Religious experiences Flashcards
Outline visions as forms of religious experience
Augustine outlines visions as forms of supernatural experience where a revelation about God is revealed.
Corporeal: comes from the physical sense of sight.
Eg: St Bernadette of Lourdes had corporeal visions of Mary who revealed herself to be the “immaculate conception” Lourdes is now a place of holy pilgrimage which 5 million people visit each year.
Intellectual - the strongest type of vision which is non-sensual and ineffable. St Teresa of Avila said she felt only an illumination of the soul and saw nothing with the “eyes of the body.”
Imaginative: seen by the “minds eye” usually in the form of dreams. In the gospel of Matthew, Joseph is warned by God through the agency of an angel of King Herod’s plan to kill Jesus.
Outline mystical experiences by William James
James believed mystical experiences “are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed” As a pragmatist, James is more concerned with the real life applications of said experiences, opposed to the authenticity of their origins.
Ineffable - experiences cannot be spoken about with the use of ordinary language.
Noetic - give a rise to a new found intuitive, non-rational knowledge
Transient - Experiences cannot be sustained but their effects are life long.
Passive - the mystic cannot control the experience once it begins.
James argues mystical experiences give the mystic a new found zest for life.
Outline mystical experiences by Walter Stace
When an individual experiences the powers of God. Mystical experiences result in a sense of peace and tranquillity.
Stace argues: “either God is a mystery or her is nothing at all” This means that by nature a religious experience must be mystical as only God can understand God’s nature. If a religious experience could be understood in a realist way, we ourselves must be omniscient. They our beyond human reality and intellect.
Stace rejects visions as a form of religious experience as these involve the physical senses. Stace argues that in order to have a mystical experience, we must give up the control of our senses and sense of self in favour of a higher power.
Mystical experiences can either be introvertive or extrovertive.
Introvertive experiences entail the mystic completely lose their sense of “I” in acceptance of a higher power. A loss of identity as a separate individual occurs, and one merges into the divine reality.
Extrovertive: sense of self still remains but you have an awareness of a higher power. The world of material objects is still seen but seen with non-sensuous unity. The division of the world into separate objects is dissolved and everything appears to be unified.
Outline numinous experiences
Rudolph Otto
Numinous experiences are ones where the power and presence of a divine, “wholly other” is felt. They are out of the realms of human experience and cannot be explained rationally.
Numinous experiences have a “sui generis” quality. This means they are unique and in a class of their own.
Mysterium – the utter inexplicable indescribable mystery of the experience
Tremendum – the awe and fear of being in the presence of an overwhelmingly superior being
Fascinans – despite that fear, being strangely drawn to the experience
In Exodus Moses is described to have a numinous experience. God is shown as ineffable “I what I am” and Moses is depicted to be in a state of inferiority, awe and wonder.
Isaiah 6:3 “holy, holy, holy is the Lord” the only way God’s greatness can be understood is through repetition.
Outline Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony.
Credulity: we should believe things to be credible, unless we have sufficient evidence to suggest otherwise.
Testimony: we should believe the testimonies of others’ religious experiences.
Swinburne argues “just as you must trust your five ordinary senses it is equally rational to trust your religious sense” - Plato would argue we cannot trust our senses and any knowledge acquired through empiricism is unreliable.
Occam’s razor says that the simplest explanation is the best so if something appears to be true, by this argument, it probably is.
Swinburne: “If you say never trust appearances until it is proven they are reliable you will never have any beliefs at all”
Evaluate Swinburne’s argument for REs
Consistent with James’ pragmatist approach and that the authenticity of a religious experience should be judge by their results, rather than their origins. If we see someone has transformed their life we should accept the genuineness of their experience.
Swinburne arguably has considered certain issues as he says religious experiences can be disproven with sufficient evidence. However, he doesn’t outline what would be enough to falsify his beliefs.
Principles reflect how humans typically navigate life - we would not be able to sufficiently function if we demanded absolute proof of everything we came across.
Swinburne makes a dubious claim that our religious sense is as reliable as our 5 ordinary ones. This comparison of an unfalsifiable concept with the senses which are universally and scientifically agreed upon, is weak.
Personal testimonies may be true to the mystic but are distorted through our own cultural lenses and beliefs.
Outline St Paul’s religious experience
The Book of Acts outlines Saul as he was traveling to Damascus on his way to continue persecuting the Jews.
During this journey a bright light shone and Jesus spoke to him and asked “why do you persecute me?” After this experience, he was convinced that Jesus was the messiah. From that day on, he used the name Paul.
As a result of the experience, Saul transformed his life, converted to Christianity and became one of the most influential evangelists.
Billions of people continue to read Paul’s 13 letters which promote and have formed the foundations of Christian teachings.
Outline general arguments against religious experiences:
They are private and so cannot be objectively measured. James would argue that positive observable life changing effects is evidence of the experience being verifiable and valid.
Multiple claims issues:
The religious experiences of varying religions conflict each other. Any evidence to prove an experience from one religion, disproves any religious experiences from other religions. This is as different religions have incompatible claims about which supernatural beings exist. Pluralism can respond to this critique. Hick argues differences between religions are due to the cultural lens we perceive the world through.
Persinger’s God helmet was able to induce a similar state as those described by religious experiences through using magnetic fields to disrupt communications between the temporal lobes. This could suggest religious experiences are merely a reaction to external stimuli. However, if humans were created by God, these brain manipulations could be the mechanism in which God creates these experiences through. Replications of Persinger’s experiment have inconsistent findings.
Outline scholarly arguments against religious experiences.
Freud argues religion is a projection of our desires to have a father figure to look towards. Therefore, religion is merely a form of neurosis and such experiences are types of wish fulfilments.
Freud - “visions are at best signs of immaturity, at worst symptoms of mental illness.”
Bertrand Russel - “There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes”
Visions undermine Hick’s epistemic distance.
Stross - “One ape’s hallucinations is another ape’s religious experience” Stross argues religious experiences are misinterpretations; social influences and the cultural lenses people experience the world through are why humans wrongly interpret psychologically originating experiences as divine.
Schweitzer is a theologian but believes it is more likely St Paul’s experience was more likely to be an epileptic fit. “The most natural hypothesis is that Paul suffered from some kind of epileptic form of attacks.”
