Religious experience Flashcards
James Pragmatism
Pragmatist – a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us or works, then that is evidence of its truth.
Bases value on effects
Verification not crucial , as real and important to the person
Religious experience as psychological phenomena natural to the person as thinking is
Have life changing effects we can observe, are not merely hallucinations
Eg) alcoholic has religious experience and is able to quit, this is evidence of its validity
Seen in conversions experiences; a transformation from an unhappy divided or imperfect self with a guilty conscience to a more unified happy state.
James, and William Alston, argued that something is real if it has real effects. we can’t deny that religious experiences have effects on people, this is not logic proof, but supporting evidence
James PINT
James summed up religious experiences by giving four distinct descriptions (PINT):
P: passivity – you are not in control of the experience
I: ineffable – the experience cannot be described in human language
N: noetic – the experience leads to a greater understanding
T: transient – the experience is temporary
conclusions were as follows:
if the effects are real, the cause is: if god is believed to be the cause, he is real to those who experience it.
if it is real and true it has positive effects: a fake experience would have negative effects.
religious experiences have both these things.
James Principles
Pragmatism – James is a pragmatist in terms of his understanding of the idea of truth. Truth is not something that is fixed but rather ‘true’ is whatever has value for us and works in real life. Hence given the effects of religious experience, we ought to conclude that they are probably true.
Empiricism – James is committed to an empirical approach. Although we cannot empirically verify the experience, the truth of the experience is empirical data. If a former criminal is now living a good and religious life following a conversion experience, this can be observed by our senses.
James Pluralism
Pluralism – James’ research into experiences in different faiths led him to conclude that there were similarities.
-These experiences may be interpreted differently dependent on our own views and belief systems but if they produce positive effects then they are in some sense true. Hence there is truth in all faiths.
-W. Stace developed this argument much more explicitly, claiming that the universality of certain features of religious experiences is good evidence that they connect to a real.
- James concludes that mystical experiences are the core of religion, whereas teachings and practices were ‘second hand’ religion,
- Paul Knitter is a pluralist who makes a similar argument about religious experiences. He points to a classic metaphor. Each religion is a well. If you get to the bottom a well (through mystical experience) see same water in all, i.e. all the other religions.
James weaknesses
Hallucnatoins could bring life changing effects - f a hallucination happens to fit with certain beliefs a person might have then it might be life-changing even though it isn’t real. if a theist hallucinates an angel, it might be life changing. Yet, it would still be a hallucination – only life changing because of ideas the own mind supplies, pragmatic effects add no validity
The problem of other minds - you may be telling the truth but i cannot experience your experience they way you do. i may know you to be truthful but i cannot say that you are interpreting your experience correctly. sincere beliefs are not necessarily valid.
Pluralism weak - link to pluralism/society, see pluralism dimisnehes all unique objective tradition/expereicnes? Evolutionary explanation: Cross-cultural similarity of the features of religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation, all human brains hallucinate similarly because they evolved similarly
Leads to fideisms – sees religious experience as merley emotional, not objective ruth singular truth, but higher pluralist spirituality. Appeals to non cognitive language thoery of Wittgenstein , seeing how theological anti realism can undermine exculsivist turth claims
Subjetcive - focuses more on the truth of the experience for the individual rather than if this relates to the idea of a God who exists in the ‘real world’- cannot prove objective validity – arguably are meaningless – Popper, unfalsifiable
Schielmacher
Subjective stance
-experience verifies by having it – subjectvie to the individual
the essence of religion was based in personal experience
Religious experience should be at the heart of faith
Religious people are those who are aware of, and try to develop the sense of divine
He believes that religious experience is ‘self- authenticating’ (it needs no other testing to see if its genuine)
On Religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers
*He believes that our religious experiences don’t need to fit with the creed of the religion
*Our religion should be based around our experiences
*This is different to Catholic tradition which used to test the experiences of mystics against the Church’s teachings before they were considered genuine
*Religious experiences should have priority and the statements of faith should be formulated to fit them
*He called religion a ‘sense and taste for the infinite’
*A religious experience is based on someone feeling wholly dependant
*He believed Christianity was the highest of religions as Jesus was the only example of someone with complete ‘God-consciousness’
Scheilmacher weaknesses
He put too much emphasis on things that are subjective
*He reduces religion to emotion and removes the possibility of religion being based on fact
– dimsnisng factual basis leads to fiedsim, is proved by fiath alone only
*Some argue that there has to be the possibility of testing experiences against the Bible otherwise we couldn’t test the validity of them
Otto
Looks to numinous experiences, saying that God is transcendent and so he can only affect us by filling us with a sense of awe
“mysterium tremendum et fascinans”
Quality of mystery
God as the upmost importance
Quality of awe and fear
Tremendum – the awe and fear of being in the presence of an overwhelmingly superior being
Fascinas– despite that fear, being strangely drawn to the experience
Numinious – a feeling of awe inspiring holinesss
Aims to identify what it was about a religious experience that made it religious
See sense of a personal encounter with the divine as fundamental
Encounter with god is inexpressible
Experiences provide a reference point to interpret the world
Kantian criticisms of otto
-Kant would criticize otto in his view, stating that we cannot use our senses to experience God, since he is in the nominal world whereas we’re stuck in the phenomenal world
confusion regarding the issue of whether knowledge of God is gained through experience, cannot know the an- sich as it is vague
he says the theological ideas come after the experience, undermines fundamentalist teachings in the bible
Undermines Propositional knowledge
he implies that numinous experience is a ‘once and for all’ experience, implying there can be no further experience
to suggest that all religious experiences are numinous is limiting as other forms
Are so well documented
Teresa of Availa
she argues if they were sexual frustrations she would have been left disgusted, but she was not.
Experience
. * that experience should be subject to tests to determine whether they are genuine
*The tests should include:
-Whether there is a positive change in the person
-Whether the experience left the person at peace rather than disturbed
-Whether the experience fits with the teachings of the church
Mystical experience
A direct experience of God or ultimate reality, a sense of oneness of all things
*When people have these experiences they feel that they have reaches an understanding of spiritual truth which cannot be accessed through the use of reason and normal sense experience
*When religious experience is called ‘mystical’ it carries connotations of the idea that underneath the different doctrines and practices, everyone is connecting with the same God
Appeals to pluralism, higher truth of the kanitain nomenoual
Fc Happold
Basis Mysticism underlies religion in all forms
*When people have these experiences they feel that they have reaches an understanding of spiritual truth which cannot be accessed through the use of reason and normal sense experience
*Mysticism underlies religion in all its forms
*It depends on the non-rational, intuitional side of human understanding
Is non cogntive, but our innate connection to the spiritual
Happold - divine ground
The divine ground
*Mystics understand this world as only part of ultimate reality; the world comes from a ‘Divine Ground’
*This ‘Divine Ground’ can be known intuitively but not rationally
*We are comprised of our ego and our eternal self
*Our purpose is to discover our true ‘eternal self’ and unite us with the ‘Divine Ground’
-compelling – see divine ground as the kantain an-sich (real)
See how mystical experience brings us to john hicks plurlaist basis
Compelling – truth in all religions, non colonialist but RE brings social cohesion of united truth
Swinburne
A priori probability argument
Sees how evidence in the world makes probability for God logical
principle of credulity
if someone appears to be present, it makes logical sense to say that they are so, unless the observer is under particular circumstances (intoxicated, has a mental illness etc). in the same way, testimonies of religious experiences should be taken at face value, unless there is significant evidence that they would be wrong.
principle of testimony
it makes sense to believe what people tell you, since the majority of people tell the truth. he says we tend to believe what people say because otherwise everyday conversation would be very tough.
Swinburne -Overstates probability
Overstates probability
antony flew - accusing him of simply adding up theories to create a ‘cumulative case‘. using the analogy of ten leaky buckets, Flew stated that arguments for god make a ‘bucket’, but the flaws of all these arguments put holes in the buckets; it is pointless trying to fill up a bucket with holes in it.
JL Mackie (Credulity) said that in the balance of probabilities, it is more likely that a person is mistaken than God is the explanation.
Swinburne - cannot trust testimony
j.l. mackie reminded us that people will unintentionally dramatise, exaggerate and mislead people with their religious experiences.
R.M. Gale said religious experience is not the same as other types of experience and therefore normal rules do not apply. i wouldn’t claim i felt a monster under the bed was real. same as any other dream, just as fake.
makes god trivial and believable as a dream of eating food.
Michael Martin suggests that Swinburne’s credulity and testimony can be used to suggest that God doesn’t exist
Russel
Scientific basis
From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes”.
This encapsulates the key claims that such experiences:
-can be explained by scientific principles and require no supernatural causation
-can be simulated by natural causes, either in real life or under experimental conditions
Feurbach
Religion as Psyhcological Neurosis
The idea of God is a human invention.
*All the attributes of God can be seen in human nature
*We project and stretch these human qualities to create the idea of God
*We create God in our image
‘God is man written in large letters’
Freud
Religion as Psyhcological Neurosis
Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’ and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces
1) 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.
2)Oedipus complex - 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. Also want for approval from father figure
Religious response: Freud’s analysis fails to explain mystical religious experience because of its sense of unity with something infinite and unbounded. These seem to go far beyond the wish-fulfilling hallucinations of a neurotic
Winnicot
Developmental psychological approach
Looked at the bond between mother and baby
*Placed emphasis on the importance of a healthy, stable upbringing for children
*Looks at when children play, they have illusions about certain objects eg a blanket/train etc
*Illusion is an important part of people’s mental lives, we need it to make sense of ourselves
*Religious experience is an illusion; it only becomes madness when you try to impose it on someone else
Starbuck
Experience as psychological part of development
19th century psychologist
*Studied conversions and this prompted him to draw parallels with the normal process of development and finding our identity
*He studied evangelical Christian conversions and found:
-most conversions occur between 14-17
-all adolescents go through similar stages of incompleteness, anxiety before finding relief
He believes that religious conversion is normal
Persinger
Persinger’s physiological challenge
Created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulated people’s brain waves and sometimes caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings.
This seems to show that religious experiences originate from the brain, not anything supernatural like a God.
Product of uncknwon brain processes
Religious response: However, maybe that brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience.
Evaluation: Arguably Persinger at least demonstrates that religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation. Therefore, supernatural explanations are unnecessary.
Dawkins
Evolutionary physiological approach
Dawkins: religious ideas may be ‘memes’ these are ideas that have evolved and have been useful to our survival, hence the brain accepts them more readily
*They are produced within our brains
*Religion is a ‘virus of the mind’
*Religious experience can be explained by reference to the physical brain
Fatima
miraculous solar phenomenon, in which the Sun appeared to fall toward Earth
Appeared to 6 children ages 10-16
1917
events reported at Fátima were collected by Father John De Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest 1943-1950
Toronto
1994
Outpouring of holy spirit, laughter, dancing
Durkheim
Corporate is an efferscent group phenomenon
more likely to be caused by mass hysteria than by God’s actions,
