Evaluate the claim that corporate religious experience is no more than an illusion

by xxfernyxx (student)

AS and A Level Religious Studies & Philosophy

Fern Phillips U6CHA

Evaluate the claim that corporate religious experience is no more than an illusion. 35 marks

William James defined a genuine religious experience as ‘ineffable, noetic, transcient and passive’, with the sense of divine revelation and oneness’. Therefore, corporate religious experiences take place when this sense of awe and inexplicable wonder occurs among a group of people in the same location. One key objection to the validity of corporate religious experiences is the possibility of interpreting them in ways other than those put forward by believers. Bertrand Russell famously said that some people get drunk and see snakes, other people fast and see God.

Corporate religious experiences seem more impressive than individual ones as a number of people experience them, making them easier to verify than individual ones, which are almost impossible to authenticate.

A famous example of a corporate religious experience recorded the Bible is found in Acts chapter 2 verses 5 to 13, where the disciples were having a meeting in an ‘upper room’ and “suddenly tongues of fire appeared above their heads, and they proceeded to ‘speak in tongues’.” These ‘tongues of fire’ which appeared above the disciples’ heads were Holy Spirit, which enabled them to speak in different “tongues” or languages, so that they could preach to people of different nations. Onlookers thought that they were drunk (Acts 2:13), but Acts 2:7 and 8 state ‘In amazement and wonder they exclaimed, “These people who are talking like this are Galileans! How is it, then that all of us hear them speaking in our own native languages?”’ (Good News Bible), proving that this was not in fact merely hysterical babbling but that the disciples were actually speaking the languages of the nations surrounding their own country.

A modern day example of a religious experience still continuing to this day is the Toronto Blessing. ‘The Blessing’ is a worldwide spiritual movement within Pentecostal and charismatic churches which originated at the Toronto Airport Church in January 1994. The Blessing originated from the Faith Movement in the USA, and was passed onto Randy Clark, a pastor in Missouri. When he visited the Toronto Airport Church, ‘the Blessing’ seemed to be passed onto this church and has remained there since. Common effects of ‘the Blessing’ working on a person are falling backwards (sometimes gently, other times violently, with those falling having a tendency to lose consciousness), uncontrollable laughter (referred to as Holy Laughter), speaking in tongues (unintelligible to those hearing this), moving and make noises resembling animals and uncontrollable weeping. Among Pentecostal congregations, similar emotions and actions are evoked at religious rallies, where thousands of Christians congregate and are healed by a pastor who claims to have the power of the Holy Spirit within him. At these rallies, when the pastor touches a member of the flock (although touching isn’t always necessary), the person collapses, seems to have a seizure and sometimes speaks in tongues. However, it may be argued that these actions are the result of peer pressure, since some may fear that if they do appear to have been affected by Holy they may stand out as different , leading to embarrassment.. Therefore these acts “under the power of the Holy Spirit” may not be considered to be valid.

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Christians experiencing the above would argue that such experiences are a consequence of the Holy Spirit being poured out on them, and represent a ‘new move’ of God. Sceptics on the other hand would argue that these experiences are due to mass hysteria or hypnotism at the hands of charming pastors who might, unbeknown to the flock, be hypnotising them through the use of certain words, actions or images, which pastors across the entire world might be copying from each other, explaining why ‘the Blessing’ has spread worldwide. Mass hysteria could be the explanation for ‘Holy Laughter’, since crowd manipulation has been known to cause people to act in ways they would not normally act. A prime example of this would be Nazi Germany, where Hitler used techniques to make the average person believe that Jews were an inferior race and that they should be eliminated. However, this theory cannot explain why, in rare cases, some teeth have allegedly turned to gold and that those under ‘the Blessing’s’ influence can still remember what happened afterwards.

Another argument that may be raised by Christians from other denominations is that despite the fact that speaking in tongues (actual foreign languages) is mentioned in the Bible in Acts, Holy Laughter and behaving like animals is not recorded within the Bible. Therefore it could be argued that this behaviour in fact has nothing to do with Holy Spirit, but in fact could be the work of the Devil in disguise, as indicated at 2 Corinthians 11:14, 15 ‘No wonder! Even Satan can disguise himself to look like an angel of light. So it is no great thing if his servants disguise themselves to look like servants of righteousness. In the end they will get exactly what their actions deserve.’ (Good News Bible) After all, the Toronto Blessing has left some of those affected by it damaged as a result of seizures, and it could therefore be argued that this is not caused by God’s Holy Spirit since He wouldn’t want to cause harm to one of his worshippers. Another reason that it might be argued that the Toronto Blessing is the work of the Devil is that we must ask ourselves ‘why would God want us to act like animals if he intended us to rule over and care for the animal kingdom?’ After all, acting like animals doesn’t glorify God; rather it might be argued that it dishonours him and humiliates his creation.

Whether religious experiences are personal experiences like visions or voices or are corporate in nature, one main criticism is that they rely on personal testimony, not empirical evidence. The issue here is the multitude of problems that surround taking personal testimony at face value. For example, I personally might want to believe someone who says that they saw a vision of Christ, but even if the person himself is not lying and entirely believes that they saw Christ, does this mean that they actually did see him and the vision was not caused by lack of sleep, drugs, or a psychotic episode. Schizophrenia is a mental condition in which it is common to feel that God is speaking to you, or that you have been chosen by God in some way. All of these factors diminish the validity of personal testimonies. One might therefore question whether the miracle of Bernadette at Lourdes was in fact due to an illusion caused by her continuing disease, which did eventually kill her at a young age. Although Lourdes is commonly known in Catholicism as a place of healing, there have only been 6 recognised healings out of the millions of people who have been visiting the shrine over many decades.

Sigmund Freud felt that religious experiences, both individual and corporate, can be explained in terms of psychological factors acting on the personality, factors that are ultimately based on childhood traumatic experiences involving one’s parents. For Freud the human condition is one of fear in the face of our mortality and helplessness in the face of nature. Thus he felt that we need comfort – as children this comes from the father, while later in life we resort to religion and the “father-in-the-sky”. This religious comfort is wish fulfilment – Freud believed that powerful wishes could find outlets in dreams, religious visions, voices and experiences. Freud argued that hallucinations result from our powerful need to feel control over our own helpless state. However, Freud didn’t dismiss the validity of religious experiences or the fact that religious experiences have a certain meaningfulness or significance because they come from such a deep-rooted and universal source, possibly God. One might also argue that God works through the mind, as he did when sending to the Bible writers’ minds the content of the Holy Scriptures.

William James was an American theologian who recognised that there was a difference between genuine and false religious experiences, creating criteria for a religious experience. As mentioned above, for James a religious experience had to be four things; ineffable (unutterable quality of the experience), transcient (life changing), noetic (acquisition of insight) and passive (the experience is out of the person’s control). James concluded that religious experiences are psychological, that they do not just possess a physical element, but also a metaphysical one. James stated that he based his conclusion on three principles: empiricism (we interpret all our situations and the same way we interpret religious experiences; the noetic quality and transient nature of religious experiences hint to a reality beyond this world); pluralism (although religious experiences in different religious are very varied, they all experience the ultimate reality and are interpreted as evidence of God’s existence) and pragmatism (James was a pragmatist and believed the truth was not fixed; it changes as the things of value to us change. Observing the effects of religious experience should convince us that there is truth to be found in religion). Yet, there are some issues surrounding James’ argument; religious experiences are very subjective and open to interpretation; for example one person may view intense calmness as a religious experience, while another may argue that it is due to environmental factors. Furthermore, if there is one divine being then why do Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, etc. all have different experiences involving different gods? Fundamentally however, all religious experiences do follow a similar pattern, as identified by William James.

The principle of credulity states that if it seems to a person that “something” is present, then probably that “something” is indeed present. Swinburne says that generally it is reasonable to believe that the world is probably what we experience it to be. He says that apart from special considerations, such as when a person has taken hallucinogenic drugs, if someone claims to have had a religious experience, this constitutes evidence that the person has experienced God. Therefore unless we have some specific reason to question a religious experience, we ought to accept that it is at least at first sight evidence in favour of the existence of God.

It may also be argued that in some cases corporate religious experiences have brought about positive physical results and have caused internal spiritual revolutions, meaning that religious experiences are not merely illusionary. In the case of the Toronto Blessing, some non-Christians have experienced this and as a result changed their mind regarding religion and the existence of God, although this is not always the case. Also, in the case of the miracle at Lourdes, although few, some people have in fact been acknowledged as having experienced a miracle, curing them of their disease.

In conclusion therefore, I can see why some believe corporate religious experiences to be true since some people having these remember them and it is more convincing when more than one person has the same experiences. Also speaking in “tongues” is mentioned in the Bible and some positive results may ensue from these experiences. However, in my opinion modern day examples of corporate and individual religious experiences are merely an illusion and can mostly be explained by science and psychology. For example, the Toronto Blessing could merely be a result of hypnotism, and as for the golden teeth, it hasn’t been proved that the people concerned didn’t already have gold teeth. Also, behaving like animals is not mentioned in the Bible as a sign of the Holy Spirit working, convincing me that this has nothing to do with God. In fact, a lot of hypnotists can cause people to behave like animals under hypnosis, so might this not be the case here? As for healing rallies, this can be explained by crowd manipulation, peer pressure and mass hysteria. However, I do believe that the religious experience that occurred on Pentecost 33 AD was genuine because it had a divine purpose, to continue the preaching work started by Jesus Christ.

Philosophy