Does Religious Experience offer a convincing argument for God

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Religious experience offers a convincing argument for the existence of God

(i)A religious experience is a non-empirical, supernatural event in which the receiver has an apparent encounter with the divine. Even though it is usually a personal experience, corporate experiences do exist, where groups of people generally experience the same or a similar experience at the same time for example, The Toronto Blessing. These experiences are so potent that for those who experience them at least, they offer convincing evidence for the existence of God.

However, even though a religious experience is the usually the ultimate proof for the existence of God for a religious believer, many people still remain sceptical over such claims and believe even though they see the logic in the claims that are made, they will remain sceptical until the possible day they have a religious experience.  St. Teresa of Avila reportedly said after her religious experience that ‘God establishes himself in the interior of this soul deeply that when I return to myself it is wholly impossible for me to doubt that I have been in God and God in me.’ meaning that it is true for the believer, a legitimate experience. This experience convinced St Teresa of Avila that God is exist as after it, she believed she had felt a connection with him and that he really was there, something which she didn’t feel before. Religious experiences can come in various different forms, they may be very different to each other however nonetheless, and they are still classed as a religious experience. For example, a religious experience could be seeing apparitions such as ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’ (1858) as people would feel that God made the apparitions possible so people could realise he existed and he was working closely with the community, however religious experience could also be experiencing stigmata, which originated from the line at the end of 's  where he says, "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." with other case studies such as Marie Rose Ferron , who experienced stigmata such as ‘a crown of thorns’ on her forehead. This experience also offering a convincing argument for the existence of God as people may believe that these messages of wounds were personal messages from God to let people know he exists and that he is doing it for a specific reason.

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William James states that there are four main qualities of a religious experience. Ineffability, meaning it is impossible to express adequately in normal language. Noetic quality, meaning the experience gives the person an understanding of important truths, which could have not been reached without the experience. Transience, meaning that the experience is not long lasting – no more than a few hours – however the effect of the experience could last a life time and finally Passivity, meaning the person having the experience feels as through the experience is being controlled from outside themselves – they are the recipients of ...

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