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Religious Experience & Verifying Religious Experience (Walter Stace -…
Religious Experience & Verifying Religious Experience
Numinous Experiences
For Otto God is 'wholly other'. He is a being that is completely different and distinct to human beings
We are unable to know God unless he chooses to reveal himself
He argues religious experiences are emotional. Believers interpret the world through the experience and the beliefs attached to it
God reveals himself and his revelation is felt on an emotional level
Mysterium cremendem - it is both awe-inspiring to the point of producing fear, and also strangely fascinating, we are drawn into the experience
'It is the emotion of a creature submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness. In contrast to which is supreme above all creatures' - the creatures emotion is submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness. This is in contrast to which is supreme above all creatures
Otto argued that all religious experiences are of numinous nature
Corporeal, Imaginative, Intelligent experiences
Imaginative Experiences
In the mind of the eye
In dreams
Not through senses
e.g Pharaohs dreams - small cows ate big cows
Religious Experience?
YES
Accuracy
Nature of the prophecy
NO
Not seen by anyone else
Coincidence
Intelligent Experiences
Aware of God
e.g Teresa - described it in negative terms
Can't be described in ordinary words
Religious Experience?
YES
Its an abnormal feeling
NO
Never seen
No image
Corporeal Experiences
Empirical experiences
Actually see it
e.g Vision of Mary and Lourds
Religious Experience?
YES
They can see it if the image is clear enough
NO
High medical state
Hallucinations
Mental health issues
Unstable mind set
Sleep deprivation
Trick of the light
Walter Stace - Mysticism
State didn't regard telepathy, telekinesis,clairvoyance and precognition as mystical experiences
Stace regards the central characteristics of a mystical experience in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate non-sensuous unity in all things
Stace regarded mystics as people who has experiences a mystical experience
Extroversive mystical experience - looks outward and through the senses
Stace defined mysticism as non-sensuous and non-intellectual
Introvertive mystical experiences - reflecitve experience inside
Stace did not honour beginning or intermediate states people experience along the path to fill mystical experiences: visions, voices,insights or powerful dreams
Stace regards introversive as being superior as they are more accurate and precise
Walter Stace was an english born philosopher. He wrote on Mysticism after his retirement in 1955
Mandukya describes the introvertive mystical consciousness as beyond the understanding
Strengths
Stace excludes some forms of religious experience such as visions which can be explained in non-religious terms
Stace laid of 'oneness' is similar to the other definitions of God e.g cosmological argument
Narrows it down - it is more specific
Weaknesses
Staces definition of mysticism makes such experiences impossible to verify empirically (non-sensuous/ineffable) - meaningless?
His definition may be too narrow excluding many experiences which could be 'mystical' in some sense
William James
James' four criteria
Noetic - not just 'feelings,' but a deep and direct knowledge of God which could not have been achieved through reason alone. The truth was revealed to them
Transient - the experience is temporary and cannot be sustained, although its effects may let a long time. It can develop and deepen with subsequent experiences and the effects can last a lifetime
Ineffable - experience beyond proper description - no adequate description can be given in words: language limitations prevent description
Passive - experience not initialised by the mystic but rather they have a sense that something is acting upon them. The experience is controlled from outside themselves
Weaknesses
His study is too subjective as he focuses more on the truth of the experience for the individual rather than this relates to the idea of a God who exists in the 'real world'
He does not show that there really must be a God - he could have looked at other possible causes of a religious experience
Believers in different faiths claim that their experiences prove the truth of their faith however, they cannot all be right
Strengths
There are many first hand testimonies offered as evidence
Similarities - there are considerable similarities between descriptions of religious experiences that would not be present if these experiences were made up
Effects - the effects of these experiences are powerful and positive
Quantity - religion based on the experience of its founders has been a powerful force in history and modern researchers such as David May suggest it is widespread
Sigmund Freud
If we could understand everything there is to understand about the physical / biological side of life, we would fully understand human beings
He suggests that the urge some people felt towards religion was no more than psychological obsession
Believed that people were completely material
Saw religious experiences as, essentially, illusions
Austrian Psychiatrist
He believed that they were projections of the ultimate, oldest and most profound ideas that people had
e.g if someone claimed to have experienced the suffering of Jesus, a religious person may accept this
Freud would claim that the recipient of this experience were simply projecting his or her ultimate beliefs about suffering, helplessness and separation, along with salvation, hope an desire to be reunited with ones parent
Freud refers to religion and religious experience as a mass delusion or paranoid wish-fulfilment
Ramachandran
He decided to measure his patient's changes in skin resistance, essentially measuring how much they sweated when they looked at different types of imagery
Discovered to his surprise was then when the temporal lobe patients were shown any type of religious imagery, their bodies produced a dramatic change in their skin resistance, much greater than people not suffering from the condition
Set up an experiment to compare the brains to people with and without temporal lobe epilepsy
He concluded from his research that famous religious figures such as St Paul could also have been people who had the condition
Carried out extensive research related to temporal lobe epilepsy from which he has concluded that there is important evidence linking the temporal lobes to religious experience
Neurologist
Not unwilling to accept that it may be that God exists and has placed the temporal lobe within the brain as a means of communication with humans
Persinger
Able to reproduce this by electrically suppressing activity in the superior parietal lobe using his helmet
When he performed this experiment on Tibetan monks and the Franciscan nun, they all reported that the experiment was identical to what they experience in their own meditative practice
However, as soon as the electromagnetic field is turned off tenth experiences cease
One experiences becoming 'one with the universe'
This sense of self expands to fill whatever the brain can sense and what it senses is the world so the experience of the self simply expands to fill the perception of the world itself
It is thought that this happens because when under the influence of the helmet, the Brain is deprived of the self-stimulation and sensory input that is required for it to define itself as being distinct from the rest of the world; the brain 'defaults' to a sense of infinity
Over 900 people who have taken part in the experiments claim to have had some form of religious experience
Developed a helmet which produced weak magnetic fields across the hemispheres of the brain, specifically the temporal lobes
Claims that by stimulating the temporal lobes with a unique machine he can artificially induce in almost anyone a moment that feels just like a genuine religious experience
Cognitive neuroscience researcher who agrees that temporal lobes have a significant role in religious experiences, and argues that religious experiences are no more than the brain responding to external stimuli
Swinburne
Defines religious experiences as 'an experience of God or of some other supernatural thing'
Very important definition - many people have rejected the testimony of religious experiences on the basis that they have not actually 'God' but an angel, a messenger or other relligious figure
His basic conclusion: 'on our total evidence theism is more probable than not'
If we accept the definition we must accept the involvement of such beings under the category of 'some other supernatural being'
Develops an argument for the existence of God based on religious experience
After defining religious experience, Swineburne's argument effectively takes the form of two areas: the Principle of credulity dealing with the 'four key challenges'; an, the principle of testimony
Principle of credulity
Therefore, we should accept what a person experiences unless you can prove otherwise
Swinburne offers the four possible challenges in his argument:
The circumstances in which the experience occurred generally produce unreliable results or the recipient of the experience is unreliable
The recipient of the experience did not have the ability to interpret the experience
It is possible to show that whatever/whoever the recipient is claiming to have experienced was not there
It is possible to show that whatever/whoever the recipient is claiming to have experienced was there but was not involved in/ responsible for the experience
The basic principle states 'If it seems to a subject that X is present, then probably X is present; what one seems to perceive probably is so'
Principle of testimony
Swinburne appeals to a basic rational and verifiable idea - that people usually tell the truth
Again he accepts that there will be 'special considerations' which may reject this principle
The principle of testimony suggests that I should accept your statement of what you experienced unless I can demonstrate positive grounds showing it to be mistaken