Religious Experience AO2 and Essay Plans Flashcards
1
Q
Religious experiences are caused by psychology
A
- Freud- illusions of the mind. False examples of desires.
- Marx- product of a culture that a person lives in.
- Feuerbach- the idea of a God is a human projection.
- Placebo effect- Dawkins/corporate experiences.
-Lionel Tiger- neuropsychological mechanisms create an impression of religious experiences.
-Kant- logically impossible to experience God.
AJ Ayer- cant verify religious experiences as they are subjective and experiences, thus meaningless.
2
Q
Religious experiences are not caused by psychology
A
- Psychological support- James, Jung (believed in numinous experiences and developments of the spiritual aspect of us was essential to psychological wholeness)
- Physiological support- Andrew Newberg (centre for integrative medicine) - brain seems hardwired for God.
- Swinburnes principle of credulity and testimony.
- William James- religious experiences may well have a supernatural element. “there is truth to be found in relgion”
- Conversions suggest long term effects. Validity to RE being genuine.
- Corporate- adds validity because there are minds to test
- Empirical evidence- healing at Lourdes.
3
Q
Critically evaluate the views and Conclusions of William James
FOR
A
- if there is a God who transcends out understanding, then the idea of the noetic is useful becuase it would take a incomprehensible, powerful God to be able to discolse such knowledge, rather than finite limited beings grasping an understanding of this God.
-Pluralism is useful in it’s attempt to be all include across all religions. This promotes harmony.
James is modest in his approach. He never goes as far to say that these religious experiences prove the existence of a particular religions idea of God.
-he looks at other areas of human faculties, such as the psychological, when studying experience. This is more holistic.
4
Q
Critically evaluate the views and Conclusions of William James
AGAINST
A
-The term mystical experience is useful in it’s focus upon the experience which it is beyond our natural ability to understand, but if we can’t undestand it have we really said anything useful at all.
-Pluralism makes no sense because it fails to take seriously the competing truth claims from each religion. Jesus in Islam and Christianity.
-If there are psychological explanations for these experiences, they are no longer religious experiences.
-Is experience the main source of belief?
is he putting too much emphasis on the importance of human experience when it comes to making sense of religion?
5
Q
Conversion experiences are the most convincing form of religious experience
DISAGREE
A
- Edwin Starbucks- most conversions occur in early adulthood. This can be explained naturally by a persons view deviating from their parents and society not God.
- Freud- illusions of the mind. False examples of desires.
- Marx- product of the culture that a person lives in.
- Placebo effect- Dawkins/corporate experiences
- Lionel Tiger neuropsychological mechanisms create impression of religious experiences.
- AJ Ayer Verification Principle.
6
Q
Conversion experiences are the most convincing form of religious experience
AGREE
A
- Examples of conversion experiences recorded in scriptures and in the modern day raise interesting issues.
- Although the inner experience is not empirically detectable, the resulting, long term, changes in behaviour are something which can be empirically observed.
- William James argued that, as with all religious experience, it’s truth was to be found in the results. Hence dramatic changes in the character and lifestyle of an individual does count as empirical evidence in favour of spiritual claims.
7
Q
Religious experiences are proof of God’s existence
A
- Swinburne’s case for supporting religious experiences (testimony/credulity)
- Conversions- empirical evidence that needs to be explained.
- Corporate- adds validity because more cases to test
- Miraculous healings- Lourdes
- William James- there is truth to be found in religion.
- Psychological support- James, Jung- believed in numinous experiences and developments in the spiritual aspect of us was essential to psychological wholeness
- Physiological support- Andrew Newburg brain seems hardwired for God.
- Cumulative argument- there are so many cases of religious experiences in different cultures/religion - is it realistic to say they are all incorrect.
- The feelings that people claim to feel during a religious experience are so different from normal feelings suggests that they cannot come from a normal source, this suggests God.
- The psychological explanations of religious experience, such as those of Feurbach, Freud and Winnicott all have no or limited scientific research behind them, and Freud has been rejected by the modern scientific community, as there must be a different explanation, this implies God.
8
Q
Religious languages are not proof of God’s existence
A
- AJ Ayer- Religious experiences cannot be verified and therefore are all meaningless
- Freud- religion is a comfort blanket so we are not terrified of death.
- Lionel Tiger- religion is a secretion of the brain
- religious experiences in all religions cant be correct.
- God would be biased and have favourites if he allowed religious experiences for some and not others. (Wiles)
- Many people who have claimed to have had religious experiences are either confused, on drugs or seeking fame (Dawkins/Peter Atkins)
- The privacy of others minds, cannot be validates, therefore no evidence of a higher power.
- Satre highlights the problem of interpretation, experiences are just events and it is our interpretation of them afterwards that leads to people thinking it was God. As peoples interpretations differ, they cannot be an objective proof of God.
9
Q
Arguments for personal testimony
A
- Swinburne’s case for supporting religious experiences (testimony/credulity)
- Conversions- empirical evidence that needs to be explained.
- Corporate- adds validity because more cases to test
- Miraculous healings- Lourdes
- William James- there is truth to be found in religion.
- Psychological support- James, Jung- believed in numinous experiences and developments in the spiritual aspect of us was essential to psychological wholeness
- Physiological support- Andrew Newburg brain seems hardwired for God.
- Cumulative argument- there are so many cases of religious experiences in different cultures/religion - is it realistic to say they are all incorrect.
10
Q
Arguments against personal testimony
A
- AJ Ayer- Religious experiences cannot be verified and therefore are all meaningless
- Freud- religion is a comfort blanket so we are not terrified of death.
- Lionel Tiger- religion is a secretion of the brain
- religious experiences in all religions cant be correct.
- God would be biased and have favourites if he allowed religious experiences for some and not others. (Wiles)
- Many people who have claimed to have had religious experiences are either confused, on drugs or seeking fame (Dawkins/Peter Atkins)
- Swinburnes principle of Testimony states that we should take someones word that they had a religious experience. However, we only take people’s world on trivial matters , not on such prominent issues such as God existing- Carol Anne Davis.
11
Q
Against the idea of corporate religious experiences being mass hysteria
A
- Swinburne-Principle of credulity and the principle of testimony
- Scientific methods support the validity of corporate religious experiences- more evidence, more witnesses strengthens the validity of a religious experience. (AJ ayer says that if you cannot verify something it is meaningless, but surely you can verify something if you have several people claiming to have had the same experience)
- Friedrich Schliermacher- Schliermacher suggested that REs are self authenticating. The essence of religion is based in personal experience-feeling and experience are just as if not more important than reason etc.
- People rarely experience the same thing and interpret it the same way, yet if many people use the same language to describe something, it suggests that what they describe is the common cause.
12
Q
For the idea of corporate religious experiences being mass hysteria
A
- Richard Dawkins- Dawkins provides a number of illustrations of personal experience as a psychological illusion and caused by mass hysteria
- campers convinced they have heard the voice of Satan when in fact it was just the shrieks of the infamous devil bird.
- people seing the face of satan rising from the smoke of the twin towers on 9/11.
- Dawkins has applied one of David Hume’s criticisms of miracles to corporate experiences- whats more probable- thousands of people saw the sun spinning in the sky in Fatima or people are convincing eachoether something is not there?
- Richard Dawkins- Religious experiences in groups are merely the collection of religious believers whipped up into a religious frenzy
- Placebo effect- people are highly impressionable and effected by eachother enourmously.
