"Religious experience must be true because there is a common core to them all" Discuss.
“Religious experience must be true because there is a common core to them all” Discuss.
The Bible claims that God can be directly experienced and philosophers such as William James saw religion as essentially based on experience and that such experience should be the primary basis of study of religion as opposed to practices and dogma. Indeed many of the world’s major religions are based on experience or revelation of the transcendent to mankind. Yet religious experience is intrinsically enormously subjective. Arguably two of the most complicated issues to discuss in any context and reach an objective opinion on are God and personal experience. As individuals we are incapable of personally experiencing things which happen to somebody else, it is impossible. If we add this to the fact that religious experience is of the divine and the transcendent it becomes apparent that by its very nature it is extremely difficult to assess or comment on anything viewed as a ‘religious experience’. One thing which may make it an easier phenomenon to understand is the theory that there is a common core to all these, this could be seen as something within the nature of religious experience such as a numinous feeling or the sheer individual quality, or something that happens after the event such as a drastic life change. However do comparable aspects of different experience make them any more valid? Does positing a God make God more likely to exist?
James put forward four qualities to consider when assessing the validity of religious experience: Passivity, that is the recipient, is passive and the experience is happening to them from an outer source, ineffability, noetic quality and transiency. Bibilical examples may include the ineffability of Ezekiel’s visions or Moses experience of the burning bush as well as Isaih’s vision of God in the temple (which fits with Otto’s idea of such an experience being ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’). Arguably if religious experiences are to be taken as valid they should all share these qualities to some extent. Mysticism within religious experience provides many examples. The mystical and deep prayer experienced by people such as St Teresa of Avila and St John of the cross seem to share some similarities. Other examples may include near death experiences, where a common theme tends to be the idea of light and a feeling of being ‘out of oneself’. However it must be considered that perhaps there is a certain social and cultural aspect to these, our ideas of what it is to die and experience dying are informed by things we see and hear around us. The perhaps stereotypical description of tunnels, light and family members may seem less convincing with the backdrop of hundreds of other people saying they felt the same thing. Yet to be less cynical perhaps they genuinely did experience the same occurrence and this should be the test of its authenticity. Other forms of religious experience include visions, revelation, prayer, auditory experiences, miracles and mysticism. Within Catholicism images of the Virgin Mary are common such as those in Lourdes, France and Knock, Ireland. These apparitions have appeared frequently elsewhere in the world, and although treated sceptically by the Catholic Church and subject to rigorous testing, those judged as genuine do seem to share stark similarities. However these are direct religious experiences, a person can also experience indirect religious occurrences, such as a numinous feeling which doesn’t fit James’ criteria as well.