Douglas Groothuis
Defending Christian Faith, October 19, 2004
THE
ARGUMENT FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
IV.
The Argument from Religious Experience
A. Types of
religious experiences
1. Relational,
personal, theistic
a. Ordinary
(Ron Nash, Faith and Reason)
b. Extraordinary,
numinous (Moreland)
i. Causal
(God as best explanation for radical, spiritual change)
ii. Direct
perception (numinous experience)
2. Monistic/nondualistic,
pantheistic, impersonal, enlightenment (only touched on by Nash and
Moreland)
3. Religious
yearning/desire (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, Blaise
Pascal “the infinite vacuum.” See D. Groothuis, On
Pascal, 93 – 94); not primarily experience of God or the
sacred, but desire for this.
a. Reverse
of the projection argument against religion (Freud, et al)
b. Humans
yearn for the transcendent beyond the natural (“joy”)
c. Natural
means cannot satisfy this yearning
d. Basic
human yearnings—hunger, etc.—can be fulfilled
e. Therefore,
the yearning for the transcendent is fulfilled by the transcendent
(but how understood?)
B. The argument
from positive religious experience (not yearning/desire)
1. Types of
religious experience: theistic, monistic
(nondualistic)
2. A
critique of monistic/nondualistic experience
a. Phenomenology
breaks down evidentially
b. No
subject/consciousness/object structure
c. Beyond
language, logic, personality
d. Ineffability
claims: self-refuting or
incoherent
e. Therefore:
there no evidence in
support of monism/nondualism
3. Relational,
theistic experiences
a. The
phenomenology of theistic experiences
i. Numinous
(Moreland). See Exodus 3; Isaiah 6:1
– 8; Revelation 1:12 – 17.
ii. Ordinary
(Nash)
b. The
principle of credulity. Unless there is good evidence
to the contrary, if person S seems to experience E, S should believe
that E probably exists.
c. Vast
numbers or different kinds of people have had theistic experiences
(whether they are salvific or not)
d. It is
more likely that some of these experiences are veridical than all are
delusory or deceptive
e. Objections:
i. No
way to check for false religious experiences (Rowe, Martin)
ii. Response:
Ways of checking for
false religious experiences
iii. Other
religious experiences cancel out theistic ones
iv. Response: monistic
experience fails evidentially
C. Worth of the
argument from religious experiences
1. Evidence
for the person who has the experience: first-person unbeliever
2. Evidence
for one who does not have the experience: third-person
3. Evidence
for one who is already a believer (partial confirmation): first-person
believer
4. Argument
should be given in a comparative fashion (don’t bias the case
toward theism)
5. Should
be part of a cumulative case argument; it cannot stand alone
For more on the argument from religious
experience argument, see Keith Yandell, Philosophy of Religion
(Routledge, 1999), chapter 11; Norman Geisler, Philosophy of
Religion (Baker, 1974; out in a revised ed.), part 1; Richard
Swinburne, The Existence of God, revised ed. (Oxford, 1991),
chapter 13; Swinburne, Is There a God? (