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Religious Experiences, 'mysterium tremendum et fascinas' - quote…

- - - - her words are completely contrasted to those of the preacher behind the Toronto Blessings, Rodney Howard Browne, who said: 'God, if you don't come down here and touch me, I'm going to come up there and touch you'
  - - - they might take the form of miraculous experiences (like the perception of the sun 'dancing' by a large group of people in Fatima, Portugal in 1917)
        
        the 'Miracle of the Sun'
        
        Virgin Mary's announcment
        
        shortly after midday, rain stopped and sun came out. great majority of people in crowd then allegedly saw sun spinning around and sending out rays of light, lighting up peoples faces in all different colours. then the sun appeared to dislodge from its place and hurtle towards the earth
        
        people were terrified and thought it was the end of the world
        
        it had been raining for 24 hours, everyone soaked to the skin
        
        so news spread far and wide, and many people travelled for miles to see it. many sceptics and non-believers as well as religious people in the crowd. and many news reporters
        
        on the 13th day of every month for five months prior to this, the Virgin Mary had appeared to three shepherd children and announced that a miracle would take place there, on that day
        
        people found the muddy earth and coats were completely dry
        
        most accounts say c70,000 people gathered in. the field
        
        national newspapers, even secularist ones, reported the event as real. non-believers were unable to explain it and some people as far as twenty miles away also reported seeing it
        
        the sun returned and event ended. had lasted about 12 minutes
        
        validity of the event
        
        seems impossible to explain this event in terms of mass psychology as many who had come sceptically saw the event, as well as those who were not there seeeing it
        
        also rain-sodden, muddy ground drying up completely
        
        Catholic Church explanation
        
        throughly examined the oracle, as it dos with every reported case miracle, and declared it 'worthy of bellef'
        
        clearly more persuasive than an individual experience because so many people - regardlesss of beliefs - saw the same things
      - or, at the other end of the scale, they might take the form of group experiences of peacefulness and calm during periods of silence - eg silence during Quaker meetings
      - are those undergone by a group of people
  - - - seems to point to some reality transcendent of cultures
- - - - originally called Saul, Paul was a Jew who persecuted christians until a sudden experience of the risen christ on the road to Damascus. he described himself as a new man, a new creation
      - John Wesley
        
        initially aware that he did not have the same faith in a personal saviour that others had. in his conversion e he felt his heart warmed and felt trust in christ, that he had been saved from sins
  - - - sick= personality type that is depressive and pessimistic
      - healthy = conversely optimistic about life
- - - - the mystic feels unable to control the experience, feels 'taken over' by it
    - - impossible to put into words
    - - conveying insights into the nature of reality which transcended normal discursive (involving discussion) thought
    - - fleeting, over within a short space of time
    - - 'the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves in heir solitude, so far as jeu apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine'
  - - - numinous comes from the latin numen, meaning divinity
      - O was trying to convey the original sense of awe-inspiring wonder and terror which he believed lay at the heart of r experience
        
        eg the fear the disciples felt when Jesus calmed the storm, a supernatural fear, contrasted with their fear of the storm itself. their fear of Jesus calming was a far more profound fear
    - - uses the latin words to explain numinous
        
        tremendum
        
        trembling
        
        the experience is awe-inspiring, and both attracts us and makes us feel our own inferiority as mere creaturees
        
        fearsome experience of God's overwhelming majesty and enregy. sense of human nothingness and sinfulness. consquently, absolute dependence on God
        
        mysterium
        
        mysterious
        
        the experience in some sense unavailable to ordinary human reason - it is a mystery. Otto wanted to remind us of the 'mystery schools' of Ancient Greece, in which neophytes would undergo rituals involving being led into darkness and being forbidden to speak about the initiation
        
        far removed from humanity that can be experiences but not understood. elicits the repose of awe and wonder
        
        creature - feeling
        
        related to the trenmendum characteristic, a sense of ones own contingency as a created being in relation to the source of that existence
        
        emphasises God's separateness and otherness - transcendence
        
        fascinas
        
        fascinating
        
        compulsive and attractive nature of the experience creates a desire for a relationship with the Being. creates awareness of the need for salvation, forgiveness
      - an experience where you are having a strong religious/ spirituality quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of the divine
      - non-rational and unique form, totally outside everyday experience
      - basis on all genuine religion - need to have one
    - - holy meaning 'other than', 'seperate from'
      - is an attempt to describe the sense some people have of a reality totally outside and beyond their experiences themselves and the world
  - - - in her book The Interior Castle, she outlines any types of religious experience
        
        through mental prayer " God gave her spiritual delights: the prayer of quiet where God's [resence overwhelmed her senses, raptures where God overcame her glorious foolsishness, prayer of union where she felt the sun of God melt her soul away
      - spanish nun
    - - thought that people should. think of mysticism as an alteration of the whole person instead of an immediate experience of God
      - flemish mystic of Catholic Church
- - - - gathered a large range of testimonies via this
      - conlusions
        
        the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance
        
        union/harmonious relation with tat higher universe is our true end
        
        prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof - be that spirit of 'God' or 'law' - is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world
      - religion also includes the following psychological characteristics
        
        a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life and takes the form of either lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism
        
        an assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections
      - criticisms
        
        Mackie
        
        even what he classes as genuinely religious experience do not intrinsically resist explanation in purely human terms
        
        Dawkins
        
        argues similarly that psychological or physiological explanations ae far more likely given the prior improbability of a divine being who interacts with humans
      - argued for a 'common core' to experiences
    - - thought we feel helpless, need a father figure and create one unconsciously with religious experience, which helps us satisfy the need for security
      - often experiences can deceive us (like hallucinations). some people may be mistaken and even self-deluding
    - - just because some people are mistaken or hallucinate, it doesntmean all religious experience is out of this character
      - just because God appears as a father in the way we need Him, doesn't prove that religious experience is not true - may be that He appears that way because he has placed the deep need In us
      - believed that archetypes in the collective unconscious can cause religious experience
  - - - ascectic practices
        
        avoiding pleasure such as fasting, can lead to hallucinations
      - the Persinger Helmet
        
        invented to study, religious experience and the impact of lobe stimulation - shows how manipulating magnetic fields in the brain can give rise to feelings of 'presence'
      - limited understanding
        
        on how the brain works and interacts with physical processes in other parts of the body - it is possible that we will understand religious experiences in natural terms when our knowledge grows
  - - - Swinburne formed it to answer the above question
        
        quotation: "if you say the contrary - never trust appearances until it is proved that they are reliable - you will never have any beliefs at all. for what would show that appearances are reliable, except more appearances? and if you cannot trust appearances as such, you cannot trust these new ones either. just as you must trust your five ordinary senses so it is equally rational to trust your religious sense"
      - states that we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be unless we have evidence that we are mistaken
      - this is an axiomatic (obviously true) principle of rationality which we apply all the time without even considering it in everyday life
      - so Swinburne asks why we make an exception to axiomatic principle of rationality when it comes to religion
    - - problem: experience is merely subjective and private, how can the person who has it be certain of this?
- - - - in experiencing a normal non-religious object eg sunset
      - in experiencing an unusual public object eg Jesus' resurrection
- - - - actually answers one of the objections to this principle, which that the lack of testimony of rekligious experiences by some people undermined the testimonies of others who have had them
      - she write sin The Evidential Force of Religious Experience : 'Where the very existence of an entity is at issue, a failure to perceive it is not by itself prima facie evidence for its non-existence whereas an experience of it its presence is itself prima facie evidence for the entity's existence
    - - is like applying the principle of credulity to experiences of people
      - all other things being equal, other peoples' experiences are likely to be as they report them to be
      - Swinburne, like William Alston, argues that religious experience has a prima facie evidential force. this means that the existence of seeing perceptions of the divine is sufficient to establish them as true unless actually disproved
    - - research by the Religious Experience Research Centres found that up to 40% of people report having experiences of some kind of 'higher power' - which further increases the likelihood of the argument
    - - Swinburne claims a basic principle of rationality is that those who don't have an experience of a certain type ought to believe others when they say that they do eg they are a known habitual liar
      - if we didnt follow this principle of rationality, S says, we would have almost non-existent knowledge of geography, history or science
  - - - this becomes clearer as you examine the case of someone who says they sae the lock ness monster
        
        why would it not be justified to believe them merely on the basis of their testimony alone? because the bacgroufn evidence is so slight for the existence of the creature
        
        Richards Dawkins spends large part of The God Delusion arguing along these lines. God is like the tooth fairy: you can dismiss anyone off-hand who tells you they've experienced them because there is no evidence for such a creature
    - - Swinburne argues in the case of re, we have a whole set of other reasons to believe in God which are part of
      - things like the cosmological, teleological and moral arguments for God
    - - would have to be part of other sources of authority - such as rational argument, officially sanctioned teachings (eg the magisterium of the catholic church) revelation in sacred scripture and elsewhere, and personal experience to support validity of re
    - - although Swinburne doesn't claim that any. oftehse are sufficient on their own to establish beklief in God as reasonable, he argues that togerth they do raise the background possibility of there being a god to the level of likely
      - a religious believer can add other sources of authority mentions above and ghave confidence in the validity of the testimony, as long as it coheres with religious teaching
- - - - often take form of dreams
        
        eg Joseph's dream, in which he was told Mary was pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit and that he was to marry her
    - - mystic visions - hard to understand as they defy description but enlighten the soul
        
        eg Teresa of Avila was a mystic who had many such visions 'I saw nothing with the eyes of the body, nothing with the eyes of the soul'
    - - supernatural experiences are mediated through physical senses, see real/physical things
        
        eg 18 visions of Mary Bernddte of Lourdes experienced