The different ways in which individual religious experiences can be understood

Understanding religious experiences as a union with a greater power

Key scholars: William James, Swinburne; Alston; Otto and Schleiermacher.

Swinburne:

Swinburne, in his work 'Is There a God?', suggests that religious experiences should be treated the same as other private, personal experiences which we are more likely to believe happened than not.

Ultimately, Swinburne places the burden of proof on those who doubt religious experiences.

The principle of credulity: unless we have overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we should believe that things are as they seem to be.

📎 Swinburne writes "If it seems to a subject that X is present, then probably X is present ".

This means that if I personally have a religious experience then unless I know I am prone to delusions or similar, I should trust that my experience is a genuine one in the same way that I trust all of my other experiences.

The Principle of Testimony

The principle of testimony: we normally believe what people tell us to be the case unless we have a good reason not to do so, in the same way, we should also believe people to be telling the truth when they tell us about their religious experiences.

Beyond this, Swinburne also presents the cumulative argument whereby he proposes that the sheer quantity of testimony from people claiming to have had a religious experience points to strong evidence for the fact that these experiences are likely to be the product of a union with a higher power since it is highly unlikely that all of these experiences are fictional or erroneous.

William Alston:

• In this he postulates that all beliefs based on perception are prima facie justified, meaning they are justified at first sight.
• Much like Swinburne's principle of credulity, Alston holds that religious experiences, by being experienced, should be trusted unless there is a good reason not to trust your experiences.
• One criticism of religious experiences is that they cannot be empirically verified in the same way that other sense experiences can.
• Alston concedes that experiences of God are different from other sense experiences, but, he still thinks that they hold value. He argues that the view that the only valuable knowledge is that which can be verified empirically is an example of 'epistemic chauvinism'.
• By this, he means that it is unjustified to hold that the only place genuine knowledge can be found is through empiricism. Alston argues that there are no non-circular justifications for the view that genuine knowledge is only available through verifiable sense perception. When it comes to religious experiences, Alston is arguing that even though they cannot be empirically validated it does not mean that they are not legitimate.

Rudolf Otto

Otto makes significant contributions to the discussion around the validity of religious experiences.

In his work 'The Idea of the Holy' Otto postulates that religious experiences are: "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" (an awe inspiring fascinating mystery).

• He argues that these experiences must indicate a union with a greater power since they are numinous in nature – they leave the subject with a sense of awe-inspiring holiness that cannot be explained in any other way.
• Much like William James, Otto argues that one of the key characteristics of religious experiences is their ineffability.
• He holds that ordinary language cannot do justice to religious experiences since they are unlike any other type of experience.

Schleiermacher

In his work 'Speeches on Religion to it's Cultural Despisers' Schleiermacher writes that Religion is "a sense and taste for the infinite" and "all temporal things in and through the eternal".

Much like William James, Schleiermacher is positing that religion is not simply agreeing to a set of religious rules and doctrines, instead religious experiences are at the heart of faith.

Schleiermacher believed that every person has a consciousness of the divine, but that in many people this is obscured by other concerns. He held that all experiences could be religious ones and that people can cultivate these experiences in the same way that they can cultivate virtues or aesthetic appreciation.

Understanding religious experiences as a psychological effect such as illusion

Freud

Sigmund Freud is a psychologist who, although presenting some unpopular theories, has been hugely influential in the field of psychology, most notably through the development of psychoanalysis. Our use of Freud will be focused precisely on his views on religion and how this influences his views on religious experiences.

✔️ Freud was an atheist. He did not think that religious experiences indicated a union with a higher power, instead, he categorized religious belief as akin to mental illness when he described it as "infantile neurosis".

Freud postulated that the unconscious mind influences people's beliefs & behaviors in ways that they are unaware of. He held that there are three elements to the unconscious mind:

1. The id: the selfish, pleasure-seeking element of the mind that is present from birth
2. The ego:
3. The superego Humans create the idea of God, the ultimate father figure, to help them cope with the harsh realities of life and their vulnerability and helplessness in the face of nature.

Freud expresses this view when he writes "Thus, man's longing for a father is a motive identical with his need for protection against the consequences of his human weakness".

For Freud, all religious beliefs are "illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind" This means that religion, for Freud, is not a genuine construct.

Dawkins

As we have seen in previous units, Richard Dawkins, write of The God Delusion, is an atheist and therefore naturally does not think that religious experiences are the product of a union with a higher power.

Dawkins presents this view when he writes "The argument from personal experience is most convincing to those who claim to have had one, but it is least convincing to anything knowledgeable about psychology".

Here, he is postulating that religious experiences can be explained psychologically.

He describes an experience of his own when, as a child, he was awoken by the sound of a man's voice in his bedroom. At first, believing it was a ghost but, when he went to explore, he discovered the sound was made by the wind whistling through the keyhole of the door.

He describes how the "simulation software in the brain" created a model of male speech from the droning of the wind. He adds "had I been both impressionable and religiously brought up, I wonder what words the wind might have spoken"

Starbuck

As previously seen, Starbuck is a contemporary of James and a fellow psychologist. With specific reference to conversion experiences, he held that since they tend to occur in 15-24-year-olds and from this rejected the divine notion of the experience opting instead to explain them as a "normal adolescent phenomenon". Starbuck argued that the search for identity and purpose seen in adolescent struggles resulted in either a religious conversion experience or, a sense of calm and identity that is wholly psychological rather than divine.

Understanding religious experiences as the product of physiological effect

Dr Michael Persinger's God Helmet

Dr Michael Persinger developed the 'God Helmet' which is a modified crash helmet, designed to induce experiences in the subject wearing the helmet. The God helmet produces a weak magnetic field & the subject puts this on & is told that they are going in for a relaxation experiment. This procedure Dr. Persinger claims will induce an experience in over 80% of test subjects with the majority of them describing a 'sensed presence' as a result. This experience indicates that religious experiences can be induced by manipulating brain functions. This means that religious experiences can at least be explained in some way by physiology & not necessarily a union with a higher power.

Dr Ramachandran

Conducting research into temporal lobe epilepsy, Dr Ramachandran found that there was a link between religious experiences and those with temporal lobe epilepsy. From this research, Dr Ramachandran went on to postulate that It's possible that many great religious leaders had temporal lobe seizures and this predisposes them to having visions, having mystical experiences, citing specially Saul as an example of this.

Bertrand Russell

Atheist Russell writes that "There is no distinction between a man who eats little and sees God and the man who drinks a lot and see's snakes". Here he is suggesting that religious experiences are linked to physiological effects such as vitamin deficiencies and malmourishment and are not the product of a union with a higher power. This view can be illustrated with the example of Buddhist ascetics who, in their quest for enlightenment, will deprive their bodies of nourishment, mimicking the behaviour of the Buddha who, whilst living as an ascetic survived on one grain of rice a day. Russell would suggest that there is a correlation between this malnutrition & the fact that many ascetics claim to have mystical experiences.

The Marsh Chapel Experiment

The Marsh Chapel Experiment was conducted by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert with the intention of checking whether it is possible to induce religious experiences with hallucionagenic drugs. Prior to a Good Friday Church service, 20 volunteer undergraduate theology students were given a pill to take. Of those participants, half received a placebo and half received a hallucinogenic drug. Following the service nearly the entire group receiving hallucinogenic reported having had a profound religious experience, compared to just a few in the control group. 9/10 men who received the hallucinogenic drug went on to become ministers. This indicates that religious experiences can be induced by the physiological effect that drugs can have on the body.