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Religious Experience - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Mystical experiences are full-blown out of body transcendent experiences - not just seeing an angel flying around
        
        James said mystical experience have 4 criteria:
        
        Transient: happens in limited amount of time
        
        Passive: it happens to you, you don't make it happen
        
        Ineffable: beyond description - beyond language
        
        Noetic: provides knowledge/insight
        
        James' pluralism argument is that because these mystical experiences are found in all religions and have these 4 criteria in common - this can't be by chance - there must really be a higher spiritual reality behind all religious experiences - so all religions are valid and true
  - - - So, these experiences could just be hallucinations
- - - - He pointed out that, unlike hallucinations, religious experiences can have positive and profound life-changing effects, which we can observe
  - - - Saul changed his name to Paul and became Christian and ended up writing a lot of the Bible
  - - - If a Christian hallucinated an angel, then that might have a life-changing effect on them, even though it was just a hallucination
        
        Plus - St Paul probably had epilepsy which causes hallucination/visions
- - - - Swinburne says that if you see something, or someone tells you they've seen something, that is evidence that it exists
        
        So, if you see God (Credulity) or someone tells you they've seen God (testimony) then that is evidence that God exists
        
        You can't dismiss evidence for no reason - you can only dismiss it if you have other, better evidence that goes against it
        
        If you know someone is a liar or on drugs, then you could dismiss their experience
        
        Swinburne's point is that there are many religious experiences where we have no evidence that someone has any such physiological or psychological influence
        
        In those cases, we have to accept them as evidence for God
- - - - You can't explain corporate by things like mental illness or drugs - because there's no way everyone would hallucinate the same thing
  - - - Unless there really are aliens and witches running around, groups of people an clearly share delusion - and that could explain corporate religious experiences