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RELIGOUS EXPERIENCE A GOOD PROOF?? - Coggle Diagram
RELIGOUS EXPERIENCE A GOOD PROOF??
Definition:
A
religious experience
is a
non-empirical
occurrence and may be perceived as supernatural
Challenges to RE's:
the problems arises of how you can distinguish God from other possible objects of experience
to recognise omniscience you would have to be omniscient yourself
God has no body , he is not material , yet is said to be one being
Freud Challenge:
he suggests that the urge some people felt towards religion was no more than a psychological obsession
Freud saw the religious experience as an
illusion
Ramachandran challenge:
He carried out extensive research on temporal lobe epilepsy from which he has concluded that there is important evidence linking the temporal lobes to RE
Persinger challenge:
cognitive neuroscience researcher who agrees that the temporal lobes have a significant role in RE, and argues that RE's are no more than the brain responding to extend stimuli
Conversion RE:
conversion is the adoption of a new religion better that differs from a previously held belief
Types of conversion:
a conscious and voluntary experience
involuntary and unconscious experience
example of conversion:
**- St Paul dramatically converts to Christianity after experiencing God on the road to Damascus)
the name changed from Saul to Paul is significant to show the conversion of Saul/Paul to Christianity
Mystical RE:
mystical experiences are experiences where the recipient feels a sense of 'union' with the divine
-
mysticism of love and union,
need to be part of something bigger than ourselves
mysticism of knowledge and understanding ,
need to find out answers to the 'secret' of the universe/to know the ' whole story'
William James:
claimed that the best way to study religion is by looking at the religious experiences people have had, and one of the aims of his book is to view such experiences.
" The Variaties of Religious Experience" 1902
James criteria for a mystical experience. 'a directed oneness with God'
James and RE:
He argues that all normal persons have RE's and since experience is the final arbiter of truth, then God - as the object of RE's must be accepted as factually true
His motive was to classify the types of RE
James Conclusion:
James's conclusion we can find out how people's religious experience are seen as a potential 'evidence' for the existence of God
James noted that people who claimed to have had religious experiences seemed to be generally more fulfilled and purposeful in their understanding of the world and their place in it , than those who subscribed to athiest theories
Pragmatism
: there is no fixed truth, RE is subjective
Pluralism
: simarliarity of experiences across faith
Empiricism
: the outcomes matter more than the RE -
Transformative
FOUR CHARCATERISTICS OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES:
Ineffable:
no adequate description can explain the experience
Noetic:
a deep knowledge and understanding is taken from the experience
Transient:
It is temporary as an experience , although the effects might last for a while and might deepen once other religious experiences are experienced
Passive:
the expereince is not initiated by yourself , you have a sense of something greater
Rudolf Otto:
"Theologian and Scholar" 1869-1917
Numinous experience:
leaves us in awe and wonder in the presence of God
Otto implies numinous experience is a 'once and for all experience , which implies that there can be no further experience after it because we are left overwhelmed and cannot explain it fully. This means that the validity of the experience could be questioned
Otto would believe that all RE'S are numinous because we are left feeling emotional and fascinated and cannot always describe them. However, there are experiences where God reveals himself clearly and directly to people expressing orders or knowledge
criticised - Immanuel Kant criticised this saying we cannot use our senses to experience God since he’s in the nominal world while we occupy the phenomenonal world
Friedrich Schleiermarcher : Theologian Philosopher and Scholar
Experieneces are primarly emotional and these emotions are deeper than reason
the experience is not numinous , but are an emotional connections to the divine
it should be a feeling over absolute dependence upon a source of power that is distinct from the world
people then reflect on the experience afterwards to make sense of it
Augustines experiences :
Augustine claimed to hear voices as a RE . Augustine was upset and crying , he then heard a child voice was singing. He looked up and saw this to be a sign from God , a command to be positive
St Teresa of Avila claimed to have experienced visions of God
Swinburne Book:
**"Existence of God"
Richard Swinburne argues in his book The Existence of God for the Principles of Credulity (if someone says x is present to them, x is probably present unless we think there are good reasons to think otherwise) and Testimony (people should be believed unless there are good reasons not to do so
CHALLENGES OF PRINCIPLE OF CREDUALITY:
the recipient of the experience did not have the ability to interpret the experience eg recipient is very young
the circumstances in which the experience occurred generally produce unreliable results eg intoxication from drugs or alcohol or the recipient is unreliable
YES RE PROVES GOD:
many people are more likely to belive something if it has been experienced . Our experience of God is the next evidence we have that God exist
NO RE NO GOD:
the finite cannot experience which means it is impossible for a human to experience God
Philosophy/Science challenges:
Ramachandran and Persinger offer a credible alternative for RE
Experience is the strongest form of evidence. If a person has a vision of a religious figure or hears the voice of God and then they'll firmly believe that they have had that expereince
A corporate religious experience is one which happens to a number of people at once in the same location.
Examples of corporate religious experiences include the Toronto Blessing
Corporate experiences could also be explained as resulting from a kind of mass hysteria and/or the manipulation of people’s moods by a charismatic preacher.
the corporate religious experiences of six teenagers and children in Medjugorge , where they claimed to keep seeing the virgin Mary
Richard Swinburne argues in his book The Existence of God for the Principles of Credulity (if someone says x is present to them, x is probably present unless we think there are good reasons to think otherwise) and Testimony (people should be believed unless there are good reasons not to do so).