Religious Experience

• corporeal visions

  
  

  • the vision that comes through the physical sense of sight
  • St Bernadette of Lourdes saw the Virgin Mary who told her to dig at her feet where she found a spring where people still pray
  • joan of arc who saw angels and saints leading her to lead france in battle w the english
• William James Pint

  Passive - mystical experiences are done to the mystic and aren't under their control. acts as evidence against claims that religious experiences can be willed into existence
• Rudolf Otto

  
  

  • numinous- an experience of "creature-feeling" when you are aware of the almighty/ something "wholly other" that is so much bigger than you
  • says religious experiences change the way one interprets the world and helps develop ideas about god
  • they contrast with mystical experiences which seek the unity of all things
  • says that its key to understanding spirituality and there's no religio religion without it
• Walter Stace

  
  

  • an experience can share common characteristics with mystical experiences like ineffability, being nontemporal and feeling blessedness but they have to share the central characteristic to 'count' or have significance
  • the central characteristic is a oneness, transcending sensory-intellectual consciousness.
• psychological objection- feuerbach

  
  

  • attributes of god are within human nature "God is man written in large letters" he is something we made up
  • if god is just made up by exaggerating humanities' qualities then james' argument that religious experiences suggest something beyond us is wrong
• psychological objections- freud

  
  

  • human religious behaviour is a neurosis caused by a childhood desire or insecurity to be protected by a father figure
  • religious experiences are just hallucinations caused with an explanation based in psychology and are products of our subconscious
  • thus religious experience cant be used as evidence for god
• sociological objections- marx

  
  

  • religion alienates you from yourself as it acts as a form of comfort for the oppressed
  • he calls it the "opium of the people" something to suppress us into not wanting that sweet sweet world revolution.
  • therefore religious experiences must be fabricated
• Psychological objections- mackie

  
  

  • if they're explainable psychologically they have no authority
  • people who believe aren't critical enough
• objections- kant

  
  

  • kant said we can only experience things in the empirical realm- he calls phenomena
  • this means our humans senses are limited and therefore we can't experience the unlimited god, it's logically impossible
• Swinburne's defense for religious experience, principles

  
  

  • principle of credulity- accept what appears to be the case unless there's clear evidence to the contrary which gives you a reason to doubt it like evidence they're on drugs or strong reasons god definitely doesn't exist or didn't cause it.
  • principle of testimony- believe the testimony of someone's experience unless there's evidence suggesting they're a liar/misremembering swinburne calls these reasons special considerations
• objection- psychological transformation

  edwin starbuck found parallels between religion conversion and the regular process of finding adolescence identity, so maybe religious conversion isn't something special and divine, but a normal universal process
• imaginitive visions

  
  

  • vision occurs not through the physical sense of sight but through a dream/ is seen through the mind's eye
  • in the bible joseph had a dream where an angel told him not be be afraid of marrying mary even though shes pregnant
  • the pharohs dreams in genesis 41 in which 7 thin cows eat 7 fat cows and withered grain eats fat grain
• intellectual visions

  
  

  • theres no image at all, something is experienced rather than observed with the eyes. mystics claim to 'see' things as they really are, illuminated by the holy spirit
  • St Teresa of Avila, she sees "christ at [her] side neither with the eyes of the body or of the soul"
• William James pInt

  Ineffable- its a direct experience of god which goes beyond our power to describe
• William James piNt

  Noetic- you get knowledge of god which isn't otherwise available, its gives you direct knowledge in the form of revelation from god
• William James pinT

  Transient - the effects of the experience last long beyond the experience itself and the experience will involve a different perception of time.
• William James empiricism

  empirical evidence as to the effects of religious existence provides clues to a supernatural reality beyond the ordinary man
• William James pragmatism

  truth is value, observing effects of religious experience must conclude there's truth to religion- specifically says religious experience suggests a higher reality/ something bigger than us but not necessarily god
• Rudolph Otto Mtef

  mysterium, mystery cant be described; wholly other and causes a mystic to be 'taken up'.
• R otto mTEef

  tremendum, inspires awe/unease, is overpowering and has a sense of energy
• R otto mteF

  et fascinas- its fascinating, were drawn to it
• Walter stace- introvertive vs extrovertive

  extrovertive- looks outward through physical senses to the external world to find the One, because it includes ordinary sense perception is a half way house To the introvertive, not a complete experience of the one. the mystic sees the same world as everybody else but the objects are transfigured so the unity / the one shines through them.
• numinous religious experiences

  • experiences of awe and wonder in the presence of an almighty transcendent god, the awareness of human nothingness int he face of an all powerful being.
  • many example sin literature like Isaiah 6 "I am ruined! for i am a man of unclean lips, and i live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king the lord almighty"
• evaluation of otto

  • his account can be seen as confusing regarding whether knowledge of god is gain, states the experiences come from cognitive apprehension but also theological ideas come after the experience
  • otto seems to suggest all religious experience is numinous, which is too simplistic other types like mystical experiences are well documented
• Walter stace- introvertive vs extrovertive

  introvertive- looks inward to find the One at the bottom of the self, outweighs the other in importance- 'counts'. wholly nonsensuous and nonintellectual "total suppression of the whole empirical content of consciousness"
• response to the psychological objection

  James argued that religious experience do have a psychological element, but that doesn't rule out a supernatural cause. He was also more interested with the result of religious experiences, empiricism and pragmatism
• response to marx

  can be responded to with james' empiricism, the effects he documented outweigh the causes, religion leads to lots of good in the world through things like charity, it isn't keeping people down
• response to mackie

  it could be argued mackie is being overly critical, jame's empiricism also works for him too since i usually group him in with feuerbach and feud
• response to kant

  William Alston says religious experience is similar to normal sensory perception, like extrovertive numinous experiences and there's no reason we cant perceive of something unlimited because we can imagine infinite lines and indefinite sequences of numbers
• scientific objections verification

  • religious experiences only happen to individuals, one persons eye witness testimony is unreliable.
  • religious experiences are akin to emotions they cannot be tested repeated observed or anything.
  • people who have religious experiences describe such a variety of things, between religions and even people who believe in the same thing.
• scientific and verification objection, drugs

  • drugs and alcohol like LSD can cause people to believe they've had mystical experiences
  • even james used nitrous oxide and anaesthetics "to stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree"
• scientific objection- temporal lobe epilepsy

  • religious experiences, especially visions can be caused by tle, all experiences could be explained by abnormal brain activity.
  • vs Ramachandran carried out research and showed people with tle had physical reactions to it moreso than people without
  • persinger's helmet- created a helmet that stimulates the temporal lobes in such a ay that it can artificially induce a religious experience. led to research into the superior parietal lobe (processes information about space and time) which is surpressed when the buddhists and nuns they tested prayed
• response to temporal lobe epilepsy

  • theres no way to prove every religious person experiences abnormal brain activity in the temporal lobes during prayer
  • furthermore, it could be that god put the temporal lobes into humans as a way to communicate with us
• response to verification

  • it is untrue that only individuals have religious experiences, if swinburne's five types catagorisation is to be believed then public extraordinary experiences like the sun dancing at Fatima disprove this. however it is true even group eye witness accounts can be unreliable
• response to drugs!

  it is highly unlikely that literally every single religious experience happened to somebody on drugs, its also impossible to verify that claim
• Swinburne's five types of religious experience

  • private non-describable, eg st theresa's intellectual vision
  • private describable, isiah's numinous experience
  • private non-specific, samyutta nikaya's writing on trances and entering the realm of nothingness
  • public extraordinary, sun dancing at Fatima
  • public ordinary, Augustines writing on hearing the children chant "take it and read"
• Swineburne's special considerations

  • when these aren't there, you should believe what you see or what you're told
  • testimony: the source is a chronic liar
  • credulity: the claim is impossible
  • both: not possible to show god did it; it could be explained in a mundane way
• verification objections- objective/subjective distinction

  
  

  • religious experiences are regarded as subjective because no objective criteria can be applied to them, they can't be tested or empirically verified in any way.
  • subjective experiences cannot be offered as scientific, as empirical or intellectual proof, as they're up for interpretation.
• value for religious faith

  • they can be life changing, causing conversions, deepen faith and re-frame religious peoples lives, like how Aquinas experienced a revelation so profound he stopped writing
  • can result in the founding of religions
  • they can be inspirational
• process theology problems


  other than the obvious not compatible with the biblical account, not worthy of worship stuff- it cant coexist with other arguments like the ontological which limits it's usefulness on a wider scale