The challenges of verifying religious experiences

Question 1

Why does the personal nature of religious experiences make them challenging to verify?

Answer 1

Due to their private and personal nature, we cannot verify religious experiences because we have no way to tell if somebody is lying or telling the truth, as we have no evidence to prove either way.

Question 2

What are some reasons why religious experiences are hard to verify?

Answer 2

• personal/private
• Ineffable
• natural explanations
• spoken in tongues
• contradictory
• too extraordinary to be believable