introduction?
are religious experiences genuine
- when someone feels they’ve had a direct experience with God, most convincing proof of Gods experience as they have experienced or felt God for themselves
- 2 main factors ; experience itself + the interpretation
- Hobbles in his leviathan raised Q ‘whats the difference of a man saying God spoke to him in a dream and a man dreaming of God in a dream’
✅ Swinburne,Otto,James
❌ Freud,Russell
William James on religious experience?
- lecture series ‘variety of religious experience’ acknowledges variety of experience, but tries to find some common things they all have in common + came up with four categories ;
- passivity (can’t control anything)
- ineffability (beyond words to describe)
- noetic quality (gain knowledge)
- transiency (cannot be sustained for long)
➡️should be tested not accepted, over beliefs, those who speak find their descriptions are aired at supporting their beliefs
Swinburne on religious experience?
believes due to 2 principles ;
- principle of one duty, if someone believes they’ve experienced something they probably have (dont Q seeing a bird)
- principle of testimony, we believe the testimony of others, unless lying its probably true ➡️ if we always doubted everything conversation would be impossible
- also believes in principle of credulity ‘WE OUGHT TO BELIEVE THAT THINGS ARE AS THEY SEEM TO BE, UNTIL WE HAVE EVIDENCE THAT WE ARE MISTAKEN’
✅ - If the other person is colour blind, they will not see the same colours that we see, but that doesn’t mean we should doubt what we are seeing. In the same way, people who don’t have religious experiences might be spiritually blind
- logical
❌ - not everything we experience is true BUT Swinburne isn’t saying that everything we experience therefore exists,Sometimes we fool ourselves = ‘in the absence of special considerations’ eg something ‘happening’ after taking drugs
Otto on religious experience?
- book ‘the idea of the Holy’
- describes a religious experience as an encounter with the wholly others ➡️ signfies that God is of a completely different order
- describes the meeting as a kind of seduction ‘mysterious and nenedum at fascinans’
- all religious experiences are “numinous” experiences = this meant that they invoked the mysterium tremendum, which is the tendency to invoke fear and trembling, and the mysterium fascinas, which is the tendency to attract, fascinate, and compel
what are the types of religious experience?
- personal (happens to individual)
- corporate (more than one person)
mystical?
most common, visions revealing knowledge
conversion?
alters their life from one set of conviction to another, changes their life from one set of convictions to another
corporate?
shared by a group of people, multiple people all having individual experiences at once
best example of personal mystical experience?
St Teresa of Avila
➡️ describes a series of visions which she knows are genuine because of the way they made her feel
- believed they fit with beliefs of church
- have to be life changing which her experience was (has experience with Jesus)
- ‘I thought that he thrust several times into my heart, and that it penetrated to my entrails.’ golden tipped spear (of holy spirit) enter inside her
example of personal conversion?
St Paul
- initially called Saul and persecuted christians
- temporarily blinded by a strike from heaven (God spoke to him) ➡️ regained site + changed to St Paul as a missionary figure
example of corporate experiences?
- in Bosnia, reports of seeing Mary since 1981
- Toronto blessing; worldwide spiritual movement in charismatic church, airport church Vineyard ➡️ since 1994 people fall, laugh and make animal noises
miracles?
- involves an intervention from God (usually seen in the terms of breaking a law of nature)
- Aquinas defined miracles ‘those things must properly be called miraculous which are divine power, apart from the order generally followed things’ eg Jesus walking on water, wine into water
- can show authencity of God
Issues with personal?
- may be interpreted as illusions, we are prone to perceptual errors
- Russell ‘if you eat too little you see visions : and if you drink too much you see snakes’ ➡️ body perception of world changes
- can’t know the mind of another
- usually sincere people can be wrong
- Hume,humans are drawn towards magical things
issues with corporate?
- people behave differently in groups, mass hysteria in a well recognised phenomena
- Toronto blessing might be the work of demons but act of Apostles in bible spoke in tongues (not act like animals tho)
- why would God make us do such pointless things? when he could be preventing evil through overriding free will
