Religious experience, whether that is the general experience of living a religious life or specific, direct experiences of the divine, is very commonly cited as the basis for religious faith. Nevertheless, William James and William Alston have both argued that although Religious Experiences are reasonably authoritative for the people who have them – and for those people may serve as more than a pointer to the existence of God – because of plausible non-religious explanations there can be no duty on other people to accept the authenticity of religious experiences or see them as pointers to anything supernatural. Richard Swinburne went further, noting that whether one accepts religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God will depend on one’s assessment of prior probability. Responses to the claim “Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God!” depend to some extent on one’s own relationship with religious experience(s), whether one has had a direct experience or must rely on others’ reports, but depend mostly on one’s world-view. Atheists and materialists are unlikely to accept the claim, even if they have had an experience that might otherwise be categorized as religious, whereas those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds are more likely to accept the claim, even on the strength of anecdote.
Direct religious experiences are notoriously difficult to define or categorise. William James identified four marks that most experiences seem to have – transiency, a noetic quality, ineffability and passivity – and yet there are well-known experiences which do not have these marks. Thomas Merton had relatively regular experiences over a long period. Teresa of Avila’s experiences were sustained and seemingly the result of practices designed to provoke them. Further the Religious canon is packed with descriptions of religious experience. Other scholars have defined religious experiences in different ways. Scholar of mysticism Rudolph Otto took a more general approach, saying only that authentic religious experiences are those of mysterium tremendum et fascinans. In some ways Otto’s definition accords with Martin Buber’s description of religious experiences as I-thou encounters. Walter Stace excluded classic visions and voices altogether and argued that genuine religious experiences are non-sensuous and mystical in character. Richard Swinburne, on the other hand, listed five different types of religious experience in two categories, public and private, in an attempt to be inclusive. The difficulty in defining religious experiences is a seemingly insuperable obstacle to using them as the basis for an inductive argument for the existence of God.
Direct religious experiences are also open to alternative, non-religious explanations. Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud both noted how religious belief tends towards wish-fulfilment. Some religious experiences fit in most conveniently with the wants and needs of the person who has them and could be explained as creations of the subconscious mind. For example, Joan of Arc’s experiences fit in with the French nationalistic mood of the time and provided Joan with a credibility that she could never otherwise have had. Might she have invented the experiences – or have interpreted them creatively – for her own (side’s) political advantage? The Emperor Constantine’s vision before the battle of Milvian Bridge and the visions leading to the discovery of the True Cross on the First Crusade could be seen in similar terms. Alternatively, other religious experiences might be explained in physiological terms. It is more common for those experiencing extreme physical stress or hormonal change to claim religious experiences – could the physiological changes associated with puberty or the suffering involved in a life-threatening illness be causing out-of-body sensations that are later interpreted as religious? Julian of Norwich experienced visions while close to death, St Paul seems to have been an epileptic subject to grand-mal seizures and many other visionaries and mystics have exhibited physiological symptoms which might account for their altered state. Of course it is difficult to disprove religious experiences in these ways – not least because an account of HOW the experience might have happened does not rule out God as the reason WHY it happened. Nevertheless, the existence of non-religious explanations for religious experiences does undermine their status as a good pointer to the existence of God, both individually and otherwise.
Although Swinburne incorporated an argument from Religious Experience into his cumulative case for God, set out in “The Existence of God” (1991), he accepted that unlike accepting the natural observations that other inductive arguments start with, accepting religious experiences as even a pointer to the existence of God depends on prior probability. People who already accept the possibility of God’s existence will accept that religious experiences are a feature of the world which require explanation while those with an atheistic world-view will reject religious experiences as delusions or at least claim that psychology and/or physiology explain away the phenomenon without any need to suggest a supernatural cause. It is fair to say that religious people, or at least those who are open-minded, will be more likely to accept that Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God than those who are committed to an atheist or materialist world-view and this suggests that there will always be disagreement on whether Religious Experiences constitute a good pointer to the existence of God that is little to do with the experiences themselves or what causes them.
Swinburne went on to argue that it is reasonable to accept reports of religious experiences – defined very broadly so as to include both public and private experiences – and to take them as pointers to the existence of God because of the principles of credulity and testimony. In everyday life we believe what we see or experience ourselves and believe other people unless we have a good reason not to. Why should these principles not apply to religious experiences? Given the large number of people who claim to have had experiences that might be classed as religious experiences – around 1 in 3 people according to Alister Hardy Centre research – they need to be explained. What reasonable grounds are there for dismissing either the occurrence of these experiences or the explanation proffered by those who have had them when we have no clear reason to doubt? Nevertheless, Swinburne’s principles do little to advance his argument beyond prior probability. Those with an atheistic or materialist world view are likely to respond to Swinburne by arguing that the very fact that somebody claims to have had a religious experience is evidence of their irrationality and good reason to be suspicious of their testimony. As Carl Sagan said “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – by their nature religious experiences are out of the ordinary and demand more rather than less evidence both to support their authenticity and their interpretation.
In conclusion, the claim “Religious experiences are good pointers to the existence of God” will only be accepted by those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds and is unlikely to persuade non-religious people of God’s existence. As Anthony Flew wrote in God and Philosophy (1966), responses to religious experiences… ‘seems to depend on the interests, background and expectations of those who have them rather than on anything separate and autonomous…” Take AJ Ayer’s conversion experience. Even the medically documented experience of a committed atheist and expert Philosopher is explained away in physiological and psychological terms by those who see it as impossible. Ayer eventually denied his own experiences, attributing them to the effects of cerebral anoxia or shock, rather than change his prior assessment of probability. In “The Blind Watchmaker” Richard Dawkins wrote that if he witnessed a marble statue waving its hand at him he would prefer to check himself into the nearest psychiatric hospital than accept that he had witnessed a miracle. What better demonstration can there be of the effects of prior probability on the likelihood of people accepting religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God?
When compared with the classical arguments for God’s existence – Cosmological, Teleological and Ontological – Religious Experience might seem like the best basis for believing in God, because the God revealed through well-known experiences is more obviously what Pascal called “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” than the abstract “God of the Philosophers”. In this way, Religious Experience would better support Religion or Classical Theism than the other arguments, which seem to support deism at best. Nevertheless, on closer analysis Religious Experience does little more to support belief in the God of Religion, a personal deity, than the other arguments. Because of this, coupled with the unique difficulties which beset Religious Experience as an argument for God’s existence, Religious Experience is not the best – or even a good – basis for belief in God.
Firstly, as William James argued in his “Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902) genuine religious experiences are ineffable and resist description in what Ramsey called “ordinary language”. When somebody reports having “seen” the Virgin Mary or having “heard” the voice of God, the experience is not really like other sense-experiences through the eyes or ears. Further, the object that people experience is not really personal. As Otto argued, genuine religious experiences are of “the numinous”, “the Absolute” rather than any anthropomorphic being. Stace concurred, arguing that genuine mystical experiences are of “an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate.” Happold agreed, arguing that genuine mysticism is characterized by a sense of love and union with all other beings which overcomes the anxiety we all feel at being separate and alone. For James, Otto, Stace and Happold Religious Experiences point not towards the existence of “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” but to a “higher power” which, as James pointed out, “need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self…” (Varieties of Religious Experience, Postscript) In this way, Religious Experience does not really serve to support belief in the God of Religion or even Classical Theism any more than the classical arguments do and so it is not the best basis for belief in such a God.
Secondly, Religious Experience is a weaker basis for belief in a “higher power” God than the classical arguments are. This is because:
Religious Experience is difficult to define. While James, Otto and Stace recognize only solitary experiences, Richard Swinburne and Caroline Franks-Davis allow for corporate experiences as well. While James, Otto and Stace suggest that all genuine experiences are beyond literal description, Swinburne and Franks-Davis allow for experiences which can be described using everyday language. Because scholars differ about which experiences are possibly “authentic” and which are not, Religious Experience as a phenomenon is a less convincing basis of observation on which to build an inductive argument for God’s existence. When compared with the Cosmological Argument, nobody questions Craig’s first premise “everything that begins to exist has a cause” even if they go on to criticize other premises or the conclusion of his argument. It follows that because of the difficulty in defining Religious Experience, is a weaker basis for an inductive argument for God’s existence than the classical arguments are
As Swinburne points out, the argument from Religious Experience depends on assuming the Principles of Credulity and Testimony. While it is far to say that the other arguments from observation also depend on the Principle of Credulity, Hume’s critique of Miracles in “An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding” Section X (1758) fatally undermines the Principle of Testimony as it applies to reports of religious experiences. It is always more likely that somebody has made a mistake than that their experience, which goes against the established laws of nature, is genuine. While it is, as Hick pointed out, bad science to ignore such reports, it is, as James pointed out, impossible to exclude the possibility that the person reporting a religious experience is mistaken because credible physiological and/or psychological explanations exist to account for everything reported. For examples, as James discusses in his chapter on Conversion Experiences, psychiatry might account for very many of these including those of St Paul (as a response to a moral crisis according to Leuba) and of St Augustine (as a delayed adolescent crisis according to Starbuck). While St Paul or St Augustine might themselves be convinced that their experience was authentic and be justified in believing in their object, there is no necessity for other people to believe either in the authenticity of their experiences or in what they seem to refer to. So, because testimony always lacks credibility, an inductive argument based on Religious Experience will be weaker than the classical arguments in establishing a basis for belief in God.
Finally, as Swinburne points out, accepting accounts of Religious Experience as possibly genuine depends on prior probability. If you are what James called a “medical materialist“, reports of religious experience would be their very nature incredible. In this way, reports of will only be entertained as the basis for belief in anything by those who are already open to the existence of that thing and the argument from Religious Experience is shown to be circular and so not as persuasive as the other classical arguments.
Clearly, Swinburne would disagree and would argue that Religious Experience is a better basis for believing in God than the other inductive arguments. In his “The Existence of God” (1979) he set out a cumulative argument for God’s existence which employed Bayes’ Theorem to assess the relative probabilities of God and natural causes as explanations of causation, order and purpose, beauty and morality in the universe. None of these arguments is conclusive in itself, argued Swinburne. It takes Religious Experience to tip the balance in favour of God’s existence and provide a basis for believing in God. Nevertheless, Swinburne’s cumulative argument has been widely criticized, not least by Anthony Flew, who compared it with “ten leaky buckets”. A lot of bad arguments, each of which fails to justify belief in God in itself, are together not significantly better than one bad argument and so fail to justify religious belief. Further, Swinburne’s contention that Religious Experience is the strongest argument, the argument which tips the balance of probability in favour of God’s existence, seems odd given that it depends on prior probability and so has no force without the other arguments having already established that God is slightly more probable than the natural alternative. To what extent can an argument which is circular in itself be the deciding factor? If the other arguments succeed in justifying an openness to the existence of God without depending on Prior Probability or the Principle of Testimony, then surely they are better bases for belief in God than Religious Experience. For Swinburne, Religious Experience is a better basis for belief in God than the other arguments from observation even though it depends on Prior Probability and the Principle of Testimony because, as he sees it, Religious Experiences support belief in the personal God of Religion. However, as has already been established here, this is not necessarily the case. On close analysis, for those who have had no experience themselves, Religious Experiences can support openness to the existence of a “higher power” at most. By contrast, the cosmological argument supports belief in a necessarily single, all-powerful creator God and the teleological argument supports belief in an omni-benevolent intelligent designer God, at least when “good” is understood in the purely Aristotelian sense. In this way, Religious Experience is a worse basis for belief in God than either of the cosmological or teleological arguments, even when it comes to believing in “the God of the Philosophers” with the classical attributes.
In conclusion, Religious Experience is very far from being the best basis for belief in God. On close analysis, reports of such experiences fail to justify anything more than an openness to a “higher power” which would not have to have any of the classical attributes of God. It is as impossible to exclude naturalistic explanations for Religious Experiences as it is to exclude the possibility that they have been caused by God, so the question of what they point towards must remain open. Further, as an argument for God’s existence, Religious Experience is beset by problems of definition, credibility of testimony and circularity. It is certainly not the decisive factor in demonstrating the existence of God that Swinburne claims, but is a bucket that is more leaky than most.
In this essay I will be discussing the challenges to religious experiences and how successful they are in proving whether they are genuine or not. A religious experience is an encounter with God and is unique to each individual, these experiences may be a result of intensive training and self discipline which leads people to having these encounters. Challengers of religious experiences such as Feuerbach and Freud try to give more naturalistic and alternative explanations to why someone may claim they have had a religious experience. Personally, I believe that the challenges to religious experiences are not successful as there are still so many reports of religious experiences that take place where recipients are convinced that their encounter was genuinely with God, this has not been proved otherwise and the challengers of religious experiences are those who are not open to God.
Firstly, William James’ objective study was a pragmatic approach to religious experience as he wanted to find out the usefulness of religious experiences. He saw the value in religious experiences even if there was a psychological explanation that we all accepted, James’ he suggested that religious experiences do not need to be spectacular as it can just be a sudden recognition that there is a God. James’ does agree that Psychology and science may be able to explain religious experiences not to be true through naturalistic explanations such as emotional reasons or drugs the individual may be taking, but he also accepts that religious experiences are true and valid for the individual who experiences it as some souls may have the ability to connect to the spiritual world. Although there are some flaws of James’ study as it is true for the person who has had an encounter of God there is still no explanation or evidence to explain whether claims of this are true or not. Overall, I support that his study is successful as James’ takes into account the personal experience and contact that an individual has encountered, as he believes religious experiences are meaningful for the person who has experienced it thus does not need to be proven or confirmed by anyone else.
A challenge of religious experiences that is not successful is from Feuerbach who supposed ‘God is a psychological projection’ as human beings have observed themselves and have unravelled all these admirable qualities such as being loving and kind. Feuerbach suggested that we all fall short in terms of perfection as it is impossible for anyone to be hundred percent all loving and kind. Feuerbach demonstrates how we project these qualities into our imaginary God and this is our own construct from our minds for us to worship and aspire to. The consequence of this is that there is no validity in the experiences and can lead to people in creating their own constructs which will never be true. Although this may seem plausible at first glance, there are some issues with this challenge as Feuerbach indicated that people project God and in time religion will become extinct however it hasn’t. ‘With social development,
religion will disappear’, yet religion is still present throughout the world, this definitely cannot be the result of people continuing to create their own constructs of God. Feuerbach’s challenge is unsuccessful and does not destroy my belief in the authenticity of religious experiences as Feuerbach is a Psychologist who has a physical perspective on religious experiences, however religious experiences are not physical therefore he does not have the tools to validate the experiences of others. As Theists we are happy to accept that the spiritual world is something real and that God, in his omnipotence and benevolence would want to reach out to us - a view supported by James and Schleiermacher.
Another scholar who is successful in proving religious experiences is F. Schleiermacher who held the view that religious experience comes from within not without; therefore it is accessible to all. Schleiermacher responded to Psychologists who said religion is something we have made up because we are scared of dying. The most important point given by Schleiermacher was that when you are religious, the belief is not about preserving ourself, it is able sacrifice and the preservation of others. Schleiermacher's point convincingly counter attacks the psychologists challenge to the validity of religious experiences. Furthermore, he believed once you have an encounter with God it is self-authenticating and the experience is already real enough; hence does not need to be confirmed with anyone else. A strong point point given by Schleiermacher is that everyone is able to have a religious experience but some refuse it but to find proof of God you need to have an open mind to seek him: ‘a sense of the infinite is obscured in some’.
Richard Swinburne is at the top of the ladder when supporting religious experiences he has the opinion that we should trust such experiences, otherwise we are left with a philosophy that doubts everything, but unlike Descartes who doubts everything he sees or hears. Swinburne presents two principles: The Principle of Credulity ‘if it seems to a recipient that X is present that probably X is present, what one seems to perceive is probably so’, this means we have our own sense of whether something is genuine and regarding a religious experience there is nothing that invalidates what a person sees or hears. However, the weakness within this principle is that it casts doubt on the word ‘probably’ as it does not seem certain that x is present, also if X is ‘present’ we are not completely sure where as it could either be present in front of us or in our own vision. The Principle of Testimony is when we are told something we believe what we are told unless we have a reason to think otherwise, so why do we not believe someone if they tell us they have had an encounter with God? It is unreasonable to believe that millions of people who have had an religious experience are deluded, if anything the amount of people who have experienced one makes it more veridical. There are some flaws in the Principle of Testimony as although there are millions of people to confirm these experiences there are much more people to say that these claims are false. Another flaw is from Dawkins: ‘Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, which recipients don’t have’, we believe we people tell us however we believe them as they have evidence to prove this to us however individuals who have had encounters with God only have their word, nothing else.
I think Richard Swinburne offers a credible defence of the authenticity of religious experience. Compared to the doubt of Descartes, his Principles of Credulity and Testimony are refreshingly non sceptical in their approach. There are weaknesses in his theory, such as M. Martin's observation that his Principle of Testimony could be applied in the negative, but I agree with P. Vardy that the types of people who have experienced God are the sorts of people we would trust when they speaking of everyday occurrences. As for Dawkins point that ‘extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence’ this seems implausible to me. If every recipient had a great quantity of physical evidence for religious experiences then they would no longer be ‘extra-ordinary’ experiences. God in his transcendence selects those with faith to receive his message - of course there will never be quantities of the type of evidence that Dawkins demands.
In conclusion to this, I believe points from both sides are logical and valid however not all the challenges to religious experiences are successful although they may be a reliable explanation. It can be argued that the people who attempt to challenge religious experiences (psychologists) do not have the tools to validate experiences, as they have a physical perspective and religious experiences are not physical therefore they can not study it if they are shut off from it themselves. The challengers to religious experiences are not successful as they do not understand the nature of religious experiences nor are they religious themselves to then claim that there are alternative explanations for religious experiences, such as Feuerbach who suggests that we project admirable qualities into our own imaginary God. This is not successful as it does not explain why people can feel such amazing things and why people may encounter something that is not explainable, although we are able to create our own God it still does not give a reliable explanation to these experiences.