Overview of Religious Experience
- Created by: SarahMcc012
- Created on: 16-02-15 13:55
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- Religious Experience
- Visions
- Group Visions
- Visions that are seen by more than one person - British Army at Mons
- Individual Visions
- Visions seen by only one person - Bernadette at Lourdes
- Corporeal Visions
- The object is external but only visible to certain people
- Imaginative Visions
- The image is produced in the person's imagination
- A vision can be defined as something seen other than by ordinary sight, i.e. supernatural
- Group Visions
- Conversion
- Conversion from no religion to a faith
- e.g. Augustine
- Conversion from one faith to another
- e.g. Sundar Singh who was raised a devout Sikh, and consencrated from his youth to become a Hindu sadhu
- Conversion from faith (believing) to faith (trusting)
- The reformer Martin Luther, who was a monk and a priest
- A conversion can be defined as 'a process of religious change which transforms the way the individual perceives the rest of society
- Results of Conversion
- The loss of worry
- The sense of perceiving truths not known before
- A sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without
- The ecstasy of happiness is produced
- The loss of worry
- Conversion from no religion to a faith
- Mysticism
- Mysticism is usually understood in a religious context, similar experiences may happen to anyone
- Experiences can occur without preparation and at any time and might not be understood as religious experiences at all
- It's often seen as a spiritual journey in which the ultimate goal is achieved: union with God. It's an experience of oneness with the divine.
- Hans King, Rudolf Otto and Wayne Teasdale
- William James' features of Mystical Experiences
- Passive - It happens without acknowledgement
- Ineffable - Can't describe it in words or ordinary language
- Noetic - new knowledge
- Transient - fleeting
- Challenges to Religious Experiences
- Michael Persinger
- He is a cognitive neuroscience researcher who agrees that the temporal lobes have a significant role in religious experience
- He says that religious experiences are no more than the brain responding to external stimuli
- Persinger has developed a helmet which produces weak magnetic across the hemispheres of the brain, specifically the temporal lobe
- Over 900 people who have taken part in the experience claim to have had some form of religious experience
- It is thought that this happens because when under the influence of the helmet, the brain is deprived of the self-stimulation and sensory input that is required for it to define itself as being distinct from the rest of the world
- Over 900 people who have taken part in the experience claim to have had some form of religious experience
- Persinger has developed a helmet which produces weak magnetic across the hemispheres of the brain, specifically the temporal lobe
- He says that religious experiences are no more than the brain responding to external stimuli
- He is a cognitive neuroscience researcher who agrees that the temporal lobes have a significant role in religious experience
- Michael Persinger
- Visions
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