‘If there is a God, any Experience which seems to be of God, will be Genuine’

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-217
Author(s):  
Michael P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Face ◽  
Richard Swinburne ◽  
Vision Of God

In The Existence of God Richard Swinburne argues that ‘if there is a God, any experience which seems to be of God, will be genuine – will be of God.’ On the face of it this claim of the essential veridicality of any religious experience, given the existence of God, is incredible. Consider what is being claimed by looking at a particularly dramatic example – but one that is well within the purview of Swinburne's claim. The ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ who murdered at least thirteen women, claimed to hear voices telling him to kill. He took these voices to be divine. While it is easy enough to suspect the killer's sanity, it is not so easy to doubt his sincerity. Yet since Swinburne claims that God probably exists, he is committed to the view that the Ripper had a series of genuine religious experiences – so much for the arduous preparations sometime taken as necessary for a ‘vision’ of God.

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 Mothers of the Movement: Evangelicalism and Religious Experience in Black Women’s Activism

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Vaughn A. Booker
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
God's Mission ◽  
The Face ◽  
Black Women's Activism

This article centers Black religious women’s activist memoirs, including Mamie Till Mobley’s Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America (2003) and Rep. Lucia Kay McBath’s Standing Our Ground: The Triumph of Faith over Gun Violence: A Mother’s Story (2018), to refocus the narrative of American Evangelicalism and politics around Black women’s authoritative narratives of religious experience, expression, mourning, and activism. These memoirs document personal transformation that surrounds racial violence against these Black women’s Black sons, Emmett Till (1941–1955) and Jordan Davis (1995–2012). Their religious orientations and experiences serve to chart their pursuit of meaning and mission in the face of American brutality. Centering religious experiences spotlights a tradition of Black religious women who view their Christian salvation as authorizing an ongoing personal relationship with God. Such relationships entail God’s ongoing communication with these Christian believers through signs, dreams, visions, and “chance” encounters with other people that they must interpret while relying on their knowledge of scripture. A focus on religious experience in the narratives of activist Black women helps to make significant their human conditions—the contexts that produce their co-constitutive expressions of religious and racial awakenings as they encounter anti-Black violence. In the memoirs of Till and McBath, their sons’ murders produce questions about the place of God in the midst of (Black) suffering and their intuitive pursuit of God’s mission for them to lead the way in redressing racial injustice.

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 On Music, Order, and Memory: Investigating Augustine’s Descriptive Method in the Confessions

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 274-287
Author(s):  
Jessica Wiskus
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Musical Rhythm ◽  
Time Consciousness ◽  
Vision Of God ◽  
Descriptive Method ◽  
Perfect Memory

AbstractAugustine’s account in the Confessions Book IX of his ecstasy at Ostia remains unsurpassed in its poetic force, yet unusual, as a description of religious experience, in two particular respects. First of all, what he describes is not a “vision” of God, but an experience of listening. Second, it is not a solitary but a shared experience (e.g., with his mother, Monica). This essay considers the significance of these two elements by analyzing the relation between his description in Book IX and the understanding of rhythm that he develops in De musica. Drawing also on Book X (on memory) and Book XI (on time-consciousness) in the Confessions, I investigate a particular type of flowing memory – what I call, “perfect” memory – that characterizes the temporally ordered movements of musical rhythm, showing that it is in this type of memory that Augustine finds God.

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.

Religion

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-294
Author(s):  
Adrian Bardon
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Motivated Cognition ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Literal Truth ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis

This chapter critically examines key historical and contemporary justifications for religious literalism. Reasons to believe in the literal truth of certain religious texts are divided into historical and contemporary evidence of miracles, the sensus divinitatis (or sense of God), and cosmological and teleological “proofs” of the existence of God. It finds that literalist religious belief is the product of motivated cognition, and can only be sustained by rationalization and denial. It further investigates ideas about how religious ideology may have originated, as well as how religious literalism can persist in the face of scientific advancements and cosmopolitan knowledge of other cultures.

Divine Intimacy Theodicy

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Laura W. Ekstrom
Keyword(s):  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Religious Person ◽  
Medieval Mystics ◽  
The Problem Of Evil

This chapter develops what the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy in response to the problem of evil. It highlights reflections of this theodicy in the thinking of several historical and contemporary philosophers, theologians, and religious practitioners, including some medieval mystics. The central idea is that some occasions of suffering may qualify as religious experiences that serve to promote closeness with God. Despite its value as a strategy a religious person might use for coping with suffering, the author argues that ultimately the divine intimacy view does not succeed in answering the concerns of the non-theist who poses arguments from evil against the existence of God. The chapter closes by discussing prospects for a hybrid theodicy.

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.

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