Religious Experience Flashcards
What is the most discussed method of communicating with God or the ultimate?
Religious experience
What sort of encounter is a religious experience ?
Opaque encounter
Religious experience has what sort of nature?
Highly ambiguous
Why are religious experience subjective?
They happen on an individual level
Is religious experience empirical or non-empirical?
Non-empirical
Is religious experience a priori or a posteriori?
A posteriori
How do we give God a real quality?
If he communicates via direct manner
When do people have a pivotal moment when belief enters actuality?
When they have religious experience
Numerous people underwent a religious experience?
Toronto blessing
Why does the Toronto blessing doubt whether God is personal?
Because it happened to so many people
Who’s book is on religion: discourses to its cultural despisers?
Schleiermacher
Where did ‘numinous’ come from?
Latin of numen meaning divine power
What year was the Toronto blessing?
1994
What did Otto say about religious experience ?
God can be known through feeling
Who came up with the four main rulings ?
William James
Ineffability means?
Experience is so extraordinary cannot be described in a way that would make them intelligible to anyone who has not had an experience
What is Noetic?
Provide some kind of insight or carry a message of revelation
David hays religious experience research unit of 1500 people how many credible cases were there?
45% credible cases
God communicates
With a high number of the population
What is a logical contradiction?
If the message does not contribute to the persons life
Why is the transcendent nature of God open for debate?
One cannot know God because of distance , epistemic distance prevents humans being aware
An example of God being distant ?
Story of the fall where humans became aware
There are numerous forms of..
Religious experience
Who classified religious experiences ?
Caroline franks David’s
Interpretive experience means
No specific religious characteristics but to a person with prior religious belief
Example of an interpretive experience ?
Answering a prayer
Why are interpretive experiences criticised ?
Accused of not looking for sufficient reason for proponents of legitimacy of religious experiences
Quasi-sensory experience is a ..
Physical experience
An example of a quasi-sensory experience?
Viewing a vision or hearing a voice
Criticism of quasi- sensory
Cannot be adjudged for legitimacy as they are ineffable
Quasi-sensory.. Criticism
If God is all powerful the human body should not be able to decipher what he radiates
Quasi-sensory-sensory.. If we should not be able to decipher what he radiates criticism
If you accept God created human life surely he has knowledge to communicate effectively however why isn’t he more clear in his communication
Ineffable nature of religious experience which theodicy relates?
In relation to irenanen theodicy - john hicks
What is epistemic distance ?
Where God does not communicate directly as it would overwhelm the individual or on a mass scale the human race
What is a revelatory experience?
Religious light or reasoning coming to enlightenment - ultimate knowledge
Revelatory experience is criticised by
Freud - religious experiences are simply the creations of the brain and are false examples of our desires
Regenerative experience means
Gives a faith renewing quality or coverts people
What is a criticism of regenerative experience?
Can’t be said which faith the experience is of or which God
An example of a regenerative experience?
Yusuf Islam - CAT STEVENS was christian and after a life changing miracle he followed Allah
What is a problem with discussing God or the ultimate ?
Each religion has its own qualities or ideals of God
A bible quote of tongues ?
‘And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with tongues, as a spirit have them utterance’
A mystical experience beyond logic?
Tongues
Christians who would like translation can ask for it in which language
Tongues
Communication with God is worthless if we cannot ..
Prove credibility
Swinburne - principle of credulity
‘If it seems to a person that something is present , then it probably is present’
Criticism : unless we have specific reason to question then we accept it as prima facie evidence for existence of God
What does Michael martins the atheist claim
If Swinburne suggests experiences are to be treated as veridical then this allows an argument from the absence of religious experience to be constructed
An atheist who experiences absence of God can argue from
Principle of credulity
All experience is subjective therefore
Logically consistent
Reasons for experiences synonymous with religious experiences
Dreaming/hallucinating
People would argue God to intervene is benevolent nature however
He allows people to die such as holocaust
A problem of legitimacy is
Derren Browns miracles for sale shows illegitimacy of religious experience - teaching someone to become a illegitimate faith healer opens up debate if religion is trying to prove itself via greed to be legitimate
At Theresa of Avila’s quote
I wish I could argue the smallest part of what I have learnt but when I trust I find it impossible
