What Is Religious Experience?

What Is the Question?

Religious experience is the felt encounter with what the experiencer takes to be a divine or sacred reality. It ranges from the quiet sense of God's presence in prayer, through conversion and visions, to the mystic's union with the divine. The philosophical question is what to make of it. Is religious experience evidence for the existence of God, on the principle that experiences are prima facie veridical unless there is reason to think otherwise? Or is it better explained by psychology and culture, and so carries no evidential weight? The question matters, because if religious experience is evidence, the case for theism is significantly strengthened, and if it is not, the case for theism loses one of its most powerful supports.

The SEP entry on religious experience sets the contemporary debate as a contest between the principle of credulity, which holds that experiences are prima facie veridical, and the explanatory challenge, which holds that religious experience is better explained by naturalistic causes. The debate is part of the larger question of the rationality of faith, and it bears directly on the project of natural theology, where religious experience is one of the main arguments.

William James and the Varieties

The classic philosophical study of religious experience is William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, delivered as the Gifford Lectures in 1901-1902. James, the American pragmatist, approached the topic as a psychologist and philosopher, and he drew on a vast range of personal accounts, from Augustine and Pascal to the memoirs of unknown believers. James's method was to focus on the lived experience of individuals, rather than on the institutional forms of religion, on the grounds that the institutional forms are derivative, and that the original phenomenon is the personal encounter.

James's central distinction was between the "fruits" of religious experience, the moral and psychological effects, and its "roots," the psychological causes. James was cautious about the roots, allowing that psychology might explain the causes of religious experience, but he argued that the fruits provide prima facie evidence for the reality of the objects of the experience. The saintly lives, the moral reforms, the recovery from despair, the deepened sense of meaning and connection, are real effects, and they call for an explanation. James's pragmatic test was that a belief is to be judged by its fruits, and the fruits of religious experience, on his reading, are good.

James also distinguished the "healthy-minded" and the "sickly" forms of religion. The healthy-minded, exemplified by the mind-cure movement and by certain forms of mysticism, see the world as fundamentally good and find in religion a confirmation of that goodness. The sickly, exemplified by Kierkegaard and the existentialists, see the world as fundamentally broken and find in religion a saving transformation. James treated both as live possibilities, and he resisted the temptation to dismiss either. The distinction has been influential in the subsequent literature, including in the contemporary debate about whether religion is a net good.

Rudolf Otto and the Numinous

A second classic study is Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy (1917). Otto argued that the central religious experience is the experience of the "numinous," the encounter with what he called the "wholly other," a reality that is not reducible to the moral, the aesthetic, or the rational. The numinous, on Otto's view, has a distinctive phenomenology, marked by the "mysterium," the "tremendum," and the "fascinans": the experience of mystery, of awe and dread, and of fascination and attraction. The numinous is the experience of the holy, in the strong sense of a reality that commands reverence and that is qualitatively distinct from the ordinary.

Otto's work has been influential in the phenomenology of religion, and it has shaped the contemporary understanding of the sacred. The numinous is not the moral, though it is connected to it; it is not the aesthetic, though it has aesthetic features; it is not the rational, though it can be articulated in rational terms. The numinous is a sui generis category, and the experience of it is, for Otto, evidence that there is a reality corresponding to the category. See the companion entry on the sacred for the wider context.

The Argument from Religious Experience

The argument from religious experience, in its contemporary form, has been developed by Richard Swinburne and by William Alston. The argument rests on the principle of credulity, that experiences are prima facie veridical unless there is reason to think otherwise, and on the principle of testimony, that the reports of others are prima facie reliable unless there is reason to think otherwise. Applied to religious experience, the principles yield the conclusion that religious experience is prima facie evidence for the existence of the objects of those experiences, namely God or the divine.

Swinburne's version is Bayesian. The principle of credulity, on Swinburne's reading, gives religious experience a prior probability of veridicality, and the burden shifts to the skeptic to provide reason to think the experiences are non-veridical. The skeptic may cite the diversity of religious experiences across cultures, the psychological explanations of religious experience, and the absence of independent confirmation, but Swinburne argues that these do not defeat the prima facie case, and that the cumulative evidence, including the arguments of natural theology, makes theism more probable than not.

Alston's version is more epistemological. Alston develops a "doxastic practice" approach, in which the formation of religious beliefs on the basis of religious experience is a practice with its own internal standards, comparable to the practice of forming perceptual beliefs on the basis of sense experience. The practice, Alston argues, is not obviously irrational, and the burden is on the critic to show that it is. The view is a form of Reformed epistemology, in which religious belief can be rational without inferential evidence, grounded in the deliverances of religious experience.

The Explanatory Challenge

The explanatory challenge to the argument from religious experience is that religious experience is better explained by naturalistic causes. The challenge has several forms. The first is the psychological explanation, that religious experience is produced by altered states of consciousness, by emotional stress, or by cognitive biases such as the hyperactive agency detection that may have evolved to detect predators. The second is the sociological explanation, that religious experience is shaped by the cultural expectations of the experiencer, and that the diversity of religious experiences across cultures is evidence for the cultural shaping rather than for a common object. The third is the neurological explanation, that religious experience is correlated with distinctive brain states, and that the correlation suggests the brain is producing the experience rather than receiving it.

The defender of the argument from religious experience has several replies. The first is that the naturalistic explanations do not show that the experiences are non-veridical, only that they have natural causes, and that a religious experience can have both natural and divine causes, with the divine acting through the natural. The second is that the cultural shaping does not show that the experiences are non-veridical, only that they are interpreted through cultural categories, which is true of all experience including sense experience. The third is that the neurological correlation is ambiguous, since the brain may be a medium for the experience rather than its producer, just as a radio is a medium for the broadcast rather than its producer.

The debate is live, and the state of the question is that religious experience provides some prima facie evidence for theism, but whether that evidence is sufficient, in the face of the explanatory challenge, is disputed. The question is part of the larger debate about the rationality of religious belief, and it bears on the wider question of whether theism is more probable than not on the total evidence.

Religious Experience and Mysticism

A distinctive form of religious experience is mysticism, the experience of union with the divine. Mystical experiences, across religious traditions, share certain features, often summarized as ineffability, the experience cannot be adequately expressed in words; noesis, the experience conveys knowledge; transiency, the experience is brief; and passivity, the experiencer feels acted upon rather than acting. The philosophical debate about mysticism is whether the cross-cultural commonalities are evidence for a common object, or whether they are artifacts of the similar psychology that produces them.

The defender of the mystical argument, such as W. T. Stace, holds that the cross-cultural commonalities are evidence for a common object, on the principle that similar experiences across very different cultural contexts are more likely to be veridical than to be coincidental. The critic, such as Steven Katz, holds that the experiences are shaped by the theological expectations of the traditions, and that the apparent commonalities are imposed by the interpreter rather than found in the experiences themselves. The debate is technical, but it bears on the wider question of whether religious experience is evidence for theism.

Contemporary Relevance

Religious experience remains a live topic, both in philosophy and in the wider culture. The persistence of religious experience, even in secularized societies, suggests that it is a deep feature of human psychology, and the philosophical question of what to make of it is correspondingly urgent. The rise of the cognitive science of religion, and the neurological study of religious experience, have sharpened the explanatory challenge, but they have not settled the question. The argument from religious experience remains a serious part of the case for theism, and its defense and critique continue to be a central research program in the philosophy of religion.

The deeper lesson is that the question of religious experience is part of the larger question of how to weigh experiential evidence, and of how to balance the principle of credulity against the explanatory challenge. The question reaches into the foundations of epistemology, and it is not settled by a single argument. The honest philosophical stance is to take the experience seriously, to engage with the explanatory challenge, and to weigh the evidence as carefully as the question deserves.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Religious Experience" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-experience/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "William James" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Religious Epistemology" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religious-epistemology/
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philosophy of Religion" — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/

Related Topics

• What Is Mysticism? — the experiential core of the debate.
• What Is the Sacred? — the object of the experience.
• Is Faith Rational? — the wider question.
• What Is Reformed Epistemology? — the properly basic belief view.
• Does God Exist? — the central question.
• Philosophy of Religious Experience — the wider domain.