1) Religious experiences are argued to provide evidence for the existence of God, but there are counterarguments that question their validity and reliability. 2) Proponents argue that under William James' PINT framework, religious experiences have identifiable features and can be a rational basis for belief in God. However, critics argue that religious experiences can be explained by unusual physical or mental states and are not independently verifiable. 3) There is no consensus on whether religious experiences genuinely provide contact with a deity or higher power, or whether they can be fully explained by natural or psychological factors. Evaluating the evidence for and against considering religious experiences valid evidence of spiritual realities remains an open issue.

1. Religious Experience

2. Key
• Red writing – names of philosophers
• Green writing – examples/illustrations
• Blue writing – key words/phrases
• Purple writing – evaluation points

3. Arguments for religious
experiences

4. Swinburne’s Principle of Credulity
• It is the case that our senses sometimes deceive us.
• However, we are only aware of this fact because our other senses
have shown us the error of the others.
• For example, Macbeth knew that the dagger wasn’t real because he couldn’t
touch it.
• If we have no reason to distrust our senses, then we have no reason
to think that they are deceiving us.
• HOWEVER Descartes’ 3 waves of doubt could be used to counter this
point.

5. Self-authentication
• Our experience of God is veridical if it is real and true.
• HOWEVER the self-authentication argument is circular.

6. William James’ PINT
• There are four main features of religious experiences:
1) Passive – the experience happens without the individual’s control
(you cannot choose to have a religious experience)
2) Ineffable – it cannot be adequately put into words
3) Noetic – some form of good must come from the experience;
something must be learnt from it
4) Transient – the experience is temporary

7. Otto
• While people claim to experience different things when having
religious experiences (for example, a Muslim will have an experience
of a slightly different god than a Christian) there is still a universal
series of emotions associated with religious experiences.
• This feeling is one of attraction, fascination and compulsion, as well as
one of fear and trembling.

8. Craig
• Believing in the existence God on the basis of religious experience is
akin to believing in the existence of the external world based on
normal experience.
• Both beliefs are equally rational in the absence of any evidence to
doubt them.

9. Hick
• It is impossible to verify the veracity of religious experiences in this
life.
• With this concept of eschatological verification, there is no way that
we can independently verify religious experience.

10. Arguments against religious
experiences

11. Unusual physical/mental state
• Bertrand Russell: “From a scientific point of view, we can make no
distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man
who drinks much and sees snakes”.
• A religious experience can only happen when the person is in an unusual
physical/mental state.
• For example, Jesus fasting in the desert and seeing the devil (physical)
• Religious meditation (mental)
• HOWEVER Davies argued that…
• You sometimes need to undertake special preparation to have a certain experience
(e.g. going to the top of the Eiffel Tower to see all of Paris)
• Not all religious experiences happen to those in an unusual physical/mental state
(e.g. Saul on the road to Damascus)

12. Pursinger’s experiments (biological
argument)
• God is not necessarily the cause of ‘religious’ experiences.
• The experiences can be recreated by stimulating the temporal lobe.
• If it is possible to recreate the feeling of a religious experience in a
lab, then it is surely within the body’s capacity to create the feeling of
a religious experience on its own.

13. Freud
• Belief in the truthfulness of religious experiences is merely a form of
wish-fulfilment.
• We want to believe that religious experiences are true, because they
give us comfort.
• HOWEVER religious experiences are not always comforting, and such
experiences in the Bible are often accompanied with the words ‘don’t
be afraid’.

14. Aquinas
• We cannot experience God, as our idea of God is of a being that
humans are unable to directly experience.
• The finite cannot experience the infinite.
• This could be backed up with the example of Moses having to turn his back
when God passed by in the Old Testament.
• HOWEVER many people in the Bible fear death when they have a
religious experience, but are reassured by the forgiveness of their sins
(for example, Isaiah); this fits in with the salvation acquired by the
sacrifice of Jesus.

15. Hume (problems of testimony)
1) The time and place where the people who have religious
experiences live is frequently those which are scientifically
backwards.
2) People may be misremembering.
3) There may be an alternate motivation to telling the story of a
religious experience (for example, TV evangelists may be looking for
money).
4) Those from different religions seem to have different experiences.

16. Marx
• Religion is a tool used by the bourgeoisie to control and subdue the
proletariat (the “opium of the masses”).
• Therefore, religious experiences are merely illusory.
• HOWEVER can we really separate God from organised religion?