Concepts, anti-concepts and religious experience

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sallie B. King
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
Verbal Expression

The linguistic expression of religious experience is problematic for both the experiencer and the philospher. For instance: is the religious experience nonverbal, i.e. does it utterly transcend all words, concepts, and thought? Or is it ineffable – not amenable to verbal expression? In either case, what can one make of all the talk and writings of those who do report religious experiences? The frequent references to ineffability, transcendence of thought and the like, lead one to wonder if the experiencers themselves are not dis-satisfied with these expressions. If this is indeed the case, what is it about these expressions that produces this dissatisfaction? Are some expressions better suited to the experience than others?

Religious Disagreement, Religious Experience, and the Evil God Hypothesis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Lougheed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Believer ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Epistemic Peer ◽  
Religious Disagreement

Conciliationism is the view that says when an agent who believes P becomes aware of an epistemic peer who believes not-P, that she encounters a (partial) defeater for her belief that P. Strong versions of conciliationism pose a sceptical threat to many, if not most, religious beliefs since religion is rife with peer disagreement. Elsewhere (Removed) I argue that one way for a religious believer to avoid sceptical challenges posed by strong conciliationism is by appealing to the evidential import of religious experience. Not only can religious experience be used to establish a relevant evidential asymmetry between disagreeing parties, but reliable reports of such experiences also start to put pressure on the religious sceptic to conciliate toward her religious opponent. Recently, however, Asha Lancaster-Thomas poses a highly innovative challenge to the evidential import of religious experience. Namely, she argues that an evil God is just as likely to explain negative religious experiences as a good God is able to explain positive religious experiences. In light of this, religious believers need to explain why a good God exists instead of an evil God. I respond to Lancaster-Thomas by suggesting that, at least within the context of religious experience, (i) that the evil God hypothesis is only a challenge to certain versions of theism; and (ii) that the existence of an evil God and good God are compossible.

scholarly journals PENGALAMAN KEAGAMAAN PARA GURU PENDIDIKAN AGAMA ISLAM

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-103
Author(s):  
Fuad Nashori ◽  
R. Rachmy Diana
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Positive Behavior ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study intends to get an overview of the themes and processes of religious experience in Islamic religious education teachers. Data disclosure of research respondents, namely religious teachers, was carried out using in-depth interviews. The results showed that the research respondents had a variety of religious experiences, both physiological, social-psychological, parapsychological, and spiritual. Among the various experiences above, the most prominent theme is the themes of experience of the mind. Various spiritual experiences take place through a process that involves socio-cultural conditions, opportunities, difficulties and challenges of life, worship such as praying, tahajjud prayer, diligent prayer, timely prayer, positive behavior or attitude towards others, and the nearest social environment such as brothers, uncles / mother, and so on.

scholarly journals Introduction to “Religious Experience in the Hindu Tradition”

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 329
Author(s):  
June McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The World

This special issue of Religions brings together a talented group of international scholars who have studied and written on the Hindu tradition. The topic of religious experience is much debated in the field of Religious Studies, and here we present studies of Hindu religious experience explored from a variety of regions and perspectives. They are intended to show that religious experience has long been an important part of Hinduism, and we consider them to be important and relevant. As a body of scholarship, these articles refine our understanding of the range and variety of religious experience in Hinduism. In addition to their substantive contributions, the authors also show important new directions in the study of the third-largest religion in the world, with over one billion followers. This introduction will discuss some relevant issues in the field of Indology, some problems of language, and the difficulties faced in the study of religious experience. It will also give a brief sketch of the religious experiences described by our authors in some major types of Hinduism.

scholarly journals To feel with and for Friedrich Schleiermacher: On religious experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël P. Veldsman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Friedrich Schleiermacher ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Absolute Dependence ◽  
Theological Thinking

The German systematic theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher has shaped Western Christian theological thinking in many ways. One such influential way has been his formulation and exposition of religious experience, and specifically the concept of the ‘feeling of absolute dependence’ (Gefühl der schlechthinnigen Abhängigkeit). From a brief account of his understanding of the ‘feeling of absolute independence’, a few critical remarks are made from the broader context of contemporary hermeneutical discourses, focusing on the constitutive role of affectivity and narrative identity in religious experiences of embodied personhood. It is argued that these two themes in revisiting Schleiermacher’s understanding of the ‘feeling of absolute dependence’ can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of religious experience.

‘Salute to Radio’: The self-reflexive artistry of Betty Comden and Adolph Green in Fun with the Revuers

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahoko Tsuji
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
Verbal Expression ◽  
Sound Recordings ◽  
Artistic Style ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Aesthetic

Betty Comden and Adolph Green are well-known librettists and lyricists of stage musicals and musical films; their artistic style and verbal expression are considered to bear urban witness to a period understanding of the 1940s and 1950s. Nonetheless, previous studies have scarcely investigated the aesthetic features of their dramaturgy, especially with regard to linguistic expression. This article focuses on the radio comedy Fun with the Revuers, for which they wrote scripts and lyrics. Through a close look at the scripts and sound recordings, it analyses the ‘interruptive sound and voice’ functions that construct the show, and examines how these satirize the conventions of the format, as well as the essential features of the medium. This article will offer a new perspective on the generational dynamics of Comden and Green’s artistry.

James and Religion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen S. Bush
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
William James ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Social Lives

William James made signal contributions to the philosophical and psychological study of religion. One of James’s greatest contributions to the study of religion is his defense of the permissibility of religious beliefs. In his essay “Will to Believe,” he argues that it can be permissible (morally and epistemically), if certain criteria are met, to hold beliefs for which one does not have conclusive evidence in support (provided there isn’t conclusive evidence against). This applies to religious beliefs, but also to moral beliefs and certain beliefs that are essential to our social lives and to the scientific enterprise. His second-greatest contribution to the study of religion is his methodological focus on individuals’ religious experiences, which we see most extensively in Varieties of Religious Experience. In addition to these two contributions, he has important things to say on the relation between religion and other aspects of culture, such as ethics, politics, science, and philosophy.

scholarly journals Religious experience and the probability of theism: comments on Swinburne

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH JÄGER
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Probability ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Prior Probability ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Phenomenal Conservatism ◽  
Rival Hypothesis

AbstractI discuss the role of religious experience in Richard Swinburne's probabilistic case for theism. Swinburne draws on his principle of credulity to argue that, if in addition to other evidence we consider that many people have theistic religious experiences, theism comes out as more probable than not. However, on many plausible probability assignments for the relevant non-experiential evidence, the conditional probability of theism already converges towards 1. Moreover, an argument analogous to a general Bayesian argument against phenomenal conservatism suggests that, after we take account of evidence from religious experience, the probability of theism cannot be greater than the prior probability that the best rival hypothesis is false. I conclude that these observations are compatible with what Swinburne would call ‘weak rational belief’ in theism and that such weak belief can be strong enough for rational faith.

The Principle of Credulity and Religious Experience

1986 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Martin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Richard Swinburne

In The Existence of God Richard Swinburne argues that certain religious experiences support the hypothesis that God exists. Indeed, the argument from religious experience is of crucial importance in Swinburne's philosophical theology. For, according to Swinburne, without the argument from religious experience the combined weight of the other arguments he considers, e.g. the teleological, the cosmological, or the argument from miracles, does not render the theistic hypothesis very probable. However, the argument from religious experience combined with these other arguments makes theism more probable than its rivals.

scholarly journals Qualia of God: Phenomenological Materiality in Introspection, with a Reference to Advaita Vedanta

Open Theology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Louchakova-Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Internal Field ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Intentional Consciousness ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Embodied Self

AbstractApplying Michel Henry’s philosophical framework to the phenomenological analysis of religious experience, the author introduces a concept of material introspection and a new theory of the constitution of religious experience in phenomenologically material interiority. As opposed to ordinary mental self-scrutiny, material introspection happens when the usual outgoing attention is reverted onto embodied self-awareness in search of mystical self-knowledge or union with God. Such reversal posits the internal field of consciousness with the self-disclosure of phenomenological materiality. As shown by the example of Vedantic self-inquiry, material introspection is conditioned on the attitude ‘I “see” myself’ and employs reductions which relieve phenomenological materiality from the structuring influence of intentionality; the telos of material introspection is expressed by the inward self-transcendence of intentional consciousness into purified phenomenological materiality. Experience in material introspection is constituted by the self-affection and self-luminosity of phenomenological materiality; experience is recognized as religious due to such essential properties as the capacity of being self-fulfilled, and specific qualitative “what it’s like”(s). Drawing on more than 5000 live accounts of internal religious experience, it is shown that introspective attention can have different trajectories, producing, within a temporal extension of material introspection, different spatial modifications of embodied self-awareness and a variety of corresponding religious experiences.

scholarly journals Porównanie doświadczeń religijnych w okresie wczesnej, średniej i późnej dorosłości

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Tatala ◽  
Czesław Walesa
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Counseling ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Importance Rating ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Late Adulthood ◽  
Negative Experiences ◽  
Five Dimensions ◽  
Level Of Importance

Comparison between Religious Experiences in Early, Middle and Late Adulthood The aim of the study was to examine the differences in religious experience in early, middle and late adulthood. The study examined 608 people who were a part of catholic religious communities. Religious Experience Scale, which includes five dimensions: Importance rating, Negative experiences, God’s support, Entrusting in God and Openness to God, was used. Statistical analyzes showed that the level of religious experience was significantly differentiated by the age of the respondents for four out of five dimensions of Religious Experience: Importance rating, God’s support, Entrusting in God and Negative experiences. People in late adulthood were characterized by the highest level of Importance rating, God’s support, Entrusting in God and the lowest level of Negative experiences compared to people in early and middle adulthood. The nature of late adulthood – i.e., the ability to discover the specificity of religious experience to understand and interpret the signs of God’s presence and action in everyday events – may account for the observed effects. The results of the study add to the knowledge on religious experience depending on the developmental stage of the person. They could be used to adjust the character of pastoral counseling to the needs of specific age groups of adult clients.

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