8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 1/11

Religious Experience

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 2/11

Religious Experience, and the argument

• A religious experience may be understood as any encounter

with God, or what is ultimate. It is an experience oftranscendent reality, seen in many different ways in different

faith traditions.

• There are actually a number of different types of argument.

For instance, some argue from ‘direct awareness’ – the viewthat God can be known directly by the person perceiving him.

This is very personal however, and has limited capacity to

persuade others.

• Most commonly, theistic philosophers have preferred to talk

about an argument from religious experience: an inductive and

a posteriori argument based on the evidence of witnesses

and testimonies.

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 3/11

A summary of the inductive argument

1. If an entity is experienced, it must exist

2. God is the sort of being that it is possible

to experience

3. People claim to have experienced Goddirectly

Conclusion: God exists

God also uses PowerPoint to help revise.

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 4/11

Developing the argument:

Richard Swinburne

• In his book (Is There a God? ) Swinburne claims that it is

reasonable to suppose that God would seek to engage and

interact with his creation. If God exists, we should expect

religious experiences to take place.

• Swinburne defends the idea that those experiencing God should

believe what their senses tell them. He calls this the Principle

of Credulity.

• He also argues that we should trust those who give accounts of religious experiences, if there is no reason to doubt them . He

calls this the Principle of Testimony. Swinburne readily admits

that known liars, those influenced by drugs, etc . should not be

trusted.

A key supporter of the inductive

argument from religious experience

is the philosopher Richard

Swinburne. He offers the following

arguments:

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 5/11

Essentially, Swinburne is trying to

leave the burden of proof with those

who doubt religious experiences. If

we experience something, we tend

to assume that this experience is

genuine. Why should it not be the

same with religious experiences?

If such experiences are genuine, it is

reasonable to conclude that God or

some higher power probably exists.SwinnyB.’  

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 6/11

Other forms of argument

• A few other types of argument based onreligious experience might also be

considered, although they are less favoured

by modern philosophers.

• The ‘historical argument’ states that the

experiences of key individuals have been sogreat and impressive that they must be

true: Mohammed, St. Paul, etc .

• The ‘cumulative argument’ states that so

many people have had religious experiences

in the past that they simply cannot all bemaking it up. God must be the cause of all

this.

St. Paul – vision of Christ knocked him off

his horse

The trouble with these arguments is

that they’re very subjective andambiguous. Who’s to say whether

Mohammed has had a ‘great’ impact

or not?

Also, it’s implausible that God would be

evident in all of these differing

experiences, since so many are so

different.

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 7/11

The Varieties of Religious Experience

• A significant aspect of religious experience is the

considerable variety of types: conversions (like that

of St. Paul), corporate experiences, near death

experiences, or mystical encounters.

• The philosopher and psychologist William James was

impressed by this great variety. He thought that the

heart of religion lay in personal experiences whichfor the individual would be “absolutely 

authoritative”.

• James regarded mysticism as a significant state of 

mind or awareness, identifying four key features of such important experiences: (1) Ineffability – 

they cannot be explained (2) Noetic Quality – they impart

knowledge, (3) Transiency – they are over quickly, (4) Passivity

– they come upon the individual without being sought after.

William James, author of

The Va rieties of Religious

Experience  

Key mystic:

Teresa of Avila

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 8/11

Weaknesses of the argument

Philosophical critiques

The problem with an inductive argument is that it only ever gives probable

explanations for states of affairs. This can lead to questionable ‘leaps’ in the

evidence. Claims to experience God can never amount to proof as there aremany alternative explanations: states of mind can be chemically or drug

induced, or they might be part of a natural and sub-conscious healing process

(so Viktor Frankl), or they might result from activity in the temporal lobes.

Mackie: ‘Disanalogies’

between experiences

A number of philosophers have also made criticisms of the

argument from religious experience. J.L. Mackie has argued

that it is wrong to draw evidence from people’s claims to

religious experiences on the grounds that there are‘disanalogies’ between these and other normal experiences.

Mackie states that religious experiences have different

characteristics from other perceptions, so they should not

carry the same degree of authority. They are not part of the

same scheme of shared and verifiable experiences common in

daily life.

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 9/11

not convinced

Richard Dawkins  also has

something to say about this debate. In his

book The God Delusion , Dawkins tells astory from his student days. He recalls

that a fellow undergraduate was camping

in Scotland and claimed to have heard

“the voice of the devil – Satan himself”.

In fact, it was just the call of the Manx

Shearwater (or ‘Devil Bird’), which has anevil sounding voice.

For Dawkins, this highlights the key

problem with personal experiences. They

are often used in an appeal to God

because people are ignorant of more

straightforward physical or psychological

explanations for what the perceive. It is an

argument based on ignorance.

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 10/11

Possible responses to criticisms

• Mackie’s claim that religious experiences are disanalogous with

normal experiences seems harsh. William Alston suggests that thereis continuity in our experiences, focusing on our ability to check

perceptions, detect regularity, share experience, and have common

views of public objects between cultures. Religion might well fit into

this scheme.

• Dawkins’ use of a personal anecdote is not revealing of religiousexperience as a whole. In most cases, testimony or personal

experience are not easily deconstructed in natural or psychological

terms.

Scooby Doo is dece itful television: there isn’t

always a ‘perfectly straightforward

explanation’. 

8/2/2019 Religious Experience Argument Ppt

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-experience-argument-ppt 11/11

Final Evaluation

Burden of proof: do the religious

have to prove their experiences

are genuine, or must sceptics

disprove them?

Can we verify religious

experiences? What would a

good method be like?

Are religious experiences

really different from normal

experiences?

Should God be something we can

experience for ourselves?