Religious Experiences

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  • Religious Experiences
    • Visionary
      • Corporal
        • Empirical (sense experience)
          • Joan of Arc
      • Intellectual
        • No image- do not directly see anything
          • Theresa of Avila
      • Imaginative
        • Seen by eye of the mind
          • Dreams, e.g. Pharaoh's Dream
    • Mystical
      • William James
        • 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'
        • a union of God rather than God being something completely other
        • "God meets the individual's concerns"
        • REs come before faith
        • 3 diff types: simplistic, drug induced + direct union
        • Passive, ineffable, Noetic quality and Transient
      • Walter Stace
        • non-sensuous and non-intellectual union with the divine
        • 'Mysticism and Philosophy'
        • only a mystic if you've have ME
        • 2 qualities: Extrovertive- outward, everyday things 1/2
          • Introvertive- inward, full blown union, transcends our level of consciousness
    • Numinous
      • Rudolf Otto- an apprehension of the wholly other
      • 4 key ideas
        • direct union/encounter with the holy other
        • suis generis- of it's own kind
        • non-rational
        • Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
    • Challenges and responses
      • Freud- wishfulfillment
        • This is just a theory that cannot be tested/verified
      • WJ believes drugs can bring about RE- just hallucinogens (LSD) - not religious just stimulated experience
        • Doesn't make it any less legitimate. Nirvana is induced through practise e.g. meditation
      • Can be brought through illness- TLE- St Paul's characteristics match. Persinger- 'the God Helmet'
        • how else do you experience ME other than through the brain?
      • REs cannot be verified - James+ Stace: RE's are ineffable and nonsensuous
        • Group experiences and evidence in life changes
    • Swinburne's principles of credulity and testimony
      • Credulity
        • if it seems to a subect that x is present, then probably x is present
          • it's reasonable to believe that the world is probably as we expeirence it to be
          • 4 considerations for thinking that the way things seem may not be how they actually are
            • difficulty of showingGod was present during the experience
            • truth of the claim
            • the possibility that what is claimed can be accounted for in other ways
            • reliability of the claim
      • Testimony
        • with the absence of any reason to disbelieve them,one should accept the eyewitnesses/believers are telling the truth about REs
        • makes sense to believe as the majority of people tell the truth
      • Rejections
        • too optimistic
        • mystical and visionary claims are unreliable
      • Support
        • POC- significant life changes
        • the Cumulative Argument

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