Religious Experience: Key Terms

Question 1

Define Anti-Realism

Answer 1

The idea that something can be true in a non-real way. Some beliefs may be true for the community of people that believe it (see Coherence Theory)

Question 2

Define Buber

Answer 2

Knowing God through a personal relationship (“I-Thou” instead of “I-It”)

Question 3

Define Coherence Theory

Answer 3

Anti-realist view of truth. Something is never absolutely true or false, it is ‘true for you’ if it coheres with a cultural/ linguistic system already present. Something can be true for someone and not true for others.

Question 4

Define Correspondence Theory

Answer 4

Realist view of ‘truth’. Something is true if it corresponds with known facts. Based on Empiricism.

Question 5

Define Empiricism

Answer 5

Knowledge is gained through experience

Question 6

Define God Helmet

Answer 6

Persinger has made a helmet that can test brain patterns

Question 7

Define Immanence

Answer 7

God as close and intimate; caring and guiding

Question 8

Define Ineffability

Answer 8

Experience cannot be communicated through language

Question 9

Define Medical Materialism

Answer 9

Reducing religious experience to biological/ medical factors and thereby ‘explaining it away’

Question 10

Define Medjugorjie

Answer 10

A small town in Bosnia where, since 1981, six people has claimed to have visions of The Virgin Mary

Question 11

Define Mystical Experience

Answer 11

An direct, unmediated experience of God

Question 12

Define Noetic Quality

Answer 12

Experience provides evidence

Question 13

Define Numinous

Answer 13

A feeling of awe and wonder associated with the presence of holiness

Question 14

Define Objective

Answer 14

Open to Empirical testing and verification

Question 15

Define The Parable of the Gardener

Answer 15

Story by John Wisdom about two people who interpret a patch of ground differently. One see’s the actions of a gardener (God), one only see’s Weed’s (no God)

Question 16

Define Passivity

Answer 16

An experience occurs without any action on the part of the recipient

Question 17

Define Pragmatism

Answer 17

Trying to verify in practical terms through the effects of an action

Question 18

Define The Principle of Credulity

Answer 18

If a person says they have seen something, it is usually the case that they have

Question 19

Define The Principle of Testimony

Answer 19

Unless you have good reason to doubt what someone says, you should assume its true

Question 20

Define Realism

Answer 20

An idea that is opposed to Anti-Realism, and says that for something to be true it must be real in an empirical and verifiable way

Question 21

Define Stigmata

Answer 21

Unexplained markings on a person’s body that correspond to the wounds of Christ

Question 22

Define Subjective

Answer 22

Not open to Empirical testing

Question 23

Define Transcendence

Answer 23

God is beyond understanding and more powerful than we can conceive

Question 24

Define Transiency

Answer 24

Experience lasts for a short time

Question 25

Define Induction

Answer 25

Moving from specific instances to a general conclusion; when you go to a school induction, you may see loads of little details, and then conclude those details happen at that school all the time.
Small to big

Question 26

Define Deduction

Answer 26

Opposite to Induction (Big to small (general law)).
You may know something, and from there, you find the reasoning; “Cambridge University do well”- From here, you begin to find the specific reasons why; good teachers; good students; good resources etc.

Question 27

Define Natural Theology

Answer 27

Defining the attributes of God through the observable world

Question 28

Define Divine Theology

Answer 28

Understanding the nature of God through holy intervention/ divine activity/ revelation

Question 29

Define Synthetic

Answer 29

Something is true or false if you see it to be so

Question 30

Define Analytic

Answer 30

Logically looking at what makes sense

Question 31

Define A priori

Answer 31

Reasoning that comes through theoretical deduction

Question 32

Define A posteriori

Answer 32

Knowledge that comes from observation