Religious Experience

Question 1

What is a religious experience?

Answer 1

It is an encounter with the divine, a non-empirical occurrence that brings with it an awareness of something beyond ourselves.

Question 2

What are the types of religious experience?

Answer 2

1- Awareness (seeing the work of God when looking at the world)
2- Quasi-sensory (having a vision/inner experience of God)
3- Numinous (encountering the holiness of God)
4- Regenerative (conversion experience)
5- Interpretive (having prayers answered)

Question 3

What are points for religious experience as proof of the existence of God?

Answer 3

1- The amount of people that have claimed to have religious experiences is proof in itself
2- Our experience of God is the best evidence we have that God exists, makes people more likely to believe
3- John Hick’s idea that universe is “religiously ambiguous”, all experiences valid as depends on interpretation
4- Swinburne’s principle of credulity
5- Swinburne’s principle of testimony
6- James believes reasonable to believe God is responsible for experiences than to attribute the profound effects of them to an imaginary being

Question 4

What are points against religious experience as proof for the existence of God?

Answer 4

1- Individuals have experiences, not groups, cannot corroborate account so don’t know if true
2- Drugs +alcohol + psychological problems e.g. temporal lobe epilepsy
3- Finite cannot experience the infinite, impossible to prove existence of something we can’t experience (Kant)
4- Religious experiences are subjective, subjective experience not empirical or intellectual proof
5- Freud linked religion with neurosis, religious experience an illusion that derives from psychological needs. wishful thinking