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Advantages
- YES
- MORE EYE WITNESSES: Toronto Blessing - 1994 - holy laughter, crying, shaking, falling to the floor... Christians claimed to be drunk off the holy spirit - "holy spirit party". - more testimonies, surely not all can make up the same story, more believable. BUT - Why would God perform such trivial acts instead of solving suffering - whats he trying to tell us? Also this event goes against Corinthians 14, which states that only one person speaks in tongues during a RE.
- GIVE PEOPLE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT: Due to more claims we have more reason to believe them. Swinburne: principle of credulity and testimony - we should accept what people claim unless we have evidence to believe otherwise, eg under the influence of drugs or alcohol. BUT - Flew: Leaky bucket analogy - a series of weak arguments dont make a strong one.
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Disadvantages
- NO
- CORPORATE REs ARE JUST CASES OF MASS HYSTERIA: People start to generate physical symptoms in response to fear. Laughter is likely to become contagious - copy cat behaviour. People behave differently in groups than on their own, they want to be apart of something. John White calls it 'learned patterns of behaviour'.
- NO RE EXPERIENCES ARE RELIABLE - THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS: Freud (psychology): the idea of God is a result of childhood insecurities, REs are hallucinations caused by deep desires. Persinger (neuro-psychology): Explains events like the Toronto Blessing through his 'God helmet' theory - REs are caused by beijg in the presence of a magnetic field. Marx (sociology): Religion is the 'opium of the masses' - used as a form of control, social repression and maintains the status quo. REs are just wish fulfillment.
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