Religious experiences

• How does Edward Schleiermacher define a religious experience?

  An experience that offers a sense of the ultimate
• How does Paul Tillich define a religious experience?

  A feeling of ultimate concern that demands a decisive decision
• How does William James define a religious experience?

  - Religious experiences, give a person, an overwhelming experience of joy, reverence, and a desire to belong to God

  - They are a psychological phenomena that occur in our brains

  - However, he agreed this does not mean that this is all they are

  - Pluralist- there must be some objective explanation of the cross-cultural similarity of religious experiences
• James identified four core characteristics of religious experience:

  1. Passive- the experience controls you and not you it

  2. Ineffable- it cannot be described in ordinary language

  3. Noetic- the believe gains some knowledge which could only have been reached by the experience

  4. Transitory- it is fleeting or momentary, meaning that the experiencer experiences time in a different way
• What acronym can be used to help remember James' four core characteristics of religious experience?

  P.I.N.T
• Pragmatism


  A theory of knowledge, founded by William James, that claims we can never establish what is true in an absolute and infallible way, but rather by what works in practicality

  - The validity of a religious experience depends on the effects they have on a persons life
• What example does James use to show this?

  An alcoholic was unable to give up alcohol until he had a religious experience

  - They previously lacked the power to give up alcohol but after the experience they had gained that power

  - James would only think this was evidence for the validity of 'the spiritual', not necessarily God
• How did James argue that religious experiences express truth in pragmatic terms?

  - They help us to improve and make sense of our lives in the world

  - They support the existence of God for those who benefit from such beliefs
• How does FC Copleston describe a religious experience?

  Something transcendent, of which doubt is impossible during
• What are the two main types of religious experiences?

  1. Direct experiences

  2. Indirect experiences
• Direct Experience


  Where the person having the experience feels that he/she is in contact with God, for example, during prayer.
• Indirect Experience


  Where there is an inner experience of God's immanence, a feeling of God acting on the world, for example, during meditation.
• Caroline Franks Davis identifies seven types of religious experience:

  1. Awareness- seeing the work of God when looking at the world

  2. Quasi sensory- having a vision or inner experience of God

  3. Numinous- encountering the holiness of God

  4. Regenerative- a dramatic or conversion experience

  5. Interpretative- having prayers answered

  6. Mystical- having a sense of the ultimate reality

  7. Revelatory- receiving enlightenment from God
• Corporate Religious Experience


  An experience shared by two or more individuals simultaneously
• Near-death Experience


  An experience that occurs when someone undergoes a temporary death-like state and is then revived/resuscitated
• Saul of Tarsus


  - Acts as example of foundational religious experience

  - The original name of Saint Paul

  - He was a religious expert in Judaism and hated the influence of Christianity over Judaism

  - God came in a vision to one of Jesus's disciples, asking him to find Soul, and tell him that he was God's chosen instrument to bring his name to the people of Israel
• What is a foundational religious experience?

  An experience that forms the basis of a religious movement
• In what ways did Saul's experience demonstrate several of the classic phenomena of religious experiences?


  - His experience was both visual and auditory

  - He was convinced that he was in the presence of God

  - The men travelling with Saul heard the voice, but they saw nobody

  - He was left with temporary blindness

  - He experienced a complete conversion to Christianity
• Why have some suggested that this was not a religious experience?


  - There are several indications in the Bible that St Paul suffered from epilepsy- could just have been an epileptic seizure?

  - His experience didn't give him any real knowledge of God
• Mystical Experience


  - Not always religious

  - Experiences of an inner or deeper self

  - Oneness with nature

  - In a religious sense, the believer becomes one with the Ultimate Reality/God

  - They are on the same level of understanding as God whilst retaining an awareness of self as a distinct entity
• Dramatic or Conversion Events


  - A direct experience

  - Numinous (having a strong spiritual quality, suggestive of a divine presence

  - Inspire awe and wonder in the presence of an almighty God

  E.g. Saul in the Bible
• Numinous Experience


  An experience that evokes a deep sense of awe, wonder, and reverence in the presence of God or the divine.
• Rudolf Otto


  Argued that all religious experiences are numinous in nature

  - God can only be known via a sensory experience or a logical argument; a numinous experience is where God reveals himself

  - Numinous experience are the true core of religion
• What two elements of religious experiences did Rudolph Otto identify?

  1. The mysterium tremendum- the tendency of religious experiences to cause fear and trembling

  2. The mysterium facinans- the tendency that mystical experiences have to attract, fascinate, and compel
• Persinger's God Helmet


  Physiologically manipulated people's brain waves and often caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings.

  - If this is the case, arguably religious experiences originate from the brain, not God.
• Criticism of Persinger


  Maybe brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience

  - This shouldn't necessarily count against the validity of religious experiences that occur without drugs
• Defence of Persinger


  Persinger at least demonstrates that religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation. Therefore, supernatural explanations are unnecessary.
• Revelatory Experience


  - God makes himself directly known, often in visions or dreams

  - The person experiencing acquires new knowledge, for example, universal truths or prophecy.
• What are the two types of revelatory experiences?

  1. Propositional revelation- God communicates his divine message to a human being

  2. Non-propositional revelation- through religious experience, a person comes to a moment of 'realisation' about a divine truth
• Toronto Blessing


  A corporate religious experience that occurred in 1994 in Toronto Airport

  - Believers reported being deeply affected by the Holy Spirit

  - Weeping, laughing, rolling on the floor, and animal noises
• Hume's multiple claims argument

  Most religions involve the claims that their particular God(s) intervene in the world and in human experience. Hume argued this means their claims 'cancel each other out'. All religions cannot be true.
• A pluralistic response to Hume's criticism


  - James thinks that mystical religious experience occurring in all religions shows that they are all true

  - Hick argues that the different religions of the world are like blind men each touching a different part of an elephant. They each report they are feeling something different, yet that is because they are just too blind to see how they are really part of the same thing
• What common aspects did Professor Kenneth Ring identify in near death experiences?

  - Out of body experiences

  - Feeling of peace

  - Entering darkness and seeing light
• Using religious experiences as an argument for the existence of God is what type of argument?

  Indicative and a posteriori
• Religious experiences as an argument for the existence of God

  P1- There are compelling reasons for believing that claims of religious experiences point to spiritual realities that exist beyond our physical understanding

  P2- According to physicalists, nothing exists beyond our physical understanding

  P3- According to classical theism, God gives human beings the ability to perceive religious and spiritual realities through religious and spiritual experience

  C- Therefore, to the extent that P1 is accepted, theism is more plausible
• What are the strong reasons for supporting this argument?

  - Quantity- in almost all cultures large amounts of normal people have had a RE

  - These experiences are a posteriori and rely on empirical evidence

  - The experience often has significant effects on people's lives, inducing them into acts of self-sacrifice well beyond what could be expected from evolutionary arguments

  - Religious experiences often seem very real to the people involved and are quite often reported as being shared by several people
• Swinburne's five- part classification


  Swinburne identifies 5 types of religious experience

  1. Everyday experiences seen as a work of God

  2. Extraordinary occurrences

  3. Unusual personal experiences with religious significance that can be described

  4. Unusual personal experiences with religious significance that can NOT be described

  5. A general sense of a 'presence' or 'guiding
• 1. Experiences of God through common public sensory object


  E.g. a sunset or a nation
• 2. Experiences of God through uncommon public sensory object

  E.g. Moses at the burning bush, or someone rising from the dead
• 3. Experiences of God through private object that can be described empirically


  E.g. in Acts, Peter sees a vision of a cloth filled with non-kosher animals. The cloth descended from heaven and the vision taught Peter that all foods are clean and may be eaten.

  (A mystical dream or vision that can be expressed in words)