Religious Experience Flashcards
Numinous
The feeling of the holy and includes awe, fascination religious awareness and the smallness of self.
Intellectual Conversions
A change in the way of thinking about something
Moral Conversions
A change in behaviour so that the individual does what is thought to be right
Social Conversions
Acceptance of a different way of life or in worship
Mystical Experience
A direct and intimate experience of God
Divine
A being that is all powerful and is not comparable to anything human. Such a being is usually referred to as a God.
Ineffability
The experience cannot be communicated in normal speech
Noetic Quality
The mind gaining knowledge and understanding
Passivity
Refers to the fact that the religious experience occurs without any action on the part of the recipient.
Transcend
God is separate and superior to the physical material world. God is outside space and time.
Immanence
God is active in the world.
Nature Mysticism
Observing the beauty or vastness of nature triggers a mystical experience.
God mysticism
Mediating on the attributes of God and the desire to be one with God triggers the mystical experience.
Existential Judgement
A ‘primary’ question and is concerned with the nature of something- how it came into existence, what it does and what it is made of.
Value Judgement.
A ‘secondary’ question and is concerned with the meaning, importance and significance of something.
Medical Materialism
To try to explain mystical experiences through a medical cause such as epilepsy.
— an approach to medical science that seeks to classify everything through physical terms.
Cognitive Neuroscience
Studies the nervous system and cognitive neuroscience is the branch of neuroscience that studies the biological foundations of mental phenomena such as religious experiences.
Correspondence Theory
Tries to verify the statement (theory) by seeing if it matches ( corresponds) to the known facts.
Coherence Theory
Tries to verify the statement (theory) by seeing if it agrees with other truths that have been proved already.
Pragmatic Theory
Tries to verify the statement (theory) in practical terms through any benefits gained from the experience.
Principle of Credulity
If a person sees something/ someone then it is usually the case that they have seen something/someone
Principle of Testimony
Unless you have reliable reasons to doubt what a person says they have experienced then what is said should be accepted as true.
Empiricism
Knowledge derived from experience
