RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES Flashcards
KEY TERMS: MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
experiences of God/supernatural which go beyond everyday sense experience
KEY TERMS: CONVERSION EXPERIENCE
an experience which produces a radical change in someone’s belief system
KEY TERMS: CORPORATE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
religious experiences which happens to a group of people ‘as a body’
KEY TERMS: NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE
an indescribable experience which invokes feelings of awe, worship + fascination
KEY TERMS: PRINCIPLE OF CREDULITY
Swinburne’s principle that we should usually believe what our senses tell us we are percieving
KEY TERMS: PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY
Swinburne’s principle that we should usually trust that other people are telling us the truth
KEY TERMS: NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION
an explanation referring to natural rather than supernatural causes
KEY TERMS: NEUROPHYSIOLOGY
cxan area of science which studies the brain and the nervous system
FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER: What is his text and what does he have to say?
- ‘On religion: Speeches to the cultured Despisers (1799)’
- Essence of religion is based in personal experience
- RE is more important than church dogma (church laws)
- RE is at the heart of faith
- Every person has a consciousness of the divine but these are obscured by life. Religious people are aware of this and try to develop this.
FOR SCHLEIERMACHER…
- RE is self-authenticating. It is a ‘sense and taste of the infinite’ + the feeling of absolute dependence
- The RE should have primary importance rather than it having to be checked against scripture/doctrine
- RE could take on different form in different cultures+societies.
- They can be all true but Christianity is the highest one because Jesus is the only one with complete God consciousness
WILLIAM JAMES: What is his text?
“The Varieties of Religious Experience”- originally the Gifford Lectures
- Most influential book of Religious Experiences this century
Define Religious Experience
The feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine
What does James say in his text
- James maintains that underneath all religious creeds and dogmas lies the primary experience of the Divine
- The creeds and dogmas are then overlaid on the primary experience