Religious Experience

• First attempt at presenting religious experience as a vehicle for revelation
• "feeling of absolute dependence"
• Special faculty of apprehension/ appreciation required
• Intuitive
• Deeper than level of rational thought

Criticism

• Private concept- conflicting claims
• Can feelings lead to knowledge claims?
• Psychological origins?

• God= irrational (see Kant)
• "leap of faith", beyond reason
• Subjective- "no objective way" of reaching God

Criticism

• Strengthened by Kant
• Subjective things cannot be proven true

• "apprehension of the wholly other" (direct experience)
• experience of the "numinous" and holy
• One can perceive the numinous through direct intuition
• "mysterium, tremendum et fascinans"
• Ineffable, though often described with words like "awe"

Criticism

• Kant- can't know the noumena, only the phenomena
• Numinous- God too other to be experienced?
• Feelings cannot generate cognitive truth claims and are often unreliable
• Prior belief may shape experience

• personal encounter with the divine
• "I- thou" not "I-it" relationship with God
• People are incorporeal and can connect with eachother and God through direct apprehension

Criticism

• Brian Davis- everyday relationships not comparable to relationships with God
• Psychology- relationship with God conditioned by those we have with friends etc.
• Peter Donavan- "Can we know God by Experience?" Sense of encounter may be mistaken- we cannot verify intuition

• Unifying core (PINT)
• feeling= source of religious experience. Felt, not conceptualised.
• "men in their solitude" "stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine"
• Cannot establish cause so test effects instead
• Not interested in brain's functioning- "mystical"

Criticism

• No cause
• Corporate not included
• Not all ineffable
• Katz- effects often shaped by belief
• Lash- does not point to God

• 2 types of conversion experience
• Volitional- conscious and voluntary
• Self surrender- person gives up- leaves it to God
• Conversion happens when we are not looking for it
• Subconscious divine intervention

Criticism

• First type is not passive so contradicts PINT
• May not be a result of God

• Everyday experience is reported and believed so why is religious experience doubted?
• It is possible we perceive God if there is a God to perceive.
• Sense perceptions- if we reported seeing a red car, noone would doubt our sense perceptions.
• No reason to reject experience just because it is unusual.
• Antirealist

Criticism

• Lash- God is a mystery so can't be sure
• Vardy- modest claim- if you believe in God it is reasonable to believe in religious experience
• Anti realist- shows claims to religious experience are acceptable within the form of life of religious believers
• Katz- interpretation- can't identify cause
• Martin- religious experience conditioned by prior beliefs

• Cognitive- conforms to reason/ test
• Defines religious experience by separating into categories
• Principle of credulity- what seems to be, probably is
• Principle of testimony- "experiences of others are probably as they report them"

Criticism

• Flew- 10 leaky buckets
• Conditioned by religious tradition- only interpretation makes it religious
• Vardy- likens to ordinary too much, too rational- "little feeling for the numinous"
• Martin- negative principle of credulity- what seems not to be, probably isn't