Religious Experience

Prepared by:
John Rhay Bundalian Lhirna Mae Garcia
Joshua Galang Kevin Dela Cruz
Karizza Tolentino Lorraine Cruz
Ma. Crizelda Del Rosario Ma. Merjorie Alcantara
 Definition:
An event that people
feel gives them direct
contact with GOD.
 William James
Religious experience is the
feelings, acts, experiences of
individual men in their solitude,
so far as they apprehend
themselves to stand in relation
to whatever they consider
divine.
A powerful experiences
that draws you closer to
GOD.
 01 Mystical Experiences

02 Conversion Experiences

03 Visions

Variety
04 Voices
Of Religious
Experiences 05 Prayer
For the people who have these experiences, the phenomena
have authority and convince them that their religious beliefs
are true.
For many people throughout history, the strongest demonstration of
the existence of God comes from the personal experience.

One famous example is the conversion of Saul to Paul.

Two Categories
Of Religious
Experiences
 • Direct Experience

refer to situations where

someone encounters
God in a direct way.
 • Indirect Experience

refer to times in which

the mind of an individual
focuses on God
Varieties of Religious Experiences
VISION EXPERIENCES
Vision experiences can happen when
a person is awake or in a dream.
There are three different types of vision:
Corporeal Vision
Imaginary Vision
Intellectual Vision
 Corporeal visions
Involves seeing a physical
presence which communicates
something to the recipient.
 Imaginary visions

Imaginary visions are those

internal visions that take
place in the mind or the
“mind’s eye”
 Intellectual visions
Intellectual visions is an
experience rather than an
observation of a physical
object. So being conscious
of a higher power with such
visions not seen with the
real eye.
 Visions are religious experiences where the
subject sees something. They always include
some kind of message or revelation.
CONVERSION EXPERIENCES
Conversion is adopting a new religious
belief that differs from a previously-held
belief (or no belief at all).
Two types of mental occurrence that
lead to a difference in conversion
processes.

Conscious and Voluntary

01 experience:

This is gradual conversion, or

the volitional type.

Involuntary and Unconscious

02 experience:
This is a sudden conversion, or
the self surrender.
There are three different types of conversions:
Intellectual conversion
Moral conversion
Social conversions
 Intellectual conversions:

a change in the way of

thinking about religion
 Moral conversions:

a change in behaviour,
rejecting a destructive
lifestyle in favour of a
new, better one.
 Social conversions:
acceptance of a new
social group and way of
worship
Voices
It is used to describe experience of
hearing God or another religious figure, or
having a conversation with them.
 Three Types of Voices

Disembodied voice
01 A voice that does not show a from speaking. (who
the voice is coming from)
For example: St. Paul on the road to Damascus

Revelation
02 Awhich
voice that communicates a revelation from God
reveals God and his wishes.
For example: God and Moses on Mt Sinai where
God spoke the 10 commandments.

Authoritative
03 Passes on God’s Authority.
For example: At Jesus’ baptism where God says
“You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well
pleased”
Mystical Experience
It refers to a variety of religious
experience in which the subject is
transformed and reports the loss of
individuality, the oneness of all reality,
union with the deity and the unity of the
subject of the experience with the object of
the experience.
Prayer
Prayer is the experience of
communicating with God; in some
ways, all religious experiences can
be seen as a form of prayer.
 St. Teresa of Avila Teresa’s types of Prayer

Teresa believed that the purpose of life was union

with God, which is also the purpose of prayer.
Therefore, the purpose of life is union with God
through prayer.
 William James and
The Varieties of Religious Experiences
William James
He is a
philosopher and
psychologist
• The first educator to offer a psychology course in
the United States.
• He established a psychological school called
“pragmatism”
• James is considered to be a leading thinker of the
late nineteenth century.
• He is the Father of American psychology
The author of The Varieties of Religious
Experience: A study in the Human Nature.
James felt that religious experience was at the very heart of
religion. He said that religion was ‘the feelings, acts, and
experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they
apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may
consider the divine...’
Psychological
Phenomena
 Transient
01 The experience is temporary; the individual soon
returns to a “normal” frame of mind. Feels
outside normal perception of space and time.

Psychologist and philosopher Ineffable

William James described four
characteristics of mystical
02 The experience cannot be adequately put into
words.

experience in The Varieties of Noetic

Religious Experience. According
to James, such an experience is:
03 The individuals feels that he or she has learned
something valuable from the experience. Feels to
have gained knowledge that is normally hidden
from human understanding.

Passive
04 The experience happens to the individual, largely
without conscious control. Although there are
activities, such as meditation that can make
religious experience more likely, it is not
something the can be turned on and off at will.
Challenges to the
Objectivity and
Authenticity of Religious
Experiences
Three Categories
of Challenges to Religious Experiences
 Description
Related
• There may be logical
inconsistencies or incoherence
within the description.
• There might be inconsistencies
between the subjects’ actual
behaviour and what you would
expect if they had the claimed
experience.
 Description
Related
• The person claiming to have had
the experience might be
unreliable.
• Memory is unreliable.

• The person may have

misunderstood the experience.
 Subject
Related
• Dreams, visions and hallucinations
are generally regarded as unreliable.

• Conflicting claims between different

religious experiences.
• Doubtful state of the person at the
time of the religious experience.
 Object
Related
• The entities in the experience are
improbable.

• Other people present at the

experience might not experience
anything themselves.
Franks Davis’ different challenges became
persuasive and not persuasive at all.
SUPPORTING
RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE

• Public experiences
• Private Experiences
• Corporate Religious
experience
Richard Swinburne
Richard Swinburne has suggested in his book
The Existence of God that here are five
recognizable types of religious experience,
which he further divides into two groups:

Public Experiences
Private Experiences
Public Experiences
Ordinary Experiences – Experiences where a
person interprets a natural event as having religious
significance. For example, the beauty of nature or the
natural world.

Extraordinary Experiences – Experiences that

appear to violate normal understanding of the workings of
nature. For example Jesus turning water into wine at Cana
(John 2).
Private Experiences
Describable in Ordinary Language –
Experiences such as dreams. For example Joseph’s dream
of God telling him to flee to Egypt in the Bible (Matthew 2).

Non-Describable Experiences – This

refers to direct experiences of God in which God is revealed
to people. These experiences are ineffable.

Non-Specific Experiences – These

experiences could include things like looking at the world
from a religious perspective. For example seeing the
intricacy of God the Creator in the universe.
 Corporate Religious Experience

Corporate religious experiences are experiences seen by a body of

people.
They are not just experienced by one person, but by a collective group of
people who all say they experienced some supernatural event similar to
one another.
 Corporate Religious Experience

The religious experience argument is a classic a posteriori argument,

which seeks to establish of the objective existence of the Divine.
 2 Principles
to support
the suggestion of Swinburne
LOREM that there is no reason why
claims to religious experience
IPSUM
should be treated any differently
DOLOR SIT to any perceptual claims.
AMET,
Principle of Credulity
Credulity means "willingness to believe
something“

It is also part of an inductive argument for God's

existence. - Swinburne's definition
Principle of Testimony
Testimony is another person's claim that they
want you to believe.

"unless we have positive evidence that they are

misremembering or are untrustworthy, we should
believe the testimony."
According to Swinburne, in the absence of
special considerations,
“He's not saying that we should always
believe anything that people tell us.“
 THANK YOU
Prepared by:
John Rhay Bundalian Lhirna Mae Garcia
Joshua Galang Kevin Dela Cruz
Karizza Tolentino Lorraine Cruz
Ma. Crizelda Del Rosario Ma. Merjorie Alcantara