condensed: religious experience

william james

william james wrote varieties of religious experience. he broadly defined them as “the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men“. he did interviews to see the effects, and argued verification is not crucial because it is important and real to the person. he says they are psychological phenomena like thinking.

james and william alston argue that something is real if it has real effects. james uses the effects as evidence for god, not as logical proof but supporting evidence, arguing that they are central to belief.

james summed them up by giving four descriptions:

• passive
• ineffable
• noetic: leading to greater understanding
• transient

his conclusions were thus:

• if the effects are real then the cause is real. god is real to those who experience him
• if it is real it has positive effects
• religious experiences are both of these

he compared similarities with hallucinations and dreams, suggesting re could be linked to our subconscious.

personal testimony

problem of other minds

if you claim to have an experience you may be telling the truth, but i can’t experience it the way you do. i may know you to be truthful but i cannot say you are correct in your interpretation. sincere beliefs are not necessarily valid.

richard swinburne

he argues for the a prior probability argument, that the existence of a god is higher than the likelihood of aliens so it should be taken seriously. (weak af.)

he says there are five types of experience:

• through a common, public, sensory object like a sunset. an encounter
• through an unusual, public, sensory object, like a burning bush
• of god though private sensations for which we have language, like a vision
• of god though private sensations for which we lack language, like a vague feeling
• of god through no sensory experience, through intuition

principle of testimony

it makes sense to believe what people tell you because we tend to tell the truth. (do we?) if not, everyday conversations would be tough.

is this really true? religious testimony is not like other testimony. we are unlikely to believe claims of alien sightings. the possibility for error is higher.

principle of credulity

if someone seems mentally sound, logically we would think they are. testimonies of re should be taken at face value unless there is evidence otherwise.

some argue religion itself is something which makes it more likely that someone will see things that aren’t there.

antony flew criticised swinburne saying that he is simply making a cumulative case. using the analogy of leaky buckets, flew says arguments for god make a bucket, but the flaws are all holes and it is pointless trying to fill a bucket full of holes.

j.l. mackie reminded us that people will unintentionally dramatise, exaggerate and mislead people with religious experiences.

against swinburne

his principles are criticised as too optimistic and idealistic for us

mackie said that in the balance of probabilities it is more likely a person is mistaken

r.m. gale said re is not the same as normal experiences so normal rules do not apply

it makes god trivial and as believable as any dream

michael martin suggests swinburne’s principles here can be used to suggest god doesn’t exist.

bertrand russell

from a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes

this show key claims that such experiences can be explained by scientific principles, not needing the supernatural, and can be stimulated by natural causes.

types of experience

corporate

re that happens in a public place to a group. an example is the 1994 toronto blessing in which people in a pentecostal church spoke in tongues, laughed hysterically and barked like dogs.

strengths

• numerically valid
• show shared feelings and responses, more valid
• suggests it comes from god, not imagination
• more impressive
• more verifiable, multiple testimonies
• easier to verify because it is not private
• effects are life-changing, surely they should be judged on this

issues with corporate

• in the toronto blessing, why would god show himself through hysterics and dog barks?
• hank hanegraaff argues such phenomena are mass hypnosis
• william sargeant argues mass religious conversions are due to conditioning
• skeptics suggest it was mass hysteria
• some people might say they can see or hear something and others join in just faking it
• many have suggested the toronto blessing was hysteria and heightened emotions
• critics suggest these do not line up with scripture, i.e. the holy spirit would not bring disorder to worship

personal

personal experiences are self-explanatory… they relate to the swinburne and james view. these could be numinous or something like glossolalia.

strengths

• can’t be mass hypnosis
• can be personally authenticated
• less likely to be conditioned

weaknesses

• don’t appear as valid
• no witnesses usually
• lack of empirical evidence

rudolf otto

argued for numinous experiences, saying god is transcendent and can only fill us with awe. this he calles the ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’, indescribable, mysterious and fascinating. numinosity is the sense of being in a greater presence, yet feeling separate from it.

otto tried in his book the idea of the holy to identify what about re made it religious. he wanted to show it was fundamental to religion that people had a personal encounter as a reference point for interpreting the world.

• kant criticised this saying we cannot use our senses to experience god since he is in the nominal world while we occupy the phenomenal world.
• confusion regarding whether knowledge of god is gained through experience
• ideological ideas come after experience
• he implies that numinous is a once and for all, as if there can’t be more in the future
• to suggest all religious experiences as numinous is limiting

teresa of avila

she had a mystical experience. she was accused of being sexually frustrated, so she self examined to see. she argues if that were true she would have been left disgusted but she wasn’t.

i was at prayer…when i saw christ at my side – or to put it better, i was conscious of him, for neither with eyes of the body nor with those of the soul did i see anything…but as it was not an imaginary vision, i could not discern in what form..

conversion

james believed truth could be found in results and because conversion has such great effects, it counts in favour of religious claims. he argued sudden conversion is very real to the recipient. he said it felt more like a miracle than a process. even when james saw conversion as a process, he maintained that it was inspired by the divine.

examples of conversion

the most famous is saint paul, who was struck off his horse and went blind as a voice cried ‘saul, saul, why do you persecute me?’ while he was on his way to damascus to persecute christians. he was nursed back to health and sight by christians, converted and became a great missionary. not all conversions are this quick.

how to understand religious experiences

union

part of any mystical experience is a union with a greater power. the question is what is this union? is it genuine? people feel a sense of closeness and connection through it.

an illusion?

one of the difficulties is that re seems more likely to be an illusion. children have imaginary friends, adults hear voices sometimes. if someone wants something bad enough it can become reality. perhaps those who want to see god so badly, imagine it.

a major criticism of re is the argument from psychology, advocated by freud, who called religious experiences wish fulfilment, referring to religion as a ‘universal, obsessional neurosis’.

physiological effect?

this goes back to russell’s argument. drink, drugs, tiredness, illness, fasting and dehydration can distort our perceptions. our mental state is deeply affected by our physical one. people hallucinate on lack of sleep. some religious experiences are sure down to this.

objections

• privacy of experience means we will never know
• just because someone is sincere, doesn’t mean it is a correct interpretation
• hume wrote about how humans like the unusual, and will make a story more and more dramatic with each retelling.
• ineffability means a lack of clarity, how much weight can we give this? we are likely to misinterpret,