Religious Experience

• Religious Experience


  - An experience in which someone believes that they have direct access to God.
• The nature of religious experience - Augustine


  - St. Augustine classified visions into three categories:

  
  

  -> Corporeal: Empirical. They are experienced through the physical senses.

  
  

  -> Imaginative: Visions experienced through 'the minds eye' - not physical sight, normal senses are not used. Often take the form of dreams.

  
  

  -> Intellectual: No image. It will cast light on a deep and important truth and will see things the way they really are. These are also mystical visions meaning they cannot be explained with words.

  
  

  - Features of visions.

  -> Individual.

  -> Group.

  -> Auditory (involves seeing the future).

  -> Visual (involving seeing something).

  -> Prophetic (involves seeing the future).

  -> Illumination (teaches about a spiritual truth).

  -> Mystical (can't explain in words).
• Numinous experiences - Otto


  - Otto thought all religious experiences = numinous.

  -> Numinous = related to the power or the presence of a deity.

  - Features of a numinous experience:

  -> Sui Generis: they are in their own genre.

  -> Non-rational: we cannot think our way into understanding numinous feelings - we can understand things only through experiencing them.

  -> "Mysterium tremendum et fascinans" - a tremendous and fascinating mystery. Far removed from humanity, fearsome experience of God's overwhelming energy, creates awareness of need for salvation.
• James' account of religious experiences

  - James wanted to be able to explain the difference between true things and false things. He came up with philosophical pragmatism.

  -> Philosophical Pragmatism = a theory of truth that judges the truth or falsity of claims according to whether they are useful and produce positive outcomes.

  -> Link with religious experience = the fact that religious experiences change people's lives is, for James, enough to prove that God exists. "Something is real if it produces real effects."

  
  

  - He believed religious experience is primary.

  -> Religious faith comes after the religious experience.

  -> Most important thing = experience.

  -> Worship, etc is only important if it helps us to understand and make sense of an experience.

  -> People may need to make sense of their religious experience.

  -> It can happen to anyone, not just God's believers.
• Features of a religious experience - James

  - Ineffable: You cannot explain this experience with words.

  - Noetic: Gives rise to knowledge, especially emotional knowledge.

  - Transient: Experiences do not last long. Life transforming effect on someone's life.

  - Passive: Participant cannot control any part of it.
• James' ideas


  - God isn't much like the traditional idea of God.

  -> Believed that religious experiences were the important thing about God.

  -> God would be able to intervene easier in the world if he existed within time.

  -> God = doesn't have to be all knowing, causes religious experiences, could be a group of beings, doesn't need omnipotence.

  
  

  - People are changed a lot by their religious experiences.

  -> Key feature of mystical experiences = they are efficacious.

  -> Differences they can cause: an energetic enthusiasm for life, empathy with other people, feelings of safety, peace, love.

  -> Reason why they make such an impact = they achieve a higher consciousness and we can understand the universe more deeply.

  
  

  - Mystical experiences are deeply personal.

  -> God meets humans "on the basis of their personal concerns". i.e. they are suited specifically to the needs of an individual.

  -> We all perceive God differently in our religious experiences.

  -> Whatever is wrong with us can be dealt by connecting with God.
• Stace's account of religious experience

  - Focuses on mystical experiences as he believes it is pointless trying to prove the existence of God with the usual arguments.

  -> "God is either a mystery or he is nothing".

  -> Goal of all religious experience = to experience union with God.
• Stace's definition of religious experiences

  - Mystical experiences are the only non-intellectual and non-sensuous experiences.
• Types of mystical experiences: Stace

  - Extrovertive: Normal objects are seen with the physical senses, but they are transfigured so that the non-sensuous unity shines through them.

  -> All things are one.

  -> A sense of the one as inner subjectivity of life in all things.

  
  

  - Introvertive: Experience of senses is suppressed, there is no awareness of the world, there is no intellectual function, ordinary human consciousness is replaced with mystical consciousness.
• Challenges to religious experience

  - A religious experience is veridical if it is in fact a direct experience of God.
• Challenges to religious experience: Entheogens/psychedelics


  - Some drugs are called ethnogens, such as LSD.

  -> People who have done psychadelics report experiences very similar to religious experiences.

  -> Psychadelics cause abnormal activity in the temporal lobe.
• Challenges to religious experience: Freudian psychoanalysis


  - Freud claimed that visions were just illustrations created by subconscious fears and desires.

  -> As we all have a deep fear of death and the unknown, religion is comforting as the promise of heaven makes us feel better.

  -> Religious experiences are a way of trying to deal with trauma and worry as a self-defence mechanism.

  -> We take comfort from them and the religious interpretations we give to these experiences.
• Challenges to religious experience: Temporal lobe epilepsy


  - Type of brain disorder.

  -> Sufferers report a certain type of feeling whenever they have seizures.

  -> These feelings are identical to those in mystical experiences: prescense of the divine, losing the sense of self, bliss, self-transcendence, etc.
• Challenges to religious experience: The "God Helmet".


  - Designed to stimulate exactly the same parts of the brain that is stimulated by temporal lobe epilepsy.

  -> When people have worn this, most report they had experienced something - out of body experiences/presence in the room.
• Christian responses to challenges: James

  - The Interaction Model

  -> Claims that instead of waiting for God to induce a religious experience, we can seek them out by some of our actions.

  -> We can invite God to cause a religious experience.

  -> So drugs or weird brain activity are just ways to prompt the religious experience to happen.

  -> He claims that correlation and causation are different. Just because two events happen at the same time, it does not mean that one caused the other.
• Christian responses to challenges: Swinburne's principles

  - Swinburne wants people to believe that religious experiences are veridical.

  
  

  - Principle of Testimony: in the absence of special considerations, the simple observation that things people tell us are generally true.

  -> We rely heavily on trusting others as a way to get knowledge.

  
  

  - Principle of Credulity: in the absence of special considerations, the way you perceive things to be is probably the way they are.

  
  

  - When people say they've had a religious experience, there are generally two reasons why we may doubt they've had a veridical experience.

  -> We could believe they're lying.

  -> We believe they could be mistaken about the type of experience they've had. They've interpreted it wrong.

  
  

  - Special considerations:

  -> Reasons as to why we wouldn't be able to trust someone.

  1. Any claim made by someone who was obviously insane.

  2. Obviously false.

  3. There is a more logical reason.

  4. Not provable.
• Influence of religious experiences

  - Some religious experiences have resulted in the founding of religions, which have their basis in faith.

  
  

  - Religious experiences are often inspirational, leading others to faith about and in God. (e.g. C.S. Lewis who felt the presence of God was so strong that he had to accept it and convert).

  
  

  - Religious experiences are life-changing.