scholarly journals Why Religious Experience Cannot Justify Religious Belief

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-46
Author(s):  
David Kyle Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Experiences

Theists often claim that neither the diversity of religious experience nor natural explanations for religious experience can threaten the ability of religious experience to justify religious belief. Contrarily, this paper argues that not only do they pose such a threat, but religious experience and natural explanations for them completely undermine the epistemic justificatory power of religious experience. To establish this, the author first defines the supposed role of religious experience in justifying religious belief. Then the author shows how the diversity of religious experience raises an inductive problem that negates religious experience’s ability to justify religious belief. The author then shows that available natural explanations for religious experience do the same by simply providing better explanations of religious experiences (i.e., explanations that are more adequate than religious explanations of those experiences).

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.

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.

Testimony in High Places: The Conversion of Bertram Wodehouse Currie

1988 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Powell
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Role Of Religion

The role of religion in history is an inherently difficult topic. Historians have rightly approached it with caution. Nevertheless, excessive caution has sometimes impaired our understanding of both individuals and broad historical developments. Ignoring personal religious experiences, especially when they have followed deliberate conversions, may be more dangerous to the truth than imperfectly assessing those experiences. I am not proposing an interdisciplinary approach, although that too is needed. Rather, I am suggesting that the religious experience of individuals be more fully incorporated, where possible, into traditional historical writings. It is in this spirit that I here examine the 1896 conversion, from agnosticism to Catholicism, of the influential London banker, Bertram Wodehouse Currie.

Religious Social Identity, Religious Belief, and Anti-Immigration Sentiment

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAZIT BEN-NUN BLOOM ◽  
GIZEM ARIKAN ◽  
MARIE COURTEMANCHE
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Target Group ◽  
Host Society ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigrants ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity

Somewhat paradoxically, numerous scholars in various disciplines have found that religion induces negative attitudes towards immigrants, while others find that it fuels feelings of compassion. We offer a framework that accounts for this discrepancy. Using two priming experiments conducted among American Catholics, Turkish Muslims, and Israeli Jews, we disentangle the role of religious social identity and religious belief, and differentiate among types of immigrants based on their ethnic and religious similarity to, or difference from, members of the host society. We find that religious social identity increases opposition to immigrants who are dissimilar to in-group members in religion or ethnicity, while religious belief engenders welcoming attitudes toward immigrants of the same religion and ethnicity, particularly among the less conservative devout. These results suggest that different elements of the religious experience exert distinct and even contrasting effects on immigration attitudes, manifested in both the citizenry's considerations of beliefs and identity and its sensitivity to cues regarding the religion of the target group.

scholarly journals Cognition, Culture and Religion

Open Theology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Cresswell ◽  
Rodrigo Farías Rivas
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Cognition And Culture ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
Culture And Language

AbstractThe present paper is both a critical analysis of the reductive problems inherent in an evolutionary approach that surfaces in the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) and an appeal for an enactive turn that can enhance CSR by better accounting for religious experience – i.e. the phenomenologically experienced realities that are entailed in religious belief. First, we discuss CSR and a basic evolutionary presupposition: that religious experience is based on a universal architecture designed by natural selection, which includes the notion of domain-specific processing mechanisms. We then discuss how Cultural Psychologists conceive of the ontogenetic role of culture by arguing that religious cognition does not solely develop out of evolution. As we propose, CSR can be studied with a view to the evolution of cognition that can account for the ontogenetic role of culture and language constituting phenomenologically immediate realities. Finally, we discuss enactivism as an ideal alternative for such a shift. Enactivism conceives the relation between the evolution of cognition and the ontogenetic role of culture as embodied: a non-reductive relation in which cognition and culture shape each other. This approach allows for CSR that acknowledges the fact that religious experiences constitute non-representational but lived experiences.

scholarly journals The Role of Darkness in Ancient Greek Religion and Religious Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efrosyni Boutsikas
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
Light Darkness ◽  
Emotional Condition

Aiming at a better understanding of ways through which the ancient Greek religious experience was shaped, this chapter investigates the role and use of darkness in religious belief and practice. The orientation and certain architectural features of Greek temples, Dionysiac and Mystery cults, divination, rites of passage, magic, and other nocturnal rituals are examined here in an investigation of the interplay between light, darkness, and shadow and the aims fulfilled by such associations. It transpires that darkness was a decisive element in the religious experience, one that intensified the emotional condition of the participants, whilst shaping the ritual experience and memory of the event.

Writing Rites

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Roden
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Literature Classroom ◽  
Queer Spaces

This experiential essay interrogates the role of the literature classroom for teaching the diversity of religious experience. The secular humanities academy, and the secular humanities classroom, prove to be "queer" spaces for exploring religion: and strategic in demonstrating the breadth of its study.

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.

The Varieties of Religious Experience

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William James
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Urgent Necessity

‘By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.’ The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) is William James’s classic survey of religious belief in its most personal, and often its most heterodox, aspects. Asking questions such as how we define evil to ourselves, the difference between a healthy and a divided mind, the value of saintly behaviour, and what animates and characterizes the mental landscape of sudden conversion, James’s masterpiece stands at a unique moment in the relationship between belief and culture. Faith in institutional religion and dogmatic theology was fading away, and the search for an authentic religion rooted in personality and subjectivity was a project conducted as an urgent necessity. With psychological insight, philosophical rigour, and a determination not to jump to the conclusion that in tracing religion’s mental causes we necessarily diminish its truth or value, in the Varieties James wrote a truly foundational text for modern belief. Matthew Bradley’s wide-ranging new edition examines the ideas that continue to fuel modern debates on atheism and faith.

EXPRESS: Religious Belief, Religious Priming, and Negative Word-of-Mouth in Everyday Service Failure Encounters

2021 ◽  
pp. 002224372110111
Author(s):  
Riza Casidy ◽  
Adam Duhachek ◽  
Vishal Singh ◽  
Ali Tamaddoni
Keyword(s):  
Social Exchange ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Service Failure ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Negative Word ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Fairness Norms ◽  
Strategic Variable

This research examines the effects of religious belief and religious priming on negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) behavior. Drawing on social exchange and norm paradigms, we theorize and find evidence of the unique effects of religious belief and religious priming on NWOM in everyday service failure encounters. Specifically, we find that religious belief is associated with higher NWOM, driven by a greater sensitivity to violations of fairness norms, which in turn reduces forgiveness. However, exposure to religious priming attenuates NWOM among more religious consumers by reducing sensitivity to violations of fairness norms, which in turn enhances forgiveness. A field study involving over 1.2 million online reviews of actual restaurant experiences, in addition to four lab studies, provides support for our theorized effects. Our study sheds light on the religion–forgiveness discrepancy by establishing the mediating role of sensitivity to fairness violations on the relationship between religion and forgiveness in the NWOM context. Further, our results demonstrate the importance of religion as a strategic variable in the management of service failure experiences, providing theoretical implications for the literature on the effects of religion on consumer behavior.

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