Transcript Validity and verification of religious experience

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
Review
 How
do religions determine whether a
religious experience is ‘true’ or ‘false’?
 List
How many of these did you get?
The Bible offers some good advice:
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Emphasis on the commitment of the person
not the feelings or emotions.
Produces an improvement in the individual’s
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.

Correct these sentences

William Otto performed experiments with
cocaine and tranquilisers that produced results
very similar to religious experiences

Research done by Hull’s 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.

William James performed experiments with
nitrous oxide and anaesthetics that produced
results very similar to religious experiences
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Research done by Oxford’s 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.
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:
1. Principle of Credulity – if a person says they have
experienced something, they probably have.
2. Principle of Testimony – unless someone is totally
unreliable or a liar their description is probably
true.
Disputing the reliability of Religious
Experiences
Caroline 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?
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 allloving), 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’
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 - ?
…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.
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…
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 –
 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).
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
 Teresa
of Avila