Religous Experience Flashcards
What are the three types of religious experience?
Mystical Experience
Conversion experience
Corporate experience
What is a Mystical Experience?
an experience of something beyond normal awareness sometimes described as super-sense
What case is for Mystical experience?
Teresa of Avila
What is a conversion experience?
a change of heart and turning around of one’s priorities following a new direction of life
What case is for Conversion experience?
Saul to St Paul
What is a corporate religious experience?
Experienced by many people at the same time
What case is for Conversion experience?
Toronto blessing-Church it was described as a move of Holy Spirit and manifests in various ways including speaking in tongues (unlearned language), animal noises and uncontrollable laughter. Some testify in changed their lives and strengthened marriage
What is William James 4 criteria of religious experience?
-Passive-they were not in control of the experience and another power is controlling them
-Ineffable-experience cannot be explained
-Noetic-experience provide information about God or revelation
-Transient-the experience lasted a short time but had a significant effect on the person often long time
Psychological explanation of religious experience?
-Feuerbach argued God was a psychological construct formed from human desires. For example desire for control led to belief in a all powerful God
- Jun interpreted St Paul’s conversion experience for, how psychological perspective that Paul exhibited symptoms of emotional breakdown perhaps triggered by his guilty at the number of Christians he had killed
-Freud argue religions is an ‘obsessional neurosis’- Describes problems experienced in life e.g. traumas that are repressed in mind and develop into obsessive neurosis in adulthood
-Psychologists would point to social conformity to suggest that corporate experiences are far less reliable than individual as ones
-Mass Hysteria can spread through a group in large groups people tend to follow the majority perhaps because they want to fit in, gain approval or avoid social rejection
Physiological explanation of religious experience?
-Physiological explanations for religious experiences Paul’s conversion the effect he felt such as bright light becoming unconscious and temporarily lost his sight are symptoms of lobe epilepsy.Paul refers ‘thorn in his side’ which is a metaphor for recurring illness such as epilepsy
-Substance abuse can have mind altering effects this means religious experiences, such as visions or voices, are linked to fasting, vitamin deficiencies is a cause of hallucinations Teresa of Avila were caused by vitamin deficiency
-Michael Persinger singer used God Helmet to stimulate the temporal lobes and found that participants had sensations similar religious experience.However his experiments are not widely accepted because the results were inconclusive
What does Swinburne say about religious experience?
-Principle of testimony-We should not all believe what people tell us to be the case unless we have good reason to believe otherwise
-Principle of Credulity-Unless we have overwhelming evidence to the contrary we believe things are as they seem to be
