Swinburne on religious experiences

Question 1

What is the principle of credulity?

Answer 1

He says that religious experiences should be taken as true unless there are some special considerations as to why we shouldn’t accept them as true.

Question 2

What examples of special considerations does he give? And why does he reject them all?

Answer 2

• Reliability and truth of the claim, e.g. history of lying ( you cannot say someone is lying just because they have lied in the past )
• Difficulty showing God to have been present in the experience ( God is omnipresent )
• Possibility that the claim can be accounted for in other ways (God underpins all processes anyway since he is the creator )

Question 3

What is the principle of testimony?

Answer 3

States that others who experience similar experiences support a claim of a religious experience. And if you see a change in their life, then they are probably telling the truth.

Question 4

What does Swinburne think the probability of God is without religious experience?

Answer 4

He thinks that without religious experiences, there is a 50/50 chance of God’s existence, but religious experiences push the odds in favour of God’s existence.