bullet summary: religious experience

• 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
• argues that they are central to belief
• james summed them up by giving four descriptions: passive, ineffable, noetic, and 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

• the problem of other minds is that 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 argues for the a priori probability argument, that the existence of a god is higher than the likelihood of aliens so it should be taken seriously
• this is very weak
• he argued there are five types of experience:
  • common public objects through senses
  • unusual public objects through senses
  • private sensations we lack language for
  • private sensations we can talk about
  • through intuition

• swinburne also argues for two principles:
• the 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
• the 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
• but 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.

• further criticisms of swinburne are as follows
• his principles are criticised as too optimistic and idealistic for us
• j.l. 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 says “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

• there are different types of religious experience
• a corporate re is one 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
  • 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
• but
  • 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 experiences are self-explanatory… they relate to the swinburne and james’ view. these could be numinous or something like glossolalia.
  • can’t be mass hypnosis
  • can be personally authenticated
  • less likely to be conditioned
• but
  • 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.
• immanuel 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 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.”

• 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
• the most famous conversion 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

• religious experiences can be interpreted in many ways
• as a 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
• as 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 sigmund freud, who called religious experiences wish fulfilment, referring to religion as a ‘universal, obsessional neurosis’
• or as a 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 are numerous:
• 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