religious experience essay

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Religious Experience

Religious experiences can be characterized generally as experiences that seem to the person having them to be of some objective reality and to have some religious import. That reality can be an individual, a state of affairs, a fact, or even an absence, depending on the religious tradition the experience is a part of. A wide variety of kinds of experience fall under the general rubric of religious experience. The concept is vague, and the multiplicity of kinds of experiences that fall under it makes it difficult to capture in any general account. Part of that vagueness comes from the term ‘religion,’ which is difficult to define in any way that does not either rule out institutions that clearly are religions, or include terms that can only be understood in the light of a prior understanding of what religions are. Nevertheless, we can make some progress in elucidating the concept by distinguishing it from distinct but related concepts.

First, religious experience is to be distinguished from religious feelings, in the same way that experience in general is to be distinguished from feelings in general. A feeling of elation, for example, even if it occurs in a religious context, does not count in itself as a religious experience, even if the subject later comes to think that the feeling was caused by some objective reality of religious significance. An analogy with sense experience is helpful here. If a subject feels a general feeling of happiness, not on account of anything in particular, and later comes to believe the feeling was caused by the presence of a particular person, that fact does not transform the feeling of happiness into a perception of the person. Just as a mental event, to be a perception of an object, must in some sense seem to be an experience of that object, a religiously oriented mental event, to be a religious experience, must in some way seem to be an experience of a religiously significant reality. So, although religious feelings may be involved in many, or even most, religious experiences, they are not the same thing. Discussions of religious experience in terms of feelings, like Schleiermacher’s (1998) “feeling of absolute dependence,” or Otto’s (1923) feeling of the numinous, were important early contributions to theorizing about religious experience, but some have since then argued (see Gellman 2001 and Alston 1991, for example) that religious affective states are not all there is to religious experience. To account for the experiences qua experiences, we must go beyond subjective feelings.

Religious experience is also to be distinguished from mystical experience. Although there is obviously a close connection between the two, and mystical experiences are religious experiences, not all religious experiences qualify as mystical. The word ‘mysticism’ has been understood in many different ways. James (1902) took mysticism to necessarily involve ineffability, which would rule out many cases commonly understood to be mystical. Alston (1991) adopted the term grudgingly as the best of a bad lot and gave it a semi-technical meaning. But in its common, non-technical sense, mysticism is a specific religious system or practice, deliberately undertaken in order to come to some realization or insight, to come to unity with the divine, or to experience the ultimate reality directly. At the very least, religious experiences form a broader category; many religious experiences, like those of Saint Paul, Arjuna, Moses, Muhammad, and many others come unsought, not as the result of some deliberate practice undertaken to produce an experience.

1. Types of Religious Experience

2. language and experience, 3. epistemological issues, 4. the diverse objects of religious experience, other internet resources, related entries.

Reports of religious experiences reveal a variety of different kinds. Perhaps most are visual or auditory presentations (visions and auditions), but not through the physical eyes or ears. Subjects report “seeing” or “hearing,” but quickly disavow any claim to seeing or hearing with bodily sense organs. Such experiences are easy to dismiss as hallucinations, but the subjects of the experience frequently claim that though it is entirely internal, like a hallucination or imagination, it is nevertheless a veridical experience, through some spiritual analog of the eye or ear (James 1902 and Alston 1991 cite many examples).

In other cases, the language of “seeing” is used in its extended sense of realization, as when a yogi is said to “see” his or her identity with Brahman; Buddhists speak of “seeing things as they are” as one of the hallmarks of true enlightenment, where this means grasping or realizing the emptiness of things, but not in a purely intellectual way.

A third type is the religious experience that comes through sensory experiences of ordinary objects, but seems to carry with it extra information about some supramundane reality. Examples include experiencing God in nature, in the starry sky, or a flower, or the like. Another person standing nearby would see exactly the same sky or flower, but would not necessarily have the further religious content to his or her experience. There are also cases in which the religious experience just is an ordinary perception, but the physical object is itself the object of religious significance. Moses’s experience of the burning bush, or the Buddha’s disciples watching him levitate, are examples of this type. A second person standing nearby would see exactly the same phenomenon. Witnesses to miracles are having that kind of religious experience, whether they understand it that way or not.

A fourth type of religious experience is harder to describe: it can’t be characterized accurately in sensory language, even analogically, yet the subject of the experience insists that the experience is a real, direct awareness of some religiously significant reality external to the subject. These kinds of experiences are usually described as “ineffable.” Depending on one’s purposes, other ways of dividing up religious experiences will suggest themselves. For example, William James (1902) divides experiences into “healthy-minded” and “sick-minded,” according to the personality of the subject, which colors the content of the experience itself. Keith Yandell (1993, 25–32) divided them into five categories, according to the content of the experiences: monotheistic, nirvanic (enlightenment experiences associated with Buddhism), kevalic (enlightenment experiences associated with Jainism), moksha (experiences of release from karma, associated with Hinduism), and nature experiences. Differences of object certainly make differences in content, and so make differences in what can be said about the experiences. See Section 4 for further discussion of this issue.

Many have thought that there is some special problem with religious language, that it can’t be meaningful in the same way that ordinary language is. The Logical Positivists claimed that language is meaningful only insofar as it is moored in our experiences of the physical world. Since we can’t account for religious language by linking it to experiences of the physical world, such language is meaningless. Even though religious claims look in every way like ordinary assertions about the world, their lack of empirical consequences makes them meaningless. Ayer (1952) calls such language “metaphysical,” and therefore meaningless. He says, “That a transcendent god exists 3s a metaphysical assertion, and therefore not literally significant.” The principle of verification went through many formulations as it faced criticism. But if it is understood as a claim about meaning in ordinary language, it seems to be self-undermining, since there is no empirical way to verify it. Eventually, that approach to language fell out of favor, but some still use a modified, weaker version to criticize religious language. For example, Antony Flew (Flew and MacIntyre, 1955) relies on a principle to the effect that if a claim is not falsifiable, it is somehow illegitimate. Martin (1990) and Nielsen (1985) invoke a principle that combines verifiability and falsifiability; to be meaningful, a claim must be one or the other. It is not clear that even these modified and weakened versions of the verification principle entirely escape self-undermining. Even if they do, they seem to take other kinds of language with them—like moral language, talk about the future or past, and talk about the contents of others’ minds — that we might be loath to lose. Moreover, to deny the meaningfulness of religious-experience claims on the grounds that it is not moored in experience begs the question, in that it assumes that religious experiences are not real experiences.

Another possibility is to allow that religious claims are meaningful, but they are not true or false, because they should not be understood as assertions. Braithwaite (1970), for example, understands religious claims to be expressions of commitments to sets of values. On such a view, what appears to be a claim about a religious experience is not in fact a claim at all. It might be that some set of mental events, with which the experience itself can be identified, would be the ground and prompting of the claim, but it would not properly be what the claim is about.

A second challenge to religious-experience claims comes from Wittgensteinian accounts of language. Wittgenstein (1978) muses at some length on the differences between how ordinary language is used, and how religious language is used. Others (see Phillips 1970, for example), following Wittgenstein, have tried to give an explanation of the strangeness of religious language by invoking the idea of a language-game. Each language-game has its own rules, including its own procedures for verification. As a result, it is a mistake to treat it like ordinary language, expecting evidence in the ordinary sense, in the same way that it would be a mistake to ask for the evidence for a joke. “I saw God” should not be treated in the same way as “I saw Elvis.” Some even go so far as to say the religious language-game is isolated from other practices, such that it would be a mistake to derive any claims about history, geography, or cosmology from them, never mind demand the same kind of evidence for them. On this view, religious experiences should not be treated as comparable to sense experiences, but that does not entail that they are not important, nor that they are not in some sense veridical, in that they could still be avenues for important insights about reality. Such a view can be attributed to D. Z. Phillips (1970).

While this may account for some of the unusual aspects of religious language, it certainly does not capture what many religious people think about the claims they make. As creationism illustrates, many religious folk think it is perfectly permissible to draw empirical conclusions from religious doctrine. Hindus and Buddhists for many centuries thought there was a literal Mount Meru in the middle of the (flat, disc-shaped) world. It would be very odd if “The Buddha attained enlightenment under the bo tree” had to be given a very different treatment from “The Buddha ate rice under the bo tree” because the first is a religious claim and the second is an ordinary empirical claim. There are certainly entailment relations between religious and non-religious claims, too: “Jesus died for my sins” straightforwardly entails “Jesus died.”

Since the subjects of religious experiences tend to take them to be real experiences of some external reality, we may ask what reason there is to think they are right. That is to say, do religious experiences amount to good reasons for religious belief? One answer to that question is what is often called the Argument from Religious Experience: Religious experiences are in all relevant respects like sensory experiences; sensory experiences are excellent grounds for beliefs about the physical world; so religious experiences are excellent grounds for religious beliefs. This argument, or one very like it, can be found in Swinburne (1979), Alston (1991), Plantinga (1981, 2000), Netland (2022) and others. Critics of this approach generally find ways in which religious experiences are different from sensory experiences, and argue that those differences are enough to undermine the evidential value of the experiences. Swinburne (1979) invokes what he calls the “Principle of Credulity,” according to which one is justified in believing that what seems to one to be present actually is present, unless some appropriate defeater is operative. He then discusses a variety of circumstances that would be defeaters in the ordinary sensory case, and argues that those defeaters do not obtain, or not always, in the case of religious experience. To reject his argument, one would have to show that religious experience is unlike sensory experience in that in the religious case, one or more of the defeaters always obtains. Anyone who accepts the principle has excellent reason to accept the deliverances of religious experience, unless he or she believes that defeaters always, or almost always, obtain.

Plantinga offers a different kind of argument. According to Cartesian-style foundationalism, in order to count as justified, a belief must either be grounded in other justified beliefs, or derive its justification from some special status, like infallibility, incorrigibility, or indubitability. There is a parallel view about knowledge. Plantinga (1981) argued that such a foundationalism is inconsistent with holding one’s own ordinary beliefs about the world to be justified (or knowledge), because our ordinary beliefs derived from sense-experience aren’t derived from anything infallible, indubitable, or incorrigible. In fact, we typically treat them as foundational, in need of no further justification. If we hold sensory beliefs to be properly basic, then we have to hold similarly formed religious beliefs, formed on experiences of God manifesting himself to a believer (Plantinga calls them ‘M-beliefs’), as properly basic. He proposed that human beings have a faculty—what John Calvin called the ‘ sensus divinitatis ’—that allows them to be aware of God’s actions or dispositions with respect to them. If beliefs formed by sense-experience can be properly basic, then beliefs formed by this faculty cannot, in any principled way, be denied that same status. His developed theory of warrant (2000) implies that, if the beliefs are true, then they are warranted. One cannot attack claims of religious experience without first addressing the question as to whether the religious claims are true. He admits that, since there are people in other religious traditions who have based beliefs about religious matters on similar purported manifestations, they may be able to make the same argument about their own religious experiences.

Alston develops a general theory of doxastic practices (constellations of belief-forming mechanisms, together with characteristic background assumptions and sets of defeaters), gives an account of what it is to rationally engage in such a practice, and then argues that at least the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of Christian religious experiences fulfills those requirements. If we think of the broad doxastic practices we currently employ, we see that some of them can be justified by the use of other practices. The practice of science, for example, reduces mostly to the practices of sense-perception, deductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning (memory and testimony also make contributions, of course). The justificatory status the practice gives to its product beliefs derives from those more basic practices. Most, however, cannot be so reduced. How are they justified, then? It seems that they cannot be justified non-circularly, that is, without the use of premises derived from the practices themselves. Our only justification for continuing to trust these practices is that they are firmly established, interwoven with other practices and projects of ours, and have “stood the test of time” by producing mostly consistent sets of beliefs. They produce a sufficiently consistent set of beliefs if they don’t produce massive, unavoidable contradictions on central matters, either internally, or with the outputs of other equally well-established practices. If that’s all there is to be said about our ordinary practices, then we ought to extend the same status to other practices that have the same features. He then argues that the Christian practice of belief-formation on the basis of religious experience does have those features. Like Plantinga, he admits that such an argument might be equally available to other religious practices; it all depends on whether the practice in question generates massive and unavoidable contradictions, on central matters, either internally, or with other equally well-established practices. To undermine this argument, one would have to show either that Alston’s criteria for rationality of a practice are too permissive, or that religious practices never escape massive contradictions.

Both Plantinga’s and Alston’s defense of the epistemic value of religious experiences turn crucially on some degree of similarity with sense-experience. But they are not simple arguments from analogy; not just any similarities will do to make the positive argument, and not just any dissimilarities will do to defeat the argument. The similarities or dissimilarities need to be epistemologically relevant. It is not enough, for example, to show that religious experiences do not typically allow for independent public verification, unless one wants to give up on other perfectly respectable practices, like rational intuition, that also lack that feature.

The two most important defeaters on the table for claims of the epistemic authority of religious experience are the fact of religious diversity, and the availability of naturalistic explanations for religious experiences. Religious diversity is a prima facie defeater for the veridicality of religious experiences in the same way that wildly conflicting eyewitness reports undermine each other. If the reports are at all similar, then it may be reasonable to conclude that there is some truth to the testimony, at least in broad outline. A version of this objection is the argument from divine hiddenness (cf. Lovering 2013). If God exists, and shows himself to some people in religious experiences, then the fact that he doesn’t do so for more people, more widely distributed, requires some explanation. Axtell provides another version of that objection. He argues that to insist that one’s own religious convictions are true in the face of the diversity of religions is to reason counter-inductively, and is therefore irrational. The reasoning is counter-inductive because your own convictions come from the same kinds of epistemic sources (investment in testimonial authority) as those you deem to be wrong, so if you are right, it is just a matter of luck. But if two eyewitness reports disagree on the most basic facts about what happened, then it seems that neither gives you good grounds for any beliefs about what happened. It certainly seems that the contents of religious-experience reports are radically different from one another. Some subjects of religious experiences report experience of nothingness as the ultimate reality, some a vast impersonal consciousness in which we all participate, some an infinitely perfect, personal creator. To maintain that one’s own religious experiences are veridical, one would have to a) find some common core to all these experiences, such that in spite of differences of detail, they could reasonably be construed as experiences of the same reality, or b) insist that one’s own experiences are veridical, and that therefore those of other traditions are not veridical. The first is difficult to manage, in the face of the manifest differences across religions. Nevertheless, John Hick (1989) develops a view of that kind, making use of a Kantian two-worlds epistemology. The idea is that the object of these experiences, in itself, is one and the same reality, but it is experienced phenomenally by different people differently. Thus, is possible to see how one and the same object can be experienced in ways that are completely incompatible with one another. This approach is only as plausible as the Kantian framework itself is. Jerome Gellman (2001) proposes a similar idea, without the Kantian baggage. Solutions like these leave the problem untouched: If the different practices produce experiences the contents of which are inconsistent with one another, one of the practices must be unreliable. Alston (1991) and Plantinga (2000) develop the second kind of answer. The general strategy is to argue that, from within a tradition, a person acquires epistemic resources not available to those outside the tradition, just as travelling to the heart of a jungle allows one to see things that those who have not made the journey can’t see. As a result, even if people in other traditions can make the same argument, it is still reasonable to say that some are right and the others are wrong. The things that justify my beliefs still justify them, even if you have comparable resources justifying a contrary view.

Naturalistic explanations for religious experiences are thought to undermine their epistemic value because, if the naturalistic explanation is sufficient to explain the experience, we have no grounds for positing anything beyond that naturalistic cause. Freud (1927) and Marx (1876/1977) are frequently held up as offering such explanations. Freud claims that religious experiences can be adequately explained by psychological mechanisms having their root in early childhood experience and psychodynamic tensions. Marx similarly attributes religious belief in general to materialistic economic forces. Both claim that, since the hidden psychological or economic explanations are sufficient to explain the origins of religious belief, there is no need to suppose, in addition, that the beliefs are true. Freud’s theory of religion has few adherents, even among the psychoanalytically inclined, and Marx’s view likewise has all but been abandoned, but that is not to say that something in the neighborhood might not be true. More recently, neurological explanations of religious experience have been put forward as reasons to deny the veridicality of the experiences. Events in the brain that occur during meditative states and other religious experiences are very similar to events that happen during certain kinds of seizures, or with certain kinds of mental disorders, and can also be induced with drugs. Therefore, it is argued, there is nothing more to religious experiences than what happens in seizures, mental disorders, or drug experiences. Some who are studying the neurological basis of religious experience do not infer that they are not veridical (see, e.g., d’Aquili and Newberg 1999), but many do. Guthrie (1995), for example, argues that religion has its origin in our tendency to anthropomorphize phenomena in our vicinity, seeing agency where there is none.

There are general problems with all kinds of naturalistic explanations as defeaters. First of all, as Gellman (2001) points out, most such explanations (like the psychoanalytic and socio-political ones) are put forward as hypotheses, not as established facts. The proponent assumes that the experiences are not veridical, then casts around for an explanation. This is not true of the neurological explanations, but they face another kind of weakness noted by Ellwood (1999): every experience, whatever its source, is accompanied by a corresponding neurological state. To argue that the experience is illusory because there is a corresponding brain state is fallacious. The same reasoning would lead us to conclude that sensory experiences are illusory, since in each sensory experience, there is some corresponding neurological state that is just like the state that occurs in the corresponding hallucination. The proponent of the naturalistic explanation as a defeater owes us some reason to believe that his or her argument is not just another skeptical argument from the veil of perception.

One further epistemological worry accompanies religious experience. James claimed that, while mystical experiences proved authoritative grounds for belief in the person experiencing them, they cannot give grounds for a person to whom the experience is reported. In other words, my experience is evidence for me, but not for you. Bovens (2012) gives a modern expansion and explanation of this claim. The claim can be understood in a variety of ways, depending on the kind of normativity that attaches to the purported evidential relation. Some (see Oakes 1976, for example) have claimed that religious experiences epistemically can necessitate belief; that is, anyone who has the experience and doesn’t form the corresponding belief is making an epistemic mistake, much like a person who, in normal conditions, refuses to believe his or her eyes. More commonly, defenders of the epistemic value of religious experience claim that the experiences make it epistemically permissible to form the belief, but you may also be justified in not forming the belief. The testimony of other people about what they have experienced is much the same. In some cases, a person would be unjustified in rejecting the testimony of others, and in other cases, one would be justified in accepting it, but need not accept it. This leaves us with three possibilities, on the assumption that the subject of the experience is justified in forming a religious belief on the basis of his or her experience, and that he or she tells someone else about it: the testimony might provide compelling evidence for the hearer, such that he or she would be unjustified in rejecting the claim; the testimony might provide non-compelling justification for the hearer to accept the claim; or the testimony might fail to provide any kind of grounds for the hearer to accept the claim. When a subject makes a claim on the basis of an ordinary experience, it might fall into any one of these three categories, depending on the claim’s content and the epistemic situation of the hearer. The most natural thing to say about religious experience claims is that they work the same way (on the assumption that they give the subject of the experience, who is making the claim, any justification for his or her beliefs). James, and some others after him, claim that testimony about religious experiences cannot fall under either of the first two categories. If that’s true, it must be because of something special about the nature of the experiences. If we assume that the experiences cannot be shown a priori to be defective somehow, and that religious language is intelligible—and if we do not make these assumptions, then the question of religious testimony doesn’t even arise—then it must be because the evidential value of the experience is so small that it cannot survive transmission to another person; that is, it must be that in the ordinary act of reporting an experience to someone else, there is some defeater at work that is always stronger than whatever evidential force the experience itself has. While there are important differences between ordinary sense-experience and religious experience (clarity of the experience, amount of information it contains, presence of competing explanations, and the like), it is not clear whether the differences are great enough to disqualify religious testimony always and everywhere.

Just as there are a variety of religions, each with its own claims about the nature of reality, there are a variety of objects and states of affairs that the subjects of these experiences claim to be aware of. Much analytic philosophy of religion has been done in Europe and the nations descended from Europe, so much of the discussion has been in terms of God as conceived of in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. In those traditions, the object of religious experiences is typically God himself, understood as an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, free, and perfectly good spirit. God, for reasons of his own, reveals himself to people, some of them unbidden (like Moses, Muhammad, and Saint Paul), and some because they have undertaken a rigorous practice to draw closer to him (like the mystics). To say that an experience comes unbidden is not to say that nothing the subject has done has prepared her, or primed her, for the experience (see Luhrmann 2012); it is only to claim that the subject has not undertaken any practice aimed at producing a religious experience. In such experiences, God frequently delivers a message at the same time, but he need not. He is always identifiable as the same being who revealed himself to others in the same tradition. Other experiences can be of angels, demons, saints, heaven, hell, or other religiously significant objects.

In other traditions, it is not necessarily a personal being who is the object of the experience, or even a positive being at all. In the traditions that find their origin in the Indian subcontinent—chiefly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—the object of religious experiences is some basic fact or feature of reality, rather than some entity separate from the universe. In the orthodox Hindu traditions, one may certainly have an experience of a god or some other supernatural entity (like Arjuna’s encounter with Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita), but a great many important kinds of experiences are of Brahman, and its identity with the self. In Yoga, which is based in the Samkhya understanding of the nature of things, the mystical practice of yoga leads to a calming and stilling of the mind, which allows the yogi to apprehend directly that he or she is not identical to, or even causally connected with, the physical body, and this realization is what liberates him or her from suffering.

In Theravada Buddhism, the goal of meditation is to “see things as they are,” which is to see them as unsatisfactory, impermanent, and not-self (Gowans 2003, 191). The meditator, as he or she makes progress along the way, sheds various delusions and attachments. The last one to go is the delusion that he or she is a self. To see this is to see all of reality as made up of sequences of momentary events, each causally dependent on the ones that went before. There are no abiding substances, and no eternal souls. Seeing reality that way extinguishes the fires of craving, and liberates the meditator from the necessity of rebirth (Laumakis 2008, 158–161). Seeing things as they are involves removing from the mind all the delusions that stand in the way of such seeing, which is done by meditation practices that develop the meditator’s mastery of his or her own mind. The type of meditation that brings this mastery and allows the meditator to see the true nature of things is called Vipassana (insight) meditation. It typically involves some object of meditation, which can be some feature of the meditator him- or herself, some feature of the physical or mental world, or some abstraction, which then becomes the focus of the meditator’s concentration and examination. In the end, it is hoped, the meditator will see in the object the unsatisfactory and impermanent nature of things and that there is no self to be found in them. At the moment of that insight, nirvana is achieved. While the experience of nirvana is essentially the realization of a kind of insight, it is also accompanied by other experiential elements, especially of the cessation of negative mental states. Nirvana is described in the Buddhist canon as the extinction of the fires of desire. The Theravada tradition teaches other kinds of meditation that can help the meditator make progress, but the final goal can’t be achieved without vipassana meditation.

In the Mahayana Buddhist traditions, this idea of the constantly fluctuating nature of the universe is extended in various ways. For some, even those momentary events that make up the flow of the world are understood to be empty of inherent existence (the idea of inherent existence is understood differently in different traditions) to the point that what one sees in the enlightenment experience is the ultimate emptiness ( sunyata ) of all things. In the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism, this is understood as emptiness of external existence; that is, to see things as they are is to see them as all mind-dependent. In the Zen school of Mahayana Buddhism, the enlightenment experience ( kensho ) reveals that reality contains no distinctions or dualities. Since concepts and language always involve distinctions, which always involve duality, the insight so gained cannot be achieved conceptually or expressed linguistically. In all Mahayana schools, what brings enlightenment is direct realization of sunyata as a basic fact about reality.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in the Chinese traditions. The idea of religious experience seems to be almost completely absent in the Confucian tradition; the social world looms large, and the idea of an ultimate reality that needs to be experienced becomes much less prominent. Before the arrival of Buddhism in China, Confucianism was primarily a political and ethical system, with no particular concern with the transcendent (though people who identified themselves as Confucians frequently engaged in Chinese folk religious practices). Nevertheless, meditation (and therefore something that could be called “religious experience”) did come to play a role in Confucian practice in the tenth century, as Confucian thought began to be influenced by Buddhist and Daoist thought. The resulting view is known as Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism retains the Mencian doctrine that human beings are by nature good, but in need of purification. Since goodness resides in every person, then examination of oneself should reveal the nature of goodness, through the experience of the vital force within ( qi ). The form of meditation that arises from this line of thought (“quiet sitting” or “sitting and forgetting”) are very like Buddhist vipassana meditation, but there is no value placed on any particular insight gained, though one can experience the principle of unity ( li ) behind the world. Success is measured in gradual moral improvement.

The Daoist ideal is to come to an understanding of the Dao, the fundamental nature of reality that explains all things in the world, and live according to it. Knowledge of the Dao is essential to the good life, but this knowledge cannot be learned from discourses, or transmitted by teaching. It is only known by experiential acquaintance. The Dao gives the universe a kind of grain, or flow, going against which causes human difficulty. The good human life is then one that respects the flow of Dao, and goes along with it. This is what is meant by “life in accordance with nature,” and is the insight behind the Daoist admonition of wu wei, sometimes glossed as “actionless action.” By paying attention to reality as it presents itself, a person can learn what the Dao is, and can experience unity with it. This picture of reality, along with the picture of how one can come to know it, heavily influenced the development of Ch’an Buddhism, which became Zen.

All of the same epistemological problems that arise for theism will also arise for these other traditions, though in different forms. That is, one can ask of experiences of Brahman, Sunyata, the Dao, and anything else that is the object of religious experience whether there is any reason to think the experience is veridical. One can also ask whether testimony about those experiences carries the same weight as ordinary experience. Naturalistic explanations can also be offered to these experiences. It is equally true that the responses that have been offered to these objections in a theistic context are also available to defenders of non-theistic religious experience.

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• Moser, Paul, 2008. The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2020. Understanding Religious Experience: from Conviction to Life’s Meaning, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Netland, Harold A., 2022. Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God: the Evidential Force of Divine Encounters , Grand Rapids: Baker Books.
• Nielsen, Kai, 1985. Philosophy and Atheism , New York: Prometheus Books.
• Oakes, Robert A., 1976, “Religious Experience and Rational Certainty,” Religious Studies , 12(3): 311–318.
• Otto, Rudolf, 1923. The Idea of the Holy , John W. Harvey (trans.), London: Cambridge University Press.
• Phillips, D. Z., 1970. “Religious Beliefs and Language Games,” Ratio , 12: 26–46.
• Plantinga, Alvin, 1981, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Noûs , 15: 41–51.
• –––, 2000, Warranted Christian Belief , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Rainey, Lee Dian, 2010. Confucius and Confucianism: the Essentials , New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Saver, Jeffrey L., and John Rabin, 1997. “The Neural Substrates of Religious Experience,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry , 9: 498–510.
• Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1998. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers , Richard Crouter (ed.), New York: Cambridge.
• Swinburne, Richard, 1979. The Existence of God , New York: Clarendon Press.
• Taylor, Rodney L., 1990. The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism , Albany: SUNY Press.
• Wainwright, William J., 1981. Mysticism: A Study of its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications , Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Webb, Mark Owen, 2015. A Comparative Doxastic-Practice Epistemology of Religious Experience , New York: Springer.
• Wettstein, Howard, 2012. The Significance of Religious Experience , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1978. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief , Cyril Barrett (ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Yandell, Keith E., 1993. The Epistemology of Religious Experience , New York: Cambridge University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Religious Experience Resources , by Wesley Wildman, Boston University.

empiricism: logical | hiddenness of God | James, William | mysticism | perception: epistemological problems of | religion: epistemology of | religious diversity | testimony: epistemological problems of

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Essay on Religious Experience

Students are often asked to write an essay on Religious Experience in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Religious Experience

Understanding religious experience.

Religious experience is a personal encounter with the divine or sacred. It is a feeling or perception that someone has when they come in contact with a higher power. This could be God, spirits, or other supernatural beings. These experiences are often very powerful and can change a person’s life.

Types of Religious Experiences

There are many types of religious experiences. Some people might hear a voice, see a vision, or feel a sudden sense of peace. Others might have dreams or feel a strong pull towards a certain faith. Each person’s experience is unique and personal.

Impact of Religious Experiences

Religious experiences can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can lead to a stronger faith, a change in behavior, or a new understanding of the world. Some people might even decide to dedicate their lives to their faith after having a religious experience.

Interpreting Religious Experiences

Interpreting religious experiences can be tricky. Some people might see them as proof of their faith, while others might see them as psychological events. It’s important to remember that religious experiences are personal and can mean different things to different people.

In conclusion, religious experiences are deeply personal events that can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can lead to a stronger faith, a change in behavior, or a new understanding of the world. Everyone’s experience is unique and should be respected.

250 Words Essay on Religious Experience

What is a religious experience.

A religious experience is a special moment when a person feels a deep connection with a higher power. This higher power could be God, a spirit, or any divine being. These experiences are often very personal and can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can happen in different ways. Some people might have a religious experience during prayer, while others might have one while looking at nature.

There are many types of religious experiences. For instance, some people might have a ‘mystical experience’. This is when they feel a deep sense of unity with the universe. Some people might have a ‘conversion experience’. This is when they change their beliefs or their way of life because of a religious experience. Other people might have a ‘miracle experience’. This is when they believe that something impossible has happened because of the power of God.

Religious experiences can change a person’s life. They can make a person feel more peaceful, happy, and hopeful. They can also make a person feel more connected to other people and to the world around them. Some people might start to live in a different way after a religious experience. They might become kinder, more loving, or more understanding.

In conclusion, a religious experience is a powerful moment of connection with a higher power. It can happen in many different ways and can have a big impact on a person’s life. It is a deeply personal and often life-changing event.

500 Words Essay on Religious Experience

A religious experience is a special event or moment in a person’s life when they feel a strong connection to a higher power. This higher power could be God, a spirit, or a divine being. These experiences can vary greatly from person to person. Some people might see or hear things that others cannot. Others may have a deep feeling of peace and love. These experiences can happen anywhere, anytime – during prayer, in a dream, or even when simply looking at nature.

There are many types of religious experiences. One type is a “vision”. This is when a person sees something that others cannot. It could be an image of a holy person or a message from God. Another type is a “dream”. Many people believe that God or spirits can speak to them in their dreams.

A third type is a “mystical” experience. This is a feeling of being one with the universe or God. It is often described as a deep sense of peace and love. Lastly, there’s a “conversion” experience. This is when a person decides to change their beliefs or way of life because of a religious experience.

Effects of Religious Experiences

Religious experiences can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can change how a person thinks and behaves. For example, a person who has a religious experience might decide to be kinder to others. They might also start to pray more often or read religious texts.

Religious experiences can also give people hope and comfort. If someone is going through a hard time, a religious experience might make them feel better. It can give them the strength to keep going.

Understanding Religious Experiences

Religious experiences are personal and unique to each person. It’s important to respect everyone’s experiences, even if they are different from our own. Some people might not believe in religious experiences. That’s okay too. Everyone has the right to their own beliefs.

In conclusion, religious experiences are special moments when people feel a strong connection to a higher power. They can take many forms and have a big impact on a person’s life. Whether you believe in them or not, they are an important part of many people’s lives.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Religious Business
• Essay on Religious Beliefs And Practices
• Essay on Religion’s Impact On Society

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Religious Experience, Conversion, and Creativity: An Essay

• By Clarifying Catholicism

Essays About Religion: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

Essays about religion include delicate issues and tricky subtopics. See our top essay examples and prompts to guide you in your essay writing.

With over 4,000 religions worldwide, it’s no wonder religion influences everything. It involves faith, lessons on humanity, spirituality, and moral values that span thousands of years. For some, it’s both a belief and a cultural system. As it often clashes with science, laws, and modern philosophies, it’s also a hot debate topic. Religion is a broad subject encompassing various elements of life, so you may find it a challenging topic to write an essay about it.

1. Wisdom and Longing in Islam’s Religion by Anonymous on Ivypanda.com

2. consequences of following religion blindly essay by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 3. religion: christians’ belief in god by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 4. mecca’s influence on today’s religion essay by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 5. religion: how buddhism views the world by anonymous on ivypanda.com , 1. the importance of religion, 2. pros and cons of having a religion, 3. religions across the world, 4. religion and its influence on laws, 5. religion: then and now, 6. religion vs. science, 7. my religion.

“Portraying Muslims as radical religious fanatics who deny other religions and violently fight dissent has nothing to do with true Islamic ideology. The knowledge that is presented in Islam and used by Muslims to build their worldview system is exploited in a misinterpreted form. This is transforming the perception of Islam around the world as a radical religious system that supports intolerance and conflicts.”

The author discusses their opinion on how Islam becomes involved with violence or terrorism in the Islamic states. Throughout the essay, the writer mentions the massive difference between Islam’s central teachings and the terrorist groups’ dogma. The piece also includes a list of groups, their disobediences, and punishments.

This essay looks at how these brutalities have nothing to do with Islam’s fundamental ideologies. However, the context of Islam’s creeds is distorted by rebel groups like The Afghan mujahideen, Jihadis, and Al-Qa’ida. Furthermore, their activities push dangerous narratives that others use to make generalized assumptions about the entire religion. These misleading generalizations lead to misunderstandings amongst other communities, particularly in the western world. However, the truth is that these terrorist groups are violating Islamic doctrine.

“Following religion blindly can hinder one’s self-actualization and interfere with self-development due to numerous constraints and restrictions… Blind adherence to religion is a factor that does not allow receiving flexible education and adapting knowledge to different areas.”

The author discusses the effects of blindly following a religion and mentions that it can lead to difficulties in self-development and the inability to live independently. These limitations affect a person’s opportunity to grow and discover oneself.  Movies like “ The Da Vinci Code ” show how fanatical devotion influences perception and creates constant doubt. 

“…there are many religions through which various cultures attain their spiritual and moral bearings to bring themselves closer to a higher power (deity). Different religions are differentiated in terms of beliefs, customs, and purpose and are similar in one way or the other.”

The author discusses how religion affects its followers’ spiritual and moral values and mentions how deities work in mysterious ways. The essay includes situations that show how these supreme beings test their followers’ faith through various life challenges. Overall, the writer believes that when people fully believe in God, they can be stronger and more capable of coping with the difficulties they may encounter.

“Mecca represents a holy ground that the majority of the Muslims visit; and is only supposed to be visited by Muslims. The popularity of Mecca has increased the scope of its effects, showing that it has an influence on tourism, the financial aspects of the region and lastly religion today.”

The essay delves into Mecca’s contributions to Saudi Arabia’s tourism and religion. It mentions tourism rates peaking during Hajj, a 5-day Muslim pilgrimage, and visitors’ sense of spiritual relief and peace after the voyage. Aside from its tremendous touristic benefits, it also brings people together to worship Allah. You can also check out these essays about values and articles about beliefs .

“Buddhism is seen as one of the most popular and widespread religions on the earth the reason of its pragmatic and attractive philosophies which are so appealing for people of the most diversified backgrounds and ways of thinking .”

To help readers understand the topic, the author explains Buddhism’s worldviews and how Siddhatta Gotama established the religion that’s now one of the most recognized on Earth. It includes teachings about the gift of life, novel thinking, and philosophies based on his observations. Conclusively, the author believes that Buddhism deals with the world as Gotama sees it.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

7 Prompts on Essays About Religion

Religion’s importance is embedded in an individual or group’s interpretation of it. They hold on to their faith for various reasons, such as having an idea of the real meaning of life and offering them a purpose to exist. Use this prompt to identify and explain what makes religion a necessity. Make your essay interesting by adding real-life stories of how faith changed someone’s life.

Although religion offers benefits such as positivity and a sense of structure, there are also disadvantages that come with it. Discuss what’s considered healthy and destructive when people follow their religion’s gospels and why. You can also connect it to current issues. Include any personal experience you have.

Religion’s prevalence exhibits how it can significantly affect one’s daily living. Use this prompt to discuss how religions across the world differ from one another when it comes to beliefs and if traditions or customs influence them. It’s essential to use relevant statistical data or surveys in this prompt to support your claims and encourage your readers to trust your piece.

There are various ways religion affects countries’ laws as they adhere to moral and often humanitarian values. Identify each and discuss how faith takes part in a nation’s decision-making regarding pressing matters. You can focus on one religion in a specific location to let the readers concentrate on the case. A good example is the latest abortion issue in the US, the overturning of “Wade vs. Roe.” Include people’s mixed reactions to this subject and their justifications.

In this essay, talk about how the most widespread religions’ principles or rituals changed over time. Then, expound on what inspired these changes.  Add the religion’s history, its current situation in the country, and its old and new beliefs. Elaborate on how its members clash over these old and new principles. Conclude by sharing your opinion on whether the changes are beneficial or not.

There’s a never-ending debate between religion and science. List the most controversial arguments in your essay and add which side you support and why. Then, open discourse about how these groups can avoid quarreling. You can also discuss instances when religion and science agreed or worked together to achieve great results. 

Use this prompt if you’re a part of a particular religion. Even if you don’t believe in faith, you can still take this prompt and pick a church you’ll consider joining. Share your personal experiences about your religion. Add how you became a follower, the beliefs that helped you through tough times, and why you’re staying as an active member in it. You can also speak about miraculous events that strengthen your faith. Or you can include teachings that you disagree with and think needs to be changed or updated.

For help with your essay, check out our top essay writing tips !

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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13 The Argument from Religious Experience

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• Published: March 2004
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Large numbers of people have religious experiences in the sense of experiences which seem to them to be experiences of God. It is a basic epistemological principle, the principle of credulity, that — in absence of counter-evidence — we should believe that things are as they seem to be. The only kind of counter-evidence which would tend to show a religious experience not to be veridical would be any evidence tending to show that there is no God. In the absence of any such evidence, any religious experience is evidence for the subject (and via his testimony, for others) of the existence of God.

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Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Religious Beliefs — My Personal Experience with God: A Reflection

My Personal Experience with God: a Reflection

• Categories: Faith God Religious Beliefs

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Published: Aug 4, 2023

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Introduction, finding meaning in god, reflecting on my experience with god, works cited.

• The Bible. New International Version. Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com.

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Essay – Corporate Religious Experiences

November 9, 2018.

Corporate religious experiences are less reliable than individual religious experiences. Discuss (40 marks)

This essay was written in forty minutes in the actual exam in June 2018 and obtained full marks (40/40). PB

It can be argued that corporate religious experiences are less reliable than individual religious experiences such as mystical, numinous or conversion, as they can be subject to mass hysteria. William James would agree that they are less reliable as he strongly argues that conversion experiences can be proven for validity, therefore are reliable. On the other hand, scholars such as Schleiermacher and Swinburne would argue that all religious experiences are equally reliable, as this is an extremely weak view to take as religious experiences should be taken on case by case basis and it is dangerous to make blanket statements such as one is more reliable than the other. In fact it can be even argued that no religious experience is reliable and can be proven and explained by psychology. Therefore it is wrong to claim that corporate religious experiences are less reliable than others, as they should all be judged case by case.

Notice how easy it is to reconstruct the question from this opening paragraph, even if we didn’t have it in front of us – the sign of a potential top grade answer.

  Corporate religious experiences are those that happen to a group of people as a body. An example of a corporate religious experience is the story of Pentecost as the crowds all felt the same mighty winds and aw the same fountains of fire. In addition a more recent corporate experience is the Toronto blessing, where people all felt the same euphoric sensation and experienced uncontrollable laughter. A case can be made that corporate religious experiences such as these are reliable as there is more than one person claiming that this happened, although this is an extremely weal argument, as who says they aren’t all lying? This can be seen with the corporate religious experiences of six teenagers and children in Medjugorge (former Yugolsavia, June 1981), where they claimed to keep seeing the virgin Mary and she would deliver messages to them such as ‘the world needs more prayer’. However, the Catholic church itself is extremely sceptical of this religious experience and warns others to be as well., therefore demonstrating that corporate experiences perhaps are less reliable. However, these explanations may have a neuropsychologcial explanation particularly the Toronto blessing, as Michael Persinger’s God helmet demonstrated that experiences can be caused by being in the presence of magnetic fields and not bought about by God. Thus demonstrating corporate religious experiences are not reliable. But this objection can be sued for individual religious experiences, highlighting that all types if religious experiences are equally as reliable or unreliable as each other.

Friedrich Schlieremacher takes the extremely controversial view that all types of religious experiences are self-authenticating therefore receive absolutely no testing to see if they are reliable or not. Thus meaning he would completely disagree with the claim that corporate religious experiences are less reliable as they are all reliable in his eyes. However, this is an extremely dangerous view to take as it means that those experiences which may have occurred from drugs or other theories are considered valid religious experiences, when actually they contain no religious origin at all. Furthermore, the Catholic church presents a strong critique of Schleiermacher’s view stating that religious experiences do need to be tested in some way, perhaps against Scripture or biblical teachings, to make sure religion is not damaged by those caused by other means. This adds validity to the idea that different types of religious experiences are not more or less reliable than each other but the reliability should be taken on each individual experience.

On the other hand, William James would  argue that conversion experiences are perhaps more reliable than corporate religious experiences, as James argued that with conversion experiences you can see a direct change in the subject after the experience therefore meaning it can be proven to be reliable. As James wanted to take an objective account to see if conversion experiences were reliable, therefore strengthening his conclusion. In addition, James identified five main characteristics of religious experiences that we can identify in the subject. These are: ineffability, unable to express it in our everyday language, noetic quality, containing a sense of a truth, transience, lasts a short time but effects are lasting, and passivity, so it happens outside yourself. This therefore means that James has provided a framework in which we can test people’s religious experiences against.  However, this does still not mean they can be 100% reliable as those experiences caused by psychological factors may also portray the same four qualities, therefore may prove an experience has taken place even though it is not necessarily religious. However, James would argue against this and say that we can see if it was religious or not by seeing if the person now portrays characteristics of the holy spirit, such as listed in the Bible , ‘the holy spirit is joy, love, peace’, therefore if you can now see those characteristics in a person, which you could not before, suggests that a religious experience has taken place nd it can be said to be reliable. Although James’ argument that conversion is more reliable because we can observe the effects is convincing it doesn’t completely rule out any other explanations. For example, some people may be more prone to these experiences if they have had a traumatic upbringing. Therefore psychology has an answer and not James.

Feuerbach puts forward a convincing argument to disprove the concept of religious experiences as he states that people often invent this God figure in their own minds in order to fill the gap. For example, if someone didn’t have a father figure growing up they may invent a parental ‘god’ like figure in their heads to fill that gap. Thus weakening James’ argument that conversion experiences are reliable, as people may think its God talking to them but really it’s their own human nature. This therefore demonstrates that James’ is wrong in claiming individual experiences are any more reliable than corporate as they are about as reliable as each other.

In judgement, corporate religious experiences are not less reliable than individual ones, as it depends on the individual unique experience and you should judge its reliability solely on the experiences and not whether it is a corporate or individual one. In addition, perhaps no type of religious experience is reliable due to the psychological explanations which are now available.

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Religious Experience - Edexel A2

Religious Experience Essay

“ Religious experience does not provide a secure basis for belief in God.” Analyse and discuss this claim.

Few topics in philosophy and theology cause as much disagreement as religious experience. With its different definitions and numerous types, anything from seeing the Virgin Mary to being relaxed at the sound of your favourite piece of classical music, religious experience has attracted the attention of many scholars, both pro and anti religious experience.

Although they can take many different forms, there are several things that link different types of religious experience, although they do not always appear in every experience. They are a personal experience, especially the ones that involve some sort of divine influence. They also have a direct and prominent effect on the person’s life. If a person had experienced a near-death experience, and found that they had experienced a pleasant afterlife, then they would be more likely to be relaxed about death. Indeed, there are certain scholars who believe that one can only say that a religious experience has taken place, if there is a change in life. For example, Saul, commonly called Paul, had a famous conversion on the Road to Damascus.

All religious experiences, however, are convincing for the individual; no matter what the mitigating evidence, or how illogical the experience, the individual normally truly believes what they have seen or felt.

One of the greatest theologians of the age, Richard Swinburne, argues in favour of religious experience, including a clumative argument for the existence of God from the experiences. When one looks at the arguments from design, from ontology and from cosmology, one is looking at a particular part of existence. Swinburne argues that it is religious experiences that provide the best argument for the existence of God. By personally experiencing God’s existence in one’s life, it can bring about a more convincing belief in God than an inferred argument. When all of the arguments are cululated, an argument is formed which makes for a reasonable possibility for God’s existence.

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Swinburne feels that religious experiences can be put in to two main groups, public and private ones. Public religious experiences are ones where God’s actions are seen in the world at large, or in large scale events. When people argue for the existence of God from a design argument, they will often refer to seeing God’s wonder at work in the universe. Whilst the atheist may see nothing more than a starry sky, a theist may look at this and see the wonder of creation; a creation so perfect that it could only have come from God. The other group, private experiences, are ones that are for a certain individual only. They may include experiences such as seeing the Virgin Mary, or the feeling of a ‘presence’ that you associate as being religious. Although not always describable, the experiences are nearly always a lot more convincing to those who experience them, than to someone hearing about them. A J Taylor argues that have the presence of God semi-permanently or permanently in one’s life also counts a religious experience; although not a singular event, God’s presence as a guide in one’s life can bring about a similar effect to a singular experience.

Caroline Franks Davis broadly agrees with Swinburne, taking the view, in The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, that with all the inferred arguments for God’s existence, the probability is roughly equal for God’s existence as not.

Religious experiences, however, may tip the balance in favor of God’s existence.

C F Davis is most recognized in the field of religious experience for her three challenges over religious experiences, aimed mainly at Swinburne’s principles of testimony and credulity.

The description related challenge challenges the experience on the basis of self-contradiction, or the inherent difficulty that surrounds the use of language as a communicating tool. Since one person may not necessarily use language the same way as another, the use of language as a communication tool is flawed. The subject related challenge challenges the experience on the basis of the individual experiencing them, and the condition that they were in when they had the experience. If the person was under the influence, then their report may not hold as much weight as someone who had a religious experience when they were in a normal condition. However, a common rebuttal is that, just because someone is somehow mentally impaired, it does not nessecarly mean that what they experienced was not real. The third challenge is that of object related challenges, which challenges the existence of an object that was in the experience.

If someone said that they had experienced the Loch Ness monster, the objection may be on the grounds of the object related challenge. These challenges can be linked to objections to corporate religious experiences, where it is argued that people cannot know what the other people are feeling, on the basis of objections to understanding language, and the difficulties of expressing emotions and feelings in words.

Anthony Flew is also well-known for his objection to religious experiences, the vicious circle. Whilst perhaps the most relevant objections for long-term corporate experiences, the vicious circle challenge is one which questions the nature of the experience itself. As Flew says, the nature of religious experiences “seems to depend on the interest, background and expectations of those that have them, rather than anything separate and autonomous.” Religious experiences, according to Flew, only seem to reinforce our previously held beliefs, and should not be used for the basis of an argument for the existence of God. Despite C F Davis rejecting this argument, by saying that it is not easy to distinguish between an experience and its interpretation, it remains an important criticism for religious experience.

In Verities of Religious Experience , William James says: “Religion, therefore, as I ask you to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitudes.” This quite vague description includes nearly every experience where a person experiences an overwhelming emotional response to an event; this could even include listening to a favourite piece of music, or looking at an important picture. According to James, there are four markers of a mystical experience: ineffability, the impossibility of putting an experience accurately into words; noetic quality, intuitive states of insight or knowledge that cannot be reached by argument or reason; transiency, though the experience does not last for a long time, it alters life; passivity, the feeling of a person’s will being surrendered.

Although his definition of an experience is vague, his approach to identifying religious experiences is epically based, and is similar to more modern approaches, like those employed at the Hardy Institute. James also refers to the fruits of the experience being more important than the experience itself, a feeling that holds true with modern theologians.

If the objections are combined, then it appears that any religious experience can be objected to in some way: a person’s state, the language that they use, the experience, or the person themselves can all be used as an objection; Freud and Jung believed that religious belief was a neurosis, caused by the repressed love of the mother, or from “penis envy.” Hume took a less scientific route when he said that theists could not be truly trusted, as they are prone to lying, and are devoid of a “good sense, education and learning” to make sure that they are not fooling themselves.

In conclusion, if by a secure basis for belief, we mean a feeling of certainty, then religious experience will only boost the faith of those who believe, and strengthen the criticisms of those who do not believe in God. In short, the religious experience debate falls foul of Flew’s vicious circle.

Document Details

• Word Count 1310
• Page Count 4
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject Religious Studies & Philosophy

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Religious Experience Essay

This sample essay on Religious Experience Essay provides important aspects of the issue and arguments for and against as well as the needed facts. Read on this essay’s introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

The classic religious experience is a group of like-minded individuals who claim to have experienced the same thing, in the example given; the disciples claim to see Jesus after he had died on the cross. It is normally not believed by others and also some within the group.

The response tends to be that others tend not to believe your perception and experience. In John20, it was St.Thomas who disagreed with the other disciplines and stated,

“Unless I see the scars… I will not believe.”

This gives an example of one of one of many claims opposing religious experiences.

2) When saying that religious experiences can provide a “fountain of faith” means it can confirm someone’s faith and religion, making it more secure, or even making some believe in their own faith to a further extent.

It is a subjective comment.

3) Swinburne’s five types of religious experiences. Two being public and three private.

Public: * Personal interpretation – An individual sees God or God’s action in a public object or scene. I.e. Rainbow

* Breach of natural law – Examples such as people walking on water, a person appearing in a locked room, and turning water into wine. Less emphasis on personal interpretation here, although the sceptic maintains that whilst something inexplicable may have occurred, there is no need to attribute this to God.

Proficient in: Atheism

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Private: * Experiences which an individual can describe using normal language. E.g. Jacob’s vision of a ladder going up to heaven or the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Mary. There could be interpreted as psychologically explained rather than a divine explanation.

* Mystical experiences – The mystic may be the first to admit that normal language is not adequate to express what has happened.

* God is acting in his or her life. An individual may say, “God’s hand guided me” – although if pressed he or she would admit that there is no specific evidence for this.

4) Vardy criticizes Swinburne’s analysis by saying that it suffers from the defect of making religious experiences appear very similar to ordinary experiences. Vardy believes that he has little feeling for what Otto described as “the numinous” or “an apprehension of the wholly other”.

5) “Numinous” means something, which indicates or suggests the presence of God.

6) Swinburne says we should rely on reports on religious experience because of two principles:

* The principle of credulity – Cannot be sceptical – need to believe in what you see. Essentially no difference between reality and non-reality. Reasonably possible or probable to existence of God. What seems to be, we should believe. “How things seem to be is a good guide to how things are.”

* The principle of testimony – Swinburne’s second principle claims that it is reasonable to accept that other people normally tell the truth. The principle says that we should believe what people have said. It tends to circle round we should treat a religious experience as we would treat any other experience. “In the absence of special considerations the experiences of others are (probably) as they report them…”

7) Vardy opposes Swinburne’s two principles and draws a parallel with the sighting of UFO’s. He says that it may merely be misinterpreted. He uses the example of if he saw a UFO it could simply be a meteorological balloon or a hand glider at an odd angle. Also, claims to have seen the Lock Ness monster. The probability of this seems to be low, and therefore the quality of the statement must be proportionally high. Vardy essentially claims that not all religious statements are true according to Swinburne’s theory. Swinburne states that we should believe what we have been told; however if it is a misconception then surely it cannot be rendered a religious experience.

8) Caroline Davis is generally anti the reliability of religious experiences. Her decision is highlighted when Vardy says that she maintains that, while some challenges may have been force, the balance of probability rests with religious experience pointing beyond themselves to something that has actually been experienced. She believes that religious experiences are due to psychological states, or that they should be dismissed because they are relative to different cultures.

9) David Hay of the Oxford Centre for Religious Experience. His contributions to religious experiences is that he had conducted many interviews throughout the country under carefully controlled conditions and has found that a very high proportion of people claim to have had experiences of a power or presence beyond themselves.

10) Being a believer affects your position as the claims can be substantial and, if they could be justified then religious believers would indeed be able to rely on religious experience. The claims could misguide or mislead believers in advocating such extraordinary perceptions on God and how others perceive him via a religious experience.

11) Davis defends the use of religious experience, as she believes that

“senses of “presence” provide very strong evidence for broadly theists beliefs. this includes the claims that human beings have a “true self” beyond their everyday “phenomenal ego” and that this true self intimately related to the divine nature; that there is a holy power beyond the world of the senses…and that human beings can find their most profound satisfaction in a harmonious relation with this holy power”

She relates to religious believers as humans who truly believe in themselves and what experience they may of claimed of seeing, by doing so she defends the use of religious experience.

12) Vardy suggests that in order to distinguish between an individual who claims to have had the religious experience to the second problem, which is, the person who is informed of the experience. Firstly, the person who claims to have had a religious experience, how is it possible to separate:

* “God appeared at my window last night” from

* “It seemed to me that God appeared to me last night”?

Secondly, in the case of the person who is told about the experience, how does one separate:

* “God appeared to him or her last night” from

* “He or she thought that God appeared to him or her last night”?

Vardy suggests that if the individual who has the experience is satisfied about its truthfulness, should others be convinced by the same report.

This is important as there can be a series of claims being told, for example if I were to say that I had seen God last night and told my friend who then told a friend and then was passed on in this manner, the claim can be seen as false and bits extended making the claim seem almost as inevitable as a game of Chinese whispers, I feel that by distinguishing the two it helps separate true and false claims.

13) The tests that Vardy proposes that we apply to check weather religious experiences transpire, are as follows:

* To what extent has the person who believes to have had a religious experience, life changed and has it had a major influence on their life?

* Or does it fit in with other claims that have been made within are traditional reports and other things that we claim to know?

These tests will help distinguish between weather a claim is in fact true of false or weather it has made a development or transformed someone’s life in a major way.

14) I believe that religious experiences tend to occur within faith as it justifies it more so than it not to be. However, I do feel that in some occasions religious experiences can occur to make an impact on an individual to either become a believer in faith and religion or convert into a different religion, highlighted with the immense change in St.Paul after his intervene with God. It tends to stay within the boundaries of faith, as those who tend to respect and worship God, are rewarded with visual and sometimes physical enlightenments of religious experiences.

When it comes to affecting its credibility, I feel it proves it more, as we are more likely to believe someone who has believed in religion, faith and God for numerous amounts of years, to an individual who maybe an atheist or simply does not take any interest in religion. As a whole I personally wouldn’t rely on any conception of a religious experience until I have experienced it myself.

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William James Argument

William James was a philosopher and psychologist from New York City.

His book ‘ The Varieties of Religious Experience: a study in human nature’ summarises the author’s ‘Gifford Lectures’ (renowned lectures in natural theology- based on reason and ordinary experience) given in 1902 in Edinburgh - It has been argued to be the most important book ever written on the topic of religious experience.

In it, James aims to survey the various types of religious experience as a psychologist and to present the findings of this survey and its implications for philosophy. He used a variety of case studies of first-hand religious experience in the words of the people who told him their stories such as a homeless drunken man who “ seemed to feel some great and mighty presence. I did not know then what it was. I did learn afterwards that it was Jesus, the sinner’s friend. ” The man went on to become a preacher

Religious experience for James is at the heart of religion whereas religious teachings, practices and attitudes are ‘second hand’ religion. The experiences are true religion.

• James analysed forms of experience including conversion, prayer and saintliness
• He viewed conversion as a transformation from a divided or imperfect self (unhappy, conscious of being wrong) to a more unified consciousness (happy, knows right) – can be a sudden or gradual process

Much of his book concentrates on firsthand accounts of experiences however, sceptics view many of these are examples of psychological disorders. James saw them as central to understanding any religion.

His aim was to take an objective a stance as he could, to take accounts of religious experiences seriously and to make observations about them. James believed that all religious experiences indicated the probability of God, although as a pluralist, James does not directly speak of God but of the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘higher aspects’ of the world and the self. He was particularly interested in the effects of religious experience on people’s lives and believed that the validity of the experience rests upon the effects it produces e.g. are lives changed? This was his way of testing them.

He was more concerned with ‘does it work?’ as opposed to ‘is it true?’. He wanted to examine the experiences objectively and did not try to prove if they were true or false.

Therefore, James offers an argument for God in very general terms, the phenomena of religious experiences points to a higher order of reality.

The criteria for religious experience – the main arguments of The Varieties of Religious Experience

1.    In James’ view, the spiritual value of religious experience is not undone even if we can find a psychological explanation for the experiences. He rejected the view that religious experience was the result of a repressed or perverted sexuality (Freud’s suggestion) He saw this as an attempt to discredit religion by those who started with an antipathy towards it.

2.    He did not agree that there was a single feature of religious experience that defines it, but he understood it to be “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” i.e. humans have a feeling or ‘something there’

3.    The experiences of great religious figures can set patterns for the conventional believer to study. He cites examples of ‘saintliness’ in people such as St Teresa of Avila. He shows how such Christians can be strong people who help others to progress and for people to learn from

4.    He believed that religious experience was more important than focusing on a study of religious institutions i.e. the church as these were examples of secondary religion

James’ four criteria

James acknowledges the difficulty in defining religious experience so he proposed four criteria that he considered to be the characteristics of all religious and mystical experiences.

• Ineffable – experience beyond proper description – no adequate description can be given in words. Language limitations prevent description.
• Noetic – not just ‘feelings,’ but a deep and direct knowledge of God which could not have been achieved through reason alone. The ‘truth’ was revealed to them
• Transient – the experience is temporary and cannot be sustained, although its effects may last a long time. It can develop and deepen with subsequent experiences and the effects can last a lifetime
• Passive – experience not initiated by the mystic but rather they have a sense that something is acting upon them. The experience is controlled from outside themselves

His main conclusion: religious experience does not give proof of anything however it is reasonable to believe that there is a personal God who is interested in the world and individuals. It is not reasonable for anyone to reject clear evidence of religious experience just because they started form a position of scepticism

• Quantity: religion, based on the experience of its founders has been a powerful force in history and modern researchers such as David Hay suggest it is widespread
• Effects: the effects of these experiences are powerful and positive. They change the lives of communities and individuals in a way that it difficult to explain without reference to an outside agency such as God
• Similarities: there are considerable similarities between descriptions of religious experiences that would not be present if these experiences were made up
• There are many first-hand testimonies offered as evidence

Bertrand Russell asserted “ the fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth” – he argued that it might be possible for someone to be profoundly affected for the good by a story about a great hero, but this could happen even if the story were a myth and the hero was entirely fictional.

Antony Flew in ‘Theology and Falsification’ concluded that statements which cannot be tested empirically are meaningless. He would therefore reject James’ test of religious experience through its results in the life of individuals.

• His study is too subjective as he focuses more on the truth of the experience for the individual rather than if this relates to the idea of a God who exists in the ‘real world’
• He does not show that there really must be a God – he could have looked at other possible causes of a religious experience
• Believers in different faiths claim that their experiences prove the truth of their faith however, they cannot all be right
• Believers tend to interpret experiences in the light of their particular traditions, making them highly subjective and personal

Swinburne’s argument (1934-)

He suggests that there is no reason why claims to religious experience should be treated any differently to ordinary perceptual claims. He offers to supporting principles:

• The principle of credulity – we must accept what appears to be the case unless we have clear evidence to the contrary. The clear evidence might mean that you have good reason to doubt the person, you prove that God does not exist or you show the experience was not caused by God.
• The principle of testimony – unless we have positive evidence that they are misremembering or are untrustworthy, we should believe the testimony of the experience. He claims that “ other things being equal, we usually think that what others tell us that they perceive, probably happened”

The aims and main conclusions drawn by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience

• Draws on knowledge of psychology and neurology in accepting that religious experiences are psychological phenomena that occur in our brains
• This does not mean that they are just psychological
• They may well have a supernatural, as well as a spiritual element
• He bases this on his three key principles
• Empiricism – his case studies are empirical evidence of the effects of religious experience which provide us with clues as to the reality beyond what we see and hear
• Pluralism – his experiences in different faiths led him to conclude that they were similar. Those having experiences may be experiencing the same ultimate reality i.e. a Christian may see it as the presence of the Holy Spirit and a Hindu may see it differently.
• Pragmatism – he believed that the truth was not fixed and what is true is whatever has great value for us. Therefore, on observing the effects of religious experience, we have to conclude that there is truth to be found in religion

A  religious experience does not have to marked by a dramatic supernatural event, although it can be; the real test of what happened is the long-term change in the person.

Being a pragmatist, James deemed the truth of something to be determined by its practical effects and consequences.

A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Religious Experience

AQA Philosophy

10 mark question content

Corporeal visions are sensory experiences; religious experiences that appear to be sensed through the senses such as vision and sound. They are experienced in the same way as you would experience any natural object like a tree or an animal. Seen with the eye of the body, or other sense organs.

St Bernadette experiences visions of a small young lady claiming to be the virgin Mary. The visions led to the discovery of a spring of water which became the site of miracles (Lourdes).

Imaginative visions are seen in the mind, such as in a dream or in the imagination. They are ‘seen’ with the eye of the mind.

Joseph’s dream. An Angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, warning him of King Herod’s attempt to find and kill Jesus and telling Joseph to run away with Jesus and Mary to Egypt. They do so until Herod dies.

Intellectual visions are seen with the ‘eye of reason’. There is no image; there is an intellectual grasping of knowledge or understanding.

St Theresa of Avila had a vision of Christ but not with the eye of the body or mind/soul. Theresa says she ‘felt’ Jesus at her right hand, being a witness to all her actions. She claimed to that such an experience ‘illuminates the understanding’ and that, in her case, Jesus made himself ‘present to the soul’.

Rudolf Otto on Numinous experiences

Otto defined mystical religious experiences as “numinous”, deriving from the latin word ‘numen’ meaning divine power. It involves feelings of awe and wonder in the presence of an all-powerful being. It is an experience of something ‘Wholly other’ – completely different to anything else.

Otto thought too much focus had been put on the idea that God could be known through logical argument. He insisted numinous experiences were non-rational. This does not mean irrational, it means a way of knowing that doesn’t involve reasoning.

Otto uses language to describe the experience but insists that the feelings involved are unique and unlike anything ordinary. To emphasise this, he deliberately describes uses Latin or Greek words:

• Mysterium – the utter inexplicable indescribable mystery of the experience
• Tremendum – the awe and fear of being in the presence of an overwhelmingly superior being
• Fascinans – despite that fear, being strangely drawn to the experience

Otto claims Numinous experiences are the core of any religion ‘worthy of the name’. For Otto, it is fundamental to true religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with the divine. This means that Numinous religious experiences are the true core of religion, whereas the teachings and holy books and so on are not the true core of a religion.

William James on mystical experiences

James was a philosopher and a psychologist who claimed that religious experiences occur in different religions and have similar features. People who engage in practices to have religious experiences are often called ‘Mystics’. Their experiences are called ‘Mystical experiences’, meaning intense and totally immersive. They don’t just involve distorted visual experience, seeing images and visions or hearing voices. They are unlike anything in normal experience. They often involve a sense of unity with some kind of higher power or even with the universe itself.

James’ four criteria which characterise all mystical religious experiences:

• Ineffable – the experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words to accurately described.
• Noetic – some sort of knowledge or insight is gained
• Transient – the experience is temporary
• Passive – the experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen.

James says that the most useful descriptor of a mystical experience is that it “defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words”. It is ineffable. It has to be directly experienced to be appreciated. It’s like music or love in that regard. If someone has never felt love or heard music, they might find a musician or lover weak-minded or absurd, but that’s just because they lack the required experience. James saying this is true of those who dismiss religious experience too.

James’ pluralist argument for religious experience

James’ argument is that there must be an explanation of why these four criteria are found in religious experiences in different cultures across the world. This is an interesting point that comes out of James’ observations. It clearly can’t be chance. So, what is the reason for religious experiences having these similar features?

James’ explanation is that religious experiences really are coming from a higher spiritual reality. Writers such as W. Stace developed this argument much more explicitly, claiming that the universality of certain features of religious experiences is good evidence that they are real.

James concludes that mystical experiences are the core of religion, whereas teachings and practices were ‘second hand’ religion, i.e not what religion is really about. This makes James a pluralist, the view that all religions are true.

Paul Knitter is a pluralist who makes a similar argument about religious experiences. He points to a classic metaphor. Each religion is a well. If you get to the bottom a well (through mystical experience) you get down to the underground water that you then realise is also sourcing all the other wells, i.e. all the other religions.

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.

Walter Stace on mystical experiences

We typically have a sense that we are a subject – an individual with consciousness looking out onto an external world of objects which are distinct from us. This is called the subject-object distinction. Mystical experiences alter or even cause us to lose this sense of the multiplicity of objective (extrovertive) or the sense of self (introvertive) that divides us from the external world.

Extrovertive mystical experience is non-sensuous. The world of material objects is still seen but seen with non-sensuous unity. The division of the world into separate objects is dissolved and everything appears to be unified.

Introvertive mystical experience involves the transcendence of all sensory experience and our sense of self is replaced by mystical consciousness. We lose the sense that we are a self that is separate from the world. The normal intellect is not functioning; it is a non-intellectual experience.

• Unity of all consciousnesses into pure consciousness.
• Outside of space and time.
• Experience of the true reality.
• Peace, tranquillity, equanimity.
• Sacredness and divinity.
• Beyond intellect and logic.

Challenges verifying religious experiences & religious responses

Challenge #1: religious experiences are private.

Religious experiences are private, meaning they occur within people’s minds. Evidence must be publicly accessible, however. This means there is no way for anyone to test whether they are true. Even the person having the religious experience has no way to test whether it is actually true. So, there is no way to verify a religious experience.

Religious response: James’ pragmatism argument

Challenge #2 : the multiple claims issue.

Religious experiences have evidence against them – the religious experiences of other religions. Since different religions cannot all be true, religious experiences about different religions conflict with each other. If all religions have religious experiences and yet most religions cannot be true, then they must be generally unreliable.

Whatever evidence might be attributed to a religious experience, at least the same amount of evidence must be granted to the religious experiences of other religions. However, different religions cannot all be true because they make incompatible claims about which supernatural being(s) exist.

So, evidence for one religion must be taken as evidence against all the others. Therefore, claiming that a religious experience is evidence for the supernatural beings of a particular religion must make it evidence against the beings of all other religions. Any principle that identifies a religious experience as evidence, inevitably also brings far greater evidence against it. Claiming that a religious experience is as evidence for a particular religious belief only creates more evidence against it.

Religious response: p luralism

Pluralism can respond to the multiple claims issue. Pluralism is the view that all religions are true. This view is held by William James, Hick and Knitter. James thinks that mystical religious experience occurring in all religions and being life-changing shows that they are all true (in a pragmatist sense). Hick argues that the different religions of the world are like blind men each touching a different part of an elephant. They each report they are feeling something different, yet that is because they are just too blind to see how they are really part of the same thing. For Hick, differences between religions are just part of the cultural ‘lens’ through which we see the world.

Knitter uses the analogy that each religion is like a well, and if you get to the bottom a well (through mystical religious experience) you get down to the underground water that you then realise is also sourcing all the other wells, i.e. all the other religions. Knitter thinks that this is an argument for taking a pluralist view of religion. The fact that mystical religions in different religions are so similar can’t be by chance. It shows that there is a core truth that all religions share.

Challenge #3: the challenge of the possibility of naturalistic explanations

A naturalistic explanation is one which attempts to provide a scientific account of why something happens. In the case of religious experiences, naturalistic explanations could be:

• Psychological: e.g., prayer, meditation, mental illness, mass hysteria, social compliance.
• Physiological: e.g., random brain hallucinations, drugs, alcohol, fasting, sleep deprivation.

Religious response: Swinburne

This challenge fails against Swinburne’s approach. If someone experiences something, that is evidence for that thing being true. If someone experiences the divine, then that is evidence for the divine. We could then check for the presence of physiological and psychological causes of their religious experience. If we can’t find any, then we have no reason not to believe the experience in that particular case. Although in such cases we cannot rule out naturalistic causes, Swinburne’s point is that we have no evidence for a naturalistic cause. The mere possibility of naturalistic explanations are not sufficient for rejecting such experiences. Only actual evidence of a naturalistic cause can count against the evidence of the experience itself. In cases where we have no evidence of a naturalistic cause, then we have no basis for rejecting such experiences as evidence for God.

Scientific challenges to religious experience & religious responses

Scientific challenge #1 freud.

Freud as a scientific psychological challenge to religious experience. Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’ and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces. The first is the fear of death. We have an instinctual animalistic fear of death which we can’t control but we can control our human thoughts and cognitions. While animals only have their fear of death triggered when in a dangerous situation, humans are the only animal that constantly are aware that they are going to die. We have the animalistic part of ourselves, but have since developed cognitive processes, which then unfortunately constantly trigger the fear of death on our animalistic side. So, the solution is to manipulate those to believe that death is not the end. Also, Freud argued that the reason Christians call God ‘father’ is because they have a desire to be a child forever. It’s a desire for eternal innocence in the face of the painful reality of the world. Freud thought these psychological forces were so strong that they resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience.

A person lost in a desert can be so desperate for water that they hallucinate it. This is called a mirage. Similarly, humans can be so desperately afraid of death and the difficulties of life that they can delude themselves that there is a God who will take care of them and an afterlife.

Religious response: Freud fails to explain mystical experience

Freud’s analysis fails to explain mystical religious experience because of its sense of unity with something infinite and unbounded. These seem to go far beyond the wish-fulfilling hallucinations of a neurotic. Freud’s theory might work well against mere visions, which we know can be created by the brain due to desperate wish-fulfilment such as in the mirage case. Mystical experiences are ecstatic, immersive, and totally unlike any ordinary sensory experience, however, making them harder to dismiss as hallucinations caused by delusory wishful thinking.

Scientific challenge #1: Persinger

Persinger poses a scientific challenge to religious experience through his discovery of a physiological explanation of them. Persinger is a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulated people’s brain waves and sometimes caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings.

This seems to show that religious experiences originate from the brain, not anything supernatural like a God. Religious experiences are just an unusual state of the brain. Regular religious experiences could just be examples of that caused by some unknown brain process(es) that can happen without a machine.

Religious response: Persinger’s discovery does not disprove a supernatural cause

  However, maybe that brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience. Also, we know we can cause hallucinations by manipulating the brain with drugs like LSD. This shouldn’t necessarily count against the validity of religious experiences that occur without such manipulations.

Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony

Swinburne  argued that religious experiences are evidence for God. His argument involves the principles of testimony and credulity. The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to. The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to. Swinburne is an empiricist who argues that an experience of God should count as evidence towards belief in God, although it doesn’t constitute complete proof.

Swinburne argued that whenever we gain some new evidence, we can’t dismiss it for no reason – that would be irrational. It is only if we have other better-established evidence which contradicts that new evidence that we may rationally dismiss it. This is the rationale behind the principles of testimony and credulity. If we see a tree, that is evidence that the tree exists. Unless we have some other evidence suggesting the tree doesn’t exist, we would be irrational for dismissing the evidence of our experience. So too is it with God. Experiencing God is evidence for God, unless we have some other evidence to justify dismissing that experience.

The influences of religious experiences and their value for religious faith

10 mark questions for religious experience, 15 mark question content, 15 mark questions for religious experience.