10 mark question content
Visions
Corporeal visions are sensory experiences; religious experiences that appear to be sensed through the senses such as vision and sound. They are experienced in the same way as you would experience any natural object like a tree or an animal. Seen with the eye of the body, or other sense organs.
St Bernadette experiences visions of a small young lady claiming to be the virgin Mary. The visions led to the discovery of a spring of water which became the site of miracles (Lourdes).
Imaginative visions are seen in the mind, such as in a dream or in the imagination. They are ‘seen’ with the eye of the mind.
Joseph’s dream. An Angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, warning him of King Herod’s attempt to find and kill Jesus and telling Joseph to run away with Jesus and Mary to Egypt. They do so until Herod dies.
Intellectual visions are seen with the ‘eye of reason’. There is no image; there is an intellectual grasping of knowledge or understanding.
St Theresa of Avila had a vision of Christ but not with the eye of the body or mind/soul. Theresa says she ‘felt’ Jesus at her right hand, being a witness to all her actions. She claimed to that such an experience ‘illuminates the understanding’ and that, in her case, Jesus made himself ‘present to the soul’.
Rudolf Otto on Numinous experiences
Otto defined mystical religious experiences as “numinous”, deriving from the latin word ‘numen’ meaning divine power. It involves feelings of awe and wonder in the presence of an all-powerful being. It is an experience of something ‘Wholly other’ – completely different to anything else.
Otto thought too much focus had been put on the idea that God could be known through logical argument. He insisted numinous experiences were non-rational. This does not mean irrational, it means a way of knowing that doesn’t involve reasoning.
Otto uses language to describe the experience but insists that the feelings involved are unique and unlike anything ordinary. To emphasise this, he deliberately describes uses Latin or Greek words:
- Mysterium – the utter inexplicable indescribable mystery of the experience
- Tremendum – the awe and fear of being in the presence of an overwhelmingly superior being
- Fascinans – despite that fear, being strangely drawn to the experience
Otto claims Numinous experiences are the core of any religion ‘worthy of the name’. For Otto, it is fundamental to true religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with the divine. This means that Numinous religious experiences are the true core of religion, whereas the teachings and holy books and so on are not the true core of a religion.
William James on mystical experiences
James was a philosopher and a psychologist who claimed that religious experiences occur in different religions and have similar features. People who engage in practices to have religious experiences are often called ‘Mystics’. Their experiences are called ‘Mystical experiences’, meaning intense and totally immersive. They don’t just involve distorted visual experience, seeing images and visions or hearing voices. They are unlike anything in normal experience. They often involve a sense of unity with some kind of higher power or even with the universe itself.
James’ four criteria which characterise all mystical religious experiences:
- Ineffable – the experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words to accurately described.
- Noetic – some sort of knowledge or insight is gained
- Transient – the experience is temporary
- Passive – the experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen.
James says that the most useful descriptor of a mystical experience is that it “defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words”. It is ineffable. It has to be directly experienced to be appreciated. It’s like music or love in that regard. If someone has never felt love or heard music, they might find a musician or lover weak-minded or absurd, but that’s just because they lack the required experience. James saying this is true of those who dismiss religious experience too.
James’ pluralist argument for religious experience
James’ argument is that there must be an explanation of why these four criteria are found in religious experiences in different cultures across the world. This is an interesting point that comes out of James’ observations. It clearly can’t be chance. So, what is the reason for religious experiences having these similar features?
James’ explanation is that religious experiences really are coming from a higher spiritual reality. Writers such as W. Stace developed this argument much more explicitly, claiming that the universality of certain features of religious experiences is good evidence that they are real.
James concludes that mystical experiences are the core of religion, whereas teachings and practices were ‘second hand’ religion, i.e not what religion is really about. This makes James a pluralist, the view that all religions are true.
Paul Knitter is a pluralist who makes a similar argument about religious experiences. He points to a classic metaphor. Each religion is a well. If you get to the bottom a well (through mystical experience) you get down to the underground water that you then realise is also sourcing all the other wells, i.e. all the other religions.
James’ pragmatism argument
James was not satisfied with the attempt to dismiss religious experiences as mere hallucinations. He pointed out that, unlike hallucinations, religious experiences can have positive and profound life-changing effects, which we can observe. This is a reason to think religious experiences are not just hallucinations.
James was most interested in the effects religious experiences had on people’s lives and argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects. This is because James was a Pragmatist – a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us or works, then that is evidence of its truth.
James pointed to the case study of an Alcoholic who was unable to give up alcohol but then had a religious experience, after which he was able to give up the alcohol. After the experience, they had gained power which they lacked before. James would argue that this is evidence for the validity of the experience, that it really came from a higher spiritual reality.
Walter Stace on mystical experiences
We typically have a sense that we are a subject – an individual with consciousness looking out onto an external world of objects which are distinct from us. This is called the subject-object distinction. Mystical experiences alter or even cause us to lose this sense of the multiplicity of objective (extrovertive) or the sense of self (introvertive) that divides us from the external world.
Extrovertive mystical experience is non-sensuous. The world of material objects is still seen but seen with non-sensuous unity. The division of the world into separate objects is dissolved and everything appears to be unified.
Introvertive mystical experience involves the transcendence of all sensory experience and our sense of self is replaced by mystical consciousness. We lose the sense that we are a self that is separate from the world. The normal intellect is not functioning; it is a non-intellectual experience.
- Unity of all consciousnesses into pure consciousness.
- Outside of space and time.
- Experience of the true reality.
- Peace, tranquillity, equanimity.
- Sacredness and divinity.
- Beyond intellect and logic.
- Ineffable
Challenges verifying religious experiences & religious responses
Challenge #1: Religious experiences are private
Religious experiences are private, meaning they occur within people’s minds. Evidence must be publicly accessible, however. This means there is no way for anyone to test whether they are true. Even the person having the religious experience has no way to test whether it is actually true. So, there is no way to verify a religious experience.
Religious response: James’ pragmatism argument
James was not satisfied with the attempt to dismiss religious experiences as mere hallucinations. He pointed out that, unlike hallucinations, religious experiences can have positive and profound life-changing effects, which we can observe. This is a reason to think religious experiences are not just hallucinations.
James was most interested in the effects religious experiences had on people’s lives and argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects. This is because James was a Pragmatist – a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us or works, then that is evidence of its truth.
James pointed to the case study of an Alcoholic who was unable to give up alcohol but then had a religious experience, after which he was able to give up the alcohol. After the experience, they had gained power which they lacked before. James would argue that this is evidence for the validity of the experience, that it really came from a higher spiritual reality.
Challenge #2: The multiple claims issue
Religious experiences have evidence against them – the religious experiences of other religions. Since different religions cannot all be true, religious experiences about different religions conflict with each other. If all religions have religious experiences and yet most religions cannot be true, then they must be generally unreliable.
Whatever evidence might be attributed to a religious experience, at least the same amount of evidence must be granted to the religious experiences of other religions. However, different religions cannot all be true because they make incompatible claims about which supernatural being(s) exist.
So, evidence for one religion must be taken as evidence against all the others. Therefore, claiming that a religious experience is evidence for the supernatural beings of a particular religion must make it evidence against the beings of all other religions. Any principle that identifies a religious experience as evidence, inevitably also brings far greater evidence against it. Claiming that a religious experience is as evidence for a particular religious belief only creates more evidence against it.
Religious response: pluralism
Pluralism can respond to the multiple claims issue. Pluralism is the view that all religions are true. This view is held by William James, Hick and Knitter. James thinks that mystical religious experience occurring in all religions and being life-changing shows that they are all true (in a pragmatist sense). Hick argues that the different religions of the world are like blind men each touching a different part of an elephant. They each report they are feeling something different, yet that is because they are just too blind to see how they are really part of the same thing. For Hick, differences between religions are just part of the cultural ‘lens’ through which we see the world.
Knitter uses the analogy that each religion is like a well, and if you get to the bottom a well (through mystical religious experience) you get down to the underground water that you then realise is also sourcing all the other wells, i.e. all the other religions. Knitter thinks that this is an argument for taking a pluralist view of religion. The fact that mystical religions in different religions are so similar can’t be by chance. It shows that there is a core truth that all religions share.
Challenge #3: the challenge of the possibility of naturalistic explanations
A naturalistic explanation is one which attempts to provide a scientific account of why something happens. In the case of religious experiences, naturalistic explanations could be:
- Psychological: e.g., prayer, meditation, mental illness, mass hysteria, social compliance.
- Physiological: e.g., random brain hallucinations, drugs, alcohol, fasting, sleep deprivation.
Religious response: Swinburne
This challenge fails against Swinburne’s approach. If someone experiences something, that is evidence for that thing being true. If someone experiences the divine, then that is evidence for the divine. We could then check for the presence of physiological and psychological causes of their religious experience. If we can’t find any, then we have no reason not to believe the experience in that particular case. Although in such cases we cannot rule out naturalistic causes, Swinburne’s point is that we have no evidence for a naturalistic cause. The mere possibility of naturalistic explanations are not sufficient for rejecting such experiences. Only actual evidence of a naturalistic cause can count against the evidence of the experience itself. In cases where we have no evidence of a naturalistic cause, then we have no basis for rejecting such experiences as evidence for God.
Scientific challenges to religious experience & religious responses
Scientific challenge #1 Freud
Freud as a scientific psychological challenge to religious experience. Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’ and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces. The first is the fear of death. We have an instinctual animalistic fear of death which we can’t control but we can control our human thoughts and cognitions. While animals only have their fear of death triggered when in a dangerous situation, humans are the only animal that constantly are aware that they are going to die. We have the animalistic part of ourselves, but have since developed cognitive processes, which then unfortunately constantly trigger the fear of death on our animalistic side. So, the solution is to manipulate those to believe that death is not the end. Also, Freud argued that the reason Christians call God ‘father’ is because they have a desire to be a child forever. It’s a desire for eternal innocence in the face of the painful reality of the world. Freud thought these psychological forces were so strong that they resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience.
A person lost in a desert can be so desperate for water that they hallucinate it. This is called a mirage. Similarly, humans can be so desperately afraid of death and the difficulties of life that they can delude themselves that there is a God who will take care of them and an afterlife.
Religious response: Freud fails to explain mystical experience
Freud’s analysis fails to explain mystical religious experience because of its sense of unity with something infinite and unbounded. These seem to go far beyond the wish-fulfilling hallucinations of a neurotic. Freud’s theory might work well against mere visions, which we know can be created by the brain due to desperate wish-fulfilment such as in the mirage case. Mystical experiences are ecstatic, immersive, and totally unlike any ordinary sensory experience, however, making them harder to dismiss as hallucinations caused by delusory wishful thinking.
Scientific challenge #1: Persinger
Persinger poses a scientific challenge to religious experience through his discovery of a physiological explanation of them. Persinger is a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulated people’s brain waves and sometimes caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings.
This seems to show that religious experiences originate from the brain, not anything supernatural like a God. Religious experiences are just an unusual state of the brain. Regular religious experiences could just be examples of that caused by some unknown brain process(es) that can happen without a machine.
Religious response: Persinger’s discovery does not disprove a supernatural cause
However, maybe that brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience. Also, we know we can cause hallucinations by manipulating the brain with drugs like LSD. This shouldn’t necessarily count against the validity of religious experiences that occur without such manipulations.
Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony
Swinburne argued that religious experiences are evidence for God. His argument involves the principles of testimony and credulity. The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to. The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to. Swinburne is an empiricist who argues that an experience of God should count as evidence towards belief in God, although it doesn’t constitute complete proof.
Swinburne argued that whenever we gain some new evidence, we can’t dismiss it for no reason – that would be irrational. It is only if we have other better-established evidence which contradicts that new evidence that we may rationally dismiss it. This is the rationale behind the principles of testimony and credulity. If we see a tree, that is evidence that the tree exists. Unless we have some other evidence suggesting the tree doesn’t exist, we would be irrational for dismissing the evidence of our experience. So too is it with God. Experiencing God is evidence for God, unless we have some other evidence to justify dismissing that experience.
The influences of religious experiences and their value for religious faith