A religious experience is a memorable event, where an impossible thing happens, which brings forward an argument whether or not God exists.

Religious believers are comfortably assured of their convictions based on personal experiences. There is a line of reasoning based on this observation, where religious experience is presented as evidence for God's presence:

1. A very large number of people in the world have personal religious experiences of God.

2. Man is by nature a religious being (no other animal shows any behaviour like it).

3. It is very unlikely that a phenomenon so universal as religion is founded upon fantasy or illusion, so there must be an external source for this concept.

4. Therefore, a God like the God of the Bible offers a reasonable explanation for man’s tendency to worship.

5. The Bible tells us that we can have God Himself residing within us (2 Cor.1: 21,22). It seems reasonable that we should expect to feel the Spirit of God within us, and it is a powerful and personally meaningful proof for the believer to be able to feel God's presence.

6. As powerful and spiritually reinforcing as a personal religious experience is to the believer.

7. Man’s propensity for worship is not an ironclad argument - there are too many other explanations. Almost as many concepts of God exist in the world today, as there are those to conceive - this is hardly a proof of the God of the Bible.

Perhaps spiritual experiences require corroboration from other perspectives. Consider the apostle John's warning:

John 4:1; Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

There are many valid objections to experiential arguments - we cannot claim truth about a subjective experience, even when applied across many experiences of many people. A million people can still be wrong.

 Truth must be universal and objective by definition. In the Bible, almost every passage about truth is ascribed to God, through His word, through Jesus, and by means of the Spirit. According the Bible, there is no truth apart from God.

Design Argument: The universe exists, and displays design. This design cannot be explained in any other way than by means of a Designer.

How can one explain a mechanism by which the things that we observe about the universe have come about? We can only conclude one of two things:

1. What we observe must have been designed, and thus created, by a Designer capable of such beauty and complexity
2. What we observe must have happened by an as-yet unexplainable chance mechanism.

Animals, plants and planets show clear signs of being designed for specific ends; therefore there must have been a Designer.

Jesus is the best-documented person that ever lived

The Bible is historically accurate

Everything must have a cause. We can safely reason that anything that exists currently, and has the possibility not to exist, must have been caused to exist by another cause.

Theism involves belief in a personal, living, and spiritual God, distinct from the world that he has created as the human mind is felt to be distinct from what it knows. Various forms of theism exist, however. The Old Testament shows a progress from henotheism (belief that the community must be loyal to one god only) to monotheism (belief that this god is the one and only God). Other forms of theism are polytheism, belief in many gods, which includes usually at least a vague apprehension that the many are aspects of one; pantheism, the belief that God is simply all things in the universe (although this type of belief is historically a philosophical idea rather than a religious belief); and pane theism, the belief that every creature is an appearance or manifestation of God, who is conceived of as the divine actor playing at once the innumerable parts of humans, animals, plants, stars, and natural forces.

A particular mystic, called Teresa of Avila supported theism. She often claimed that she could speak to some sort of God and that she was linked to him. She was often very ill, especially when she was younger due to her obsession of her belief in God. She did not eat, drink or act normally. Eventually she became very ill and fell in to a coma. She was thought to be dead, but was revived in 4 days. Although she had awoken, she had not been properly cured, and she had paralysis in her legs. After 3 years of constant praying, her legs healed and she was able to walk once again. She believed this to be her own religious experience because of her immediate devotion to God. However, Professor Frank Fish in his well known textbook of psychopathology described one of St. Teresa of Avila's mystical experiences as: "probably the result of a lack of sleep, of hunger and religious enthusiasm."

Could this mean that the curing of Teresa’s paralysed leg was an actual religious experience, or was it just another co-incidence?

Religious experiences supposedly happen everyday to people but they could be affected by certain factors. Is the person hallucinating? Are they an enthusiast? Are they telling the truth? Is it real?

All these things can determine the existence of God, but without proper visual evidence, then God cannot simply exist until there is sufficient proof.

I believe that is there were religious experiences, then they would happen so that there is valid proof, and so that more than one or a few people could experience them.

As individuals, religious experiences are proof enough for the existence of God, but as a whole, religious experiences are not sufficient to confirm the existence of God.