Verifying Religious Experiences (AQA A-Level Religious Studies): Revision Notes

Verifying Religious Experiences

Introduction

Religious experiences present significant challenges when attempting to verify their truth and authenticity. Within the Christian tradition, three broad types of religious experience have been identified: visions, numinous experiences and mystical experiences. Key questions arise when considering these experiences:

• Do they come from an external source, and is it reasonable to think this source is God?
• What role does the mind play in these experiences?
• If from God, what is their meaning and purpose?
• If generated by the brain, what is their meaning and purpose?

Challenges to proving religious experiences true

General difficulties

Religious experiences face several verification challenges that make it difficult to establish their authenticity and divine origin.

Individual testimony problem

• We only have the word of the individual who claims to have had the experience as evidence
• These are subjective, private experiences and feelings
• Critics argue they are just 'in the mind'

Ineffability problem

• Those who experience them often cannot describe them adequately
• Sceptics suggest this means there is nothing real to describe
• The inability to articulate the experience makes comparison and investigation difficult

Natural explanations

• Scientific explanations can account for religious experiences
• This suggests they may not require supernatural causes

Contradictory experiences

• Different people report contradictory religious experiences
• If they contradict each other, they cannot all be true

Extraordinary nature

• Religious experiences are so extraordinary and rare as to be unbelievable
• All normal experience counts against them

Religious responses to general challenges

Religious believers have developed several responses to address these general challenges, drawing on both philosophical arguments and empirical observations.

Group experiences

• Some religious experiences are group experiences, where testimony does not rely on a single individual
• This provides multiple witnesses

Observable effects

• Experiences can be evidenced through their effects
• Examples include complete changes of lifestyle and more spiritual outlooks on life
• These tangible outcomes suggest something real has occurred

Swinburne's Principle of Testimony

• We should accept that people's experiences are probably as they report them
• There must be special reasons to think otherwise before we reject their claims

Privacy does not equal falsity

• Dreams and emotional states cannot be proved true
• Yet we find it reasonable to believe others when they describe their feelings or dreams
• Similarly, private religious experiences should not be dismissed solely because they are private

Characteristics of religious experience

• Ineffability is a recognised characteristic of religious experiences
• It makes investigation difficult but does not prove them false
• An experience can be considered religious if it conforms to definitions of religious experience

Diversity of understanding

• How humans understand their experiences differs from what the experiences actually are
• Ultimate Reality could choose to express itself in ways suited to each individual
• This accounts for apparent contradictions

Frequency of experiences

• There are many reports of religious experience
• Statistics suggest around 30-40% of people have had experiences ranging from general spiritual awareness to deep religious insights
• This prevalence suggests they should not be dismissed as extremely rare

Scientific challenges to religious experiences

Most scientific challenges claim that religious experiences are products of the mind, relating to human psychology and physiology rather than God. When we study religious experiences, we verify only brain states at particular moments, not the existence of God.

Sigmund Freud's challenge

Wish-fulfilment theory

• Freud argued that religion is wish-fulfilment by the unconscious mind
• The idea of God helps us control fear of the unknown and of death
• Such fears are infantile and neurotic

Hallucinations

• Religious visions and mystical experiences are simply hallucinations
• They are caused by our need to have control over our helpless state
• They do not reflect external reality

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE)

Brain condition explanation

• People suffering from TLE are sometimes prone to have religious visions and mystical experiences
• This suggests religious experiences are nothing more than abnormal states of the brain

Implications

• If a medical condition can produce religious experiences, they may be self-generated rather than from God
• The correlation between TLE and religious experiences suggests a neurological basis

Neurotheology

Definition and research

• Neurotheology attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms
• Neuroscience is the scientific study of the structure and function of the nervous system
• Research developed in the 1980s, particularly by Michael Persinger

The God Helmet

• An updated device using magnetic coils placed on either side of the head
• Stimulates the subject's temporal lobes through electrical stimulation
• Results include mystical states, visions of God and sensing the presence of spiritual beings
• Confirmed by further studies from Carlos A. Tinoco and Joao P. L. Ortiz

Implications

• If neuroscience can duplicate aspects of religious experiences, this suggests they are specific states of the brain
• They are not experiences of God or from God

Entheogens (religious drugs)

Drug-induced experiences

• Religious experiences can be caused by certain drugs
• This provides further evidence that they are products of brain states

Types of entheogens

• Hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin
• Called entheogens, meaning 'generating/becoming the Divine from within'
• People who take them can have intense spiritual and religious experiences

Conclusion from science

• TLE, neurotheology and entheogens show that when certain parts of the brain are stimulated, particularly the temporal and frontal lobes, people access higher levels of consciousness
• They can have full-blown mystical experiences and be convinced they have experienced God
• In reality, these experiences may have been generated by the brain itself

Religious responses to scientific challenges

Religious believers have developed sophisticated responses to scientific challenges, arguing that neuroscience does not necessarily disprove divine origin.

Response to Freud

Freud's wish-fulfilment hypothesis cannot be tested, so it remains only a hypothesis. It may be true that people wish to have experiences of God and find comfort in them, but this does not prove that experiences of God must be false.

Response to brain-based challenges

Religious believers can respond to TLE, neurotheology and drug challenges with the following argument:

Necessary brain processing

• If God wants to give people religious experiences, these must be processed by the brain
• The brain is our only way of processing anything
• There must be areas of the brain responsible for processing religious experiences

Temporal and frontal lobes as channels

• Many religious experiences are processed by the temporal and frontal lobes
• These are the structures through which God can bring about religious experiences
• Finding the neural correlates does not disprove divine origin

Mind interaction with God

• Religious believers have no difficulty accepting that the mind can both receive and generate religious experiences
• The mind can interact with God

Two models of religious experience

The 'downwards' or processing model

• God/universal consciousness is the source of religious experiences
• The experiencer processes a given experience and derives meaning from it
• The experience could be given to meet a specific situation
• Examples: Bernadette's vision, Saul's conversion

The 'interaction' model

• God/universal consciousness interacts with those who seek such experience
• The experiencer (through situation or preparation) brings about the experience
• The experiencer approaches God with a specific request
• They encounter God through nature or moments of higher consciousness

Active seeking of God

Many religious traditions emphasise that humans can actively seek and cultivate religious experiences rather than passively waiting for them.

Biblical support

• God is personal and relates to people in many ways
• Through prayer, God's incarnation as Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit
• Parable of the Persistent Friend: people should be persistent when they pray to God

Human initiative

• Christians do not have to sit and wait for God to reveal something
• They can reach out to God
• Those who experience God through nature see God's power, glory, majesty and love

Cultivated mystical consciousness

• William James refers to great mystics who deliberately cultivate mystical consciousness
• Example: yoga in India as 'the experimental union of the individual with the divine'
• Each step in the discipline is intended to bring practitioners to the superconscious state
• The experience begins with those who reach out to God

William James's pragmatic approach

For William James, it makes no difference how the religious experience is arrived at. The mystic can have a religious experience through:

• TLE
• Drugs
• Any altered state of consciousness, however it is arrived at

Coherence of religious response

It is coherent for believers to argue that the mind can both:

• Receive experiences from God
• Initiate the experience by reaching out to God

Swinburne's principles of credulity and testimony

Richard Swinburne (b.1934) is a British philosopher influential in writings about the existence of God. For Swinburne, although God's existence cannot be proved by logical arguments, our experiences of the world suggest that God probably exists. Religious experiences form part of this probability argument.

The Principle of Credulity

From ordinary experience to religious experience

Swinburne begins with ordinary sense experiences, then extends this reasoning to religious experiences. Having an experience of seeing a chair, table or listening to a lecture is good evidence that these experiences genuinely occur.

The principle stated

"It is a principle of rationality that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one seems to perceive is probably so."

Further: "How things seem to be is good grounds for a belief about how things are."

The key claim

The way things seem to be is the way things really are.

Special considerations (potential doubts)

Swinburne acknowledges four special considerations that might make us doubt whether things are as they seem:

1. Reliability of the claim: If someone has been known to tell lies in the past, you have grounds for doubting their religious experience claim

2. Truth of the claim: If somebody makes unlikely perceptual claims (such as reading normal text from 100 yards away), their claims about religious experience are not likely to be true

3. Difficulty of showing God's presence: How can the experiencer demonstrate that God was present in the experience?

4. Alternative explanations: What is claimed might be accounted for in other ways (such as TLE)

Swinburne's rejection of special considerations

Swinburne argues that these special considerations do not necessarily undermine the validity of religious experiences.

1. Not all claims are unreliable: Just because someone has lied in the past does not mean they are lying now about a religious experience

2. Not all claims are untrue: Making one false claim does not mean any other particular claim to religious experience is likely to be untrue

3. Burden of proof: God is presumably everywhere, so rather than the experiencer showing God was present, the onus is on the doubter to show he was not

4. God underpins all processes: As the Creator, God underpins all processes, including those in the brain. If God causes an experience through the temporal lobes, that would be perfectly normal (as William James would argue)

The Principle of Testimony

The principle stated

The Principle of Testimony is the counterpart to the Principle of Credulity. Swinburne argues: "Experiences of others are (probably) as they report them."

Application

We should believe what people tell us, provided there are no particular reasons not to. If someone tells us they have had a religious experience, and they are normally reliable and honest, we should believe them.

Burden of proof

It is the sceptic's job to show that religious experiences should be rejected, rather than the believer's job to show that they are true.

Swinburne's conclusions

1. Someone who has had a religious experience of what seems to be God has, by the Principle of Credulity, good reason for believing that there is a God

2. The testimony of others who report similar experiences supports such a claim

3. Without religious experience, the probability of God's existence is about 50/50. If we add the testimony of religious experience, it becomes greater than 50/50. God probably exists

Evaluating Swinburne's claims

Arguments against Swinburne

Problem of comparing different types of experience

Swinburne seems to be saying that since normal sense experiences are reliable, religious experiences are reliable evidence for God's existence. This is a dubious claim. Can we really move from being convinced about the reliability of what people claim to touch, taste, hear, smell and see to the reliability of mystical and visionary claims about God?

Belief does not equal proof

Even if every single person who has had a religious experience believed completely it was an experience of God, it would not prove that 'God' is the right explanation for such experiences.

Arguments supporting Swinburne

Despite these criticisms, Swinburne's approach has several strengths that make it a significant contribution to the debate.

Observable lifestyle changes

In terms of the Principle of Credulity, Swinburne is on stronger ground where he says that if someone really believes they have had an experience of God, this will make measurable differences to their lifestyle. Their approach to prayer, worship and self-sacrifice might change radically, as might their treatment of others. Since we often see this change in lifestyle (for example, by those who have had near-death experiences), this is strong evidence for the reliability of claims about religious experiences.

Supporting testimony

This conclusion is supported by the testimony of others who claim to have had similar experiences of God, and in whom we can see similar changes of lifestyle.

The Cumulative Argument

Swinburne uses the Cumulative Argument, suggesting that if we consider all arguments for God's existence (Design Argument, Cosmological Argument, Ontological Argument), these arguments are stronger when taken together. The argument that religious experiences show God's existence strengthens those arguments and is strengthened by them.

The influence of religious experiences

The influence of religious experiences has been immense across history, shaping religious traditions, inspiring believers, and transforming individual lives.

Foundational experiences

Religious experiences have been the direct cause of founding several religions, forming the basis for faith and organised religion.

Judaism

• Genesis 17 records a foundational religious experience given to Abraham
• God makes a covenant (agreement) with Abraham and his descendants

Inspirational experiences

The religious experiences of great martyrs and saints have inspired belief in others. Those who died for the faith convinced others that their faith was worth standing up for. The lives of saints have inspired people throughout Christian history. Consider the effects of Joan of Arc's visions on France during the fifteenth century and ever since.

Pilgrimage experiences

Religious experiences are at the heart of pilgrimage. Consider Bernadette Soubirous' experiences and the founding of the shrine and pilgrimage centre at Lourdes, where the annual number of pilgrims is around 5 million. Many hope for miraculous cures from various diseases and conditions.

Life-changing experiences

Swinburne argues that religious experiences can be life-changing. The 'fruits' of religious experience include:

• Development of feelings of sympathy, empathy, hope, courage, endurance, self-esteem and love
• Psychological benefits such as an energetic zest for life
• Lyrical enchantment or inspiration to do heroic deeds
• Assurance of safety, peace and loving affection
• Conversion experiences

The value of religious experiences for religious faith

Religious experiences can be foundational, inspirational and life-changing, as discussed above. However, their most distinctive value lies in how they confirm and deepen religious faith.

Confirmation of faith

The most distinctive aspect is that religious experiences confirm faith. Consider Teresa of Avila's response to her confessor, who asked how she knew one particular experience had been of Christ. She replied that she did not know how she knew it, but she could not help knowing that Christ was close beside her.

Faith and certainty

For some, the only certainty we can ever have is that which comes from faith. That certainty is based on a religious experience where God is encountered personally. This relates to the difference between 'belief in' and 'belief that':

• 'Belief that' refers to propositional belief (believing that certain facts are true)
• 'Belief in' refers to trust and commitment (believing in a person or relationship)

Religious experiences contribute particularly to 'belief in' by providing personal encounter with the divine.

Cross-religious experiences

An important consideration: whereas religious experiences will confirm Christianity to the Christian experiencer (or someone with a Christian cultural background), the same is true for experiences of those belonging to other religious traditions. This presents a problem for those who believe only their religion holds 'the truth'. For William James, 'the truth' of religious experiences is much wider than the concerns of any one religion.

Religious experience as wisdom and authority

Religious experience serves as:

• A source of wisdom and authority in religion
• A source of scripture itself (many biblical texts originated from religious experiences)