Religous Experience Flashcards
William James
Noetic quality
Knowledge achieve in a seemingly unbelievable way
William James
Transiency
The experience has to end, travelling at a different time rate
William James
Passivity
Recognises gods power, he initiated the experience
William James
Ineffability
Indescribable
Williams James
3 reasons REs are evidence
Psychologist - number of REs says there’s something in it
Pluralism - all religions have truths
Pragmatism - it positively change lives
Religious experience
Freuds Criticism
Humans are plagued with wishful thinking
Psycho-somatic experience
Conversion meets the psychological needs of people, they desire a father figure
Religious experience
Starbuck
Most conversions happen between ages 18-24
People more stressed and easily influenced
Religious experience
Marx
“Religion is the opiate of the people”
Religion controls society, gets people through life
Religious experience
Swinburne Principle of credulity
Senses are usually reliable
Religious experience
Swinburne Principle of testimony
Most of the time people tell the truth
Religious experience
Maurice wells
If REs are real, god is immoral, choosing to reveal himself to a select few
Religious experience
Vardys principles
A change for the better
Has religious significance
Against the laws of nature
Religious experience
Hume
“A transgression of a law of nature”
The breaking of a law by a supernatural agents, highly improbable
Religious experience
Vardy criticism of Hume
Human experience says laws of nature aren’t usually broken
A testimony must simply be stronger than the odds against it
Religious experience
Bertrand Russell
“The fact that belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth”
Religious experience
Anthony Flew
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
Religious experience
Vardy
“most stories of miracles come from ignorant and barbarous notions”
We are predisposed to love the fantastic
Religious experience
Vardy crit of NML
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
Religious experience
Schliermacher
Only oneself can define if an experience is religious
Everyone has a consciousness of the divine
Religious experience
Strengths of corporate experiences
More numerically valid
Suggests experiences are not from individual imaginations
Religious experience
Weaknesses of corporate experiences - Hank Hanegraafff
Corporate experiences ‘mass hypnosis’
Religious experience
Weaknesses of corporate experiences - William Sergeant
Mass religious experiences down to conditioning
Religious experience
Weaknesses of corporate experiences - John White
“Learned patterns of behaviour”
Religious experience
Weaknesses of individual experiences
No witnesses
Lack of empirical evidence
