Experience?
Conversion experiences are those which influence a person to join a religion. Any type of religious experience could also be a conversion experience.
Describe St Paul’s conversion experience?
He was a Jew called Saul who persecuted Christians. Yet, on the road to Damascus, he had an experience which converted him to Christianity. He changed his name to Paul and became an Apostle, spreading the Christian faith. His theology and teachings found in his letters to different Christian Churches became a very significant portion of the New Testament.
What is a key quotation taken from St Paul’s Religious Experience?
“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Why is Freud’s argument of Religious experience insufficient when applied to St Paul?
Conversion experiences from one religion to another can’t be explained away as wishful thinking or a fear of death. The person having the experience already believed in a God and an afterlife, so whatever wishful thinking for an afterlife they might have had would already have been satisfied by the religious beliefs of the religion they were already in.
What is a Corporate Religious Experience?
Corporate experiences are when multiple people all have same religious experience together.
What is the Corporate Religious Experience mentioned in the Book of Acts, by the Apostles?
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues” – Acts 2:3
What is the example of the Toronto Blessing?
The congregation of a Toronto church felt unusual emotions, some falling around crying, others laughing hysterically. They attributed this to the presence of the holy spirit, which they claimed to feel. The strengths of corporate experiences is that they can’t be explained by physiological or psychological causes that could only apply to individuals – like mental illness, drugs, alcohol, fasting
What is a counter argument to Corporate Religious Experience?
There are peculiar psychological dynamics to crowds or groups of people such as mob mentality, mass hysteria and social compliance. So clearly group delusion is possible. This is clearly the simplest explanation in the case of corporate religious experience.
What is the Multiple Claim issue?
If all religions have religious experiences and yet most religions cannot be true, then they must be generally unreliable.
What does the Multiple Claim issue conclude?
So, evidence for one religion must be taken as evidence against all the others. Therefore, claiming that a religious experience is evidence for the supernatural beings of a particular religion must make it evidence against the beings of all other religions. Any principle that identifies a religious experience as evidence, inevitably also brings far greater evidence against it. Claiming that a religious experience is as evidence for a particular religious belief only creates more evidence against it.
What is Hick’s pluralistic response to the Multiple Claim issue?
They each report they are feeling something different, yet that is because they are just too blind to see how they are really part of the same thing. For Hick, differences between religions are just part of the cultural ‘lens’ through which we see the world.
What does William James’ book ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ aim to provide?
Aims to provide a survey of different types of religious experiences and to suggest what we may infer from them.In studying religious experience, James argues that we are studying the very heart of religion, whereas studying beliefs and practices is merely second hand religion.
What does James state within ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’?
“Be ready now to judge the religious life by its results exclusively”, therefore, in the case of St
Paul’s conversion experience, whilst it may be an epileptic episode, his changed life after the experience counts as evidence for this.
What does James state in ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’, on the root of religious experience?
“One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness”.
What does Rudolf Otto suggest within ‘The Idea of the Holy’?
He describes what he calls a numinous experience. These experiences are experiences of awe and wonder in the presence of an almighty God.
What is a numinous experience?
An experience of awe and wonder in the presence of an almighty God.
What phrases does Otto use to describe numinous experience?
Mysterium: tremendum et fascinans.
1. mysterious
2. tremendous and terrifying
3. fascinating and compelling
What does William James suggest conversion experiences involve?
Centre of energy and psychology.
What does James suggest ‘centre of energy’ is?
A conversion involves someone altering their beliefs and way of life. It is similar to what may happen gradually over time in what James refers to as the shifting of energies.
What does James suggest ‘psychology’ within conversion experiences is?
James view on conversion for with his general ideas in religious experience. There is undoubtedly a psychological explanation of conversion. James suggests that the subconscious may be active in a similar way to when someone is in a hypnotic state.
What does Edwin Starbuck suggest ‘a parallel with adolescence’ is?
Starbuck studied evangelical Christian conversion alongside non-religious adolescents. He found that most conversions occurred between the ages of 14 and 17 years. All adolescents go through similar stages of a sense of incompleteness and anxiety before finding ‘happy relief’ and a sense of identity.
What does Edwin Starbuck argues the two types of conversion are?
These conversions can be gradual as the religious ideas gradually take centre stage, or can be sudden where possibility in response to a crisis the religious ideas dramatically replace the other dominant ideas.
What does Peter Donovan draw a distinction between?
Peter Donovan draws a distinction between ‘feeling certain’ and ‘being right’. When a believer claims to know God through religious experience, they are merely saying that they feel certain. The claim is subjective.
What does Caroline Franks-Davis argue on the critical treatment of religious experience.
While we can take everyday claims at face value, the issue of religious experience is not a trivial one and thus deserves a more critical treatment.
What does Carl Gustav Jung respond to Freud’s argument with?
Accepted religious experience and responded to Freud by suggesting that the development of our spiritual aspect was essential to psychological wholeness. He claimed that each of us has the archetype of God from within a shared collective unconscious.
