Religious Experience Flashcards
What did Albert Einstein say about religion?
- we all have the ability to appreciate the mysterious (religion and mystery - awe)
- can link to sensus divinitus
What could be classed as religious experience?
- miracle
- healing
- pilgrimage
- near death experience
- dreams and visions
- filled with the Holy Spirit (dancing, singing, speaking in tongue)
- answered prayer
- awe and wonder (from nature of scripture)
What did Peterson et al say about religious experience?
- ‘Reason and religious belief’ define a religious experience as one where a ‘person has or believe they have had an encounter with God’
- religious experiences are revelations
- meaning that the knowledge is gained about God that would otherwise not be known
What are corporate religious experiences?
Religious experiences that happen in a group
Some examples of corporate religious experiences
- Toronto blessing - drunk on the spirit, speaking in tongues
- whirling dervishes - form of meditation (spinning)
- Lourdes - Bernadette - a healing hasn’t been confirmed in decades
Arguments for corporate religious experience?
- you can see it happening to all
- Aquinas - unlikely for those events to have happened without divine intervention
- Occam’s razor - the simplest argument is likely to be true
Arguments against corporate religious experience?
- Anthony Flew - lots of weak arguments does not make a strong argument
- Mackie - people unintentionally mislead/ exaggerate accounts
Name two examples of personal testimony
- St Teresa of Avila - has a series of visions when she hits 39 years old, not having a conversion experience so is underwhelming as she isn’t changing her beliefs
- St Bernadette - has a vision of Virgin Mary
What is Swinburne’s principle of Credulity?
- testimonies should be taken at face value, unless there is significant evidence to prove them wrong
- similar to language games
- an individuals personal experience will always have a lack of evidence
- the idea of significant evidence is subjective
Who created 5 ways to categorise personal testimonies? And what were they?
1- experience of God through a common, public, sensory object (can link to natural theology) eg. Sunset
2- experience of God through an unusual, public, sensory object eg. Virgin Mary appear at Lourdes
3- experience of God through private sensations that can be described in normal sensory language eg. St Teresa of Avila
4- experience of God through private sensation that cannot be described in normal sensory language (ineffable) eg. St Teresa of Avila claims her experience is ineffable
5- experience of God that is not mediated by any sensations eg. Whirling dervishes (not claiming to feel something but claiming to know something, unlocking knowledge)
How convincing are religious experience as a basis for belief in God?
- we don’t have the capability to understand (it’s other worldly)
- it may be convincing for believers, but not adequate for non- believers
- in today’s society, science can make sense of ‘religious experiences’
- if a religious believer were to tell you they had a religious experience they could be trying to convert, but a nonbeliever wouldn’t be trying to convert
- we have gained more understanding to say they are not religious experiences
- you could link to RT that God choosss the revelation so to try and understand what they saw/heard/experienced would be to get to God (but you can’t - epistemically distance - god is omnipotent)
- how do you know your religious experience wasn’t a dream?
What did William James say about religious experience?
- he didn’t feel that you need verification for religious experience
- the religious experience of the individual was real and this is important as its ‘self authenticating’
- religious experience - solitary in which individuals experienced the divine or God
- religious experience is a psychological phenomena
- experiences explained as part of a persons psychological makeup
- means that RE are natural to a person like self awareness or thinking
- religious experience is central to religious belief
- James leaves open the possibility of Gods existence
- purpose of religion is not God but ‘more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life’
- religion leads to ‘consistency, stability’
His theory passed the falsification principle
Who was William James?
- 1842-1910
- a psychologist
- was not interested in proving religious experience or that God exists
- collected hundreds of testimonies of people who claimed to have a religious experience
- he found that religious experience is transforming and has positive effects (happier outlook, sense of purpose, better relationships etc)
- a healthy minded person = open to ideas and possibilities, optimistic and hopeful
- a sick soul = cynical and sceptical
- religious experience tends to make people healthy minded
- James emphasises the importance of revelation and prayer
- he compared parallels between religious experience and other experiences like dreams and hallucinations
- suggested that religious experience could be linked to subconscious ideas
- he concluded that religious experience on its own doesn’t demonstrate Gods existence although they can suggest the existence of ‘something larger’
What are James’ 4 ways to define religious experience?
1- ineffability - most recognised characteristic of the religious experience - beyond words
2- noetic quality - knowledge and information gained about god/ revelation
3- transiency - experience does not last long but lasting effect on person - well remembered
4- passive - undergoing religious experience with no control, taken over, consumed
- the effects are real - real cause. If God is believed to be the cause then God exists to those individuals
- real and true - positive effects, whereas things that are false have negative effects
- religious experience has positive effects - so source is more likely to be real and true therefore God is likely to be real and true
