Outline of Video 11: Can We Know God through Experience?
I. Religious ("mystical") experience gives meaning to life:
-
An awareness of an Other, usually with dread (not fear)
-
In the West, mysticism is personal; Eastern mysticism is the contact with
impersonal nothingness: mystical experience seems, therefore, to be differentiated
by culture
-
In mystical experience, there is a loss of identity, a union of self and
other
-
extrovertive: the divine is found outside oneself; the world itself is
seen as divine
-
introvertive: the divine is found within; our task is to eliminate our
differentiating thinking
-
In religious experience, one's life is changed for the better (spiritual
development)
II. Objections: religious experience might be based on hallucinations
or neuro-physiological events
III. How should we evaluate claims of religious experience?
-
Swinburne: the principle of credulity requires that we accept experience
unless there is a good reason to reject it
-
William James: on certain occasions (e.g., when our choices are
forced, momentous, and living), our passional nature must decide when intellect
alone does not provide answers
IV. In the end, religious belief might be based on feeling, not a philosophic
decision, in which case philosophic reflection is ultimately irrelevant