Richard Swinburne, with his ‘principle of credulity’ and ‘principle of testimony’ perfectly exemplify the previous point. The principle of credulity holds that if one cannot find any reason to disbelieve an event, one should wholly believe that it is occurring. Thus Jesus’ resurrection or the Toronto Blessing would fall under this category to the religious believer. However the problem holds that although the experience may have been analysed by both secularist and religious person, they may both be guilty of pre-held beliefs, and thus commit a logical fallacy. Swinburne’s principle of testimony has similar problems, although perhaps more weighted to the religious believer than the logical secularist. If one should believe any witnesses to an event or experience (with regards to an event that seems implausible to what we hold to be natural law or logic) then one is at danger of allowing religion and the believer to become void of scrutiny. However, Swinburne’s five categories of religious experience are inherently useful to both the theist and secularist, as they are a step towards a rationalisation of the experience. Swinburne’s categories:
Public - A perfectly normal non-religious object/event (e.g a sunset)
Public - Through an unusual public event (e.g walking on water)
Private - Private sensations expressible through normal language (e.g a dream)
Private - Private sensations not describable (e.g a mystical experience)
Private - a non-specific, general feeling of God working in one's life. An encounter with the “holy”
Seek to give what is essentially inexpressible, a categorisable and defined language. They are by no means verifiable, but they go some way to allowing them to be at least weakly verified and explained.
Another, one of the most recognisable philosophers/psychologists to be affiliated with the religious experience movement is William James. James, although being an existentialist, also created characteristics of religious experience with a hope of further understanding them and giving them greater meaning. These were Ineffability (the unutterable quality of the experience, beyond words), Noetic Quality (an insight into the wisdom and truth of God, intuition of reason), Transciency (Experience can be fleeting but have life long effects) and Passivity (the lack of control by the individual). James differentiated between institutionalised religion and personal religion, and suggested once more that the highly subjective nature of religious experience meant it was outside the realm of objective testing, just as Kierkegaard had done. Moreover what was perhaps most important to James, due to his belief in existentialism, was not the analysis of the experience, the cause or the reality of it; but instead the effects that it had on the person. In this respect James’ position on the worth of analysing religious experience is mixed, as he believes not in the worth of the cause or root of the experience (suggesting that he may see it as a worthless endeavour) yet devised a way of categorising religious experience so as to make them more analysable. Ultimately James advocated that the study of religious experience may be beneficial insofar as giving greater strength to the effects it may have on people on a real and tangible level; but he did not suggest that through analysis of religious experience one could derive an argument for the existence of God. James himself believed that there was a substantial difference between institutionalised religion and personal religion. To James the thought of a personal loving God who at the same time was all powerful and creator of the universe is conflictual.
However before moving onto existentialism, which along with modern anti-theism is perhaps the greatest proponent of the meaningless nature of religious experience analysis, there is also a strong secular argument for the worth of analysing experience. Freud, Marx and Jung all commented on the existence of ‘religious experiences’ or religious illusions as Marx referred to them. They all approached them with a secular view, yet still found their analysis incredible useful. They believed that religious experience is a product of the psyche and the incredibly complex and still unknown effects of the unconscious. Freud believed that religious experience is perfectly compatible with psychology, as it was a result of two parts of the human mind. First the deep despair and feeling of lack of control in the world; and second the infantile faith and responsibility placed in the father figure as a child. Freud saw it as evident that as we progress from the childlike state of little responsibility, we must project our lack of control and responsibility onto a father figure that we believe can cope. These hopes and desires are so strong that we can create self hallucinations as to a real father figure.
Marx had a similar approach, and believed that religion (especially institutionalised religion) was a form of mass longing from its inception. The ability of religion to dull the pain and reality of life is the reason for its inexorable grip on humanity. “Religion is the opiate of the masses” was Marx’s famous quotation. "Morals, religion, metaphysics and other forms of ideology and the forms of consciousness corresponding to them no longer retain their apparent independence. It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.". Religious experiences exist because of their strength in throwing a blanket over the reality of the world.
However there are those, who even though they may not dispute the existence of religious experience, would argue that it is pointless if not negative to analyse them. Perhaps the greatest proponents of this view are Kierkegaard, William James (to an extent) and Paul Tillich. William James believed that although study should be conducted, what was really worth study was the effects. He was a proponent of symbolism and the worth that we should ascribe to it. For example he stated that the thought of a lemon may make people salivate, even though there is nothing tangible about the thought of a lemon. However that reaction is still worthy of academic inquisition. James believed that “One must not consider an object's physical derivation when making a proposition of value” and thus the root of the religious experience is perhaps less important than the experience itself. James used the example of the founder of the Quaker movement - George Fox. Many of the scientists in James' audience, and many today, immediately reject all aspects of the Quaker religion because evidence suggests that Fox was schizophrenic. Calling this rejection medical materialism, James insisted that the origin of Fox's notions about religion should not come into account when propositioning the value of the Quaker religion.
Kierkegaard, who is called the father of existentialism, believed strongly that faith is something which is wholly subjective but meaningful as long as it has a religious effect on the person. For Kierkegaard there can be no objective study or reality of religious experience or religion as a whole, as its entire nature is subjective. “Subjectivity is truth and truth is subjectivity”. The reality of any religious experience is irrelevant as long as the result is meaningful. Individual experience is key.
Finally Paul Tillich, who furthered Kierkegaard’s beliefs of existentialism, believed that true religion is having absolute concern. … "Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It is the most centred act of the human mind...it participates in the dynamics of personal life." He believed that the only true dominating factor of faith is through concern, and because of this belief if a religious experience fosters true ultimate concern then it must be meaningful. However again it is only worth analysing a persons response to this experience and their concern rather than the experience itself. Tillich believed that the God of the religions was flawed and that a personal God was illogical. Tillich disagreed with any literal philosophical and religious statements that can be made about God. Such literal statements attempt to define God and lead not only to anthropomorphism but also to a philosophical mistake that Immanuel Kant warned against, that setting limits against the transcendent inevitably leads to contradictions. Any statements about God are simply symbolic, but these symbols are sacred in the sense that they function to participate or point to the unknown being.
During the 1980s Dr. Michael Persinger stimulated the temporal lobes of human subjects with a weak magnetic field. His subjects claimed to have a sensation of "an ethereal presence in the room." This suggests that perhaps the claimed religious experience is merely a material and tangible process that occurs within the brain that leads to the feeling of an unknown sensation that many falsely attribute to God. A 2003 Horizon program by the BBC conducted research into temporal lobe stimulation, and found two people who said they had experienced religious experiences. Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe both experienced strong religious visions. The first is an atheist; and the latter a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. After numerous studies it was revealed that they both showed signs of temporal lobe epilepsy, supporting perhaps the idea that the feeling of God and the unknown sensations are a biological function of our bodies. Richard Dawkins, who is vehemently opposed to religion and religious experience on the grounds of their being very little evidence for the existence of God in the first place. He states that even if a person did encounter a ‘religious experience’ there is nothing to suggest that it is religious based rather than any other phenomenon of biology or the unknown. However Dawkins allowed Dr. Persinger to stimulate his temporal lobe to see if he could stimulate the feeling of a religious experience; and Dawkins stated that although he felt shortness of breath, he felt no religious experience.
Thus religious experience, although evidently hugely meaningful for a great number of people, is ultimately subjective. To propose scientific empirical analysis of what is essentially a mystical and wholly unfalsifiable phenomenon is to misunderstand the nature of scientific analysis. One should not confuse objectivity and rational logic with the idea of mystical feeling, and as such the nature of religious experience in itself should not be analysed. However, where the existentialists are correct, is that religious experience provides a great deal of meaning and benefits to those who believe in it, and as such their responses and the good and bad that can result is worthy of analysis. Religion, regardless of its validity, exists in the world; its real world effects and impact should always be analysed and scrutinised so that we can judge it just like any other field of humanity.
