Religious Experience
- Created by: Sophie Jones
- Created on: 22-01-16 09:33
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- Religious Experience
- Ninian Smart- Religion as an organism with 6 dimensions.
- Social aspects: the ways in which a religion as an institution controls or influences the mores of a society.
- Ritual: Connected to, or tries to express internal reality. Includes religious practice.
- Myths: Stories that illustrate a spiritual truth. Conveys a deeper meaning.
- Doctrines: Connected with mythological dimension. Attempt to formulate systematic code of beliefs. Will withstand rational analysis.
- Ethics: Any religion will attempt to supply it's followers with a moral code.
- Experimental elements: Affects lives immediately. Communication or communion with the divine.
- William James 1902 - 4 basic feature to religious experience.
- Ineffable: It is impossible to use words to describe them.
- Passive: The person has a sense of being controlled by the 'other', by God.
- Transient: The experience passes, but the effects last.
- Noetic: They are felt to be authoritative, absolute.
- WT Stace 1960 - 8 core features of religious experience.
- Unified Vision: A harmony of all things.
- Loss of sense of self.
- Ineffability: It is impossible to use words to describe them.
- Paradoxical: Normal rules of logic do not apply.
- Appreciation of the holy, sacred & divine.
- Blessed, Joy, Peace & happiness: Key indicators.
- Sense of reality: The knowledge & awareness gained is valid.
- Timeless and Spaceless: The person is detached from the world.
- Greeley 1975 - 15 triggers of religious experience.
- Physical exercise.
- Looking at a painting.
- Your own creative work.
- Childbirth.
- Sexual love-making.
- Being alone in church.
- Reading a poem of novel.
- Reading the bible.
- Watching little children.
- Listening to a sermon.
- Attending church service.
- Moments of quiet reflection.
- Beauties of nature.
- Prayer
- Listening to music
- However, we can observe the following points about claimed religious experiences...
- They occur more often under certain conditions - the tranquillity of Nature, the emotive atmosphere of church services.
- They are often linked to the religious traditions of upbringing.
- They occur more in people who have the quality of 'cognitive openness' and who are more adept at using the right hemisphere of the brain.
- Religious experiences can have the positive effects of altruism, raised self-esteem, a sense of mission to change the world for the better.
- People who experience them say they experience some or all of the following- Sometimes ecstasy, often feelings of forgiveness, integration into and unity with the world.
- Before defining religious experience, it is necessary to have a definition of religion.
- Emile Durkheim: 'A unified set of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things... the beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church'
- Karl Marx: 'The opium of the people' - A drug that creates illusions.
- Sigmund Freud: Believed there was no God and that religion was merely neurosis - a malfunctioning of the mind.
- Carl Jung: Believed that inner religious experience was valid, necessary and useful to the individual concerned. More than just a belonging to a religious organisation.
- Ninian Smart- Religion as an organism with 6 dimensions.
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