Religious experience

Question 1

Religious experience definition

Answer 1

private or public encounters that are interpreted as having a direct connection with God

Question 2

Otto’s argument

Answer 2

NON-RATIONAL
For otto religious exerience is characterised by the numinous- a non-rational feeling of encountering the ‘wholly other’, and so it involves a divine reality that is beyond human rationality.
-> explains that the numinous is sui generis, a category of its own, and so can only be pointed out through analogy or symbolism
-> shows it canot be explained though rational concepts
- describes this experience as mysterium tremendum et fascincans, a mystery that causes both awe and dread, classifying relifgious experieence as an emotional response.

Question 3

Counter for otto

Answer 3

D.Z. Phillips argues that religious experience cannot be reduced to ineffable feelings because religious meaning is constructed and expressed through language, rituals, and communal practices.
- numinous, an isolated emotional state, ignores the importance of interpretation within a tradition and without this context, it remains a vague emotion with no clear meaning.

Question 4

Freud argument

Answer 4

NON-RATIONAL
But in an illogical way
Freud believes religion is an ‘obsessional neurosis’, contending it’s derived from the fear of death.
- we have an uncontrollable fear of death which is triggered by our cognitive processes
-> makes us constantly aware of our inevitable death so we find ways to prove God’s existence, to manipulate ourselves into believing death is not the end, and it’s the strength of this psychological forces tht resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience claims

Supported by Persingers experiments with ‘God’s helmet’ which demonstrated religious experience could be artificially induced through magnetic simulation of the brains temporal lobes
-> suggest experience is created by psychological mechanisms not the supernatural

Question 5

Counter for freud

Answer 5

William James
Pragmatic approach recognises transformative effects

‘by their fruits you shall know them’, arguing that practical effects of a religious experience, such as conversion experiences, serve as a rational basis to judge their validity
- case study of an alcoholic, points out how through religious experience the alcoholic had gained power he lacked before, since they were able to give up alcohol after the religious experience had occurred, which empirically verifies the experience came from a higher spiritual reality.
supported by the Bible through the conversion experience of Paul, who was transformed from a persecutor of Christians into a devoted apostle after encountering a vision of Christ.

However-> in The Varieties of Religious Experience one of the four characteristics he uses to describe religious experience is ineffability and if an experience cannot be put in words it must be non-rational as it is beyond human comprehension.

Question 6

William James argument (criteria)

Answer 6

four criteria which characterise religious experiences
Ineffable – the experience cannot be put into words
Noetic – some knowledge or insight is gained
Transient – experience is temporary
Passive – the experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen.
(PINT)

-> must be an explanation why these four criteria are found in all mystical religious experiences.-> It can’t be chance.
James’ explanation is that religious experiences really are coming from a higher spiritual reality

-> concludes mystical experiences are the core of religion, +teachings and practices were ‘second hand’ religion, (not what religion is really about.)

Developed by W.Stace
-> the universality of certain features across mystical experiences provides strong evidence for their authenticity.
Using a range of mystical accounts, he identifies a “universal core”- central qualities of mystical experiences: a sense of divinity and oneness, paradoxicality, ineffability, feelings of peace, and diminished spatial awareness and subjectivity
->Fact these features r the same for religious experience in all religions shows they r unlikely to be delusions

Question 7

Miller argument

Answer 7

regards mystical experiences as “the pursuit of a transcendent, unitive experience with absolute reality”, arguing that such experiences are non-rational bc they cannot be understood using rationality.
summarises religious experience into 5 key characteristics: transcendent (beyond the time and space), ineffable (cannot be described in words), noetic (knowledge gained through religious experience), ecstatic (the soul filled with bliss and peace), and unitive (a sense of oneness with reality).
For example, the noetic quality suggest an intuitive insight, the ecstatic and unitive elements explain an overwhelming emotional or spiritual immersion that defies objective rational explanation

Question 8

Examples of 3 types of visions

Answer 8

Corporeal- empirical religious experience through the senses
Imaginative-> seen with the minds eye
Intellectual- involving a non-sensory feeling of presence

Question 9

Theresa of Àvila’s visions

Answer 9

1. Corporeal- describes God taking her rosary and replacing it with 4 large precious stones which could only be seen by her
2. intellectual-> experienced the presence of God but saw ‘nothing with the eyes of the body and nothing with the eyes of the soul’
3. imaginative- transverbation-> describes an angel piercing her heart with a fiery dart-> shows estatic and ineffable nature of imaginative visions

Question 10

swinburne argument

Answer 10

religious experience is RATIONAL

Principle of credulity- ‘we ought to belive things are as they seem to be’-> if we were to distrust appearances until they r proven reliable with evidence it would prevent us from forming any beliefs

Principle of testimony- we should accept others’ reports of their experiences unless given a reason not to

Question 11

Bernadette’s visions

Answer 11

claimed to have a religious experience of Virgin Mary

Question 12

Counter to James’ pragmatic argument (in counter to Freud)

Answer 12

hallucinations can be life-changing to certain ppl depending on their beliefs.
-> if a theist hallucinates an angel, it could be life changing but it would still be a hallucination.
-> would only be life-changing bc of their beliefs about its significance which is created by mind not from a higher spiritual reality

Question 13

Corporate religious experiences

Answer 13

• when multiple people have same religious experience together
  -> e.g. The Day of Pentecost described in Acts 2:3: All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues”
  -> inspired Pentecostalism which focuses on intense shared worship, e.g. speaking in tongues

Question 14

Counter to corporate religious experiences

Answer 14

there are peculiar psychological dynamics to groups of ppl e.g. mob mentality or mass hysteria so group delusion could be the simplest explanation for corporate religious experience
- could use Freud to support

Question 15

Multiple claims issue

Answer 15

different religions cannot all be true as they have different beliefs about which supernatural being(s) exists -> religious experiences about different religions conflict
-> so claim religious experience is evidence which supports one religions disproves all other religious experiences which prove the validity of other religions
-> so no religious experience can be objectively true

Question 16

Counter to multiple claims issue

Answer 16

Pluralism- all religions are true
can use Stace, James or Hick
Hick- likens different religions to blind men touching different parts of an elephant who each report they feel something different bc they are too blind to see that they are touching the same thing. For Hick, differences between religions are simply the cultural ‘lens’ through which we see the world

Paul Knitter (pluralist)- uses metaphor to suggest that while different religions may appear separate, like wells dug in different place, they all come from the same source

Question 17

Potential golden nuggets

Answer 17

Underhill- religious experience is ‘the art of union with Reality’-> shows religious experience is beyond human intellect
Swinburne’s principle of credulity and testimony

Question 18

Dawkins argument

Answer 18

rejects the idea that collective belief makes religious experience more credible
Religious beliefs are no different from psychotic delusions, they are only taken seriously bc they are socially accepted by numerous ppl
-> ‘Religious experiences are different only in that the people who claim them are numerous’ -(The God Delusion)

Question 19

Michael Lacewing

Answer 19

criticises James