Religous Experience

Question 1

William James

Noetic quality

Answer 1

Knowledge achieve in a seemingly unbelievable way

Question 2

William James

Transiency

Answer 2

The experience has to end, travelling at a different time rate

Question 3

William James

Passivity

Answer 3

Recognises gods power, he initiated the experience

Question 4

William James

Ineffability

Answer 4

Indescribable

Question 5

Williams James

3 reasons REs are evidence

Answer 5

Psychologist - number of REs says there’s something in it

Pluralism - all religions have truths

Pragmatism - it positively change lives

Question 6

Religious experience

Freuds Criticism

Answer 6

Humans are plagued with wishful thinking

Psycho-somatic experience

Conversion meets the psychological needs of people, they desire a father figure

Question 7

Religious experience

Starbuck

Answer 7

Most conversions happen between ages 18-24

People more stressed and easily influenced

Question 8

Religious experience

Marx

Answer 8

“Religion is the opiate of the people”

Religion controls society, gets people through life

Question 9

Religious experience

Swinburne Principle of credulity

Answer 9

Senses are usually reliable

Question 10

Religious experience

Swinburne Principle of testimony

Answer 10

Most of the time people tell the truth

Question 11

Religious experience

Maurice wells

Answer 11

If REs are real, god is immoral, choosing to reveal himself to a select few

Question 12

Religious experience

Vardys principles

Answer 12

A change for the better
Has religious significance
Against the laws of nature

Question 13

Religious experience

Hume

Answer 13

“A transgression of a law of nature”

The breaking of a law by a supernatural agents, highly improbable

Question 14

Religious experience

Vardy criticism of Hume

Answer 14

Human experience says laws of nature aren’t usually broken

A testimony must simply be stronger than the odds against it

Question 15

Religious experience

Bertrand Russell

Answer 15

“The fact that belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth”

Question 16

Religious experience

Anthony Flew

Answer 16

Statements that aren’t tested empirically are meaningless

James focuses too much on the individual and not if god is actually proved as real

Believers in different faiths all use RE as truth for their faiths

Question 17

Religious experience

Vardy

Answer 17

“most stories of miracles come from ignorant and barbarous notions”

We are predisposed to love the fantastic

Question 18

Religious experience

Vardy crit of NML

Answer 18

NMLs don’t exist, just gods habits,

We need regularity to function so no rules are broken by god doing what’s not his norm

Question 19

Religious experience

Schliermacher

Answer 19

Only oneself can define if an experience is religious

Everyone has a consciousness of the divine

Question 20

Religious experience

Strengths of corporate experiences

Answer 20

More numerically valid

Suggests experiences are not from individual imaginations

Question 21

Religious experience

Weaknesses of corporate experiences - Hank Hanegraafff

Answer 21

Corporate experiences ‘mass hypnosis’

Question 22

Religious experience

Weaknesses of corporate experiences - William Sergeant

Answer 22

Mass religious experiences down to conditioning

Question 23

Religious experience

Weaknesses of corporate experiences - John White

Answer 23

“Learned patterns of behaviour”

Question 24

Religious experience

Weaknesses of individual experiences

Answer 24

No witnesses

Lack of empirical evidence