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Religious Experiences - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Just as we trust any other experience to inform us of the world, we can trust religious experience - James' empiricism, Swinburne's Principles, W.L. Craig says it constitutes basic belief
      - Our interpretation of events can hold truth - James' pragmatism, Hick's 'experiencing as,' Kant
      - The change should be evident in the person or in their description - St Teresa, James' 'fruits' of religious experience and characteristics of religious experiences, C.S. Lewis and Rudolf Otto
      - Individuals can easily be mistaken - Dawkins on the 'simulation software in the brain,' CFD's subject-related challenges
      - There may be physiological reasons for 'religious' experiences - Persinger's study, in regards to St Teresa and St Paul
      - Religious experiences go against our understanding of objective reality - CFD's description- and object-related challenges, the notion of objective truth
    - - There is strength in numbers - more likely to be correct if others back up their description of events so can be trusted more
      - If it affects multiple people then there is more likely to be a force present and it is less likely to be the result of other causes, e.g. mental illness
      - 'There is sanity in numbers' - just because more people believe something does not make it objectively true. We may consider the fact that many people in corporate experiences are those who are already religious and likely to interpret it in a religious way
      - There can still be other causes that have a more rational explanation - Dawkins on Fatima, Persinger's study, Stephanus Pretorius on Toronto Blessing
    - - There is a sense of the 'wholly other' or something beyond the scope of normal experience - James' characteristics, Otto on the numinous, C.S. Lewis
      - People feel they experience a connection to God so why deny it - W.L. Craig on basic belief, Swinburne's Principles, Teresa of Ávila's connection through prayer
      - There are other explanations for religious experiences - Persinger's study, physiological effect of near-death experiences, physical or mental illness etc
      - People are trying to interpret the world in the way they understand (Kant) and may be wrong about the truth - Hick's 'experiencing as,' people who already have faith more likely to see something as a religious experience