Discuss critically the view that people who claim to have had a religious experience of god should be believed?
A religious experience can be difficult to define but it is seen to play an important role in a religious person's life they feel as if they have an encounter with god which gives them a sense of direction which helps to make them to feel at ease. In addition, religious experience has been split into different types the first one being mystical experience this is an experience which goes beyond everyday sense experience, the second is a conversion experience which is an experience that makes a drastic change in a person's life and finally the last is a corporate religious experience which is something that happens to a group of people. Philosophers have tried to differentiate between each of the unique characteristics of the experiences and the main thinkers are Fredrich Schleiermacher, Sigmund Freud and finally Michael Persinger who explain the main issue surrounding religious experiences and this being how authentic religious experiences really are and whether they are nothing but a hallucination.
Friedrich Schleiermacher claimed that a religious experience was based on a personal experience he believed that a religious experience was self-authenticating and believed that no testing was required he strongly believed that religious experiences should have priority and the statements should be formulated to fit them However critics argued that he made things to subjective as he reduced religion to emotion on the other hand, Sigmund Freud saw religious experiences as an illusion he suggests that the urge some people felt towards religion was no more than psychological obsession. For example, if someone claimed to have experienced the suffering of Jesus, a religious person may accept this, but Freud would say that it was the persons opinion about the suffering of Jesus overall Freud explained that In turning away from reality and putting a wishful reality in its place the person makes use of imaginative thinking as if it’s a way to make them feel better about the world they live in.
Some people have explained a religious experience in a physiological interpretation Michael Persinger is a neuroscience researcher who explained that when transmitting magnetic weak signals people had a religious experience this is when he experimented with a group of volunteers who had to wear a helmet shaped device which transmitted weak magnetic signals through the brain, and he argues that religious experiences are no more than the brain responding to external stimuli. Some critics claimed that people who are unknowingly in the presence of a magnet field might feel as if they have encountered god, but it was just the effects of magnetism which was confused for a religious experience also the study took place in a controlled environment so the credibility may not be valid as a religious experience can take place at any time . Other psychological studies that have taken place is a near death experience which is experienced by people who were in a coma or a cardiac arrest whilst being in a near death experience people have claimed that they have sensed a presence of god and some have indicated that there is a real hope of life after death in the presence of god but critics have suggested that the medication used whilst they suffered from trauma could be accountable for the patients having these religious experience so would physiology offer a plausible explanation of an religious experience than the one that directly comes from god.
Many people are more likely to believe something if it has been experienced. Our experience of God is the best evidence we have that God exists. Richard Swinburne believes that a religious experience should be taken as seriously unless there's a good reason to be suspicious about it, and it could be taken as evidence for the existence of god. An example Swinburne portrays is if someone says that they can hear someone at the door then they probably can in the same way if someone says they can hear the voices of god we should believe them. Therefore, Swinburne puts forward the principle of credulity and testimony and Swinburne's principle of credulity says that experience is normally reliable and the balance of probability says that experience can be trusted and the principle of testimony says that mostly people tell the truth so we can believe what we are told so we should go with the balance of probability when we are told something and we shouldn’t make different rules for a religious experience just because we have not experienced it ourselves .Therefore, if person believes God was present we should accept what a person experiences unless you can prove otherwise. On the other hand, critics state that only one person has a religious experience and other people cannot have a repeat of the experience so it cannot be proven and considered.
Overall, I believe that a religious experience is a personal experience and the issues surrounding this is whether a religious experience is a genuine encounter with god or just a mere overactive imagination or just a hallucination. There is no clear answer to the question of whether one can demonstrate God’s existence as a result of religious experience. As a result, one cannot determine the credibility of a religious experience.