RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES

Question 1

KEY TERMS: MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Answer 1

experiences of God/supernatural which go beyond everyday sense experience

Question 2

KEY TERMS: CONVERSION EXPERIENCE

Answer 2

an experience which produces a radical change in someone’s belief system

Question 3

KEY TERMS: CORPORATE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Answer 3

religious experiences which happens to a group of people ‘as a body’

Question 4

KEY TERMS: NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE

Answer 4

an indescribable experience which invokes feelings of awe, worship + fascination

Question 5

KEY TERMS: PRINCIPLE OF CREDULITY

Answer 5

Swinburne’s principle that we should usually believe what our senses tell us we are percieving

Question 6

KEY TERMS: PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY

Answer 6

Swinburne’s principle that we should usually trust that other people are telling us the truth

Question 7

KEY TERMS: NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION

Answer 7

an explanation referring to natural rather than supernatural causes

Question 7

KEY TERMS: NEUROPHYSIOLOGY

Answer 7

cxan area of science which studies the brain and the nervous system

Question 8

FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER: What is his text and what does he have to say?

Answer 8

• ‘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.

Question 9

FOR SCHLEIERMACHER…

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

WILLIAM JAMES: What is his text?

Answer 10

“The Varieties of Religious Experience”- originally the Gifford Lectures
- Most influential book of Religious Experiences this century

Question 11

Define Religious Experience

Answer 11

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

Question 12

What does James say in his text

Answer 12

• 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