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William James’ pluralism argument for mystical individual experiences
- James was a psychologist and philosopher etc
- He studied religions from all across the world
- He claimed that mystical experiences could be found in all religions and that they all had 4 criteria in common:
- Ineffable – beyond description – beyond language
- Noetic – provides knowledge/insight
- Transient – happens in limited amount of time
- Passive – it happens to you, you don’t make it happen.
- The fact that these are found in all religions, James thinks, is evidence that they really come from a higher spiritual reality.
- Other scholars like Stace have made this argument much more explicitly, influenced by James – that the similarities in mystical religious experiences found cross-culturally shows that they must have an objective cause.
- It can’t be by chance that there are these cross-cultural similarities, there must be one objective cause behind them all.
Evaluation:
- There could be naturalistic explanations of this cross-cultural similarity. For example, human brains all evolved similarly – so it would make sense for them to all hallucinate similarly.
- Religion and religious experience could all serve a universal human psychological need or sociological function.
- So, there is no need of the hypothesis that they come from a higher spiritual reality.
William 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.
- James on conversion experiences. Conversion experiences are clearly a strong example of James’ point about the life-changing impact of religious experiences. He viewed conversion experiences as a transformation from an unhappy divided or imperfect self with a guilty conscience to a more unified happy state.
Evaluation:
- Hallucinations actually can be life-changing, in rare cases.
- If a Christian hallucinated an angel, then that might have a life-changing effect on them, even though it was just a hallucination.
Conversion experiences & James
- W. James thought conversion experiences were especially convincing because of their life-changing effects.
- James thought religious experiences could not just be hallucinations.
- He pointed out that, unlike hallucinations, religious experiences can have positive and profound life-changing effects, which we can observe.
- 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.
- James on conversion experiences. Conversion experiences are clearly a strong example of James’ point about the life-changing impact of religious experiences. He viewed conversion experiences as a transformation from an unhappy divided or imperfect self with a guilty conscience to a more unified happy state.
- For example – St Paul – he was called ‘saul’ and was a Jew who hated Christians but then saw Jesus who said ‘why are you persecuting me?’.
- Saul changed his name to Paul and become Christian and ended up writing a lot of the Bible.
Evaluation
- Hallucinations actually can be life-changing, in rare cases.
- If a Christian hallucinated an angel, then that might have a life-changing effect on them, even though it was just a hallucination.
- Plus – St Paul probably had epilepsy which causes hallucinations/visions.
Persinger’s physiological explanation
Evaluation of Persinger
Freud’s psychological explanation
- Freud says that religious experiences are just illusions/delusions caused by people’s fear of death and fear of being an adult.
- So, people delude themselves that they have seen a God who is like father figure and will provide them with an afterlife.
- This is like a mirage – if people are lost in a desert, they will hallucinate water – their minds are so desperate for water, that they hallucinate it. It’s similar with God – people are so desperate for death to not be the end that they hallucinate God.
Evaluation of Freud
- Freud was not a real scientist – he didn’t do any actual experiments, he studied a small sample size of people who were a poor cross-section of society. He’s overgeneralising – maybe he’s right about some religious people, but he’s not right about all of them.
- Also – conversion experience critique of Freud.
- Freud is arguing that religious experiences are just the result of mental desperation for an afterlife.
- The issue is, some people who are religious and already believe in an afterlife, have a religious experience which converts them to a different religion.
- They already believed in an afterlife, so an experience converting them to a different religion can’t be explained by their being desperate to believe in an afterlife.
Swinburne on witness (credulity) & testimony
- Swinburne argues that witness and testimony provide good evidence for religious experiences being valid.
- Swinburne says that if you see something, or someone tells you they’ve seen something, that is evidence that it exists. It doesn’t prove it – but it is evidence.
- So, if you see God (Credulity) or someone tells you they’ve seen God (testimony) then that is evidence that God exists.
- You can’t dismiss evidence for no reason – you can only dismiss it if you have other, better evidence that goes against it.
- If you know someone is a liar or on drugs, then you could dismiss their experience.
- Swinburne’s point is that there are many religious experiences where we have no evidence that someone has any such physiological or psychological influence.
- In those cases, we have to accept them as evidence for God.
Evaluation
- Even if Swinburne is right that religious experiences are evidence for God – that doesn’t mean they are enough evidence to justify believing in God. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We need more than just religious experience to justify belief in God.
Corporate experiences
- Some argue Corporate experiences are the most convincing because there are multiple people who can testify to them.
- When multiple people share a religious experience.
- Toronto blessing – church in canada, everyone suddenly felt the presence of the holy spirit – some started laughing, some crying, some rolling around on the floor.
- You can’t explain corporate experiences by things like mental illness or drugs – because there’s no way everyone would hallucinate the same thing.
- There is what seems to be a case of apostles having a corporate religious experience mentioned in the book of Acts:
- “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues” – Acts 2:3
Evaluation
- Groups of people can share delusions. If you go to a village in america the people there might say ‘we all saw the alien spaceship come down, they took our dog away, etc.’ Similarly with a village in medieval europe – they might all say ‘we all saw this person cast a spell – they are a witch’.
- Unless there really are aliens and witches running around, groups of people can clearly share delusion – and that could explain corporate religious experiences.