Religious Experiences Flashcards
What is the fundamental basis of religious experiences?
- Many ppl have Re EXP
- It overlaps alot across cultures and ages
- Effects resemble their causes and the nature of EXP are holy and beyond senses, so the cause must also be beyond senses and holy.
Conclusion - Re Exp are a direct perception of the presence of God.
What are the different kinds of visions according to Augustine and a story for each?
- Corporeal - empirical/physical senses
e.g. Bernadette of Lourdes
Mother Mary and the spring water
- Imaginative -
Minds eye and through dreams
e.g Jacob’s ladder
Joseph’s dream with Mary
- Intellectual -
Mystical 3rd eye
no dream, imagination or senses
Direct spiritual senses
Direct download of information
e.g. Teresa de Avila
pierced heart
What are the Church’s criteria to accept a religious experience?
- Not mad or on drugs
- good standing with the church
- agree with the teachings of the church
- long term consequences on the person
- Any prophetic claims are false? (healing water)
- Potential gain from it?
What are the components of Rudolph Otto’s Numinous experiences + example?
All religious exp have:
- Mysterium - unknowable
- Tremendum - majestic
- Fascinans - irresistible
- Holiness - untouchable
- Nostalgia - home
e.g.
Book of Isiah
- Angels visit him
- He is unclean and dirty compared to them
- They are Holy Holy Holy
- God takes away his guilt
- He asks God to give him service to do God’s work.
What is Walter Stace’s explanation of Religious EXP?
Introvertive:
1. No sense of I
2. Ineffable ( beyond understanding and senses)
3. Peace and truth
4. Sanctity of the Holy
5. Perennial - core of all religious EXP
Extrovertive:
- half introvertive experience
- mix of senses, imagination and spiritual insight
- nostalgia
He was also influenced by the upanisads, advaita vedanta and hinduism.
What is William James Mystical experience?
- similar amongst all cultures and times
- Fruits not roots
- Organised religion arose out of people with similar religious EXP.
- Ineffable (beyond understanding)
- Noetic (intuitive)
- Passive (God does everything)
- Union (merging with God)
- Transient, transformative, therapeutic
Tsor - changed from a genocidal Christian slayer
Sermon on the Mount
What are the attacks on Religious Experiences + replies?
1…………Philosophical reservations:
Hume - “Believe nothing till you have good evidence and trust no-one till they are proven reliable”
Should be men of such unquestionable intelligence, education, honesty and have a vested interest in telling the truth.
Reply: Swinburne
- Principle of Credulity:
trust perceptions unless u have a reason to doubt them - Principle of Testimony:
trust people unless you have reason to doubt them
Factors that add to the strength:
1. transformation
2. other people have similar experiences
3. use with other arguments
he’s not naïve, he has criteria to doubt:
- mental illness
- fraudulent record
- drugs
- disagrees with human and spiritual values
Higher standards of data required to justify more unbelievable things
Reply: Alistar hardy research centre has enough evidence
2………….. Effects resemble their causes
- mediocre EXP = mediocre God
Reply: multiple realizability
3……………….how can ineffable, transcendental things can be percieved through the senses?
Reply: we may have spiritual senses
God could also show Himself through matter
4……………… How can u know it is God causing it?
Reply: cross check with sources of authority
- Neuroscience + drug induced exp
Reply: multiple realizability
both can cause it!
Hard problem of conciousness
- Freud:
- all wishfullfilment
- halucinations
- subconcious mind
- omnipotent father figure
- infant desires
Reply: doesn’t mean it is wrong
- freud is too suspicious
- sub conc mind may have it’s own senses
- W. James - fruits not roots
What are the problems with data analysis of religious exp + replies?
- too few to give credible data
reply: alistar hardy research centre
some may be embarrassed to express them.
- Too random and varied
Reply: W. James - they all have some numinous and mystical attributes
- Conflicting EXP
Reply: blind men and elephant
multiple realizability
- too private and subjective
Reply: some have multiple people having them
- commonality with transformative effects
- same intentionality of sensory exp
- Too ineffable and beyond logic
Reply: you cant see your mind, but you know it exists
- Elitism:
Reply: Epistemic distance and God is a gentleman and doesn’t show up for those who don’t want him.
What is Carl Jung’s defence of religious EXP?
“called upon or not, God will be present”
- sense of God is found in all cultures
- souls yearning connection to God
- wired into the human mind
- makes us fully human
- when they drop the idea of God, it is replaced by some other form of God (communism/cult leaders)
- lack of belief leads to mental illness.
What is W.James defence of religious exp?
Prev Attack: no valid reasons to believe in them
Reply: W. James
- gives meaning
- religion is dry without it
- if it improves the quality of our life, then you’d be stupid to say otherwise.
What is the value of religious exp for believers?
Hope
Existential change
Connection to all of creation
Realms of consciousness
Evidential evidence
Aquinas and Anslem are now complete
Transformative
Eternity
Savlation
Unifies believers
