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The Empirical Dimension of Religious Experience Religious experience can be defined in the broadest sense as an emergent from the fusion of physical and conceptual feelings wherein both poles of the individual’s feelings are embedded in a wide generality of relationships and reflect the primacy of the physical. In religious experience, interpreted within process thought, the physical emotions, purposes, desires, and volitions of individuals are fused with conceptual insights into the nature of things for the purpose of transforming the individual, of enlarging his or her experience, and of advancing the creative process whereby new values emerge. Religious experience has an organic structure which can be analyzed in terms of the physical and conceptual feelings correlative to the generality of values perceived, and the subjective forms appropriate to each feeling element. www.religion-online.org /showarticle.asp?title=2466   (8328 words)

The Reality of Religious Experience All of man's truly religious reactions are sponsored by the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are censored by the adjutant of wisdom. When a member of a social religious group has complied with the requirements of such a group, he should be encouraged to enjoy religious liberty in the full expression of his own personal interpretation of the truths of religious belief and the facts of religious experience. The convictions of such an experience are unassailable; the logic of religious living is incontrovertible; the certainty of such knowledge is superhuman; the satisfactions are superbly divine, the courage indomitable, the devotions unquestioning, the loyalties supreme, and the destinies final -- eternal, ultimate, and universal. toraor.net /download/urantiabook/ubpaper103.html   (6770 words)

The Nature of Religious Experience Religious experience has been characterized as a subjective feeling, a perceptual experience, and as a supernatural interpretation of ordinary experiences. William James held that the common core of religious experience is a sense of the presence of a reality or power that transcends the self and the world. It may be that religious experience provides the necessary background for arguments for the existence of God to carry their desired force. www.homestead.com /mscourses/files/NatureofREintrolecture.htm   (1070 words)

Swinburne's Argument from Religious Experience The latter are the religious experience analogue of the highly 'interpretative' and theoretically laden perception of a track in a Wilson cloud chamber as a movement of an electron, while 'directly' perceiving God is a 'recognitional' perceiving-as similar to perceiving something as a chair. Swinburne obviously thinks that religious experiences are subject to the agreement test, for he counts agreement among different observers as confirmatory of the veridicality of their religious experiences (p. Unfortunately, his attempt to counter it by arguing that since the rival religious traditions do not share a common method for warranting or overriding claims based on religious experiences, the epistemic discreditation is far less than it would be if they shared the same method but differed in their output beliefs, fails. www.infidels.org /library/modern/richard_gale/swinburne_argument.html   (7904 words)

Religious experience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Habel defines religious experiences as the structured way in which a believer enters into a relationship with, or gains an awareness of, the sacred within the context of a particular religious tradition (Habel, O'Donoghue and Maddox: 1993). Religious experiences are by their very nature preternatural; that is, out of the ordinary or beyond the natural order of things. Natural mystical experiences are not considered to be religious experiences because they are not linked to a particular tradition, but natural mystical experiences are spiritual experiences that can have a profound effect on the individual. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Religious_experience   (1111 words)

Religious Experience and Religious Languages Experience connotes the pre-theoretical pre-linguistic; yet to speak of religious experience presupposes both that I know in some theoretical way what such an experience is and that such an experience may be comprehended within a language, spoken or written. In its integrative aspect this model presupposes that the religious character of the experience is not given apart from language, human communication being determined as an effort to convey, in the most general sense, an understanding or an explanation. Neither Jesus nor Buddha became the pure religious experience which they were without the laboring growth of integration in them – an integration which led them to the limits of the ordinary experiences which Satisfied their contemporaries, and beyond. www.infinityfoundation.com /mandala/i_es/i_es_denic_religious.htm   (5239 words)

Philosophy of Religion .info - Arguments for the Existence of God - The Argument from Religious Experience The argument from religious experience is the argument from experiences of God to the existence of God. Some, though, argue that religious experiences involve imagination rather than perception, that the object of the experience is not something that exists objectively in the world but rather is something that exists subjectively in the mind of the person having the experience. A further difficulty is the problem of conflicting experiences: adherents of all religions claim to have had experiences that validate those religions. www.philosophyofreligion.info /religiousexperience.html   (441 words)

Religious Mammal An experience of the self is often referred to by the religious mammal as an experience of God or gods. The numinosum--whatever its cause may be—is an experience of the subject independent of his will….The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness (Samuels, p. Being human, many are drawn out of their essential religious nature to such places, and the symbols, rituals and beliefs help some to connect with the numinous, the experience of the divine. sacred-quest.com /Articles/religious_mammal.htm   (4497 words)

Coloring Therapy - Exploring the Biology of Religious Experience Until the 1970s, religious experience and activity were believed to be purely cultural phenomena, a product of social conditioning, and not in any way biological. Thanks to the work of d’Aquili, Newberg and their colleagues, the biological side is becoming an important component in the study of human religious experience. Religious and spiritual experiences are typically highly complex, involving emotions, thoughts, sensations and behaviors. www.coloringtherapy.com /a_biology_religious_experience.htm   (1359 words)

Understanding Religious Experience-Index This is a phenomenological approach to the study of religion and religious experience. This may be seen as the final and inevitable fruit of the treatment of religious experience as an experiential moment irreducible to either science or morality, belief or conduct, free from the requirement that it be justified by reference to non-religious thought and action. With such an injunction as this and the insistence on personal experience as the fundamental source of religion it is understandable how belief has developed in both the final ineffability of religious sentiment and in the final equality of alternate religions. www.westminster.edu /staff/brennie/rel15bsr.htm   (6475 words)

PAPER 103 - THE REALITY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) While your religion is a matter of personal experience, it is most important that you should be exposed to the knowledge of a vast number of other religious experiences (the diverse interpretations of other and diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your religious life from becoming egocentric--circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial. The mind of evolutionary man is ever confronted with the intricate problem of refereeing the contest between the natural expansion of emotional impulses and the moral growth of unselfish urges predicated on spiritual insight--genuine religious reflection. The convictions of such an experience are unassailable; the logic of religious living is incontrovertible; the certainty of such knowledge is superhuman; the satisfactions are superbly divine, the courage indomitable, the devotions unquestioning, the loyalties supreme, and the destinies final--eternal, ultimate, and universal. www.urantia.org /papers/paper103.html   (6738 words)

Psychedelics and Religious Experience The terms "religious experience," "mystical experience," and "cosmic consciousness" are all too vague and comprehensive to denote that specific mode of consciousness which, to those who have known it, is as real and overwhelming as falling in love. From such unfamiliar sensations as these, the psychedelic experience can generate confusion, paranoia, and terror-even though the individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by a biologist, ecologist, or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of organism and environment. The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some of these substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free and responsible use be exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutional separation of church and state. www.druglibrary.org /schaffer/lsd/watts.htm   (4990 words)

Philosophy, et cetera: Religious Experiences When I experience a table I don't weigh any evidence or use reasoning to come to some conclusion that there is a table in front of me. Rather, when I see a table, for example, it leads directly to a belief that there is a table. Most everyday, normal religious experiences are of the type that lead to beliefs like "God is doing this" or "God is good" or "God is working in my life" or perhaps just to a stronger belief in God. So what I generally mean by "religious experience" is any experience that leads directly to God-beliefs similar to the ones in the previous sentence. pixnaps.blogspot.com /2005/02/religious-experiences.html   (2477 words)

FT March 2000: William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) In his own day, it was fashionable to explain religious excitability as a form of autointoxication brought on by disordered digestion or nerves. Today one is more likely to hear religious experience explained as the product of changing cultural fictions about gender, power, and selfhood; but the principle is the same. He is so warmly sympathetic toward the religious testimonies he presents—from the relentlessly cheerful affirmations of the mind—cure movement to the metaphysical reveries of nitrous oxide mystics—that one can miss his criticisms. www.firstthings.com /ftissues/ft0003/articles/james.html   (677 words)

A Religious Experience Argument If C is any IPCOCE of experiences actually had by humans, then there is a member e of C such that e’s intentional accusative objectively exists. There is a non-empty IPCOCE, M, with the property that for every experience e in M, the proposition that the intentional accusative of e objectively exists entails that a deity exists. Note that (1) is a useful anti-sceptical tool.  Zeno’s scepticism disappears once we note that the class of experiences of change is an IPCOCE.  Berkeley’s scepticism disappears as soon as we observe that the class of experiences of physical objects is an IPCOCE. www.georgetown.edu /faculty/ap85/papers/RelExpArg.html   (333 words)

Edge: THE VAGARIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Daniel Gilbert But this conceptualization of religious belief misses an important point, namely, that people don't believe in God simply because they are told to by their elders, but because they are compelled to by their own experience. But experiments show that if we are rewarded for seeing the cube one way rather than the other — rewarded with a jellybean, a dollar bill, or a friendly pat on the back — our brains begin to hold on to the rewarding view, and the cube stops changing. As such, we are surprised when experiences we once feared and avoided turn out to be much less awful than we had anticipated, and we are deeply surprised when they turn out to be blessings in disguise. edge.org /3rd_culture/gilbert05/gilbert05_index.html   (2925 words)

Religious Experience A religious experience is an experience in which one senses the immediate presence of the divine. Nonmystical experiences are experiences in which one senses the presence of the divine as a being distinct from oneself. Alston gives an argument by analogy to support the idea that religious experiences should be treated according to the principle of credulity. www.unc.edu /~theis/phil32/religiousexp.html   (1266 words)

Religious Experience The strong version contends that religious experiences are evidence for the existence of God or other supernatural beings for everyone, whereas the weak version holds that they are only evidence for such things for the experiencer. Defenders of the ARE have typically maintained that we should accept religious experiences as evidence for the supernatural in the absence of positive reasons for thinking that experiencers are deluded. The role of religious experience in his Taoism is relevant evidence against arguments from religious experience. www.infidels.org /library/modern/theism/experience.html   (1088 words)

Council on Spiritual Practices Primary religious experience is found at the heart of all the world's wisdom traditions. CSP's Primary Religious Experience Project is focused on these phenomena with the hope of understanding practices that can be beneficial to individuals and to their communities. Peak and Non-peak Experiences in Response to DPT www.csp.org /experience/experience.html   (161 words)

TBK - Is Cannibalism a Religious Experience? As repulsive as the notion may seem, it is a fact that "theophagy"--the technical term for the consumption of a god's body and blood--has been considered a religious experience worldwide for thousands of years. While certain cults/religions may think that they invented the concept of the Eucharist, and that the Eucharist has nothing whatsoever to do with cannibalism, the ritual of sacrificing a god or goddess and sharing his or her blood and body as a sacrament is an act found throughout the ancient world. In fact, it is the mark of a good religious person to take out at least a couple of towns, slaughtering every man, woman and child, and stealing their booty. www.truthbeknown.com /cannibal.htm   (3093 words)

W. James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (Table of Contents) In point of fact, the religious are often neurotic; They are good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoersive as reasones proof; Question of God's uniqueness and infinity: religious experience does not settle this question in the affirmative; www.psychwww.com /psyrelig/james/toc.htm   (857 words)

Religious Experience This makes it difficult to be objective about personal experiences since they involve feelings and thoughts instead of entirely being based on fact or evidence. A genuine religious experience that happens is the born-again experience. This religious experience is a life-changing, ongoing experience and relationship (Philippians 1:6). www.allaboutphilosophy.org /religious-experience-faq.htm   (311 words)

CONTENTS: THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE BY WILLIAM JAMES Its principles—Quotations from John Caird—They are good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoercive as reasoned proof—What philosophy CAN do for religion by transforming herself into "science of religions." Aesthetic elements in religion—Contrast of Catholicism and Protestantism—Sacrifice and Confession—Prayer—Religion holds that spiritual work is really effected in prayer—Three degrees of opinion as to what is effected—First degree—Second degree-- Third degree-- Automatisms, their frequency among religious leaders—Jewish cases—Mohammed—Joseph Smith—Religion and the subconscious region in general. Philosophic position of the present work defined as piecemeal supernaturalism—Criticism of universalistic supernaturalism—Different principles must occasion differences in fact—What differences in fact can God’s existence occasion?-- The question of immortality—Question of God’s uniqueness and infinity: religious experience does not settle this question in the affirmative—The pluralistic hypothesis is more conformed to common sense. www.human-nature.com /reason/james/contents.html   (341 words)

recipes hot Sauce recipes salsa But Religious Experience is at it's best as a foundational ingredient to make almost any food taste like authentic Mexican Cooking. Religious Experience fan, then you're loose enough to cook the way I From hundreds of Mexican salsa recipes he picked those he thought were the best and combined thier qualities to produce Religious Experience. www.thewrath.com /WRATHWEB/recipe.html   (2287 words)

Knowledge and Religious Experience Prosperous are the believers who in their prayers are humble, and from idle talk turn away and at alms giving are active and guard their private parts-- and who preserve their trusts and their covenants. They failed to see that in the domain of knowledge - scientific or religious - complete independence of thought from concrete experience is not possible. But the revelation of the total Infinite in mystic experience convinced him of the finitude and inconclusiveness of thought and drove him to draw a line of cleavage between thought and intuition. www.yespakistan.com /iqbal/reconstruction/1-1.asp   (2035 words)

Religious Experience Under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? Wayne Proudfoot shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices are presupposed by the rules governing this identification of an experience as religious. Some of these characteristics can be understood by attending to the conditions of experience, among which are beliefs about how experience is to be explained. www.ucpress.edu /books/pages/1930.html   (125 words)

Psychedelics and the Religious Experience Written in 1960, this essay relates the author's first experiments with LSD, and remains today a very penetrating and complete philosophical analysis of the psychedelic experience. See also the Discussion which followed the presentation of Dr. Pahnke's paper. The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death www.druglibrary.org /schaffer/lsd/relmenu.htm   (176 words)

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