WHAT IS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?
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A religious experience (sometimes known as a
spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical
experience) is an experience which causes someone
to believe they have felt the presence of God or seen
God at work.
E.G. Someone is miraculously cured from an incurable
disease/someone sees a vision of Jesus or a religious
figure/someone hears the voice of God speaking to
them/someone says that they felt God’s presence
surround them.
The religious experience argument…
ARGUMENTS FOR & AGAINST RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCES AS PROOF THAT GOD EXISTS
THE CUMULATIVE ARGUMENT
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If you take ALL the different accounts of religious
experience throughout history then it seems that there
are too many similar experiences from different
countries, languages and religions for them all to be
coincidences or made up.
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BUT…!
THE CUMULATIVE ARGUMENT
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BUT:
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Several weak arguments put together cannot form one
strong argument. In fact they just form one large weak
argument!
DAVID HUME SAID:
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“There is not to be found in all history, any
miracle attested by a sufficient number of men,
of such unquestioned good sense, education
and learning as to secure us against all
delusion.”
This means that there has never been an account
of a religious experience that was so convincing
that it proved the existence of God.
THE PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY
Richard Swinburne:
People, in general, tell the
truth! We cannot realistically
work on the basis of always
doubting what they say
about religious experiences.
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After all, we don’t doubt the basic
facts about the world, even though
we haven’t directly experienced
them. (Example from the class…..?)
THE PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY
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Unless we have evidence to the contrary,
we should believe what people say when
they claim to have had a religious
experience.
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“In the absence of special
considerations, the experiences of others
are (probably) as they report them.”
Richard Swinburne
THE PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY
Since people usually tell the truth, there are
only 3 types of evidence that should make
their testimonies unreliable...
1. Circumstances make it unreliable (e.g.
hallucinatory drugs)
2. Evidence to suggest they are lying
3. There are other explanations (e.g. mental
illness)
Could ALL religious experiences be explained
in these 3 ways?
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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES CANNOT BE VERIFIED!
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We can’t scientifically determine whether these
experiences do prove that God exists.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
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Each person sees their
experiences differently –
some may think they’ve
experienced God, others
think they’ve experienced
something else. This means
all testimonies of religious
experiences are unreliable.
RICHARD DAWKINS
In his book The God Delusion, Dawkins tells
a story from his student days. He recalls that
a fellow undergraduate was camping in
Scotland and claimed to have heard “the
voice of the devil – Satan himself”.
In fact, it was just the call of the Manx
Shearwater (or ‘Devil Bird’), which has an
evil sounding voice.
For Dawkins, personal experiences are often used in an
appeal to God because people are ignorant of more
straightforward physical or psychological explanations for
what they perceive. It is an argument based on ignorance.
GOD ON THE BRAIN
Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have
both experienced strong religious
visions.
 He is an atheist; she a Christian.
 He thought he had died; she
thought she had given birth to
Jesus.
 They have one thing in common
 Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.
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Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition
causes fitting but it is also associated with
religious hallucinations. Research into why
people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they
did has opened up a whole field of brain
science: neurotheology.
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The connection
between the temporal
lobes of the brain
(near your ears) and
religious feeling has
led one Canadian
scientist, Michael
Persinger, to try
deliberately
stimulating the lobes
to see if he could
induce a religious
feeling.
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80% of Dr Michael Persinger's experimental
subjects report that an artificial magnetic field
focused on those brain areas gives them a
feeling of 'not being alone'. Some of them
describe it as a religious sensation.
HOW DID HE DO THIS EXPERIMENT?
The device consisted of computercontrolled solenoids that fit over
the skull and stimulate the brain
with electromagnetic pulses.
 The subjects weren’t told the
purpose of he experiment – just
that it was about relaxation
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PERSINGER’S CONCLUSION WAS
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"Feeling something beyond yourself,
bigger in space and time, can be
stimulated"
THE BIGGER QUESTION…..
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Do some people have a ‘talent’ for religion?
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Is religion ‘wired’ into some of our brains &
not others?
SO WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?
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Should we be wondering whether
Biblical mystics such as Moses & St
Paul were actually epileptic?
The BBC’s drama doc on Paul asked
that question. It showed Paul having
what looked like a fit on the Damascus
Road
The presenter, Jonathan Edwards, a
famously Christian sportsman, started to
lose his faith as a result.
To him, it undermined the reality of
Paul’s vision
CONCLUSIONS?
If it can be shown that some people with
epilepsy have visions .....
 If religious feelings can be induced by magnets
.....
 If some people, neurologically, have more
sensitivity to religious feelings ....
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Does any of this make an individual’s mystical
experience any more real?