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.

scholarly journals Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Mariña
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Friedrich Schleiermacher ◽  
Religious Feeling ◽  
Absolute Dependence ◽  
The Common ◽  
Rudolf Otto

Two names often grouped together in the study of religion are Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1884) and Rudolf Otto (1869–1937). Central to their understanding of religion is the idea that religious experience, characterized in terms of feeling, lies at the heart of all genuine religion. In his book On Religion, Schleiermacher speaks of religion as a “sense and taste for the Infinite.” In The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher grounds religion in the immediate self-consciousness and the “feeling of absolute dependence.” Influenced by Schleiermacher, Otto also grounds religion in an original experience of what he calls “the numinous,” which can only be grasped through states of feeling. This article discusses the views of Otto and Schleiermacher on religion as feeling. It examines how both men conceived of feeling, the reasons they believed religion had to be understood in its terms, and the common threads linking their perspectives. It also considers Schleiermacher's interpretation of religious feeling as transcendental experience.

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 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).

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.

scholarly journals The Pythia at Delphi

2019 ◽  
pp. 226-252
Author(s):  
Quinton Deeley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Sense Of Identity

At Delphi in Greece the inspired oracle of Apollo, the Pythia, underwent a form of possession in which she was viewed as a vehicle for the god. Nevertheless, uncertainty has surrounded the exact nature of the experience of possession of the Pythia, and what could cause or motivate such experiences. This chapter explores the use of a range of explicit analogies and explanatory models to interpret the experience of the Pythia at the sanctuary of Apollo, and the broader context within which it occurred. Understanding of the Pythia can draw on explanatory models that reach beyond the categories of divination and possession. This includes not only the wider class of revelatory experiences in which supernatural agents (such as God or gods, demons, or spirits) speak or act through humans, but other types of experience involving alterations of the sense of identity and agency, whether they occur in psychopathology or as normal variations in experience. Examples include hallucinations and alien control phenomena in schizophrenia, and their analogues in religious experience; dissociation; and experiments combining suggestion and neuroimaging to model revelatory and possession states. All provide potential insights into the forms of experience, attributed significance, and causal processes involved in Apollo’s communication through the Pythia. They also point to the central role of ideas, expectations, and beliefs in influencing dissociations of the sense of self, and make the Pythia’s possession by Apollo seem less exotic, improbable, or deviant than it might once have seemed.

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 Modeling Uncertainty-Seeking Behavior Mediated by Cholinergic Influence on Dopamine

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwen Belkaid ◽  
Jeffrey L. Krichmar
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Dopaminergic Neurons ◽  
Cholinergic System ◽  
Dopamine Neurons ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Dopaminergic Activity ◽  
Integrate And Fire ◽  
Major Implication ◽  
Seeking Behavior

AbstractRecent findings suggest that acetylcholine mediates uncertainty-seeking behaviors through its projection to dopamine neurons – another neuromodulatory system known for its major implication in reinforcement learning and decision-making. In this paper, we propose a leaky-integrate-and-fire model of this mechanism. It implements a softmax-like selection with an uncertainty bonus by a cholinergic drive to dopaminergic neurons, which in turn influence synaptic currents of downstream neurons. The model is able to reproduce experimental data in two decision-making tasks. It also predicts that i) in the absence of cholinergic input, dopaminergic activity would not correlate with uncertainty, and that ii) the adaptive advantage brought by the implemented uncertainty-seeking mechanism is most useful when sources of reward are not highly uncertain. Moreover, this modeling work allows us to propose novel experiments which might shed new light on the role of acetylcholine in both random and directed exploration. Overall, this study thus contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the roles of the cholinergic system and its involvement in decision-making in particular.

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