Types of religious experience
- corporeal = touch / sight/empirical (eg st Bernadette saw Mary, Joan of Arc - saw saints)
Dreams (imaginative - eg st Joseph’s dream, 3 kings?)
Intellectual - St Theresa - on fire with love of God
Rudolph Otto: views on religious experience
Idea of the NUMINOUS
Not linked to morality altogether but the idea that god is transcendent
Latin for deity/spirit
Exodus - ‘hid his face, now he was afraid to look on God’’
Sui Generis - of one kind - feelings are intense and irrational
William James view on religious experience
Religion is SECONDARY to experience which is PRIMARY and ORGANISED
Can be any God
Teaches us significance of the world we inhabit
Prayer Produces real psychological effects
Benefits - zest for life
Have root in MYSTICAL states of consciousness
-> ineffability (cannot be described)
-> Noetic (gives knowledge)
-> transience - cannot be sustained
-> passivity - uncontrolled
Do not always concern religion
Experiences are personal
THIS IS WHAT RELIGION IS ABOUT!!!
Value vs problems of religious experience?
- affirms faith
- life altering
- martyrs?
- place of worship (pilgrimage)
- can be problematic for people who believe their religion holds the ‘truth’
- have to take word for it (personal…)
- group experiences?
- must somehow be experienced by the brain.. and if so is this supernatural?
- not able to be described!
What is Swinburne’s principle?
CREDULITY
Trust appearances -
Consider reasons for doubt
Consider the source - reliable?
Consider similar experiences
People should consider whether similar experiences have been shown to be false.
Consider other explanations
TESTIMONY
Multiple claims support the above
TESTIMONY AND CREDULITY PROS AND CONS
Cumulative arguments make sense!
Normal sense experience is reliable … but what about ‘visionary’ claims?
Sense/experience can usually be verified
No proof that God is correct explaination
Walter Stace views on religion
Mysticism is NON SENSUAL AND NON INTELLECTUAL
introverted vs extroverted mystics
- introverted: no sense of being
- extroverted: non sensuous unity shines through objects
AIMED TO TALK RATIONALLY ABOUT MYSTICISM
+ and - of WILLIAM JAMES
+
Has been a powerful force in history (many experienced)
Effects of experiences are visible and positive
Similarities and testimonies add up
- Russel: the fact a belief has a good moral effect on a man is no evidence in favour of its truth!
Too subjective (focuses on truth for individual rather than if this relates to a God existing in real world) - also PERSONAL across different faiths
Challenging religious experience
TLE - just abnormal states of the brain?
Drugs - LSD / hallucinogenic (prefrontal cortex)
Neurotheology - electrical stimulation of temporal lobes of brain
‘The God Helmet’ simulation of temporal lobes in the brain
Freud: wish fulfilment - fear of death
HUME: contradictory experiences in different religions
FLEW: if you can’t describe it there’s nothing to describe!
Religious responses to challenges
- we have to show our processes in our brain!
- freud’s view is a hypothesis that can’t be tested and also has lack of evidence
- to Hume: god will work through those experiencing Him in a way they can understand - also often DIVINE BEING is the same despite cultural difference
- to flew: if you could describe it , it would be part of our world
