Religious  Experience    

CONTENT  

1)  The  nature  of  a  religious  experience  2)  The  approaches  and  types  of  religious  

experiences  3)  Mys?cism  and  revela?on  as  forms  of  

religious  experiences  4)  The  argument  from  religious  experience-­‐  

James  and  Swinburne    5)  Cri?cisms  of  religious  experience  

THE  MAIN  QUESTION  

 Can  any  experience  of  the  divine  be  used  as  an  

argument  for  the  existence  of  God?      

THE  NATURE  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCES  

 Religious  Experiences  have  been  argued  to  be  grounds  for  belief  in  God.      In  general  a  religious  experience  is  defined  by:      1.  A  sense  of  wonder    2.  A  sense  of  new  insight  and  values    3.  A  sense  of  holiness  and  profundity    

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DEFINITIONS    Rudolph  OWo  (The  Idea  of  the  Holy  1917)  stated  that  a  religious  experience  may  be  an  encounter  with  something  powerful,  uncanny,  weird,  awesome  but  also  aWrac?ve  and  fascina?ng.  He  spoke  of  this  as  an  encounter  with  the  numinous.  He  also  pointed  out  that  a  religious  experience  cannot  be    described  in  ordinary  language,  since  none  of  our  words  quite  capture  that  special  sense  of  something  being  ‘holy’.    It  involves  the  whole  person-­‐  mind,  emo?ons,  values  and  rela?onships.      William  James  states  that  a  religious  experience  ‘is  the  feelings,  acts,  experiences  of  individual  men  in  their  solitude,  so  far  as  they  apprehend  themselves  to  stand  in  rela?on  to  whatever  they  consider  divine’.  

TWO  GENERAL  APPROACHES      

There  are  two  general  approaches  to  interpre?ng    religious  experience:      1.  The  experien;al:  This  is  concerned  with  the  experience  itself-­‐  it  allows  the  experience  to  speak  for  itself  without  trying  to  define  exactly  what  is    experienced    2.  The  proposi;onal:  This  extracts  experiences  from    certain  definite  proposi?ons-­‐  which  are  claimed  to    be  religious  truths    

THE  PROPOSITIONAL  

In  general,  the  philosophy  of  religion  tends  to  encourage  an  experien?al  approach,  since  the  proposi?onal  approach  does  not  allow  for  a  true  understanding  of  the  experience.    

TYPES  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCES  

1.  Near  death  experiences    2.  Conversion    3.  Group  experiences    4.  Mys?cism    5.  Medita?on    

MYSTICISM    (A  type  of  religious  experience)  

In  his  Varie?es  of  Religious  Experience,  William  James  lists  four  quali?es  associated  with  a  religious    experience:    -­‐Ineffability  (different  from  ordinary  experience)    -­‐Noe;c  quality  (a  type  of  revela?on-­‐  knowledge  which  cannot  be  properly  explained  )    -­‐Transiency  (does  not  last  long)    -­‐Passivity  (the  person  feels  that)    

CAN  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE  BE  DEEMED  REVELATION?  

 Revela?on  is  defined  as  God  ‘revealing  his  will  to  humanity’  or  ‘knowledge  which  is  given  through  supernatural  agency’.  It  can  come  through  events,  people  or  the  scriptures.    Revelatory  experiences  tend  to  be  authorita?ve  for  those  who  have  them,  going  beyond  what  can  be  known  ra?onally.  It  is  generally  thought  of  as  a  gif  from  God-­‐  a  moment  when  God  chooses  to  reveal  himself.    

PROBLEMS  WITH  REVELATION      

Revela?on  raises  problems  for  philosophy  because  knowledge  can  only  be  ar?culated  using  words  that  have  a  commonly  agreed  meaning.  Without  that,  knowledge  does  not  make  sense.  Once  wriWen  down,  revela?on  is  inevitably  reduced  to  a  set  of  proposi?ons  that  can  be  assessed  ra?onally.  It  is  this  last  process  with  which  philosophy  is  tradi?onally  concerned.    

PROBLEMS  WITH  REVELATION    

Revelatory  experiences  are  powerful-­‐  people  who  have  received  them  might  not  be  able  to  defend  what  they  have  experienced  ra?onally,  but  for  them  it  is  authorita?ve.    People  who  have  had  a  revelatory  experience  are  unlikely  to  be  dissuaded.  But  it  is  reasonable  to  dismiss  their  claim  on  the  basis  that  it  is  impossible  to  know  that  which  is  beyond  the  senses?      

THE  ARGUMENT  FROM  RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE    

 Every  experience  involves  the  interpreta?on  of  sensa?ons  –  there  is  the  thing  that  is  experienced,  and  the  interpreta?on  and  understanding  of  what  is  experienced.  The  former  is  objec?ve  and  the  laWer  subjec?ve.      A  religious  experience  must  therefore  include  both  the  objec?ve  and  subjec?ve  elements  in  order  to  classify  as  an  argument  for  God  (or  even  in  order  to  even  count  as  an  experience  itself).  

THE  ARGUMENT  FROM  RELIGIOUS    EXPERIENCE    

There  is  an  evident  problem  with  this..  God  is  meant  to  be  beyond  the  limited,  physical  world.      So  how  can  people  know  that  they  have  experienced  God?    

PRIOR  KNOWLEDGE    IS  NECESSARY  

It  all  depends  on  prior  knowledge.  If  God  is  infinite,  he  cannot  be  located  in  a  par?cular  place,  nor  does  he  have  boundaries.  So  arguments  about  whether  or  not  an  experience  is  of  God,  require  a  prior  knowledge  of  what  God  is.      In  order  for  religious  experience  to  be  part  of  a  logical  argument  about  the  existence  of  God,  there  needs  to  be  an  agreed  defini?on  of  what  is  meant  by  the  word  God.  Otherwise  there  will  be  no  way  of  knowing  how  the  person  is  interpre?ng  their    experience.    

WILLIAM  JAMES      

In  the  Varie?es  of  Religious  Experience,  James  took  a  psychological  approach  to  his  subject.  He  made  no  aWempt  to  argue  from  his  accounts  of  religious  experiences  to  any  supernatural  conclusions-­‐  he  was  simply  concerned  with  examining  the  effect  of  religion  on  peoples  lives.      He  points  to  religious  experience  as  a  phenomenon  that  can  have  a  profound  effect-­‐  it  is  self  authen?ca?ng  for  the  person  who  has  it.  James  admiWed  that  it  did  not  offer  any  logical  proof  of  the  existence  of  God.    

WILLIAM  JAMES      

James  did  not  speak  of  ‘God’  but  of  the  ‘spiritual’.  He  was  against  any  aspects  of  dogma?c  theology.  It  is  only  in  the  most  general  terms  that  James  can  be  said  to  offer  any  kind  of  argument  for  the  existence  of  God.      James  simply  points  to  religious  experiences  and  the  role  they  serve  as  filling  people  with  love,  happiness,  humility  and  peace.    

SWINBURNE  

Swinburne  also  argued  that  religious  experiences  are  authorita?ve  for  the  individual.    Swinburne  does  not  argue  that  religious  experiences  should  offer  conclusive  proof  of  God,  but  rather  that  you  need  to  balance  out  probabili?es  when  it  comes  to  belief.    

RICHARD  SWINBURNE      

Swinburne  offers  a  way  to  classify  religious  experience      PUBLIC  EXPERIENCES:    Ordinary,  interpreted  experience  –  e.g.  night  sky    Extraordinary  experience  –  Jesus  walking  on  water      PRIVATE  EXPERIENCES:    Describable  in  normal  language    OR  Not  describable  in  normal  language  (mys?cal)    No  specific  experience  (for  instance  when  the  whole  of  a  believer’s  life  is  seen  in  a  certain  way)  

SWINBURNE    Richard  Swinburne  puts  forward  two  principles  to  argue  that  we  should  balance  probabili?es.      

THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  CREDULITY      Maintains  that  it  is  a  principle  of  ra?onality  that  (in  the  absence  of  special  considera?ons)  if  it  seems  to  a  person  that  X  is  present,  then  probably  X  is  present.  What  one  seems  to  perceive  is  probably  so.  Put  simply-­‐  You  should  not  doubt  a  witness.    

SWINBURNE  

THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  TESTIMONY    Maintains  that,  in  the  absence  of  special  considera?ons,  it  is  reasonable  to  believe  that  the  experiences  of  others  are  probably  as  they  report  them.  Put  simply-­‐  You  should  not  doubt  what  they  have  to  say.  

 

IT  ALL  DEPENDS  ON  PRESUPPOSITIONS      

If  one  believes  in  God,  if  God  is  real  within  the  ‘form  of  life’  of  the  believing  community’,  then  the  whole  world  may  be  seen  as  being  imbued  with  God’s  presence.  St.  Francis  saw  the  whole  world  as  reflec?ng  the  presence  of  God.      However  this  is  NOT  the  same  as  saying  that  religious  experiences  establish  the  claims  that  God  exists  independently  of  the  created  universe….    

CRITICISM  1-­‐  The  Vicious  Circle  challenge    

This  holds  that  religious  experience  depends  on  the  prior  assump?ons  of  those  involved.  Thus  Catholics  will  experience  Mary  and  Hindus  are  likely  to  experience  Kali.      This  implies  that  instead  of  religious  experience  being  a  BASIS  for  faith,  they  are  more  likely  to  be  generated  by  exis?ng  faith  commitments.  They  therefore  have  ’no  epistemological    

CRITICISM  2-­‐  The  Conflic?ng  Claims  challenge      

This  argues  that  if  Chris?an  religious  experiences  underwrite  Chris?anity,  then  Islamic  experiences  should  equally  be  held  to  underwrite  Islam  and  so  on.      In  other  words,  if  one  religion  relies  on  their  religious  experiences  to  prove  the  truth  of  their  religion  then,  philosophically,  each  religion  can  claim  the  same  and  this  provides,  as  David  Hume  put  it,  ‘a  complete  triumph  for  the  skep?c  as  it  implies  each  religion  is  equally  true.  

CRITICISM  3-­‐  The  Psychological  Challenge      

Some  psychologists  hold  that  religious  experiences  can  be  explained  by  psychological  factors.  For  instance,  (a)  St.  Paul’s  experience  on  the  Damascus  road  could  have  been  due  to  an  epilep?c  fit.      HOWEVER  it  is  one  thing  to  say  ‘Some  religious  experiences  can  be  explained  psychologically’  and  another  to  say  that  ALL  religious  experiences  can  be  explained  like  this.  Also,  a  religious  believer  can  claim  that  if  there  is  a  God,  then  God  could  work  through  one’s  psyche.    

CRITICISM  4-­‐  From  Kant  

Kant  took  the  view  that  human  beings  have  only  five  senses  and  that  all  they  know  comes  through  one  or  more  of  them.      Since  God  is  not  part  of  the  phenomenal  world  of  objects  that  is  apprehended  through  the  senses,  we  cannot  have  any  direct    knowledge  of  him.      Kant  would  rule  out  religious  experience  as  a  way  of  demonstra?ng  the  existence  of  God.  

FINAL  THOUGHTS      

Many  throughout  the  world  are  convinced  that  they  have  been  in  the  presence  of  God.  Many  have  staked  their  lives  on  such  belief.  Such  individuals  are  ofen  intelligent,  thoughlul  and  compassionate–  not  the  sort  of  people  who  would  lie  or  be  readily  dismissed.      Their  tes?mony  may  not  cons?tute  proof  but,  according  to  James  and  Swinburne  it  should,  at  the  least,  is  deserving  of  being  taken  very  seriously  and  not  discarded.  Religious  experience  may  well  point  to  the  possibility  of  a  divine  ‘other’.