Give the definitions of religious experiences for the following scholars :
Ninian Smart
William James
Dawkins
St Teresa of Avila
include quotes
- Ninian Smart: ‘A religious experience involves some kind of perception of the invisible world’
- William James: religious experiences draw on common emotions that are directed at the divine.
- Dawkins: The God Delusion (2006). There is no such thing as a religious experience. They are merely expressions of a person’s psychological needs: ‘most convincing to those who claim to have had one, “ is the least convincing to anyone else”
- St Teresa of Avila: too hard to define due the profound nature of the experiences ‘ I find it impossible”
Describe direct and indirect experiences
-Direct experiences: the experient feels that he or she is in direct contact with God, a supernatural force, or ultimate truth. It involves a union with the divine (usually mystical experiences)
- Indirect experiences: there is an experience of God’s action in creation (imminence) or the world at large (usually numinous experiences)
Give three ways a religious experience usually affects the experient. ( it’s characteristics )
- Give the experient a greater understanding of God/ the divine
- Are encouraging to the individual - has a positive impact
- Are unique to the individual - even in a group setting
Define a conversion and its differing characteristics
when a religious experiences triggers conversion of the experient from one faith to another , or from no faith to no faith
it can be either :
gradual and volitional ( may be searching for faith or trying to gain experience of God)
spontaneous and non-volitional ( not expected ) e.g. St Paul on the road to Damascus
define revelation
- a particular experience of God where he makes himself directly known.
- crucial element is that the experient acquires new knowledge
Describe the two forms of revelation
- Propositional: refers to god directly revealing truth/facts about his nature to people without error or need of reinterpretation e.g Prophet Muhammad (saw) and the Quran
- Non-propositional: a person comes to a moment of realisation; of divine truth e.g Thé Buddha
Give criticisms of propositional revelation (3)
- suggests receiver is passive however psychologically the human mind does not passively receive knowledge
- there are conflicting propositions from different religions a how do we know which are true and which are false
- no way directly to verify or prove that propositional revelations happen
Give criticisms of a non-propositional revelation
- they do not reveal direct knowledge or God and cannot be consisted infallible
- the context of the revelation is a matter of interpretation
Describe the events which occurred during the Toronto Blessing
include controversy
- a series of corporate religious experiences occurred
- large numbers of people experience God at the same time
- people shook uncontrollable , wept laughed hysterically and made unusual sounds
- some questioned internet validity claiming that the experience are engineered through mass hysteria
Give Rudolf Otto’s description of a numinous experience.
- the experient is in the presence of an awesome power yet feels distinctly separate.
- described numinous to mean a feeling of the divine.
- numinous is something ‘ wholly other’ than the natural world and beyond apprehension.
- ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinas’ meaning fearful and fascinating mystery.
What did Greeley suggest could trigger religious experiences. Name an example
- music , dance Meditation and prayer
- prayer : communion with GOD.
- Believers claim that God answers prayers and that this is a sure sign of his existence -
The Toronto Blessing
Give Teasdall’s interpretation of a ‘mystical experience’
in ‘The Mystic Heart (1999) he describes mysticism as ‘direct, immediate experience of ultimate reality’
Give three characteristics of a mystical experience
- knowledge of the ultimate reality is gained
- a sense of freedom from the limitations of time, space and the human ego is experienced
- a sense of bliss or serenity is experienced
Give the two types of mysticism. Give examples
- theistic: involves an awareness and union of God. It usually involves knowledge of God being gained. This is what Sufi Muslims seek through their various forms of worship
- Monistic: involves an awareness of soul, self, conscience or ultimate reality. E.g. Buddhists use meditation to understand the self as non-existent and enlightenment is a mystical experience
Give the 4 ways which William James identifies a mystical experience ( THINK PINT)
1.Ineffability: The feelings defy expression ; they are beyond description using words.
St Teresa of Avila: ‘ I wish I could give a description (…) but I find it impossible
2.Noetic Quality: States of knowledge which allow insight to the depths of truth beyond human intellect
3.Transiency: These states cannot be sustained
4. Passivity: One loses control to a more powerful being. It is beyond human control.
Describe St Teresa of Avila’s religious experience
GIVE QUOTE
- she claimed to experience series of visions of Jesus ‘ seen not with the eyes of the body but with the eyes of the soul’.
- claimed her visions gave her insights into the nature of God
Describe Saint Bernadette’s religious experience
- claimed to have experienced 18 visitations from Mary over a six month period, not knowing who the lady was until the last apparition
- Mary instructed Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground and drink and bathe in it
- a mystical experience
- a direct experience
- a theistic experience
Describe St Paul’s religious experience
- Prior to conversion, Paul was a zealous Pharisee who “intensely persecuted” the followers of Jesus.
- On his way from Jerusalem, Paul sees a blinding light and communicates directly with a divine voice ‘ I am Jesus, whom you are persecuted’
- Saul was blind for three days and did not eat nor drink - Acts 9:3-9
- Paul converted to Christianity and spent the remainder of his life preaching the gospel
Give the premises of religious experience as evidence of God’s experience
P1: Expérience of X indicates the reality of X
P2: Experience of God indicates the reality of God
P3: It is possible to experience God.
C: God exists
Give the 6 strengths of Religious Experience as an argument for God. Include Counter Arguments and Rebuttals
The centrality of religious experiences to religion - there are examples within religious scriptures ie Moses and the Ten Commandments
ÇA : could mean that modern religious experiences are just a manifestation of pre-existing knowledge
ÇA: could lead to the manifestation of desires to have a religious experience
gain greater knowledge of faith from religious experience.
ÇA: Can’t verify the knowledge gained. No evidence that this it is a genuine truth of the divine.
- if knowlege is not new than ( ÇA.1)
- if new than how can we trust the knowledge of one person over God’s words
Swinburne’s Testimony of Faith
- unless there is evidence of the contrary one should believe what people say/testify
ÇA: Based on personal experience and so perception differs. Cant trust all perceptions
Swinburne’s principle of Credulity :
believe things are as they seem to be unless proven otherwise.
ÇA: Vardy : there needs to be a burden of proof
- subjective to misperception
The sheer number is convincing : as 40% of people have had a religious experience
ÇA : same as ÇA.4 - often religious experiences are in keeping with predisposed beliefs
R: Conversion - St Paul
The transformative effect is convincing - St Paul
ÇA: could be secular moral enlightenment as Buddhists wouldn’t attribute this change to God
- effects could be a result of a placebo experience - manifestation of their own desire
Give the 6 weaknesses of Religious Experience as an argument for God. Include Counter Arguments and Rebuttals
- religious non-empirical
CA should we be holding it to these standards? R: cam it than be used as a universal proof of God’s
existence.
CA2: transformative effect are the empirically verifiable elements - inductive reasoning and so leads to a probable conclusion and not a philosophical proof
CA: Swinburne’s cumulative argument
R: Flew’s 10 leaky buckets - relies on a presupposed belief in the divine
CA: St Paul’s conversion was non-volitional and spontaneous
Ca: may have an RE different to thier own religion - could be an alternative non religious explanation
- see QB AND F24
- conflicting religious experiences
CA: all have an element of the divine ; could be many paths to one god ; John Hick
R: conflicting RE between monotheistic and theistic religions
Give Sigmund Freud’s view on religious experiences
- suggested that theurge that some people felt towards religion was no more than psychological obsession
- he believed that RE were projections of ultimate, oldest and most profound ideas that people had
- referred to them as a mass delusion or paranoid wish fulfillment
Who is VS Ramachandran and what is his view on religious experiences
- a neurologist
- found that those with temporal lobe epilepsy where more likely to claim that they had experiences of God , and had greater physical reactions to religious imagery.
- suggested that St Paul could have had the condition
- he in not unwilling to accept that god exists and has placed the temporal lobe within the brain as a means of communication with humans
Give Micahel Persinger’s view and researchon religious experience
- argues that religious experiences are no more than the brain responding to external stimuli
- he developed a helmet which produced weak magnetic fields across the hemispheres of the brain which stimulated the emotions felt in a religious experience
- when performed this experiment on Tibetan monks and the Franciscan nun, they all reported that the experiment was identical to what they experience in their own meditative practice
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Philosophical Issues And Questions82
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Problems of Evil and Suffering26
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Religious Experience25
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Religious Language60
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Works of Scholars17
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Influences of developments in religious belief42
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Significant Concepts in issues or debates in religion and ethics65
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Study of Three Ethical Theories65
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Application of ethical theories35
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Ethical Language46
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Buddhism: Religious beliefs, values and teachings60
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Sources of Wisdom And Authority21
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Practices that shape and express Religious Identity36
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medical ethics33
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Social and Historical Developments31
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Triratna Buddhism13
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views on life after death1
