Religious Experience

This Element looks at religious experience and the role it has played in philosophy of religion. It critically explores the history of the intertwined discourses on mysticism and religious experience, before turning to a few specific discussions within contemporary philosophy of religion. One debate concerns the question of perennialism vs. constructivism and whether there is a 'common core' to all religious or mystical experience independent of interpretation or socio-historical background. Another central discussion concerns the epistemology of purportedly theophanic experience and whether a perceptual model of religious experience can provide evidence or justification for theistic belief. The Element concludes with a discussion of how philosophy of religion can productively widen its treatment of religious experience in the service of creating a more inclusive and welcoming discipline.

The concept of «warrant» of the christian belief in Alvin Plantinga`S theistic philosophy

The study focuses on the concept of warranted Christian belief, which was introduced by A. Plantinga. The purpose of the research is to consider the warrant as a property of the Christian belief, moreover through which it can become knowledge. The study scrutinizes the possibility of accepting faith without theistic arguments. The author analyzes A. Plantinga's classification of a warrant, for example, deontologism, coherentism and reliabilism. The author gives a general characteristic of warranted belief, moreover, the study stresses that belief has a warrant for a person if it is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly, if a belief is formed in an appropriate epistemic environment, if cognitive faculties are operating according to a design plan reliably aimed at truth, if a person has no defeaters for that belief. The article emphasizes that if A. Plantinga's A/C model is true, then theistic belief is truly warranted, consequently a warrant of theistic belief depends on the proof of the existence of God. The author of the research contends that beliefs can have different degrees of the warrant, and if this degree becomes sufficient, belief becomes knowledge. Moreover, the author points out that one of the basic beliefs admitted by A. Plantinga is belief in God. The study analyzes four types of human interaction with God: internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, perception of God (sensus divinitatis), Holy Scripture, and faith. The main function of the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit is to inspire a human to have faith in God. Moreover, the author emphasizes that Christian beliefs, acquired by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, are not only warranted but have sufficient justification to be knowledge. The complex action of the perception of God and internal instigation of the Holy Spirit provide reliable, properly basic beliefs that are referred to the truth written in the Holy Gospel. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that there are no convincing arguments for the Christian belief for those who have not accepted it. In the conclusion, the author points out that forming an A/C model, A. Plantinga creates a double problem, on the one hand, his goal is to warrant the truth of the theistic belief, and he performs his task, but, on the other hand, he tries to demonstrate warrant of the Christian belief, and presents the same opportunity to representatives of other theistic religions. Thus, instead of arguing with atheism, A. Plantinga turns to a discussion with non-Christian theistic religions.

Theism and Realism: A Match Made in Heaven?

There is no interesting entailment either way between theism and various forms of realism. Taking its cue from Dummett’s characterisation of realism and his discussion of it with respect to theistic belief, this paper argues both that theism does not follow from realism, and that God cannot be appealed to in order to secure bivalence for an otherwise indeterminate subject matter. In both cases, significant appeal is made to the position that God is not a language user, which in turn is motivated by an account of understanding as aptitude possession. The resulting picture sits comfortably with the apophatism common within living religious traditions and with the view that the philosophy of religion ought to reorientate itself away from metaphysics towards more practical questions.

Is the fact that other people believe in God a reason to believe? Remarks on the consensus gentium argument.

According to The Consensus Gentium Argument from the premise: “Everyone believes that God exists” one can conclude that God does exist. In my paper I analyze two ways of defending the claim that somebody’s belief in God is a prima facie reason to believe. Kelly takes the fact of the commonness of the belief in God as a datum to explain and argues that the best explanation has to indicate the truthfulness of the theistic belief. Trinkaus Zagzebski grounds her defence on rationality of epistemic trust in others. In the paper I argue that the second line of reasoning is more promising and I propose its improved version.

Pascal’s wager

Pascal’s wager is a type of theistic argument developed by Blaisé Pascal, a French mathematician of the seventeenth century. There are at least four versions of the wager within Pascal’s posthumously published work, Pensées, each of which is a pragmatic argument. Pragmatic arguments for theism are designed to motivate and support belief even in the absence of strong evidence. They seek to show that theistic belief is permissible, even if one does not think that it is likely that God exists, and then to employ prudential reasons to conclude that one should accept theism. Other theistic arguments – the Ontological Proof or the Cosmological Argument for example - provide epistemic reasons in support of theism: that is, reasons to think that there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, morally perfect being. According to Pascal, there is good reason to seek to inculcate theistic belief, even if one does not appreciate the evidence in support of theism (see Pascal 1960). The role of the wager, as Pascal conceived it, was to move self-interested individuals towards a perspective in which they could appreciate the evidence for theism. Understood in this way, the wager is not a pragmatic trumping of the epistemic, but a means of bridging the chasm between the pragmatic and the epistemic. The wager has the structure of a gamble, a decision made under uncertainty. Pascal assumed that a person, just by virtue of being in the world, is in a betting situation such that one cannot avoid betting one's life on whether God exists or not. The wager concerning God is forced, one might say, since trying to avoid wagering is tantamount to wagering for one of the alternatives. To wager that God exists is to take steps to inculcate theistic belief. To wager against is to do nothing. Bringing about belief is not an action that one can directly will, but one can take steps to try to bring about belief indirectly. If one wagers on God and believes, then there are two possible outcomes. Either God exists and one may have put oneself in a position to gain an eternity of bliss; or, God does not exist and one loses little, if anything. On the other hand, if one bets against God and wins, one gains little. But, if one loses that wager, the consequences may be dismal. Because the first alternative has an outcome that overwhelms any possible gain attached to nonbelief, the choice is clear, says Pascal, one should wager that God exists.

Reforming reformed epistemology: a new take on the sensus divinitatis

Alvin Plantinga theorizes the existence of a sensus divinitatis – a special cognitive faulty or mechanism dedicated to the production and non-inferential justification of theistic belief. Following Chris Tucker, we offer an evidentialist-friendly model of the sensus divinitatis whereon it produces theistic seemings that non-inferentially justify theistic belief. We suggest that the sensus divinitatis produces these seemings by tacitly grasping support relations between the content of ordinary experiences (in conjunction with our background evidence) and propositions about God. Our model offers advantages such as eliminating the need for a sui generis religious faculty, harmonizing the sensus divinitatis with prominent theories in the cognitive science of religion, and providing a superior account of natural revelation.

Feeling Is Believing: Inspiration Encourages Belief in God

Even without direct evidence of God’s existence, about half of the world’s population believes in God. Although previous research has found that people arrive at such beliefs intuitively instead of analytically, relatively little research has aimed to understand what experiences encourage or legitimate theistic belief systems. Using cross-cultural correlational and experimental methods, we investigated whether the experience of inspiration encourages a belief in God. Participants who dispositionally experience more inspiration, were randomly assigned to relive or have an inspirational experience, or reported such experiences to be more inspirational all showed stronger belief in God. These effects were specific to inspiration (instead of adjacent affective experiences) and a belief in God (instead of other empirically unverifiable claims). Being inspired by someone or something (but not inspired to do something) offers a spiritually transcendent experience that elevates belief in God, in part because it makes people feel connected to something beyond themselves.

Holm Tetens on the Moral Argument for Theism: A Kantian Perspective

SummaryThis paper presents a reconstruction and discussion of Holm Tetens’ new moral argument for theistic belief. The argument is a pragmatic one in that it intends to show that believing in God is rational because it has some morally desirable consequences. It asserts that the suffering of countless victims of evil in this world causes in atheists who try to be moral some morally questionable states of mind. By contrast, theists who have certain beliefs about the afterlife, judgment, and reconciliation are not subject to these bad states of mind. Therefore, Tetens argues, theistic belief is more rational than disbelief.