General

• Rudolph Otto: "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" (mysterious, tremendous and fascinating/compelling) - a phrase he used to describe RE
• Otto argues all RE is numinous. (his word - meaning awe/wonder, the presence of something greater).
• Defining RE is hard - "an encounter with god or what is ultimate beyind ordinary empirical explanation"
• RE are a posteriori arguments for gods existance. They are based on a claimed experiance of god.
• Brian Davis: argues that everyone may have had a religious experience, but only a few have realised.
• The Alister Hardy RE Research Centre: houses an archive with accounts of RE. 30-45% of britain say they have been aware of a presence or power beyond themselves, many people have never spoken about their experiance for fear of others misunderstanding.
• Mystical experiances - describe an experiance of direct contact or oneness with god or ultimate reality.
• Numinous experiance - used to describe experiances of awe and wonder in presence of god.
• Corporate experiances - used to describe REs that happen to a number of people at once in the same location.
• Visions - god/a religious figure appearing with a message
• Voices - hearing god/a religious figure.
• Direct experiances - encounter god in a direct way. Eg Jesus Baptism.
• Indirect Experiances - refer to experiances thoughts and feelings in everyday life. Eg observing the sun and thinking about the greatness of god.
• Swinburne divided indirect experiance into public (an ordinary event Eg sunrise) and private (cannot be explained Eg bernadette at Lourdes.)
• Eg: Saul on the road to damascas, being mean to christians. Vision of blinding (literally) light. Leads to becoming paul, a devout christian.
• Other opinions on RE: is actually common; can be frightened by an experiance; the brain can hallucinate clearly (eg dreams); Re is simply a 'wish fulfillment' from the brain
• A genuine RE is self authenticating to the induvidual
• Historical Argument - the experiances and impact of key individuals have been so great they must be true Eg mohammed/jesus.
• Cumulative argument: so many people have had RE, they cannot all by lying. God must be the cause of some.
• Can be considered implausible that god would be evident in all of the REs as they are so different.
• Swinburnes principles, Flews response: testimony of RE us bias, irrational and questionable. Nothing can count against it, believers are so convinced ot the truth of their religion they often refuse to consider evidence to the contrary.
• Flew - 10 leaky buckets, 10 REs; Swinburne responds: if many leaky buckets inside each other, they still work to hold water. (RE can work together to be a strong argument)
• Ayers verification principle: a thing can only be meaningful if it can be verified either analytically or synthetically.
• Verifications principle applied to RE: we can only verify RE as meaningful if it can be verified. Ayer is critical of mysticism, tries to ascribe meaning to a god who cannot be described with language. If we cant verify god, why is there validity to RE.