The Evidential Force of Religious Experience
... In (Davis, 1989) A Cumulative Argument in Favour of the Seriousness of Religious Experience: Starting from the assumption of "critical realism", Davis (1989, p. 10) makes clear that not only when speaking of religious issues, but also in everyday communication, language has a metaphoric component which cannot easily be dissolved. According to Caroline Franks Davis, religious experience has the special quality of being ineffable and can take "interpretive", "quasi-sensory", "revelatory", "regenerative", "numinous" and "mystical" forms. ...
... In a second step, however, Davis (1989) argues, that critics as well might construct a cumulative argument in favour of atheism -a point which was not adequately addressed by Swineburne. Such cumulative critique might be developed from a summary of (a) "descriptionrelated", (b) "subject-related", and (c) "objectrelated challenges". ...
... Other descriptionrelated challenges may arise from the fact that some reports stem from a notoriously unreliable person, from content-related or linguistic misunderstandings, or hindsight-bias. Apart from the possibility of examining these possible sources of error in detail, Davis' (1989) central argument against this type of challenge pertains to the fact that most religious experiences are highly ramified at a theoretical level (e.g., the Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity is not based on experience alone, although a multitude of different experiences related to the Holy Trinity have been reported). ...
The present case study highlights the importance of person-situation interaction and the intake skills in psychotherapy. It is easy for a professional to get into the trap of joining client in blaming the 'obvious situation' for creating a mental health problem, despite being aware of the basic person-situation interaction formulation. Careful assessment is warranted to uncover person-situation interaction. Intake skills (for example, cost-benefit analysis, assessment of feasibility issues, ability to think of alternatives, etc.) play a role in developing successful psychotherapy contact and treatment planning. This paper follows a single case study approach, useful in highlighting issues in psychotherapy, through report of a therapy with a 29 year old woman seeking treatment for depression since five years following the death of her husband. Use of intake skills and interaction formulation has lead to better management and positive outcome for her in therapy.
... As for non-resistant non-belief by those in non-monotheistic intellectual heritages, there is no reason to think that such believers lack a meaningful relationship with God. Religious experiences are recorded in different religious traditions, and on some interpretations, share important common features (Otto (1958) and Davis (1989)). Furthermore, there is a good argument to the effect that the diversity of religious experience is willed by God to achieve a transcendental unity starting from terrestrial plurality (Schuon (1984)). ...
... If Schellenberg thinks that religious experience has no epistemic standing, then there is no argument for thinking that a good and loving God should make that experience available to nonresistant seekers. Conversely, if religious experience of either the dazzling or humble sort has epistemic standing, then there is no reason for not trusting the testimony of religious practitioners for they are readily at hand (Davis (1989)). One would not be nonresistant by disbelieving their reports. ...
Most commentators on the argument from divine hiddenness agree that there exists non-resistant non-belief. This article challenges this orthodoxy by arguing that on closer inspection, this premise is problematic. The putative categories of non-resistant non-belief are really instances of resistance, or non-resistant non-belief of the sort that is not incongruent with what a good and loving God would allow (or could prevent). One of the central critiques offered here is that Schellenberg's argument against the veridicality of religious experience, if true, calls into question the importance of having conscious apprehension of God. The absence of conscious apprehension of God is taken by Schellenberg as evidence of hiddenness. But if religious experience is as epistemically tenuous as he argues it is (as against the veridicality of religious experience) then God would not be interested in bequeathing it. So, there is an internal tension within the hiddenness argument that defeats one of its key premises. Non-belief is either resistant or non-resistant, but not of the sort incompatible with what a loving God would allow.
... Establishing parity between religious experience and other experience we assume is reliable has proven a popular way of advancing the argument. Caroline Davis (1989) draws an intriguing parity with esthetic experience. We tend to trust the experiences of aesthetes (i.e., an esthetic expert, such as a wine taster, musician, or painter), so why shouldn't we trust the experiences of religious people, especially saints, who are effectively religious experts? ...
... But that seems false: the degree to which one experiences God would seem to be something entirely up to Him. Other spirited defenses of the Swinburnian approach include Davis (1989), Gellman (1997, and Kwan (2011). 10 Likening religious beliefs to perceptual beliefs, or epistemic "seemings", has affinities with Plantinga's contention that belief in God is properly basic (Plantinga, 1983) and can result from a natural capacity to sense the divine (Plantinga, 2000). ...
I survey recent and overlooked work on four of the most common and perennial arguments for theism: from morality, miracles, religious experience, and pragmatic considerations.
... Overall this is a question of what aprioristic horizons religious experience engages. Davis (1989) attempted a categorization of religious experience as interpretive (of ordinary life events), quasisensual (e.g., visions), revelatory (internal), numinous (of holy reality itself), and mystical (the union with the Ultimate Reality). This categorization is established in the natural attitude, which means that the distinctions between the categories are interpretive and not descriptive of the deeper constitutive structures of experience. ...
... gical materiality of the "nondual" religious experience Chap. 5 in this volume; Louchakova-Schwartz 2017;or cf. Louchakova-Schwartz 2013). Motivated by affect, mediated by intentional excess (cf. Marion 2002b), conversion is not an intellectual event but a full-bodied lived experience, Erlebnis. Religious experience has a "convincingness surplus." (Cf. Davis 1989.) Nonetheless, its relationship with both traditional theology and theological phenomenology has been complicated. Though integrating individual subjective experience with theological dogma would seem a natural fit for Tillich's method of correlation (cf. Hammond 1964;Bowker 2000, 594-595), in theology the historicized thematization of th ...
Can we count the work of Michel Henry among the philosophies of religion? No doubt, the answer would be negative, because even though this philosopher reflected closely on the subject of religion, especially that of Christianity, he never claimed his reflection to be “the philosophy of religion.” However, if we return to the etymology of the word “religion” by recalling that the Latin word religio is related to the verbs relegere and religare, we grasp that in Henry there is this sense of religion as religare. Indeed, as well as according to this verb religion is the art of vertically establishing links between humanity and the divine or God, and horizontally between men and women who share the same religious belief, according Henry, religion (religio) signifies a bond that binds a human being to God, and this link is that of life in the living. Religion, therefore, is the expression of the “bond” between Life and the living, and perhaps, the understanding of this “bond” is Michel Henry’s contribution to the “philosophy of religion”—or even more, his contribution to the explication of what religio manifests. The paper will investigate how Henry, in his work, proposes and develops the “religion as link” by placing the emphasis above all on incarnation and flesh, the center of Christianity.
... 12 However, we must be cognizant of the fact that conventional language literality 13 might not be fully understood if the strictly literal content is removed from it. On the other side, the irreducibility of metaphors is a subject of significant scholarly discussion, with many emphasizing its indispensable role in the discourse on the nature of religious language (Davis 1989;Soskice 1985Soskice , 2007Davidson 1978;Searle 1969;Stern 2000;Alston 2019;Camp 2006;Cavell 2015;Moran 1989). The argument posits that, given the divine's transcendent nature, the language used to characterize the divine cannot be literal, as it does not directly refer to empirical concepts. ...
This paper investigates the developmental trajectory of the debate concerning the nature of religious language, particularly the contrast between its literal and metaphorical dimensions, situating it within the broader context of linguistic, philosophical, and theological scholarship. Drawing on contemporary research, it offers a critical evaluation of three major approaches, with a detailed analysis of one in particular. The first two approaches, literalism and metaphoricism, are critiqued for their reductionist frameworks, which fundamentally erode the multifaceted nature of this discourse. The third approach, while avoiding these reductionist pitfalls, still calls for further clarification of the mechanisms underlying the interplay between these elements. Through conceptual analysis and grammatical examination, it demonstrates that this proposal, which posits a dynamic interaction—where neither dimension is subordinate to the other, but rather, they paradoxically coexist—yields a more accurate account. The findings suggest that this dialectical approach surpasses the conventional treatment of the literal–metaphorical nexus, proposing that religious language is not only communicative and comprehensible but also an evolving process in which grammatical perplexity fosters semantic depth and intellectual insight.
... 2. L'intelligence Artificielle au coeur de la théorie de l'acceptation de la technologie et des travaux empiriques 2.1. Modèle de l'acceptation technologique Le modèle d'acceptation technologique de Davis (1989) est un cadre théorique qui décrit la manière dont les individus acceptent et utilisent les nouvelles technologies. ...
Objet : L’objet de ce papier est d’analyser les enjeux de l’adoption de l’intelligence artificielle par les préparateurs de comptes, ceci pour contourner les erreurs de comptabilité, le manque de transparence, les retards dans la préparation des états financiers, la « non-conformité » aux réglementations comptables et le manque de compétences dans la pratique de la comptabilité. Méthodologie : Pour faire ce travail, nous nous sommes servi du modèle d’acceptation de la technologie de Davis (1989). Résultats : A la fin de nos analyses on retient que l’IA peut être une solution efficace pour résoudre les problèmes auxquels sont confrontés les comptables d’entreprises. Originalité du papier : En automatisant les tâches répétitives, en détectant les erreurs et les fraudes, en améliorant les prévisions financières, en assistant à la conformité réglementaire et en améliorant l’efficacité, l’IA peut aider les comptables à être plus efficaces et à prendre des décisions plus éclairées.
... More specifically, are spiritual explanations based on actual perceptions of spiritual activity or presence, or are they merely convenient ways of describing happenstance? What is the "evidential force" of putative spiritual experience(s) in arguments for the existence of the relevant spiritual entities (Franks Davis 1989)? These questions are important, but they cannot be answered at present. ...
This study utilizes the general attribution theory of Spilka, Shaver, and Kirkpatrick (1985) to examine how individuals determine that a given dream is spiritually or religiously meaningful. In accordance with Spilka, Shaver, and Kirkpatrick’s theory, this work claims that dream interpretation/attribution is a function of the attributor, dream content, dream context, and attributor’s context. Characteristics from each of these four dimensions can support or hinder spiritual attribution of a given dream. Under certain conditions spiritual attribution will be preferred over natural(istic) attribution and vice versa. Dual attribution is also possible. With the dreams and related experiences of Nepali Christians and Hindus functioning as the main objects of investigation, this study uses a mix of quantitative and descriptive statistics, case studies, and grounded observations to identify the precise kinds of things that facilitate or frustrate spiritual attribution (vis-à-vis dreams). These findings, in turn, frame discussions about attribution as a cognitive process involving the attributor and one or more situational variables. Although the primary research sample consists of Nepali individuals, this study
examines the general validity of reported findings whenever comparable data/results are available. Thus, it is claimed that the cognitive constraints affecting spiritual attribution for Nepalese are largely operative for non-Nepalese as well. The same claim likewise applies to (Nepali) Christians and Hindus. Put another way, the spiritual understandings of Nepalese and non-Nepalese, as well as those of Christians and Hindus, appear to share much in common.
... We will examine four of these challenges here. (For a more thorough discussion of the various object-, description-, and subject-related challenges, see Franks Davis [1989]; Gale [1991]; Fales [1996a].) ...
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.
... Notes 1. This does not necessarily hold true for philosophers of religion, some of whom still make a case for religious experience as evidence of truth claims (see, e.g., Alston, 1993;Davis, 1999). 2. The chapter "Psychology of Religion Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience" will appear in the Cambridge Handbook of Religious Experience (Taves, in press), the first such handbook since Hood (1995). ...
Although many researchers in psychology, religious studies, and psychiatry recognize that there is overlap in the experiences their subjects recount, disciplinary silos and challenges involved in comparing reported experiences have left us with little understanding of the mechanisms, whether biological, psychological, and/or sociocultural, through which these experiences are represented and differentiated. So-called mystical experiences, which some psychologists view as potentially sui generis, provide a test case for assessing whether we can develop an expanded framework for studying unusual experiences across disciplines and cultures. Evidence for the special nature of “mystical experience” rests on the operationalization of a metaphysically untestable construct in two widely used self-report scales: the Mysticism Scale and the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire. Consideration of the construct in light of research on alterations in sense of self induced by psychoactive drugs and meditation practices suggests that “positive experiences of undifferentiated unity” are not sui generis, but rather a type of “ego dissolution.” To better understand the nature and effects of unusual experiences, such as alterations in the sense of self, we need self-report measures that distinguish between generically worded experiences and the way they are appraised in terms of valence, significance, cause, and long-term effects in different contexts.
... While a philosophical project that presupposed the authority of biblical or Qur'anic scripture would still not count as natural theology, philosophical arguments about the evidential value of religious experience now are treated in the domain of natural theology. This allows for greater material for theists and naturalists to argue for evidence that might or might not fi ll out a religious concept of the divine (Wainwright 1981;Davis 1989;Alston 1991;Yandell 1993;Gellman 1997Gellman , 2001. The current work on religious experience does not pass over into revealed theology so long as scriptural texts are not treated as presuppositions of inquiry. ...
... La discusión acerca de los criterios de la racionalidad de la creencia religiosa, incluida su dimensión fiduciaria, es larga y compleja, y no podemos entrar aquí en una exposición detallada (cf. Audi 2011;Franks 1989). Lo que nos interesa mostrar es que la pregunta por la racionalidad de la creencia religiosa no puede entenderse simplemente en el sentido de poner a la religión ante el tribunal de la razón, sino más bien como una indagación que problematiza los límites entre ambas y que torna problemática la idea de que tenemos una teoría clara de la racionalidad. ...
Se explora cr.ticamente el pensamiento del fil.sofo colombiano Jorge Aurelio Díaz acerca de la religi.n. En particular, se examina, por un lado, la cuestión del lugar y el papel de la religi.n en la modernidad, a partir de la pregunta por la racionalidad y el valor cognitivo de la creencia religiosa, y, por otro lado, la diferencia entre misticismoy religión. Se plantear.n y discutir.n algunos aspectos problemáticos de lamanera en que Díaz comprende ambos asuntos.
... Carolyn Franks Davis provides a taxonomy of various forms of religious experience, none of which are mutually exclusive, and people may hold to various elements to various degrees. 18 Careful philosophical and theological reflection is needed in order to clearly define the object of study not to mention interpreting the results. ...
In 2009, Mark Walker first proposed the Genetic Virtue Project, advancing that science should explore using genetic engineering to eliminate moral evils just as it attempts to eliminate natural ones like disease. This seemed like an issue for the far future given the unique challenges. Walker focused on the wrong aspect of personhood, however, as moral engineering of the brain appears to be a more likely possibility. As early aspects of moral engineering the brain are in development, especially through the manipulation of the neural correlates of religious and political beliefs, emotions, and behaviors, I consider several issues surrounding this project so as to protect individual rights and prevent future harms. I advance an internal criterion for the field called Acceptability Across Ideologies to serve as a guide to protect against coercive and harmful technologies and analyze how current laws protecting cognitive liberty are lacking and in need of revision.
In Iran, love for Imam Hossein is tied to certain emotional dimensions. The most important goal of the article is to study the interpretation of the interpretation of the meaning understanding of the female pilgrims of Karbala about Imam Husayn (a.s.) and the uprising of Ashura. This research was conducted in Shahid Beheshti Airport of Isfahan, Karbala and Najaf to study the interpretation of the pilgrims of Imam Hussein (AS) with the phenomenological qualitative method in 1401 with the participation of 25 female pilgrims with the technique of focused group discussion and exploratory and in-depth interviews. The sampling method was purposive. In the process of data analysis, using the thematic analysis method, 8 sub-themes, three themes and the main theme of the emotional discourse, inability to understand the agency and cultural norms of understanding Imam Hussein (AS) was formed. Women's understanding of the meaning of Imam Hussain (AS) is traditional and emotional. By analyzing the data, the hypothesis of "women's traditional permanence in the emotional discourse of Imam Hussein (a.s.) and the Ashura uprising" was formed and became dominant as a discourse
This paper discusses the nonconceptual theory of mystical ineffability which claims that mystical experiences can’t be expressed linguistically because they can’t be conceptualized. I discuss and refute two objections against it: (a) that unconceptualized experiences are impossible, and (b) that the theory is ad hoc because it provides no reason for why mystical experiences should be unconceptualizable. I argue against (a) that distinguishing different meanings of ‘object of experience’ leaves open the possibility of non-empty but objectless nonconceptual experiences. I show that (b) is a valid objection but can be countered by a new theory of mystical non-conceptuality: mystical experiences are not conceptual because the specific mode of mystical consciousness prevents conceptualization. The dissolution of the subjectivity of consciousness during mystical experiences undermines the very foundation of the possibility of conceptual thought and thus renders them ineffable.
This paper presents new research about spiritual experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to discuss the impact of spiritual experiences on people's lives and relationships. Building upon William James' four features of the "fruits" of religious experience as a conceptual frame, the paper presents data from two surveys in which participants narrated spiritual experiences and reflected on the impacts of those experiences. We start with a short presentation of James' ideas about the fruits of religious experience. The next section outlines four themes that have emerged from the narratives of spiritual experiences during the pandemic: impacts on people's relationships with their religious communities, shifts in one's subjective sense of spiritual connection and intuition, encounters with spiritual figures and near-death experiences, and interpretations of COVID-19 as a spiritual contagion. The final section broadens the discussion from the impact of specific spiritual experiences to include spiritual responses to the pandemic more generally, leading to a discussion of the experiences within the wider debate in fruits of religious experience.
This article contributes to pentecostal research by arguing that applied phenomenology can enhance the understanding of pentecostal experience and enrich work with systematic theology by increasing the amount of relevant data. Phenomenology is especially appropriate for pentecostal theology and research due to the shared emphasis on embodiment, importance of experiences, consistency of appearances, and realism of phenomena. Despite this methodological fit, our systematic literature review reveals a lack of phenomenological works in the corpus of pentecostal studies, and we provide some considerations for integration and suggestions for further empirical research grounded in a phenomenological sensibility.
Das Verhältnis zwischen Glauben und Wissen gehört zu den klassischen Themen der Religionsphilosophie. Die Reflexion darauf reicht weit zurück in die Geschichte der Relation von Offenbarung und Vernunft inbesondere in den monotheistischen Traditionen. Deswegen werden im 2. Kapitel zunächst die wichtigsten Beziehungskonstellationen zwischen Religiosität und Rationalität vorgestellt. Im Anschluss daran erfolgt eine Einführung in die systematischen Grundlagen der Epistemologie des religiösen Glaubens. Ein Brennpunkt der Debatten in diesem wichtigen Bereich zeitgenössischer Religionsphilosophie ist die Frage nach dem realistischen oder anti-realistischen bzw. nach dem kognitiven oder nicht-kognitiven Charakter religiöser Überzeugungen. Religion besteht jedoch nicht nur aus Glaubenssätzen, sondern vor allem auch in einer Verkörperung des Glaubens in Erfahrungen, vielfältigen Sprachhandlungen und Lebensformen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden auch pragmatisch-funktionale sowie existentielle Deutungen des religiösen Glaubens betrachtet.
Thaddeus Metz is probably the leading expert on the meaning of life. His latest book admirably displays his intellectual agility and fairness: arguments, counter-arguments, examples and counter-examples come in wave after wave that may compel most of us to slow down the pace of reading. If you have ever had the delight of interacting with Professor Metz at a conference, you know his irrepressible energy and love for debate.
In this brief essay, I challenge some of Metz’s terminology, raise a worry about the role of metaphysics in the meaning of life literature, suggest a reply to the religious relational account of meaning, and firm up the intuition that meaning is enhanced in a theistic cosmos.
This article proposes to examine in detail Aurobindo’s searching—and often quite original—criticisms of Advaita Vedānta, which have not yet received the sustained scholarly attention they deserve. After discussing his early spiritual experiences and the formative influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on his thought, I outline Aurobindo’s philosophy of “realistic Adwaita”. According to Aurobindo, the sole reality is the Divine Saccidānanda, which is not only the static impersonal Brahman but also the personal, dynamic Cit-Śakti (Consciousness-Force), which manifests as everything in this universe. At various points in his corpus, Aurobindo criticizes Advaita Vedānta on three fronts. From the standpoint of spiritual experience, Aurobindo argues that Śaṅkara’s philosophy is based on a genuine, but partial, experience of the Infinite Divine Reality: namely, the experience of the impersonal nondual Absolute and the corresponding conviction of the unreality of everything else. Aurobindo claims, on the basis of his own spiritual experiences, that there is a further stage of spiritual experience, when one realizes that the impersonal-personal Divine Reality manifests as everything in the universe. From a philosophical standpoint, Aurobindo questions the logical tenability of key Advaitic doctrines, including māyā, the exclusively impersonal nature of Brahman, and the metaphysics of an illusory bondage and liberation. Finally, from a scriptural standpoint, Aurobindo argues that the ancient Vedic hymns, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavad-Gītā, propound an all-encompassing Advaita philosophy rather than the world-denying Advaita philosophy Śaṅkara claims to find in them. This article focuses on Aurobindo’s experiential and philosophical critiques of Advaita Vedānta, as I have already discussed his new interpretations of the Vedāntic scriptures in detail elsewhere. The article’s final section explores the implications of Aurobindo’s life-affirming Advaitic philosophy for our current ecological crisis.
This is a brief response to Hubert Seiwert.
The Hindu Divine Mother is revered by millions of religious practitioners in India and elsewhere, yet this goddess rarely receives attention in Western philosophy of religion. Focusing especially (though not exclusively) on her form as Kālī, this article utilizes sources from Hindu goddess traditions to explicate her contrasting characteristics, which include benign maternality and martial aggression. By adapting an embodied theological (or thealogical) approach derived from feminist discourse, the intelligibility of worshipping such a goddess is expounded; connections are delineated between the conceptualizing of divinity as radically ambivalent or multivalent and the lived experience of inhabiting an often hostile world.
Counter-Enlightenment Piety versus Moralism. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Defining Religion as the valence of conflicting human values.
It has often been claimed, e.g. by William James or Aldous Huxley, that mystical experiences across times and cultures exhibit a striking similarity. Even though the words and images we use to describe them are different, underneath the surface we find a common experiential core. Others have rejected this claim and argued that all experiences are intrinsically shaped by the mystics’ pre-existing religious concepts. Against these constructivist objections, I defend the idea of a common core by arguing that even if all experience is interpreted through concepts, there could still be a common core. Those who reject the common core thesis usually argue that no distinction between experience and interpretation can be made since all experience is per se already interpreted. The notion of an uninterpreted experience is self-defeating. Drawing on current research on nonconceptual mental content, I argue (a) that experiences can have nonconceptual content; (b) that interpretation must be understood as conceptualization and (c) that conceptualization presupposes a raw mental content that is not conceptualized. This raw content is not experienced as nonconceptual. Rather, the nonconceptual, uninterpreted common core is an abstraction which shows itself only through reflection. Thus, the existence of a common core is compatible with the fact that all experiences are interpreted.
Rituals and Practices in World Religions is a significant contribution to the study of religious ritual for several reasons. While focusing largely on the contribution of ritual to human flourishing and issues of interest to positive psychology research as well as clinical contexts, chapters individually and collectively break the barriers of segregation between disciplines and even specialties within disciplines. While prominent in a variety of religious traditions, ritual is also represented in secular traditions and in less frequently studied indigenous traditions and the extent to which psychological factors are culturally contextualized the study of ritual must be both interdisciplinary and avoid the imposition of a single methodological perspective. In doing this, this text takes a huge step in beginning a necessary but as yet unrealized conversation.
This is the concluding section to Part 3 of the book The Problem of Religious Experience. I discuss a possibility of conducting phenomenological research in the religious attitude and how this attitude can be compatible with phenomenological reduction. Using the findings from Part 3, I examine the isomorphism between perception and the knowledge of God and then revisit the idea of the metaphysical realism of phenomenology in light of Carla Canullo’s interpretation of Henry’s phenomenology of life as a philosophy of religion.
This article clarifies the relationship between spiritual desire and religious practice. I outline a philosophical account of practice, and suggest that desire is one of four cornerstones of the concept of practice. I distinguish three kinds of practice – art practice, skill practice, and spiritual practice – which are differentiated by their structures of desire. I argue that ‘spiritual desire’ can be understood as an ‘infinite desire’’, and that spiritual practices offer determinate, embodied, culturally specific ways to express this infinite desire. Within this theoretical framework, I discuss certain salient features of experiences described during my interviews with religious practitioners, showing how these first-person accounts of spiritual desire and religious practice relate to my philosophical analysis.
The efforts to prove God's existence in the history of thought have been one of the fundamental problems of philosophy and theology, and even the most important one. The evidences put furword to prove the existence of God constitute the center of philosophy of religion's problems not only philosophy of religion, but also the disciplines such as theology-kalam and Islamic philosophy are also seriously concerned. When we look at the history of philosophy, it is clear that almost all philosophers are interested in the evidence in favour of and against the existence of God. Especially in recent times, religious experience has often been regarded as evidence of the existence of God. Studies in the field of religious and mystical experience have put forward many arguments concerning the use of religious experience as evidence. However, this study has been limited to experience of sense and pure consciousness claims rather than examining all of these arguments. In this study firstly, the analogy between experience of sense and religious experience will be deal with, and then claims that conciousness can be emptied by a number of methods which are defended by mystics. In addition, it will be tried to defend the opinion that the mystical experiences which are the common point of the two approaches are valid. The main emphasis of the article will be that these arguments can be used as evidence for the existence of God. © Published by Sivas Cumhuriyet üniversitesi, Ilahiyat Fakültesi.
This article considers the relationship between philosophy of religion and an approach to the study of religion, which prioritises the experience of lived religion. Considering how individuals and communities live out their faith challenges some of the assumptions of analytic philosophers of religion regarding the position the philosopher should adopt when approaching the investigation of religion. If philosophy is understood principally as a means for analysing belief, it will have little space for an engagement with what it feels like to live out one’s faith.
Draft tekstu napisanego w 2009 roku, przyjętego w 2010 i od tego czasu podlegającego drobnym poprawkom językowym. Opublikowany w 2016 w Przewodniku po filozofii Boga i religii, pod redakcją Janusza Salamona. Od 2009 roku analityczna filozofia religii nie stała w miejscu, zaś teologia filozoficzna rozwinęła się niezmiernie, obecnie autor dysponuje też bogatszą literaturą prac wcześniejszych - więc tekst i bibliografia wymagałyby uzupełnień.
An important feature of conscience, for John Henry Newman, is the capacity to sense things divine. This feature entails a kind of moral perception. In some texts, for example, Newman describes conscience as the capacity to “perceive the voice, or the echoes of the voice, of a Master, living, personal, and sovereign” (Grammar 77; see also Philosophical Notebook 59; Certain Difficulties 247, 255; Parochial and Plain Sermons 237). However, he complicates things a bit in his sermon, “The Usurpations of Reason,” by stating that our capacity to detect moral truths happens “without any intelligible reasoning process” (Fifteen Sermons 56). At first glance, one may conclude from this quotation that conscience and reason, for Newman, are not only distinct but that the former does not need the latter to detect moral truths. In this article, I argue that such a conclusion misses both the subtlety of Newman’s employment of the term “reasoning” in this sermon and his understanding of the relationship between conscience and reason. More specifically, Newman’s discussion of the relationship between reason and conscience needs to be couched within his overall account of faith and reason. For example, one of Newman’s main concerns in the Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford is to examine existing accounts of faith and reason and thus to clarify the conditions under which Christian belief (or for that matter any belief) can be considered rational. Conscience certainly includes a perceptual feature, especially given Newman’s emphasis on its basic or pre-trained aspect, but background beliefs, training, experience, and practice play a crucial role in how we learn to perceive and make sense of things divine. As I hope to show, Newman’s notion of an “educated conscience” is saturated (or shaped) by a kind of implicit reasoning, the operation of which is external to a person’s awareness. Along these lines, I will restrict the focus of this article to four aspects of Newman’s thought on conscience. The first section will explain in what sense Newman thinks of conscience as a natural element of our cognitive existence. The second section will spell out Newman’s notion of an educated conscience. The training and development of conscience is important for learning to render apt moral judgments concerning particulars. The third section will show how his distinction between the domains of papal and civil authority illustrates the importance and relevance of forming an educated conscience. The fourth section will clarify Newman’s seemingly stark contrast between conscience and reason in “The Usurpations of Reason.” I will conclude with some brief constructive suggestions on how to re-read Newman’s concept of an educated conscience in light of recent work on perception.
The truth of one's religious beliefs can be questioned by appeal to hypocrisy or blatant moral failure amongst the adherents of one's religion. Such an appeal implies that the absence of spiritual maturity within a religious individual or group can serve in some way as evidence against the truth of that religion and (presumably), conversely, that spiritual maturity within a religious individual or group can be thought of as providing some sort of evidence for the truth of that religion. The first part of this article attempts to get clear on what sort of evidential force the presence or absence of spiritual maturity has for the rational assessment of religious belief in general. This part of the article concludes that the evidential force of spiritual maturity must ultimately be assessed within the contours of a particular religion with a firm grasp on the sort of moral formational process envisaged by that religion. So, in the second part of the article, the evidential force of spiritual maturity is considered from a Christian perspective and an interpersonal model of sanctification is appealed to as an explanation of the lack of spiritual maturity amongst Christian believers.
The evidentialist challenge to religious belief has been read as arguing that if it is not rational to accept a proposition about God, then one ought not to accept it. It is not rational to accept propositions about God unless one does so on the basis of other beliefs that constitute sufficient evidence for them, and with a firmness not exceeding that warranted by the strength of the evidence. Alvin Plantinga rejects the challenge on
the grounds that the believer does not need evidence in order to be rational in believing these propositions. Despite the claim that Alvin Plantinga's essays constitute a radical departure from the customary philosophical ways of considering the rationality
of religious belief and that they have decisively altered the nature of the debate, I suggest that Plantinga's views on the rationality of religious belief do not decisively alter the nature of the debate. His work is a sophisticated variation of the argument that religious beliefs may be justified directly by the appropriate sort of experience, and it fails to overcome the demand that there be evidence to support the belief that God exists.
John Hick (1922–2012) was an influential analytical philosopher of religion and liberal Christian philosophical theologian who taught in Britain and the United States. His work on religious epistemology, the theology of religions and, to some extent, eschatology has close links with his understanding of the philosophy of religious experience. This paper offers a detailed analysis and critical evaluation of these significant elements of Hick’s philosophical and theological thought, focusing in particular on his theory of religious knowledge and the role played by religious concepts within religious experience, and the relevance of these reflections for his pluralistic account of the variety of religions and his criterion of religious truth. Hick’s response to the challenges of contemporary neuroscience and the philosophy of mind is also reviewed. The paper reflects on the relevance of these views to accounts of an experience of transcendent reality collected through the empirical psychology of religion.
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