Religious Experience
It’s Nature and Significance
Experience and Inference
Sense experience is “direct perceptual awareness” of a material being
Statements can describe or express the content of our experience
Example: “I hear voices in the hallway.” (Alston, SP)
An inference is a conclusion drawn from other statements
Example: “There are people talking in the hallway.”
Religious Faith
Faith shares some qualities with both experience and inference:
Like experience, it “feels” and/or is accepted as obvious or certain, although it is not based sensory facts.
Like inference, it is an acceptance of that which is not itself directly experienced, although some argue that the object of faith can be demonstrated by reason.
Religious experience
Religious experience (Alston, RE) shares some qualities with perceptual experience.
Both religious and perceptual experience are modes of “direct awareness” of something.
Thus, there is the feeling of certainty that is grounding in the reality of direct awareness.
Unlike perceptual experience, however, religious experience is not “of” natural being; it is directed beyond that which can be normally experienced.
Philosophical Questions
The Descriptive TaskWhat are the reported characteristics of
religious experiences, in all their variety?
The Interpretive Task
What can we infer about ultimate reality, based on the data of such experiences?
Our Readings on Religious Experience
Smart explores both the nature and significance of religious experience generally.
Suzuki explains sartori, or the Buddhist experience of the “ultimate nature of things.”
Alston and Penelhum debate the significance of religious experience.
Experiential Dimension
Ninian Smart and the Varieties and Interpretation of Religious Experience
NuminousExternally oriented; of the “awesome and fearful
Other”; dualistic
MysticalInternally oriented; of the ultimate oneness and
unity of all
Two Kinds of Religious Experience
Numinous
Externally oriented
Otherness
Dualistic
Mystical
Internally oriented
Connectedness
Non-dualistic
Shared Characteristics
1. Smallness of self
2. Limits of the ordinary
Exploring the Experience
Some religions emphasize one kind of religious experience over the other.
Buddhism
No ultimate being or reality
Focus on consciousness: attainment of selflessness, peace and
Christianity
Ultimate Being
Outer orientation (before inner cultivation of “union”)
Exploring the Experience
Some emphasize an integration of the two.
Hinduism
Braham – Ultimate reality and objective truth; exists “outside of” created beings
Atman – Ultimate reality and subjective truth; exists “within” all beings and is experienced by sentient beings
Exploring the Experience
The distinction can create conflict within a religion
Mystic visions v. Orthodox interpretations
Christian or Sufi (Muslim) mystics challenge the orthodox teaching of:
1. the holiness and otherness of God
2. the idea that salvation flows from “God the other”
The Question of Truth
Religion experience has an undeniable subjective effect. Why think it has objective significance?
Challenges from psychologists regarding the causes of these unusual experiences (Freud, Fromm, Jung)
Brief Comment about Truth
Freud’s theory does not apply universally Fromm’s critique of “numinous experience” is
insupportably judgmental Jung reduced religious experience to collective
psychology
Common problem (according to Smart):
Each involves judging a (religious) worldview from a (humanist) worldview – that is, arbitrarily applying the criteria of one perspective to that of another.
Perceiving God
Alston on the Significance of Religious Experience
Two Kinds of Perceiving Sensory perception (SP)
Rooted in the physical universeSource of claims about the existence and
nature of physical things
Religious experience (RE)Rooted in the putative spiritual universeSource of claims about the existence and
nature of God (and other spiritual phenomena?)
Sensory Perception – Direct Realism
1. the theory that “what you see is what you get.”
2. assumes that the object of perception exists and causes the experience of perception
3. asserts that the perceptual experience caused by the object of perception reliably represents the nature of that object.
Religious Experience – “God Realism”
religious experience is a form of experience
as experience, it supports the idea that there is a (religious) cause of the experience
Religious experience reliably represents the nature of its religious cause: i.e., religious experience provides evidence for the existence and nature of God (M-Beliefs)
The Justification Argument
Based on these similarities, Alston argues that:
As sense experience justifies perceptual beliefs (I see a table justifies the claim that “there is a table”)
So religious experience (via something other than sensory qualities) justifies religious beliefs (I “saw” God justifies the claim that “God exists”)
Standards of Justification
Shared perceptions are a basis for claims about objective reality
Perception is supplemented by other shared means to construct and verify knowledge
Override systems apply those other means
Override systems are themselves derived from experiences
Alston’s Analogy
SP and RE are significantly alike in that both:Are based on individual “perceptual”
experiences Support a wider “world view” based on those
same perceptual experiences (doxastic value)Have an “override system” (188)
The Epistemology of Religious Perception (according to Alston)
All claims to knowledge must reference an experiential basis of belief religious experience is such a distinctive sort of
experiential basis for belief, “like” sensory experience
All claims to knowledge must fit into a distinctive range of belief contents (subject matter) Those who have religious experiences tend to report
religiously acceptable conclusions from their experiences
The Epistemology of Religious Perception
There must be an “overrider system” to correct unjustified “leaps” from experience
Not every unusual experience counts as a religious experience, by virtue of religious communities’ own experiences and bodies of belief
It is unreasonable to ask of any experiential doxastic system that its beliefs be indubitable.
Yeah, but….
Religious perception seems to assume what it is trying to prove
Objection I – we are assuming that there is a God to cause a RE
Objection II – different people report different and contradictory claims about what God is or wants
Objection IV – there are naturalistic explanations of putative religious experiences
Yeah, but….
Religious perception is significantly unlike sensory perception.
Objection III – sense experience varies according to the varied conditions of perception
Objection V – RE is not universally available, and its inferred claims are vague or obscure
Objection VI – there is no intersubjective confirmation of RE claims
Penelhum’s Response
The basic problem is that religious experiences – by Alston’s own criteria – are “religiously ambiguous.”
Such experiences can be explained by both SP (naturalist) criteria and RE (religious) criteria
Alston’s argument seems to put both on a parity, as he explicitly claims that these “doxastic” systems have epistemic parity.
Penelhum’s Response
Other observations:
1. The demand for parity makes us accord (epistemic) rights to apparently incompatible religious systems.
2. The demand for parity makes us accord (epistemic) right to non-religious systems.
Glossary - Alston
Doxastic – having to do with belief Compare: aesthetic – having to do with the senses; with
artistic experienceCompare: existential – having to do with meaning; with
the purpose of life
Doxastic practices – having to do with belief-formationthe social and logical conventions and standards
through which beliefs are generated and validated
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