Religious Experiences: Argument for existence of God

Question 1

Define propositional

Answer 1

Factual knowledge

Question 2

Define non-propositional

Answer 2

to communicate a personal form of knowledge

Question 3

Barth’s view

Answer 3

• reason doesn’t allow us to understand God: “man…creating the deity of his own image”
• RE only gives us a personal knowledge of God not factual
• facts only leads to idolatry (praising something as if it was God)
• non-propositionalist

Question 4

Kant’s view

Answer 4

• highest epistemological authority is reason (if we use this hen we should see that RE are false)
• can’t know anything about God as he is in nominal world which is inaccessible to reason
• impossible to have a genuine RE as they are just illusions

Question 5

Wittgenstien’s view

Answer 5

• discussion of ‘fact’ in relation to RE is irrelevant

- religious language game is about perspectives and significance

Question 6

Evidentialism

Answer 6

• W.K Clifford
• propositional
• we have a moral duty to test all beliefs against evidence and allow evidence to judge them
• a person’s judgement is limited
• only empirical experiment can give us knowledge that is verifiably “exact and universal”

Question 7

Kierkegaard’s view

Answer 7

• leap of faith
• religion is not about facts or arguments
• non-propositional

Question 8

Catholic Catechism

Answer 8

• RE occur when God reveals himself and you enter into an intimacy with him
• element of propositional thinking in order to judge whether it’s a genuine experience or not and we know this through reason