A LEVEL: Philosophy and Ethics, Religious Experiences (Edexcel)
Philosophy & Ethics
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES
(an encounter with the divine?)
- A religious experience is an encounter with the divine.
- Direct and Indirect experiences are two categories of a religious experience
- Direct experience: when the individual feels as though they are in contact with God.
- Indirect experience: when the individual has an inner experience of God through creation.
immanence: is the inner experience of God’s action in creation.
- Awareness Experience: seeing the work of God when looking at the world
- Qausi-sensory: having a vision or other inner experience of God
- Numinous Experience: encountering the holiness of God
- Regenerative Experience: a conversion experience
- Interpretive Experience: having prayers answered
- Mystical Experience: a sense of the ultimate reality
- Revelatory Experience: Receiving enlightenment and knowledge from God.
Most common themes of Religious Experiences:
- A feeling of deep inner peace
- A certainty that everything will turn out for the best
- A willingness to help assist others
- Love is the pivotal force
- Great emotional intensity
TYPES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES
1. The Dramatic &/ Conversion Event
Rudolf Otto categorises this as a DIRECT EXPERIENCE, which is also numinous. Otto claims that numinous is a mystery but can be a solid object. This experience has the individual both attracted and repelled by a sense of awe and wonder.
2. Responses to life and the world
More gentle and INDIRECT experiences, the purpose of this experience is to enhance a person’s understanding of life and the world around them.
3. Revelatory Experiences
Divine self disclosure, or an experience where God makes his presence directly known. The defining character of this type of experience is that the individual will know new knowledge.
- Propositional revelation: When God directly communicates his message to a human.
- Non-Propositional Revelation: When the human comes to a new meaning of ‘realisation’ via a religious experience
4. Near Death Experience (NDE)
When a person is said to have died, typically in a medical operation an is resuscitated and can then remember details of what happened during the moment of death.
5. Mystical Experiences
Occurs when a person experiences the ultimate reality. This experience is often hard to then be described in words. This experience is very personal, otherworld and transcendent.
Sufism- is the inner mystical part of Islam. Those who are sufis believe that to be closer to God, meditation an other unique techniques will help aid them.
- Theistic Mysticism - Involves an awareness of God
- Monistic Mysticism - Offers awareness of the self, soul and also consciousness.
- Ineffability: A state of feeling that defies description
- Noetic Quality: Revelations of universal and external truths
- Transiency: A brief but incredibly important experience
- Passivity: A feeling of being taken over by a presence of superior authority.
( ^ the above are the four characteristics of mystic experiences that William James believed to be true.)
Mysticism can also be a case of the person looking into themselves to be aware of a divine presence mixed with their own personal identity (introvertive) or looking outwards to see God in the world (extrovertive)
6. Corporate Experiences
Examples of this are easily found foe instance, there are the Toronto Blessings, this was when a mass of people apparently started to have ‘religious experiences’ all at the same time. Those who have encountered the church state that the church has often been a place of charismatic worship and manifestation of the Holy spirit, as well as in tongues. As for if this is really a mass religious experience or due to external factors we cannot be sure.
FACTORS THAT MAY LEAD TO A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
1. Music and Atmosphere
It is said that it causes the believers to have a more happy and communal atmosphere, however some also use music and atmosphere to express their religious beliefs.
2. Prayer
It is communion with God, and comes in many different forms, such as asking for help, forgiveness and praise, and thanks. There is one particular type of prayer called ‘speaking in tongues’ or glossolalia. This phenomena is commonly found in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, speaking in tongues is a symbol of the holy spirit in a person, the individual speaks in a language completely foreign to them, ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit’.
3. Meditation
A more theistic approach the individual often seeks to be in a more prayerful state to seek the understanding of and union with God. In Buddhism, mediation is used in the sense to seek of the loss of self and achieve enlightenment.
PRINCIPLES OF TESTIMONY AND CREDULITY
Swinburne is known for his two major principles.
Principle of Testimony - Since people usually tell the truth, what vested interest would someone get from not telling the truth, because surely, it isn't something to lie about. Swinburne claims that the only other reasons that would render the individual from telling the truth would be if.
- Intoxication and Drug abuse.
- There is evidence to indicate that the person is lying
- There are valid reasons other than God that would explain the experience.
Principle of Credulity - If there is a overwhelming amount of evidence, we should accept the experience for what the individual says it is.
THE MAIN ARGUMENT
Arguments from religious experiences as proof of God’s existence is from an a posteriori one.
Premise One: Experience of x indicates the reality of x.
Premise Two: Experience of God indicates the reality of God.
Premise Three: It is therefore possible to experience God.
Conclusion: God exists.
The argument is also an INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT.
The CUMULATIVE ARGUMENT, if we take all the arguments to do with religious experiences then surely, it would make the argument somewhat more reliable?
PHILOSOPHERS AND SCHOLARS IN FAVOUR OF THE ARGUMENT IN PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Richard Swinburne:
Argues that inductively one could argue that someone did have a religious experience, because it would be reasonable to believe that God as an omnibenevolent being that seemed to want a personal and loving relationship with his creation. He therefore suggests that religious experiences can be felt emperically, and interpreted non-emperically via our religious sense.
Edward Schleiermacher:
a religious experience is a feeling of complete wholeness and ultimate awareness -
(‘consciousness of the infinite and an absolute dependence.’)
Carl Jung:
‘Religious experience is absolute… it cannot be disputed. Those who have had it possess a great treasure, a source of life, meaning and beauty which gives splendour to the world.’
Martin Buber:
claimed that people experienced God via normal day interactions, Buber calls this ‘I-It’ but for relationships that are more meaningful he calls ‘I-Thou’.
Paul Tillich:
a religious experience is one that is a feeling of ‘ultimate concern’. as a result from this experience the individual must be compelled to be able to make a decision.
William James:
a religious experience will take all the human emotions and direct it to the attention of the divine. He laid out the four main characteristics in a mystic experience. James claims that because there are feelings after an experience it must prove that something happened. He accepts that sometimes there may be psychological symptoms involved but that these should not distract the individual from the divine which they encountered.
(‘The results of religious experience are the only reliable basis for judging whether it is a genuine experience of the divine.’)
Raymond Moody:
Had extensive investigations into NDEs and said the most common themes were, a feeling of peace, dark tunnels and a being of light that asked them if they wished to go back to life. However, critics argue that although there are common stories it does not necessarily point to it being a RELIGIOUS experience.
Saint John of the Cross:
‘Human language is unable to express the sense of a mystical union with God’. Saint John was a famous mystic himself. Along with St Theresa of Avila?
Clifton Wolton (ibid):
(Only if we deny any possibility of divine communication can Julian’s claims be completely ruled out’.)
Here Wolton is talking about Mother Julian of Norwich on her religious experience.
Benny Hinn:
Neither a philosopher or scholar, but a major controversial character who is often criticised for using this technique to induce a ‘religious experience’, however, he is not very reliable and has been said to have misinformed stories as well as tall tales. Hinn claims to have communications with the Divine.
CRITICS
Revelatory experiences are seen as highly unreliable. In buddhism a revelatory experience is not accepted unless the individual is at an advanced stage of meditation and other high ranking meditators have a shared opinion and experience. In the Catholic Church, these experiences are tested against the teaching of the religion to ensure that it is spiritually sound.
Richard Dawkins:
Claims there is no such thing as religious experiences, instead he calls it a projection of an individual’s psychological needs.
Peter Vardy:
Vardy uses the analogy of the Loch Ness Monster, even though people believe they have experienced something for it to be gratuitously accepted the quality of the claimed experiences must be proportionally high. Vardy also criticises the two testimonies brought up by Swinburne by stating that although the principles may work for day to day events it is flawed when used to assess religious experiences. More proof is therefore needed because people are more likely to be highly skeptical.
Ludwig Wittgenstein:
The notion of seeing as, he suggests that because everyone sees things slightly differently then some people may think they experienced God but other may not. This then means all testimonies for religious experiences are unreliable.
R.M.Hare:
Hare calls it a blik, the testimony is again unreliable because the believer will see or feel something that they think comes from God. But everyone’s interpretations are different so the individual will believe that it is true to them.
John Hick:
Hick observed that experiences could always be explained by non-religious reasons as well and
(‘accordingly cannot carry the weight of proof of God’s existence.’)
Peter Cole:
How can you be sure that what a person experiences is truly God. If God is not a material or has a definite location, then how would He be recognised?
(‘God is said to be the creator. How would you recognise that attribute?’)
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