Validity and verification of religious experience

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Validity and verification of religious experience

• Reliability of testimony, the veracity (truth) of
  religious experiences, religious experiences as
  an argument for the existence of God

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Review

• How do religions determine whether a religious
  experience is true or false?
• List

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How many of these did you get?The Bible offers
some good advice

• Emphasis on the commitment of the person not the
  feelings or emotions.
• Produces an improvement in the individuals life.
• Leads to action against social wrongs.
• Leads to humility.
• Is marked by leadership that guides (not
  controlling).
• Believes regardless of miracles.
• Is consistent with the message of the scriptures.

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• Correct these sentences
• William Otto performed experiments with cocaine
  and tranquilisers that produced results very
  similar to religious experiences
• Research done by Hulls Religious Experience
  Research Unit (published 1987) indicated that up
  to 20 of people in the UK had been aware of a
  presence or power beyond themselves.
• These results tend to suggest that visionary
  or musical experiences are actually normal.

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• William James performed experiments with nitrous
  oxide and anaesthetics that produced results very
  similar to religious experiences
• Research done by Oxfords Religious Experience
  Research Unit (published 1987) indicated that up
  to 80 of people in the UK had been aware of a
  presence or power beyond themselves.
• These results tend to suggest that visionary
  or mystical experiences are actually normal.

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• Reliability of Religious Experience
• The Argument from Religious Experience claims
  that religious experiences prove the existence of
  God, and we can do that too.
• Richard Swinburne used two principles to argue
  the case for religious experiences
• Principle of Credulity if a person says they
  have experienced something, they probably have.
• Principle of Testimony unless someone is
  totally unreliable or a liar their description is
  probably true.

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Disputing the reliability of Religious
ExperiencesCaroline Franks Davis

• Challenges to description describing an
  experience of God is describing something which
  is unable to be proved, as the person cannot
  understand it cannot have been God.
• Challenges to subject claims are evidence of
  mental illness so the person is unreliable many
  religious experiences seem to be internal and so
  not necessarily dependent on an external being
  (like God).
• Challenges to object did the person also see
  aliens or flying pigs?
• Challenges to conflicting claims all religions
  claim to be true, so which one is?

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Feuerbach who inspired Marx

• Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) held that, in order
  to make us feel secure in an uncertain universe,
  our imagination projects into heaven an ideal
  picture of ourselves (a personality that is all
  knowing, all-powerful, all good and all-loving),
  calls it God and then bows down and worships it.
  
• Religious experiences are in our own minds and
  imaginations In the consciousness of the
  infinite, the conscious subject has for his
  object the infinity of his own consciousness

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David Hume (1711 1776)

• What greater temptation than to appear a
  missionary, a prophet, an ambassador from
  heaven?
• Hume states that some people will take advantage
  of our desire to believe by producing false
  testimony.
• For example - ?

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furthermore, says Hume

• How can testimony be reliable when religious
  experiences are dissimilar to each other some
  speak of God, others of Allah, of Brahman, of
  Nirvana and so on.

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The Hard Attitude

• Terence Penelhum, maintains that there can be no
  natural theology based on experience. He says
  that if there were never any alternative
  explanations other than they are explanations of
  God there could be such a natural theology. But
  alternative explanations are always available
• Eg. Can you think of a New Testament miracle
  that we could use as an example

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The Soft Attitude

• John Hick and Richard Swinburne
• maintain that someone who has a powerful sense of
  existing in the presence of God will, as a
  rational person, claim to know that God exists

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• Such a person would be as entitled to make this
  claim as others are to claim that the physical
  world and other people exist (ie. It is no more
  irrational to claim that I have, as a rational
  person, experience God than it is to claim that I
  have experienced visiting New York or that I have
  met the Queen).

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Homework

• The efficacy of prayer
• Does God intervene in the world in response to
  prayer?
• What can you find out?
• Also - revision notes for Validity and
  Verification of religious experience essay
  after half term

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• Teresa of Avila