Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. [1] The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of Western society . [ 2 ]
The argument from religious experience is an argument for the existence of God. It holds that the best explanation for religious experiences is that they constitute genuine experience or perception of a divine reality. Various reasons have been offered for and against accepting this contention.
Unlike the bad ideas that people have under the influence of, say, fevers or drunkenness, after a religious experience the ideas and insights usually still make sense to the person, and are often valued for the rest of the person's life. [14] James had relatively little interest in the legitimacy or illegitimacy of religious experiences.
In categorizing religious experiences it is perhaps helpful to look at them as explicable through one of two theories: the objectivist thesis or the subjectivist thesis. An objectivist would argue that the religious experience is a proof of God's existence. However, others have criticised the reliability of religious experiences.
In contrast to faith meaning blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence, Alister McGrath quotes Oxford Anglican theologian W. H. Griffith-Thomas (1861–1924), who states faith is "not blind, but intelligent" and "commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence", which McGrath sees as "a good and ...
A "religious experience" is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. [32] The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of western society. [31] Wayne Proudfoot traces the roots of the notion of "religious experience" to the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher ...
This result might be effected through the much more spiritually appropriate means of religious experience, interpreted in the sensitive manner of a Pascal or a Kierkegaard." [ 10 ] Schellenberg then expresses a certain frustration that theistic writers who otherwise extol the value of religious experiences deny non-theists the right to do so.
Some aspects of religion are criticized on the basis that they damage society as a whole. For example, Steven Weinberg states that it takes religion to make good people do evil. [93] Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins cite religiously inspired or justified violence, resistance to social change, attacks on science, repression of women and ...