challenges to the objectivity and authenticity of religious experiences

Due to the nature of certain types of religious experience, it may be said that the criteria for truth is almost impossible to establish. This is because some experiences are deemed to be subjective and therefore not without dispute with regard to their credibility. Caroline Franks-Davis gave three challenges to the objectivity and authenticity of religious experience.

Description challenges involve misremembering, exaggerating, misusing terms or telling lies. An example of a description challenge is a highly interpreted description (‘I had an experience of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit’), which may also be a ground for doubt.

Authenticity and objectivity should be granted to that which conforms to everyday experience. Religious experiences do not conform to everyday experiences. Subject- related. The subject is the person who receives the claimed experience. S/he is considered unreliable. They may suffer from episodes of hallucinations or from mental illness (described further under ‘naturalistic explanations.’) As they in a fragile mental state, they have been mistaken and misguided. Object-related. This relates to the object that the person claims to have experienced. The likelihood that the object described has indeed been experienced, is as…