Religious experience
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Transcript of Religious experience
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
.
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’.