Eduqas Religious experience (challenges) A*-A summary notes

Eduqas
Philosophy

This page contains A*/A grade level summary revision notes for the Religious experience (challenges) topic.

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For AO1 you need to know:

C. F. Davis’ presentation of the challenges to religious experience
Responses to Davis’ presentation of the challenges to religious experience

For AO2 you need to be able to debate:

The extent to which the challenges to religious experience are valid
The persuasiveness of Franks Davis’ different challenges

AO1: Caroline Franks Davis

Caroline Franks Davis organized the various critiques of religious experiences into three main categories.
Defenders of religious experience like her then only need to defend against these three types of challenge, and they will have defended against all variants of critique.

Description-related challenges attempt to challenge the coherence of the description of a religious experience.
Davis says that descriptions “are our ‘data’, our primary means of access to the experiences themselves”.
Challenging this aime to show that it did not really seem to a subject that they were experiencing what they claimed to experience.
This aims to provide us with a reason to rationally reject it as evidence.
They include:
Inconsistencies in the description itself, or with something else we consider true.
Disconnect between the subject’s behavior and what you would expect from their behavior given the experience they describe.
The description seeming highly interpreted/exaggerated.
Subject-related challenges attack the reliability of the person having the experience.
These provide reasons to think that it seeming to a subject that something was true, doesn’t mean it is true.
This argues that “some factor or set of factors associated with an individual subject or class of subjects makes it likely that the described experience was unveridical.” – Davis

Dreams, visions and hallucinations.
Mental illness
Conflicting claims between those who share a religious experience.
Physiological conditions like fever, lack of sleep, hallucinogenic drugs
psychological influences like hyper-suggestibility or strong desires and expectations.
Object-related challenges doubt that the thing experienced really occurred.
Swinburne & Davis will argue there will be some religious people without any description or subject related issues.
However, object-related challenges operate regardless of that.
They claim we have evidence against God’s existence which is independent of the credibility of any particular description or subject.
This then weighs against the witness/testimony evidence of all religious experiences by giving us a reason not to believe them.
Examples:
The evidential problem of evil.
Hume & Rowe argue that evil in the world is evidence against God’s existence.
E.g., Rowe examples of the innocent child suffering and fawn dying in a forest fire.
Reductionist challenges try to explain religious belief naturalistically.
E.g., Freud, Marx, Derkheim, Jung.
Evidence for such accounts would be evidence against God and against religious experiences being real.
The multiple claims challenge
This is an object-related challenge because it suggests that experiences in a particular religion have evidence against them in the form of the experiences in other religions.
Since religious experiences in different religions disagree with each other, such experiences must be generally unreliable.

AO1: Davis’ responses to the challenges

Caroline Franks Davis argues that most religious experiences are not undermined by the various description-related, subject-related, or object-related challenges.
In cases where there is no counter-evidence against the credibility of the description or the reliability of the subject, she maintains that it would be irrational not to treat the experience as evidence for God.
To defend this position, Davis draws heavily on Richard Swinburne’s principles of testimony and credulity, especially in response to subject- and description-related challenges.
Swinburne states: “it is a principle of rationality that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that χ is present, then probably χ is present; what one seems to perceive is probably so.”
In other words, if someone experiences something, that counts as evidence that it is real unless there is good reason to doubt it.
Davis argues that this principle should apply to religious experience just as it does to ordinary perception.
This does not mean every experience must be accepted uncritically.
Davis accepts that where there is clear evidence of confounding factors, e.g., drug use, illness, sleep deprivation, or incoherent description, we may reasonably dismiss the experience.
However, she emphasises that there will be many cases where no such evidence exists.
Where there is no indication of unreliability in the subject or the description, there is no rational basis for rejecting the experience.
In those cases, religious experiences provide genuine evidence for God.
Davis also responds to object-related challenges.
Regarding the problem of evil, she argues that the debate over theodicy remains unresolved.
Whether evil is excessive or justifiable is still an open question, and therefore evil does not make God’s existence highly improbable.
Since theodicies offer possible explanations, the existence of evil cannot decisively outweigh the evidential value of religious experiences.
She gives a similar reply to reductionist theories.
Psychological and sociological explanations, such as those offered by Freud or Marx, are only hypotheses about the causes of religious experience.
They are neither conclusive nor complete, especially given the diversity and richness of reported experiences.
Finally, Davis addresses the challenge of conflicting religious claims.
Rather than adopting full pluralism, she argues for a “common core” across traditions.
Many experiences point to similar themes: a non-physical dimension of reality, the superficial nature of the everyday self, the value of ultimate reality, and a higher power experienced as loving, good, and personal.
This common core, she concludes, justifies belief in “broad theism”, the general claim that there is some higher spiritual or divine ultimate reality.

AO2: James’ ‘fruits’ argument (vs subject related challenge)

James argued the positive life-changing effects (fruits) of mystical experiences distinguish them from inert hallucinations.
E.g., conversion, freedom from addiction, or greater moral behaviour.

His pragmatist epistemology claims the meaning of existential and religious beliefs is their predictions for subjective experience.
Transformative effects on behaviour is evidence for the ‘pragmatic truth’ of the existential and religious worldview that flows from the experience.
This means it likely fits reality in some way, since beliefs that misrepresent reality are unlikely to continue to work across experience.

Counter:

However, James admitted that conversion experiences can involve transition from a conflicted to a stable self.
Jung extends this to explain life-changing effects without any nod to the supernatural.
His insight is that the psyche needs a centre of meaning (the Self).
During crisis, guilt, addiction, despair, identity breakdown, the psyche is unstable and fragmented.
It therefore seeks a new framework, or a means of integrating with a current one in a new or proper way.
We can make a Jungian interpretation of Paul:
A persecutor with deep inner conflict whose crisis experience radically reorientated their identity towards a new symbol (Christ).

Evaluation

We have two naturalistic (subject-related) explanations of life-changing effects.
Firstly, the right sort of random hallucination to the right person at the right time could be life-changing.
E.g. if a Christian hallucinated an angel talking to them, that might change their life.
Secondly, Jung shows that what James treats as suggestive of religious worldviews could just be a natural psychological crisis-resolution mechanism.
The intensity of the experience shakes them out of their rut.
The clarity of their new focus feels liberating compared to their prior conflicted state.
This can grant the resolve to adhere to the behavioural implications of the symbol system, whether conversion to a new one or renewed conviction in an old one.
So, the availability of a psychological explanation makes supernatural influence an unnecessary hypothesis.

AO2: The multiple claims critique (object-related)

We can apply Hume’s multiple claims critique of miracles here.
All religions have religious experiences.
An experience of one God is evidence against the God(s) of other religions.
So, their inconsistency with each other reduces their evidentiary weight as it implies they are generally unreliable.

Counter

However, the natural theology approach (e.g., of Swinburne) addresses this.
It regards religious experience as evidence for a generic higher power, not for the Christian God in particular.
Other arguments are needed to close that gap.
His principles of credulity and testimony are only meant to increase the probability of some God.
Pluralists could also use Swinburne’s method.
Religions are different interpretations of their shared mystical core (James & Otto).
Appearances of different deities are then expected and thus still evidence for a higher divine reality.
So, the diversity of religious experience could still be evidence for a generic higher power, or a pluralist divine reality.

Evaluation:

However, we can press the objection in ways natural theologians and pluralists can’t survive.
The issue is, it’s not just different Gods which are experienced.
There is rarely a thing a human has imagined that someone somewhere has not claimed to have seen.
E.g., ghosts, Yetis, aliens, faeries, astral projection, auras, telepathy, glitches in the matrix, the loch ness monster, etc.
Swinburne wants us to accept as evidence what a person with no evident cognitive issues says they saw.
The problem is that this approach is epistemically indiscriminate.
It would grant credence to every imagination.
This fails to distinguish genuine from illusory experiences, and thus fails to filter for truth.
It isn’t helpful in discerning which beliefs are actually true.
The diversity of reported subjective experiences seem only limited by imagination, and is thus epistemically indistinguishable from it.

AO2: Swinburne’s empirical argument (testimony & credulity)

Swinburne argues inductively:
Experience is evidence (empiricism)
We can only rationally dismiss evidence with stronger counter-evidence.
So, if someone witnesses (credulity) or testifies to experiencing God, that is evidence for God.
We can dismiss such reports if we have evidence of naturalistic causes.
But those cases with no evident naturalistic explanation must then be taken as evidence for their object (God).
They can’t be dismissed simply because they ‘could’ be hallucinations, since that’s true of all perceptions.
So, naturalists have to accept witness or tesimony of religious experiences as evidence for the supernatural.
Otherwise, they either deny empiricism (that experience is evidence) or cast doubt on all experience (scepticism).
C. F. Davis concludes that Swinburne defends against challenges attacking the reliability of the person (subject) or the coherence of their account (description).

Counter

However, Swinburne seems to overlook the differences in inductive epistemic strength between religious and ordinary experiences.
As Russell points out, inference from private mental states to external reality is generally weak unless supported by public, repeatable confirmation.
He illustrates: if a crowd sees the same object, hallucination becomes unlikely, and belief is justified.
Religious experiences, by contrast, are typically private and lack this kind of intersubjective verification.
Ordinary perceptions also gain credibility through predictive power and integration into a shared empirical framework, whereas religious experiences cannot be tested or confirmed in comparable ways.
Empiricism therefore does not require treating them as equally reliable.

Evaluation

This undermines Swinburne’s conclusion by giving us an inductive basis for rejecting religious experiences.
Religious experiences may count as data, but without independent confirmation they remain low-level evidence, comparable to uncorroborated private perceptions.
This allows scepticism about religious experience without collapsing into scepticism about perception in general.
Swinburne & Davis are therefore countered by the distinction between mere empirical data and empirically warranted belief.

AO2: sociological reductionism (object challenge)

Sociological reductionist critiques aim to provide a naturalistic account for religious psychology in general.
Hermeneutics of suspicion investigates the social and power function beneath supposedly faithful beliefs and experiences.
For Marx, religion is a tool of social control. Focusing life on getting to heaven and submitting to rulers inhibits motivation to challenge political injustice.
Durkheim thinks religion grows from a community’s need for a shared ethos to enable collective identity.
Such theories would explain the universalities of religion and religious experience.
Evidence for them is therefore evidence against the supernatural explanation.

Counter

Davis herself responds that reductionist theories are incomplete, since the immense diversity of religious experiences seem difficult to explain by any one theory.
She further argues that they are only hypotheses, so they are not conclusive.
This is in keeping with the general critique of suspicion hermeneutics that they make unfalsifiable claims about private motivations.

Evaluation:

However, the religious explanation of itself as faithful mediation of divinity is also just a hypothesis.
So, the question is which hypothesis has more evidence and explanatory power.
We can use Swinburne’s ‘cumulative case’ concept against him.
The diversity of religious experience could be accounted for by the cumulative diversity of reductionist theories.
This overcomes Davis’ ‘incompleteness’ defence.
There is a way to deploy suspicion with empirical legitimacy, because there is clear historical evidence for the link between religion and power.
The link between religion and a source of community and purpose is something believers frequently use to argue religion is necessary.
Yet this supposed strength could suggest religion is merely fulfilling a human need.
Religion serves social regulatory functions, so claiming communication with the divine indisputably has social implications.
There could have been no God and yet humans, desiring power, community and explanation, would have invented one.
Most believers would likely admit this, but about religions other than their own.
Those needs are strong enough to self-justify by causing intense experiences, or just interpretations and false memories.
Political populism is a useful comparison. People can be so hungry for stories which validate their political interests.
Religion claims existential importance, meaning religious experiences are developed in similarly intense pressures.
So, reductionist challenges counterbalance whatever prima facie evidentiary weight religious experiences seem to have.
We are certainly justified in being sceptical and even suspicious of religious self-understanding and the appeal to private experience.