Author: Gemma

Key questions
1. What is the impact of religious experiences upon religious belief and practice?	2. Can different types of religious experience be accepted as equally valid in communicating religious teachings and beliefs?	3. How adequate are James’ four characteristics in defining mystical experience?
4. How adequate is Otto’s definition of ‘numinous’?	5. To what extent are the challenges to religious experience valid?	6. How persuasive are Franks-Davis’ different challenges?

Philosophy Theme 3—Religious Experience 1
Knowledge Organiser

Scholars
7. William James	8. Caroline Franks Davis	9. Rudolf Otto
10. St Teresa of Avila	11. St Augustine	12. David Hay
13. Richard Swinburne	14. Bertrand Russell	15. Sundar Singh
16. Antony Flew	17. David Hume	18. F C Happold
19. Michael Persinger

Key Words
20. Asceticism: Deliberate self-denial of bodily pleasures for the attainment of spiritual fulfilment.	21. Charismatic: Christians of various groups who seek an ecstatic religious experience, often including speaking in tongues.
22. Conversion: to change direction or to turn around.	23. Sufism: The mystical tradition within Islam.
25. Description related: relating to descriptions of religious experiences as a basis for challenging their authenticity.	25.Caroline Franks Davis: scholar who demonstrated how the authenticity of religious experiences could be challenged.
26. Immanent: Existing or remaining; in theology it refers to God’s involvement in creation.	27. Ineffable: Defies expression, unutterable, indescribable, indefinable.
28. William James: (1842-1910) 19th/20th Century American psychologist renowned for investigations into religious experience and mysticism.	29. Mystical: Experiences or systematic meditation, which causes a heightened awareness of the divine or an ultimate reality.
30. Noetic: Gaining special knowledge or insights that are unobtainable by the intellect alone; usually as a result of a mystical experience.	31. Numinous: An experience of the holy; something wholly other than the natural world and beyond comprehension.
32. Object related: Relating to the object (that that was experienced) of mystical experiences as a basis for challenging their authenticity.	33. Rudolf Otto: (1869-1937) in his book The Idea of the Holy defined the concept of the holy as that which is numinous.
34. Subjective: Having its source within the mind.	35. St Teresa of Avila: (1515-1582) Roman Catholic Saint and mystic, known for her writings on prayer.
36. Subject related: Relating to the subject (recipient) of mystical experiences as a basis for challenging their authenticity.	37. Passive: Where the recipient(s) of the mystical experience do not bring it about themselves – the actual moment is governed by a being or force external to 139 the will of the recipient .
38. Naturalism: that which arises from real life or the world of nature.	39. Transcendent: Having existence outside the material universe.
40. Transient: The experience may be short-lived, but the effects tend to last much longer than the experience itself.	41. Vision: Something seen other than by ordinary sight. Sub categories include corporeal, Intellectual, dream based and sensory
42. Unitive: The feeling of complete oneness with the divine.	43. Ecstatic: an overwhelming feeling of bliss or peace
44. Prayer: communication with the divine.

AO2

In support of Religious Experiences	Rejection of Religious Experiences
45. Impact on religious belief and Practice: Conversion experiences result in change of behaviour e.g. Sundar Singh, raised a devout Sikh, had vision of Jesus and became active Christian for rest of his life.	54 Religious Experiences are subjective - most philosophers agree that there is no shared criteria for what constitutes a ’true’ religious experience. Religious experiences are by nature subjective (based on personal judgement, belief or assumption) and not objective (verifiable and related to external facts that can be agreed upon by observers).
46. William James: The validity of the experience rests upon the effects it produces. In James’ book ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ are many examples showing powerful and positive effects of religious experiences on lives of communities and individuals.	55. Religious Experiences are meaningless The work of the Vienna Circle means that logical positivists would reject religious experiences as meaningless as they are non verifiable using empirical evidence. Anthony Flew’s falsification principle argued that religious believers allow nothing to count against their beliefs, making religious experiences meaningless.
47. Different Experiences: God may reveal himself in terms of cultural beliefs that we understand in particular culture. Contradicting religious experiences doesn’t necessarily show all those experiences as wrong.	56. Sigmund Freud: held the view that all religious experiences were nothing more than the result of the repression of sexual urges. Re-interpreting Teresa’s vision of the angel piercing her soul in the light of Freudian imagery is very easy to do.
48. Historical Support: St Bonaventure’s work on mysticism identified three stages of mystic experiences: the purgative stage when the mystic is purified and prepared for the experience through meditation; the illuminative stage when the mystic is affected both in his intellect and his feelings illuminated both cognitively and emotionally; and, the unitive stage when the mystic gains a continuing union with God.	57. Michael Persinger: made a helmet which when worn would create magnetic fields across the temporal lobe of the brain and induce experiences much like how recipients describe religious experiences. This suggests that recipients of experiences, such as St Paul, could have simply been sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy.
49. Richard Swinburne: principles of credulity and testimony. These stated that it’s reasonable to believe what people tell us, unless specific reasons not to (they were drunk, on drugs etc). Therefore, what people tell us they have experienced, is probably what they have actually experienced. It also seems hypocritical to accept experience such as ’I am in love’ but reject ’I have seen God.’	58. Drugs etc: The characteristics of religious experiences bear remarkable resemblances to the effects felt by those who use alcohol and drugs such as LSD, which can stimulate the brain into hallucinating and experiencing so-called alternative realities.
50. Jung - argued that humanity has a collective unconscious (archetypes). This could explain the origin of religious experiences and why so many people have them.	59. Different Experiences: There is a lack of uniformity of religious experiences. They are so different and sometimes contradictory. Which one is valid, and which one is true?
51. William James: James’ theory has stood the test of time. Otto’s work doesn’t add anything truly new to James’ original four features. F.C Happold’s extra 3 characteristics (1. consciousness of the oneness of everything, 2. a sense of timelessness, 3. the idea that the ego is not the real ‘I’ but that there is something that lies behind the usual experience of self) have similarities with James’ work.	60. Caroline Franks-Davis: listed three distinct forms of challenge to the validity of claims of religious (mystical) experiences: Description-related challenges– which challenges the description of the experience. Subject-related challenges– which challenges the recipient’s reliability . Object-related challenges– which challenges the source of the experience i.e. God
52. Religious experiences promote faith value system: Religious experiences can be the source of revealing ethical standards e.g. the Buddha’s enlightenment experience shows Buddhists the value of meditation. Also Muhammad’s revelations of the Qur’an form the basis of Islam and are a key source of Islamic law.	61. David Hume: argues that a direct experience of God is impossible. How can that which is ‘wholly other’ (something greater than humanity – omnipotent etc) be partly revealed? If there is something ‘wholly other’ we could not possibly have knowledge or experience of it.
53. Influential Religious Figures: In most religions, there is often a pivotal figure linked to the founding of that religion. Their authority often derives from their religious experience. E.g. Guru Nanak’s disappearance into a river for 2 days, then emerges with the words of the Mool Mantra. There would be no Sikhism without this experience.	62. Specific Problems with Otto’s Theory: It adds nothing to our understanding of religious experiences other than a sense of awareness of the ‘other.’ Otto himself held that God cannot be known through the senses nor through the process of rational thought; God was ‘wholly other’. He also reduces the concept of religious experiences to a feeling, which is an over simplification.