Religious experience

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  • Religious Experience
    • William James
      • Argues that we are studying the very heart of religion.
        • Could be a psychological or physiological explanation to religious experience, but not fully
      • Four main characteristics of a religious experience:
        • 1) ineffability- inexplainable
    • Richard Swinburne
      • Principle of credulity
        • If someone believes that they have experienced something they probably have
      • Principle of testimony
        • All else being equal, we believe the testimony of others.
          • Unless someone is a liar, they are probably true.
      • Criticisms of the principles
        • If you aren't religious it's harder to believe
        • Likely for someone to lie and it's easier to doubt something that's unheard of
    • Brian Davies
      • God could somehow be false and is possibly an existing being, even if it's possible to be mistaken with a claim based on experience.
      • Existence cannot be reasonable grounds for existence
        • We could be mistaken eg hallucination or insanity
    • Bertrand Russell
      • 'from a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between a man who eats little and sees heavem and the man who drinks too much and sees snakes'

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