Visions

• Reasons why non-religious people believe visions do not prove God's existence

  • People who have mental illness, stress or are on certain types of medication experience hallucinations very similar to the visions of saints
  • Visionaries see the Virgin Mary as blonde and blue eyed but most Middle Eastern Jews had dark eyes, skin and hair
  • Visions exist only in the mind of the person experiencing them and so prove nothing
  • There is no independent evidence for visions
• Abraham's vision


  Abraham was childless and worried about having no descendants when God appeared to him, took him outside and pointed to the stars in the sky. God then gave him a message of hope, assuring Abraham that he would have a son and would have as many descendants as there were stars in the sky.
• The Transfiguration


  Jesus took his disciples Peter, James and John up a high mountain where he was transfigured - his face shone like the Sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. The disciples then had a vision of Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. A bright cloud covered them and a voice from the cloud told them that Jesus was his son and that they must listen to Jesus.
• Reported visions since biblical times

  • St Joan of Arc who was a French peasant girl during the Hundred Years War between England and France. She claimed to have had a vision in which the Archangel Michael, St Margaret and St Catherine told her to drive the English out of France. She managed to convince the French royal court of their truth.
• Catholics disagree with these arguments since the Church’s

  investigations of visions rule out mental illness and drugs and show the

  visionaries as good people whose visions have a positive effect on others.
• Visions might lead some people to believe in God because:

  ● they claim to come from God, so if they happen, God must exist

  ● the changes in the behaviour of the person having the vision (for example

  St Joan of Arc) make it seem the vision must have come from God

  ● the message in the vision makes them think it must have come from

  God

  ● if the person having the vision is known to be honest, then the vision

  could only come from God.
• Abraham’s vision comes from Genesis chapter 15.