Dialogue Education – Religious Experience
R E L I G I O U S E X P E R I E N C E
A philosophic perspective
Imagine you were walking along the banks of Loch Ness. Suddenly there was a tremendous commotion in the water and a green head appeared with loops behind it. The weather was good and the head and its loops swam nearer shore. You could see it clearly as well as the markings and the scales you could see that it did not appear to be a model or man made. You had not been drinking nor had you been taking drugs. To you, the Loch Ness monster would be real and no matter how much evidence there was against its existence, you might well believe in its existence.
To those who do not believe in religion, claims to religious experience are as incredible as claims to have seen the Loch Ness monster or to have seen UFOs yet many people stake their lives on such experiences. The first question to be asked is whether it is possible to argue from such experiences to the existence of God. On the face of it this seems plausible we normally rely on our senses and empiricists hold that our senses provide us with the foundation for all our claims to knowledge.
THE BASIC ARGUMENT FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE[1]
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The basic argument runs as follows:
- Throughout human history, in all cultures and societies, there have been many reports of a great variety of religious experiences.
- The competing explanations for these reports are not as probable as is the supposition that some religious beliefs are true,
- Therefore probably some religious beliefs are true.
There is a clear ambiguity as to what it means that religious experiences are “true”. If this simply means that the person or people concerned had such experiences, then this does not get us very far - the issue is whether the experiences are due to them being caused by a referent that is not located in the human psyche alone. All the above propositions are debatable and these notes are intended to amplify the debate.
It can be claimed that religious belief is so different from normal experience not just because of its object but because such experiences regulate the whole of a person’s life that it cannot be judged like normal experience - however this is part of the debate set out below.
There are two general positions regarding religious experience as evidence for the existence of God.
THE HARD POSITION is advocated by, for instance, Terence Penelhum and this maintains that there can be no natural theology based on experience. There could, it is held, only be such a natural theology if it could be shown that no non-religious explanation of the occurrence of a given type of religious experience could be had and this position holds that such alternative accounts will always be available.
THE SOFT POSITION is advocated by John Hick and this maintains that someone who has a powerful sense of existing in the presence of God must, as a rational person, claim to know that God exists - such a person would be as entitled to make this claim as others are to claim that the physical world and other people exist. Richard Swinburne (see below) can be classified as holding this soft position.
WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?
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It is very easy to waffle on about religious experience without defining what it is! There are many different types and Swinburne's analysis (set out in 'The Existence of God' (Oxford) or in ‘The Puzzle of God’) is good. The main difference he draws is between public and private religious experiences and he then divides these further. There is a substantial difference between, say, seeing the night sky as God's handiwork or seeing the sun come to a standstill in the sky and a vague, interior feeling of the presence of 'The Holy'. One of his categories is a mystical experience which it is hard to describe in normal language - the following quotation from 'The Wind in the Willows' is an excellent description of such an experience:
'Breathless and transfixed, the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke in on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade's cheeks, and bowed his head and understood... "This is the place of my songdream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. "Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!" Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeking, he knew it could only mean that some August Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look at his friend, and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous birdhaunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew....
"Rat!" he found breath to whisper, shaking. "Are you afraid?"
"Afraid?" murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. "Afraid of HIM? O, never, never! And yet and yet O, Mole, I am afraid!"
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship. Caroline Franks Davies describes religious experience as:
'...something akin to a sensory experience'
'...an intellectual intuition which is analogous to our intuition of other human persons in so far as firstly, it is mediated by signs and secondly, it terminates in spiritual reality'
'...a roughly datable mental event which the subject is to some extent aware of'
'...experiences which the subjects themselves describe in religious terms or which are intrinsically religious'[2]
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Dialogue Education - Religious Experience
Martin Buber talks of an encounter with God as an 'I/Thou' encounter. Believers may claim that their encounter with God is so real and so immediate that no justification is required. John Hick likens this to a man being asked to justify being in the presence of his wife and maintains that no such justification is required. Nevertheless the possibility of being mistaken is real as the evidence in favour of being in the presence of one's wife may be held to be higher than the evidence for being in the presence of God.
John Wisdom's famous GARDENER example illustrates this. Two people look at a neglected garden one is convinced that there is a gardener because of the signs of order and beauty that are there. The other denies this and points to the weeds and the signs of disorder. They devise various tests but no sign of a gardener is found. The first person, however, sticks to his belief and maintains that there IS a gardener, but it is an incorporeal, invisible gardener who cannot be seen. The two people do not differ about the facts of the garden their difference arises due to their different interpretations. The problem, of course, is to know which of the two people is 'right' if, indeed, there is any right answer. A.E. Taylor maintains that the person with the artist's eye sees beauty everywhere and similarly the religious person sees everything in terms of the reality of God. Taylor is effectively maintaining that it is the believer who sees things correctly however no real evidence is given. The artist may have learnt to see beauty in every situation, no matter how apparently grim and hideous. Similarly the religious believer may have been taught to experience the world as if it is infused by God.
St. PAUL ON THE DAMASCUS ROAD
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St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus is probably the best known account of a mystical/religious experience in Christianity, yet it is significant that the three accounts given in the Acts of the Apostles of this experience all differ quite markedly. [It is an interesting exercise to take the three accounts below of religious experience and to ask into which of Swinburne’s five categories they fall.]
ACTS 9: 3- 8:
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied.
"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone.
Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus.
ACTS 22: 6 - 11.
"About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me.
I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, `Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?'
"`Who are you, Lord?' I asked. "`I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied.
My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.
"`What shall I do, Lord?' I asked. "`Get up,' the Lord said, `and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.'
My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.”
ACTS 26: 13 - 19
“About noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.
We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, `Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.'
"Then I asked, `Who are you, Lord?' "`I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' the Lord replied.
`Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.
I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'
"So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven…..”
The writer of Acts was clearly aware of these three accounts and it would have been simple to harmonise them so that they did not contradict each other – in fact he chose not to do so and this, in itself, may point towards the reliability of the stories. Certainly Paul believed that something incredibly dramatic had happened to him and the writer of the Book of Acts did not consider the precise details to be directly relevant. Again, however, the question remains whether Paul’s conviction that something dramatic had happened should be interpreted as he interpreted it. The same question can be asked of the Prophet Mohammed who was convinced that Allah, through the Archangel, dictated the Holy Koran to him – again, the strength of conviction is clear but non-believers may be sceptical as to what actually occurred.
BRIDGING THE INTERNAL / EXTERNAL GAP
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Swinburne has attempted to address the issue of how one moves from the claim of interior certainty about a religious experience to the claim that this experience is an independent reality. This is a key issue.
Swinburne puts forward two important principles which attempt to bridge the gap between internal and external.
1) THE PRINCIPLE OF CREDULITY maintains that it is a principle of rationality that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems to a person that X is present, then probably X is present. What one seems to perceive is probably so.
2) THE PRINCIPLE OF TESTIMONY maintains that, in the absence of special considerations, it is reasonable to believe that the experiences of others are probably as they report them.
Swinburne maintains that if we refuse to accept the first of these principles we land in a sceptical bog. We should, therefore, allow religious experiences initial credibility unless there is some evidence against them (if, for instance, we have been drinking or the light is bad or tricks are being played by the light). The aim of the Principle of credulity is to put the onus on the sceptic to show why reports of religious experience should not be accepted. This is important - all that the principle seeks to establish is initial credibility and that claims to religious experience should not be dismissed out of hand. The sceptic should, it is held, produce argument or evidence to show why claims to religious experience should not be accepted as valid - in the absence of such argument or evidence the claims should be taken at face value.
Dialogue Education - Religious Experience
The Principle of Testimony simply relies on the inherent trustworthiness of other people it asks us to believe reports of experiences unless we have some grounds for not doing so. If, for instance, a person is known to be unreliable, is on drugs, suffers from delusions or otherwise has a previous history which would cast doubt on his her or reliability, then we would be right to be suspicious of what we are told. However if the person is apparently of sound mind, of reasonable intelligence and generally reliable, then there is no reason, in principle, why we should not believe them.
Caroline Franks Davies in her book 'The Evidential Force of Religious Experience' builds on Swinburne's approach. Effectively she and Swinburne work with a cumulative argument. They maintain that if all the arguments for and against the existence of God are considered, they are fairly evenly balanced. Some of the arguments strengthen the likelihood that God exists whilst others (for instance those concentrating on the problem of evil and suffering) make the existence of God less likely. If these are all taken together, then, it is held, it is neither highly probable nor highly improbable that God exists the scales of probability are evenly balanced. GIVEN THIS SITUATION, it is reasonable to rely on reports of religious experience to tip the scales in favour of belief that God exists.
It may be argued that neither Swinburne nor Davies give sufficient weight to counter arguments against belief in God - for instance they give scant attention to the problem of evil and whilst their arguments may be persuasive to an existing believer, to an unbiased observer they would have rather less force. The existence of evil does significantly reduce the probability that the God of Christian theism exists - although how one balances the probability for and against God’s existence will inevitably be a largely subjective matter about which opinions will differ.
WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?
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It is not easy collecting evidence about religious experience. Many people do not want to speak about their experiences and often such experiences are not easy to describe. People fear ridicule they fear being made fun of and mocked and they therefore keep quiet.
Two examples taken from experiences of close friends of mine whom I trust and know well might be examples of this:
- A Catholic priest, on the night that he was priested, was aware of being attacked by an overwhelming force of evil that thrust him down onto his bed and kept him pinned there. He was terrified and could not move and was only aware of the tremendous power of this evil force.
- Another Catholic, going on pilgrimage, and praying the rosary with some cheap rosary beads. He had been staying with a Jewish friend the night before and for some reason had shown him the rosary. At the end of the pilgrimage, every third bead had turned to a gold colour and remained like that (he showed me the rosary some time later). He had no explanation for it at all.
Neither of these people had spoken about their experiences and yet they were both people I knew well, sane and reliable.
We live in a world in which the whole idea of religious experience is often greeted with great scepticism. If, therefore, one is to proceed rationally one should examine whatever evidence is available dispassionately and without bias. If one starts from the conviction that religious experiences cannot occur or, on the other hand, if one starts by being convinced that religious experiences are common, then it is unlikely that one's mind will be changed.
David Hay wrote an important book in 1986 called INNER SPACE. This brought together research work conducted by the OXFORD RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE RESEARCH UNIT at Oxford. Essentially between about 30 and 45% of the population of Britain, irrespective of age, geographical position or even belief say that they have been aware of a presence or power beyond themselves. The book records that many of the people interviewed had never previously spoken about their experiences because they thought that others would make fun of them or would not understand. The data was collected by reputable and independent polling organizations. These figures are impressive and noteworthy and cannot be lightly dismissed. They do not prove the matter, but they must be taken into account by any openminded enquirer as part of the overall equation. It should be noted, however, that the claims are fairly general and it is difficult to translate them into the faith claims of any one, single religion.