A further argument that attempts to prove religious experiences to be true and therefore proving the existence of God, is one that focuses on the subjective testimonies of individuals who claim to have had religious experiences. It attempts to find similar characteristics and draw from these a general conclusion that religious experiences can only be explained by the reality of God. Swinburne argues inductively that it is reasonable to believe that God is loving and personal and would seek to reveal himself to humanity. He claimed “An omnipotent and perfectly good creator will seek to interact with his creatures and, in particular with human persons capable of knowing him”. He also suggested that religious experiences can be felt both empirically and non-empirically, therefore if someone claims to have had a religious experience, we should believe that it has taken place. In support of this argument, many believe that the proof of these experiences can be found in the fact that the people who experience them are changed forever for example; Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus where he was converted to Saul. Therefore, in conclusion on the basis of evidence provided by this argument religious experiences as proof of God appear probable, but the argument depends upon the whether or not the evidence is accurately interpreted by the experient and can therefore never be proven by scientific or tested means.
The cumulative argument is provided as another attempt to prove Gods existence via the use of religious experiences, however as opposed to the other arguments it attempts to combine different arguments in one with the idea that together they are more convincing than one argument alone. However, this is debatable as an argument as it is widely believed that combining weak arguments together result in a weak argument as opposed to creating a stronger argument.
Finally, the principles of Testimony and Credulity form another argument in favor of religious experiences as prove of the existence of God in claiming that in general people tell the truth and that we cannot realistically work on the basis of doubting their accounts. Just as we cannot doubt basic facts about the world because we have not experienced it ourselves. The principle of testimony claims that unless we have evidence to the contrary we should believe what is claimed, it is argued “In the absence of special considerations, their experiences of others are as they report them”. The other half of this argument is the principle of credulity, which claimed that unless we have overwhelming evidence to the contrary we should believe things as they seem as “The probability of all such experiences must be low and therefore the quality of claimed experiences must be proportionally high”.
In opposition to the above arguments, many arguments have been proposed to disprove religious experiences and therefore disprove the existence of God. The difficultly with religious experiences come from the fact that we cannot prove them via empirical testing, and cannot therefore prove or disprove the existence of God. Many scholars have suggested that at best, religious experiences are ambiguous and have various interpretations.
Ludwig Wittingstein, used the idea of each person seeing religious experiences in different ways and experiencing different meanings from it, meaning that all religious experiences are unreliable from his viewpoint. R.M. Hare also talked of a ‘blik’-an unverifiable way of looking at the world, meaning that the believer sees or feels something and automatically assumes it to be God, however in agreement with Wittingstein, he claims that it is only a persona testimony as is unreliable.
Other scholars including, Vardy, Hick and Cole all agree that religious experiences are based upon personal interpretation making them unreliable. Freud has also suggested that religious experiences have a natural explanation, such as people’s reactions to drugs and/or a psychological reaction to our hostile world, he claimed that as we feel so helpless, we automatically look for a greater figure to protect us and therefore in our own minds create the figure of God.
Many scholars have also broken down religious experiences into groups in an attempt to disprove them, firstly they grouped revelatory experiences, and claimed them to be untrustworthy despite the fact that they are examined in many religions. Cole claimed that many were and still are skeptical about the religious experience of “speaking in tongues” as the experience itself is unsound and unreliable and he claims that this experience does not match up correctly with the so called experiences we read about in the Old Testament. Another group, is near death experiences, which has been heavily criticized and called a “mental Phenomenon that many scholars claim is not a religious experience but rather an experience that is caused by lack of oxygen to the brain in the experient.
In summary, the main arguments against religious experiences, claim that if God doesn’t exist, we can therefore not experience him. We can also defer that everything is open to a non-religious interpretation as there are no tests to verify religious experiences and testimonies are unreliable in today’s age where peoples mind are continuously open to doubt.
Therefore, in conclusion the argument of existence of God, regarding religious experiences is very open to debate as the neither the strengths nor the weaknesses outweigh each other and the argument is again very open to personal interpretation, therefore it is widely agreed that the argument is different to each person regarding their beliefs and personal views.