my religious experience essay

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Religious Experience

Religious experiences can be characterized generally as experiences that seem to the person having them to be of some objective reality and to have some religious import. That reality can be an individual, a state of affairs, a fact, or even an absence, depending on the religious tradition the experience is a part of. A wide variety of kinds of experience fall under the general rubric of religious experience. The concept is vague, and the multiplicity of kinds of experiences that fall under it makes it difficult to capture in any general account. Part of that vagueness comes from the term ‘religion,’ which is difficult to define in any way that does not either rule out institutions that clearly are religions, or include terms that can only be understood in the light of a prior understanding of what religions are. Nevertheless, we can make some progress in elucidating the concept by distinguishing it from distinct but related concepts.

First, religious experience is to be distinguished from religious feelings, in the same way that experience in general is to be distinguished from feelings in general. A feeling of elation, for example, even if it occurs in a religious context, does not count in itself as a religious experience, even if the subject later comes to think that the feeling was caused by some objective reality of religious significance. An analogy with sense experience is helpful here. If a subject feels a general feeling of happiness, not on account of anything in particular, and later comes to believe the feeling was caused by the presence of a particular person, that fact does not transform the feeling of happiness into a perception of the person. Just as a mental event, to be a perception of an object, must in some sense seem to be an experience of that object, a religiously oriented mental event, to be a religious experience, must in some way seem to be an experience of a religiously significant reality. So, although religious feelings may be involved in many, or even most, religious experiences, they are not the same thing. Discussions of religious experience in terms of feelings, like Schleiermacher’s (1998) “feeling of absolute dependence,” or Otto’s (1923) feeling of the numinous, were important early contributions to theorizing about religious experience, but some have since then argued (see Gellman 2001 and Alston 1991, for example) that religious affective states are not all there is to religious experience. To account for the experiences qua experiences, we must go beyond subjective feelings.

Religious experience is also to be distinguished from mystical experience. Although there is obviously a close connection between the two, and mystical experiences are religious experiences, not all religious experiences qualify as mystical. The word ‘mysticism’ has been understood in many different ways. James (1902) took mysticism to necessarily involve ineffability, which would rule out many cases commonly understood to be mystical. Alston (1991) adopted the term grudgingly as the best of a bad lot and gave it a semi-technical meaning. But in its common, non-technical sense, mysticism is a specific religious system or practice, deliberately undertaken in order to come to some realization or insight, to come to unity with the divine, or to experience the ultimate reality directly. At the very least, religious experiences form a broader category; many religious experiences, like those of Saint Paul, Arjuna, Moses, Muhammad, and many others come unsought, not as the result of some deliberate practice undertaken to produce an experience.

1. Types of Religious Experience

2. language and experience, 3. epistemological issues, 4. the diverse objects of religious experience, other internet resources, related entries.

Reports of religious experiences reveal a variety of different kinds. Perhaps most are visual or auditory presentations (visions and auditions), but not through the physical eyes or ears. Subjects report “seeing” or “hearing,” but quickly disavow any claim to seeing or hearing with bodily sense organs. Such experiences are easy to dismiss as hallucinations, but the subjects of the experience frequently claim that though it is entirely internal, like a hallucination or imagination, it is nevertheless a veridical experience, through some spiritual analog of the eye or ear (James 1902 and Alston 1991 cite many examples).

In other cases, the language of “seeing” is used in its extended sense of realization, as when a yogi is said to “see” his or her identity with Brahman; Buddhists speak of “seeing things as they are” as one of the hallmarks of true enlightenment, where this means grasping or realizing the emptiness of things, but not in a purely intellectual way.

A third type is the religious experience that comes through sensory experiences of ordinary objects, but seems to carry with it extra information about some supramundane reality. Examples include experiencing God in nature, in the starry sky, or a flower, or the like. Another person standing nearby would see exactly the same sky or flower, but would not necessarily have the further religious content to his or her experience. There are also cases in which the religious experience just is an ordinary perception, but the physical object is itself the object of religious significance. Moses’s experience of the burning bush, or the Buddha’s disciples watching him levitate, are examples of this type. A second person standing nearby would see exactly the same phenomenon. Witnesses to miracles are having that kind of religious experience, whether they understand it that way or not.

A fourth type of religious experience is harder to describe: it can’t be characterized accurately in sensory language, even analogically, yet the subject of the experience insists that the experience is a real, direct awareness of some religiously significant reality external to the subject. These kinds of experiences are usually described as “ineffable.” Depending on one’s purposes, other ways of dividing up religious experiences will suggest themselves. For example, William James (1902) divides experiences into “healthy-minded” and “sick-minded,” according to the personality of the subject, which colors the content of the experience itself. Keith Yandell (1993, 25–32) divided them into five categories, according to the content of the experiences: monotheistic, nirvanic (enlightenment experiences associated with Buddhism), kevalic (enlightenment experiences associated with Jainism), moksha (experiences of release from karma, associated with Hinduism), and nature experiences. Differences of object certainly make differences in content, and so make differences in what can be said about the experiences. See Section 4 for further discussion of this issue.

Many have thought that there is some special problem with religious language, that it can’t be meaningful in the same way that ordinary language is. The Logical Positivists claimed that language is meaningful only insofar as it is moored in our experiences of the physical world. Since we can’t account for religious language by linking it to experiences of the physical world, such language is meaningless. Even though religious claims look in every way like ordinary assertions about the world, their lack of empirical consequences makes them meaningless. Ayer (1952) calls such language “metaphysical,” and therefore meaningless. He says, “That a transcendent god exists 3s a metaphysical assertion, and therefore not literally significant.” The principle of verification went through many formulations as it faced criticism. But if it is understood as a claim about meaning in ordinary language, it seems to be self-undermining, since there is no empirical way to verify it. Eventually, that approach to language fell out of favor, but some still use a modified, weaker version to criticize religious language. For example, Antony Flew (Flew and MacIntyre, 1955) relies on a principle to the effect that if a claim is not falsifiable, it is somehow illegitimate. Martin (1990) and Nielsen (1985) invoke a principle that combines verifiability and falsifiability; to be meaningful, a claim must be one or the other. It is not clear that even these modified and weakened versions of the verification principle entirely escape self-undermining. Even if they do, they seem to take other kinds of language with them—like moral language, talk about the future or past, and talk about the contents of others’ minds — that we might be loath to lose. Moreover, to deny the meaningfulness of religious-experience claims on the grounds that it is not moored in experience begs the question, in that it assumes that religious experiences are not real experiences.

Another possibility is to allow that religious claims are meaningful, but they are not true or false, because they should not be understood as assertions. Braithwaite (1970), for example, understands religious claims to be expressions of commitments to sets of values. On such a view, what appears to be a claim about a religious experience is not in fact a claim at all. It might be that some set of mental events, with which the experience itself can be identified, would be the ground and prompting of the claim, but it would not properly be what the claim is about.

A second challenge to religious-experience claims comes from Wittgensteinian accounts of language. Wittgenstein (1978) muses at some length on the differences between how ordinary language is used, and how religious language is used. Others (see Phillips 1970, for example), following Wittgenstein, have tried to give an explanation of the strangeness of religious language by invoking the idea of a language-game. Each language-game has its own rules, including its own procedures for verification. As a result, it is a mistake to treat it like ordinary language, expecting evidence in the ordinary sense, in the same way that it would be a mistake to ask for the evidence for a joke. “I saw God” should not be treated in the same way as “I saw Elvis.” Some even go so far as to say the religious language-game is isolated from other practices, such that it would be a mistake to derive any claims about history, geography, or cosmology from them, never mind demand the same kind of evidence for them. On this view, religious experiences should not be treated as comparable to sense experiences, but that does not entail that they are not important, nor that they are not in some sense veridical, in that they could still be avenues for important insights about reality. Such a view can be attributed to D. Z. Phillips (1970).

While this may account for some of the unusual aspects of religious language, it certainly does not capture what many religious people think about the claims they make. As creationism illustrates, many religious folk think it is perfectly permissible to draw empirical conclusions from religious doctrine. Hindus and Buddhists for many centuries thought there was a literal Mount Meru in the middle of the (flat, disc-shaped) world. It would be very odd if “The Buddha attained enlightenment under the bo tree” had to be given a very different treatment from “The Buddha ate rice under the bo tree” because the first is a religious claim and the second is an ordinary empirical claim. There are certainly entailment relations between religious and non-religious claims, too: “Jesus died for my sins” straightforwardly entails “Jesus died.”

Since the subjects of religious experiences tend to take them to be real experiences of some external reality, we may ask what reason there is to think they are right. That is to say, do religious experiences amount to good reasons for religious belief? One answer to that question is what is often called the Argument from Religious Experience: Religious experiences are in all relevant respects like sensory experiences; sensory experiences are excellent grounds for beliefs about the physical world; so religious experiences are excellent grounds for religious beliefs. This argument, or one very like it, can be found in Swinburne (1979), Alston (1991), Plantinga (1981, 2000), Netland (2022) and others. Critics of this approach generally find ways in which religious experiences are different from sensory experiences, and argue that those differences are enough to undermine the evidential value of the experiences. Swinburne (1979) invokes what he calls the “Principle of Credulity,” according to which one is justified in believing that what seems to one to be present actually is present, unless some appropriate defeater is operative. He then discusses a variety of circumstances that would be defeaters in the ordinary sensory case, and argues that those defeaters do not obtain, or not always, in the case of religious experience. To reject his argument, one would have to show that religious experience is unlike sensory experience in that in the religious case, one or more of the defeaters always obtains. Anyone who accepts the principle has excellent reason to accept the deliverances of religious experience, unless he or she believes that defeaters always, or almost always, obtain.

Plantinga offers a different kind of argument. According to Cartesian-style foundationalism, in order to count as justified, a belief must either be grounded in other justified beliefs, or derive its justification from some special status, like infallibility, incorrigibility, or indubitability. There is a parallel view about knowledge. Plantinga (1981) argued that such a foundationalism is inconsistent with holding one’s own ordinary beliefs about the world to be justified (or knowledge), because our ordinary beliefs derived from sense-experience aren’t derived from anything infallible, indubitable, or incorrigible. In fact, we typically treat them as foundational, in need of no further justification. If we hold sensory beliefs to be properly basic, then we have to hold similarly formed religious beliefs, formed on experiences of God manifesting himself to a believer (Plantinga calls them ‘M-beliefs’), as properly basic. He proposed that human beings have a faculty—what John Calvin called the ‘ sensus divinitatis ’—that allows them to be aware of God’s actions or dispositions with respect to them. If beliefs formed by sense-experience can be properly basic, then beliefs formed by this faculty cannot, in any principled way, be denied that same status. His developed theory of warrant (2000) implies that, if the beliefs are true, then they are warranted. One cannot attack claims of religious experience without first addressing the question as to whether the religious claims are true. He admits that, since there are people in other religious traditions who have based beliefs about religious matters on similar purported manifestations, they may be able to make the same argument about their own religious experiences.

Alston develops a general theory of doxastic practices (constellations of belief-forming mechanisms, together with characteristic background assumptions and sets of defeaters), gives an account of what it is to rationally engage in such a practice, and then argues that at least the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of Christian religious experiences fulfills those requirements. If we think of the broad doxastic practices we currently employ, we see that some of them can be justified by the use of other practices. The practice of science, for example, reduces mostly to the practices of sense-perception, deductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning (memory and testimony also make contributions, of course). The justificatory status the practice gives to its product beliefs derives from those more basic practices. Most, however, cannot be so reduced. How are they justified, then? It seems that they cannot be justified non-circularly, that is, without the use of premises derived from the practices themselves. Our only justification for continuing to trust these practices is that they are firmly established, interwoven with other practices and projects of ours, and have “stood the test of time” by producing mostly consistent sets of beliefs. They produce a sufficiently consistent set of beliefs if they don’t produce massive, unavoidable contradictions on central matters, either internally, or with the outputs of other equally well-established practices. If that’s all there is to be said about our ordinary practices, then we ought to extend the same status to other practices that have the same features. He then argues that the Christian practice of belief-formation on the basis of religious experience does have those features. Like Plantinga, he admits that such an argument might be equally available to other religious practices; it all depends on whether the practice in question generates massive and unavoidable contradictions, on central matters, either internally, or with other equally well-established practices. To undermine this argument, one would have to show either that Alston’s criteria for rationality of a practice are too permissive, or that religious practices never escape massive contradictions.

Both Plantinga’s and Alston’s defense of the epistemic value of religious experiences turn crucially on some degree of similarity with sense-experience. But they are not simple arguments from analogy; not just any similarities will do to make the positive argument, and not just any dissimilarities will do to defeat the argument. The similarities or dissimilarities need to be epistemologically relevant. It is not enough, for example, to show that religious experiences do not typically allow for independent public verification, unless one wants to give up on other perfectly respectable practices, like rational intuition, that also lack that feature.

The two most important defeaters on the table for claims of the epistemic authority of religious experience are the fact of religious diversity, and the availability of naturalistic explanations for religious experiences. Religious diversity is a prima facie defeater for the veridicality of religious experiences in the same way that wildly conflicting eyewitness reports undermine each other. If the reports are at all similar, then it may be reasonable to conclude that there is some truth to the testimony, at least in broad outline. A version of this objection is the argument from divine hiddenness (cf. Lovering 2013). If God exists, and shows himself to some people in religious experiences, then the fact that he doesn’t do so for more people, more widely distributed, requires some explanation. Axtell provides another version of that objection. He argues that to insist that one’s own religious convictions are true in the face of the diversity of religions is to reason counter-inductively, and is therefore irrational. The reasoning is counter-inductive because your own convictions come from the same kinds of epistemic sources (investment in testimonial authority) as those you deem to be wrong, so if you are right, it is just a matter of luck. But if two eyewitness reports disagree on the most basic facts about what happened, then it seems that neither gives you good grounds for any beliefs about what happened. It certainly seems that the contents of religious-experience reports are radically different from one another. Some subjects of religious experiences report experience of nothingness as the ultimate reality, some a vast impersonal consciousness in which we all participate, some an infinitely perfect, personal creator. To maintain that one’s own religious experiences are veridical, one would have to a) find some common core to all these experiences, such that in spite of differences of detail, they could reasonably be construed as experiences of the same reality, or b) insist that one’s own experiences are veridical, and that therefore those of other traditions are not veridical. The first is difficult to manage, in the face of the manifest differences across religions. Nevertheless, John Hick (1989) develops a view of that kind, making use of a Kantian two-worlds epistemology. The idea is that the object of these experiences, in itself, is one and the same reality, but it is experienced phenomenally by different people differently. Thus, is possible to see how one and the same object can be experienced in ways that are completely incompatible with one another. This approach is only as plausible as the Kantian framework itself is. Jerome Gellman (2001) proposes a similar idea, without the Kantian baggage. Solutions like these leave the problem untouched: If the different practices produce experiences the contents of which are inconsistent with one another, one of the practices must be unreliable. Alston (1991) and Plantinga (2000) develop the second kind of answer. The general strategy is to argue that, from within a tradition, a person acquires epistemic resources not available to those outside the tradition, just as travelling to the heart of a jungle allows one to see things that those who have not made the journey can’t see. As a result, even if people in other traditions can make the same argument, it is still reasonable to say that some are right and the others are wrong. The things that justify my beliefs still justify them, even if you have comparable resources justifying a contrary view.

Naturalistic explanations for religious experiences are thought to undermine their epistemic value because, if the naturalistic explanation is sufficient to explain the experience, we have no grounds for positing anything beyond that naturalistic cause. Freud (1927) and Marx (1876/1977) are frequently held up as offering such explanations. Freud claims that religious experiences can be adequately explained by psychological mechanisms having their root in early childhood experience and psychodynamic tensions. Marx similarly attributes religious belief in general to materialistic economic forces. Both claim that, since the hidden psychological or economic explanations are sufficient to explain the origins of religious belief, there is no need to suppose, in addition, that the beliefs are true. Freud’s theory of religion has few adherents, even among the psychoanalytically inclined, and Marx’s view likewise has all but been abandoned, but that is not to say that something in the neighborhood might not be true. More recently, neurological explanations of religious experience have been put forward as reasons to deny the veridicality of the experiences. Events in the brain that occur during meditative states and other religious experiences are very similar to events that happen during certain kinds of seizures, or with certain kinds of mental disorders, and can also be induced with drugs. Therefore, it is argued, there is nothing more to religious experiences than what happens in seizures, mental disorders, or drug experiences. Some who are studying the neurological basis of religious experience do not infer that they are not veridical (see, e.g., d’Aquili and Newberg 1999), but many do. Guthrie (1995), for example, argues that religion has its origin in our tendency to anthropomorphize phenomena in our vicinity, seeing agency where there is none.

There are general problems with all kinds of naturalistic explanations as defeaters. First of all, as Gellman (2001) points out, most such explanations (like the psychoanalytic and socio-political ones) are put forward as hypotheses, not as established facts. The proponent assumes that the experiences are not veridical, then casts around for an explanation. This is not true of the neurological explanations, but they face another kind of weakness noted by Ellwood (1999): every experience, whatever its source, is accompanied by a corresponding neurological state. To argue that the experience is illusory because there is a corresponding brain state is fallacious. The same reasoning would lead us to conclude that sensory experiences are illusory, since in each sensory experience, there is some corresponding neurological state that is just like the state that occurs in the corresponding hallucination. The proponent of the naturalistic explanation as a defeater owes us some reason to believe that his or her argument is not just another skeptical argument from the veil of perception.

One further epistemological worry accompanies religious experience. James claimed that, while mystical experiences proved authoritative grounds for belief in the person experiencing them, they cannot give grounds for a person to whom the experience is reported. In other words, my experience is evidence for me, but not for you. Bovens (2012) gives a modern expansion and explanation of this claim. The claim can be understood in a variety of ways, depending on the kind of normativity that attaches to the purported evidential relation. Some (see Oakes 1976, for example) have claimed that religious experiences epistemically can necessitate belief; that is, anyone who has the experience and doesn’t form the corresponding belief is making an epistemic mistake, much like a person who, in normal conditions, refuses to believe his or her eyes. More commonly, defenders of the epistemic value of religious experience claim that the experiences make it epistemically permissible to form the belief, but you may also be justified in not forming the belief. The testimony of other people about what they have experienced is much the same. In some cases, a person would be unjustified in rejecting the testimony of others, and in other cases, one would be justified in accepting it, but need not accept it. This leaves us with three possibilities, on the assumption that the subject of the experience is justified in forming a religious belief on the basis of his or her experience, and that he or she tells someone else about it: the testimony might provide compelling evidence for the hearer, such that he or she would be unjustified in rejecting the claim; the testimony might provide non-compelling justification for the hearer to accept the claim; or the testimony might fail to provide any kind of grounds for the hearer to accept the claim. When a subject makes a claim on the basis of an ordinary experience, it might fall into any one of these three categories, depending on the claim’s content and the epistemic situation of the hearer. The most natural thing to say about religious experience claims is that they work the same way (on the assumption that they give the subject of the experience, who is making the claim, any justification for his or her beliefs). James, and some others after him, claim that testimony about religious experiences cannot fall under either of the first two categories. If that’s true, it must be because of something special about the nature of the experiences. If we assume that the experiences cannot be shown a priori to be defective somehow, and that religious language is intelligible—and if we do not make these assumptions, then the question of religious testimony doesn’t even arise—then it must be because the evidential value of the experience is so small that it cannot survive transmission to another person; that is, it must be that in the ordinary act of reporting an experience to someone else, there is some defeater at work that is always stronger than whatever evidential force the experience itself has. While there are important differences between ordinary sense-experience and religious experience (clarity of the experience, amount of information it contains, presence of competing explanations, and the like), it is not clear whether the differences are great enough to disqualify religious testimony always and everywhere.

Just as there are a variety of religions, each with its own claims about the nature of reality, there are a variety of objects and states of affairs that the subjects of these experiences claim to be aware of. Much analytic philosophy of religion has been done in Europe and the nations descended from Europe, so much of the discussion has been in terms of God as conceived of in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. In those traditions, the object of religious experiences is typically God himself, understood as an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, free, and perfectly good spirit. God, for reasons of his own, reveals himself to people, some of them unbidden (like Moses, Muhammad, and Saint Paul), and some because they have undertaken a rigorous practice to draw closer to him (like the mystics). To say that an experience comes unbidden is not to say that nothing the subject has done has prepared her, or primed her, for the experience (see Luhrmann 2012); it is only to claim that the subject has not undertaken any practice aimed at producing a religious experience. In such experiences, God frequently delivers a message at the same time, but he need not. He is always identifiable as the same being who revealed himself to others in the same tradition. Other experiences can be of angels, demons, saints, heaven, hell, or other religiously significant objects.

In other traditions, it is not necessarily a personal being who is the object of the experience, or even a positive being at all. In the traditions that find their origin in the Indian subcontinent—chiefly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—the object of religious experiences is some basic fact or feature of reality, rather than some entity separate from the universe. In the orthodox Hindu traditions, one may certainly have an experience of a god or some other supernatural entity (like Arjuna’s encounter with Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita), but a great many important kinds of experiences are of Brahman, and its identity with the self. In Yoga, which is based in the Samkhya understanding of the nature of things, the mystical practice of yoga leads to a calming and stilling of the mind, which allows the yogi to apprehend directly that he or she is not identical to, or even causally connected with, the physical body, and this realization is what liberates him or her from suffering.

In Theravada Buddhism, the goal of meditation is to “see things as they are,” which is to see them as unsatisfactory, impermanent, and not-self (Gowans 2003, 191). The meditator, as he or she makes progress along the way, sheds various delusions and attachments. The last one to go is the delusion that he or she is a self. To see this is to see all of reality as made up of sequences of momentary events, each causally dependent on the ones that went before. There are no abiding substances, and no eternal souls. Seeing reality that way extinguishes the fires of craving, and liberates the meditator from the necessity of rebirth (Laumakis 2008, 158–161). Seeing things as they are involves removing from the mind all the delusions that stand in the way of such seeing, which is done by meditation practices that develop the meditator’s mastery of his or her own mind. The type of meditation that brings this mastery and allows the meditator to see the true nature of things is called Vipassana (insight) meditation. It typically involves some object of meditation, which can be some feature of the meditator him- or herself, some feature of the physical or mental world, or some abstraction, which then becomes the focus of the meditator’s concentration and examination. In the end, it is hoped, the meditator will see in the object the unsatisfactory and impermanent nature of things and that there is no self to be found in them. At the moment of that insight, nirvana is achieved. While the experience of nirvana is essentially the realization of a kind of insight, it is also accompanied by other experiential elements, especially of the cessation of negative mental states. Nirvana is described in the Buddhist canon as the extinction of the fires of desire. The Theravada tradition teaches other kinds of meditation that can help the meditator make progress, but the final goal can’t be achieved without vipassana meditation.

In the Mahayana Buddhist traditions, this idea of the constantly fluctuating nature of the universe is extended in various ways. For some, even those momentary events that make up the flow of the world are understood to be empty of inherent existence (the idea of inherent existence is understood differently in different traditions) to the point that what one sees in the enlightenment experience is the ultimate emptiness ( sunyata ) of all things. In the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism, this is understood as emptiness of external existence; that is, to see things as they are is to see them as all mind-dependent. In the Zen school of Mahayana Buddhism, the enlightenment experience ( kensho ) reveals that reality contains no distinctions or dualities. Since concepts and language always involve distinctions, which always involve duality, the insight so gained cannot be achieved conceptually or expressed linguistically. In all Mahayana schools, what brings enlightenment is direct realization of sunyata as a basic fact about reality.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in the Chinese traditions. The idea of religious experience seems to be almost completely absent in the Confucian tradition; the social world looms large, and the idea of an ultimate reality that needs to be experienced becomes much less prominent. Before the arrival of Buddhism in China, Confucianism was primarily a political and ethical system, with no particular concern with the transcendent (though people who identified themselves as Confucians frequently engaged in Chinese folk religious practices). Nevertheless, meditation (and therefore something that could be called “religious experience”) did come to play a role in Confucian practice in the tenth century, as Confucian thought began to be influenced by Buddhist and Daoist thought. The resulting view is known as Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism retains the Mencian doctrine that human beings are by nature good, but in need of purification. Since goodness resides in every person, then examination of oneself should reveal the nature of goodness, through the experience of the vital force within ( qi ). The form of meditation that arises from this line of thought (“quiet sitting” or “sitting and forgetting”) are very like Buddhist vipassana meditation, but there is no value placed on any particular insight gained, though one can experience the principle of unity ( li ) behind the world. Success is measured in gradual moral improvement.

The Daoist ideal is to come to an understanding of the Dao, the fundamental nature of reality that explains all things in the world, and live according to it. Knowledge of the Dao is essential to the good life, but this knowledge cannot be learned from discourses, or transmitted by teaching. It is only known by experiential acquaintance. The Dao gives the universe a kind of grain, or flow, going against which causes human difficulty. The good human life is then one that respects the flow of Dao, and goes along with it. This is what is meant by “life in accordance with nature,” and is the insight behind the Daoist admonition of wu wei, sometimes glossed as “actionless action.” By paying attention to reality as it presents itself, a person can learn what the Dao is, and can experience unity with it. This picture of reality, along with the picture of how one can come to know it, heavily influenced the development of Ch’an Buddhism, which became Zen.

All of the same epistemological problems that arise for theism will also arise for these other traditions, though in different forms. That is, one can ask of experiences of Brahman, Sunyata, the Dao, and anything else that is the object of religious experience whether there is any reason to think the experience is veridical. One can also ask whether testimony about those experiences carries the same weight as ordinary experience. Naturalistic explanations can also be offered to these experiences. It is equally true that the responses that have been offered to these objections in a theistic context are also available to defenders of non-theistic religious experience.

• Alston, William P., 1991. Perceiving God , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Ayer, A. J., 1952. Language, Truth, and Logic , New York: Dover Publications.
• Axtell, Guy, 2018. Problems of Religious Luck: Assessing the Limits of Reasonable Religious Disagreement, New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Bovens, Luc, 2012. “Does it Matter Whether a Miracle-Like Event Happens to Oneself rather than to Someone Else?” in Jake Chandler & Victoria S. Harrison (eds.), Probability in the Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 64–75.
• Boyer, Pascal, 2001. Religion Explained: the Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought , New York: Basic Books.
• Braithwaite, Richard, 1970. “An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief,” in Basil Mitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 72–91.
• Brown, David, 2015. “Realism and Religious Experience,” Religious Studies , 51(4): 497–512.
• D’Aquili, Eugene, and Andrew B. Newberg, 1999. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience , Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
• Ellwood, Robert S., 1999. Mysticism and Religion , New York: Seven Bridges Press.
• Flew, Antony, and Alasdair MacIntyre, 1955. New Essays in Philosophical Theology , New York: Macmillan.
• Freud, Sigmund, 1927. The Future of an Illusion , in The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works (Volume XXI, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud), London: Hogarth Press, 1–56.
• Gellman, Jerome, 2001. Mystical Experience of God , Burlington: Ashgate Publishing.
• –––, 2005. “Mysticism and Religious Experience,” in William Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gowans, Christopher W., 2003. Philosophy of the Buddha , New York: Routledge.
• Guthrie, Stewart Elliot, 1995. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hick, John, 1989. An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent , London: Macmillan.
• –––, 2006. The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience, and the Transcendent , New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• James, William, 1902. Varieties of Religious Experience , London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
• Laumakis, Stephen J., 2008. An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy , New York: Cambridge.
• Lovering, Rob, 2013. God and Evidence: Problems for Theistic Philosophers , New York: Bloomsbury.
• Luhrmann, Tanya, 2012. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God , New York: Vintage.
• Martin, Michael, 1990. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification , Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Marx, Karl, 1977. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right , Joseph O’Malley and Annette Jolin (trans.), New York: Cambridge.
• Moser, Paul, 2008. The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2020. Understanding Religious Experience: from Conviction to Life’s Meaning, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Netland, Harold A., 2022. Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God: the Evidential Force of Divine Encounters , Grand Rapids: Baker Books.
• Nielsen, Kai, 1985. Philosophy and Atheism , New York: Prometheus Books.
• Oakes, Robert A., 1976, “Religious Experience and Rational Certainty,” Religious Studies , 12(3): 311–318.
• Otto, Rudolf, 1923. The Idea of the Holy , John W. Harvey (trans.), London: Cambridge University Press.
• Phillips, D. Z., 1970. “Religious Beliefs and Language Games,” Ratio , 12: 26–46.
• Plantinga, Alvin, 1981, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Noûs , 15: 41–51.
• –––, 2000, Warranted Christian Belief , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Rainey, Lee Dian, 2010. Confucius and Confucianism: the Essentials , New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Saver, Jeffrey L., and John Rabin, 1997. “The Neural Substrates of Religious Experience,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry , 9: 498–510.
• Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1998. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers , Richard Crouter (ed.), New York: Cambridge.
• Swinburne, Richard, 1979. The Existence of God , New York: Clarendon Press.
• Taylor, Rodney L., 1990. The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism , Albany: SUNY Press.
• Wainwright, William J., 1981. Mysticism: A Study of its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications , Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Webb, Mark Owen, 2015. A Comparative Doxastic-Practice Epistemology of Religious Experience , New York: Springer.
• Wettstein, Howard, 2012. The Significance of Religious Experience , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1978. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief , Cyril Barrett (ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Yandell, Keith E., 1993. The Epistemology of Religious Experience , New York: Cambridge University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Religious Experience Resources , by Wesley Wildman, Boston University.

empiricism: logical | hiddenness of God | James, William | mysticism | perception: epistemological problems of | religion: epistemology of | religious diversity | testimony: epistemological problems of

Copyright © 2022 by Mark Webb < mark . webb @ ttu . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Essay on Religious Experience

Students are often asked to write an essay on Religious Experience in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Religious Experience

Understanding religious experience.

Religious experience is a personal encounter with the divine or sacred. It is a feeling or perception that someone has when they come in contact with a higher power. This could be God, spirits, or other supernatural beings. These experiences are often very powerful and can change a person’s life.

Types of Religious Experiences

There are many types of religious experiences. Some people might hear a voice, see a vision, or feel a sudden sense of peace. Others might have dreams or feel a strong pull towards a certain faith. Each person’s experience is unique and personal.

Impact of Religious Experiences

Religious experiences can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can lead to a stronger faith, a change in behavior, or a new understanding of the world. Some people might even decide to dedicate their lives to their faith after having a religious experience.

Interpreting Religious Experiences

Interpreting religious experiences can be tricky. Some people might see them as proof of their faith, while others might see them as psychological events. It’s important to remember that religious experiences are personal and can mean different things to different people.

In conclusion, religious experiences are deeply personal events that can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can lead to a stronger faith, a change in behavior, or a new understanding of the world. Everyone’s experience is unique and should be respected.

250 Words Essay on Religious Experience

What is a religious experience.

A religious experience is a special moment when a person feels a deep connection with a higher power. This higher power could be God, a spirit, or any divine being. These experiences are often very personal and can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can happen in different ways. Some people might have a religious experience during prayer, while others might have one while looking at nature.

There are many types of religious experiences. For instance, some people might have a ‘mystical experience’. This is when they feel a deep sense of unity with the universe. Some people might have a ‘conversion experience’. This is when they change their beliefs or their way of life because of a religious experience. Other people might have a ‘miracle experience’. This is when they believe that something impossible has happened because of the power of God.

Religious experiences can change a person’s life. They can make a person feel more peaceful, happy, and hopeful. They can also make a person feel more connected to other people and to the world around them. Some people might start to live in a different way after a religious experience. They might become kinder, more loving, or more understanding.

In conclusion, a religious experience is a powerful moment of connection with a higher power. It can happen in many different ways and can have a big impact on a person’s life. It is a deeply personal and often life-changing event.

500 Words Essay on Religious Experience

A religious experience is a special event or moment in a person’s life when they feel a strong connection to a higher power. This higher power could be God, a spirit, or a divine being. These experiences can vary greatly from person to person. Some people might see or hear things that others cannot. Others may have a deep feeling of peace and love. These experiences can happen anywhere, anytime – during prayer, in a dream, or even when simply looking at nature.

There are many types of religious experiences. One type is a “vision”. This is when a person sees something that others cannot. It could be an image of a holy person or a message from God. Another type is a “dream”. Many people believe that God or spirits can speak to them in their dreams.

A third type is a “mystical” experience. This is a feeling of being one with the universe or God. It is often described as a deep sense of peace and love. Lastly, there’s a “conversion” experience. This is when a person decides to change their beliefs or way of life because of a religious experience.

Effects of Religious Experiences

Religious experiences can have a big impact on a person’s life. They can change how a person thinks and behaves. For example, a person who has a religious experience might decide to be kinder to others. They might also start to pray more often or read religious texts.

Religious experiences can also give people hope and comfort. If someone is going through a hard time, a religious experience might make them feel better. It can give them the strength to keep going.

Understanding Religious Experiences

Religious experiences are personal and unique to each person. It’s important to respect everyone’s experiences, even if they are different from our own. Some people might not believe in religious experiences. That’s okay too. Everyone has the right to their own beliefs.

In conclusion, religious experiences are special moments when people feel a strong connection to a higher power. They can take many forms and have a big impact on a person’s life. Whether you believe in them or not, they are an important part of many people’s lives.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Religious Business
• Essay on Religious Beliefs And Practices
• Essay on Religion’s Impact On Society

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Essays About Religion: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

Essays about religion include delicate issues and tricky subtopics. See our top essay examples and prompts to guide you in your essay writing.

With over 4,000 religions worldwide, it’s no wonder religion influences everything. It involves faith, lessons on humanity, spirituality, and moral values that span thousands of years. For some, it’s both a belief and a cultural system. As it often clashes with science, laws, and modern philosophies, it’s also a hot debate topic. Religion is a broad subject encompassing various elements of life, so you may find it a challenging topic to write an essay about it.

1. Wisdom and Longing in Islam’s Religion by Anonymous on Ivypanda.com

2. consequences of following religion blindly essay by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 3. religion: christians’ belief in god by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 4. mecca’s influence on today’s religion essay by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 5. religion: how buddhism views the world by anonymous on ivypanda.com , 1. the importance of religion, 2. pros and cons of having a religion, 3. religions across the world, 4. religion and its influence on laws, 5. religion: then and now, 6. religion vs. science, 7. my religion.

“Portraying Muslims as radical religious fanatics who deny other religions and violently fight dissent has nothing to do with true Islamic ideology. The knowledge that is presented in Islam and used by Muslims to build their worldview system is exploited in a misinterpreted form. This is transforming the perception of Islam around the world as a radical religious system that supports intolerance and conflicts.”

The author discusses their opinion on how Islam becomes involved with violence or terrorism in the Islamic states. Throughout the essay, the writer mentions the massive difference between Islam’s central teachings and the terrorist groups’ dogma. The piece also includes a list of groups, their disobediences, and punishments.

This essay looks at how these brutalities have nothing to do with Islam’s fundamental ideologies. However, the context of Islam’s creeds is distorted by rebel groups like The Afghan mujahideen, Jihadis, and Al-Qa’ida. Furthermore, their activities push dangerous narratives that others use to make generalized assumptions about the entire religion. These misleading generalizations lead to misunderstandings amongst other communities, particularly in the western world. However, the truth is that these terrorist groups are violating Islamic doctrine.

“Following religion blindly can hinder one’s self-actualization and interfere with self-development due to numerous constraints and restrictions… Blind adherence to religion is a factor that does not allow receiving flexible education and adapting knowledge to different areas.”

The author discusses the effects of blindly following a religion and mentions that it can lead to difficulties in self-development and the inability to live independently. These limitations affect a person’s opportunity to grow and discover oneself.  Movies like “ The Da Vinci Code ” show how fanatical devotion influences perception and creates constant doubt. 

“…there are many religions through which various cultures attain their spiritual and moral bearings to bring themselves closer to a higher power (deity). Different religions are differentiated in terms of beliefs, customs, and purpose and are similar in one way or the other.”

The author discusses how religion affects its followers’ spiritual and moral values and mentions how deities work in mysterious ways. The essay includes situations that show how these supreme beings test their followers’ faith through various life challenges. Overall, the writer believes that when people fully believe in God, they can be stronger and more capable of coping with the difficulties they may encounter.

“Mecca represents a holy ground that the majority of the Muslims visit; and is only supposed to be visited by Muslims. The popularity of Mecca has increased the scope of its effects, showing that it has an influence on tourism, the financial aspects of the region and lastly religion today.”

The essay delves into Mecca’s contributions to Saudi Arabia’s tourism and religion. It mentions tourism rates peaking during Hajj, a 5-day Muslim pilgrimage, and visitors’ sense of spiritual relief and peace after the voyage. Aside from its tremendous touristic benefits, it also brings people together to worship Allah. You can also check out these essays about values and articles about beliefs .

“Buddhism is seen as one of the most popular and widespread religions on the earth the reason of its pragmatic and attractive philosophies which are so appealing for people of the most diversified backgrounds and ways of thinking .”

To help readers understand the topic, the author explains Buddhism’s worldviews and how Siddhatta Gotama established the religion that’s now one of the most recognized on Earth. It includes teachings about the gift of life, novel thinking, and philosophies based on his observations. Conclusively, the author believes that Buddhism deals with the world as Gotama sees it.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

7 Prompts on Essays About Religion

Religion’s importance is embedded in an individual or group’s interpretation of it. They hold on to their faith for various reasons, such as having an idea of the real meaning of life and offering them a purpose to exist. Use this prompt to identify and explain what makes religion a necessity. Make your essay interesting by adding real-life stories of how faith changed someone’s life.

Although religion offers benefits such as positivity and a sense of structure, there are also disadvantages that come with it. Discuss what’s considered healthy and destructive when people follow their religion’s gospels and why. You can also connect it to current issues. Include any personal experience you have.

Religion’s prevalence exhibits how it can significantly affect one’s daily living. Use this prompt to discuss how religions across the world differ from one another when it comes to beliefs and if traditions or customs influence them. It’s essential to use relevant statistical data or surveys in this prompt to support your claims and encourage your readers to trust your piece.

There are various ways religion affects countries’ laws as they adhere to moral and often humanitarian values. Identify each and discuss how faith takes part in a nation’s decision-making regarding pressing matters. You can focus on one religion in a specific location to let the readers concentrate on the case. A good example is the latest abortion issue in the US, the overturning of “Wade vs. Roe.” Include people’s mixed reactions to this subject and their justifications.

In this essay, talk about how the most widespread religions’ principles or rituals changed over time. Then, expound on what inspired these changes.  Add the religion’s history, its current situation in the country, and its old and new beliefs. Elaborate on how its members clash over these old and new principles. Conclude by sharing your opinion on whether the changes are beneficial or not.

There’s a never-ending debate between religion and science. List the most controversial arguments in your essay and add which side you support and why. Then, open discourse about how these groups can avoid quarreling. You can also discuss instances when religion and science agreed or worked together to achieve great results. 

Use this prompt if you’re a part of a particular religion. Even if you don’t believe in faith, you can still take this prompt and pick a church you’ll consider joining. Share your personal experiences about your religion. Add how you became a follower, the beliefs that helped you through tough times, and why you’re staying as an active member in it. You can also speak about miraculous events that strengthen your faith. Or you can include teachings that you disagree with and think needs to be changed or updated.

For help with your essay, check out our top essay writing tips !

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

View all posts

Cote d'ivoire

South africa, philippines, south korea, netherlands, switzerland, el salvador, latinoamérica y el caribe, puerto rico, trinidad & tobago, united states, new zealand.

• How to Know God

Do you ever wonder what Christians believe? Who Jesus is, what he did and why it matters? Get answers to these questions and more.

• Spiritual Growth

Take the next step in your faith journey with resources on prayer, devotionals and other tools for personal and spiritual growth.

• Life & Relationships

Explore resources to help you live out your life and relationships in a way that honors God.

• Bible Studies

Find resources for personal or group Bible study.

• Share the Gospel

Learn to develop your skills, desire and ability to join others on their spiritual journeys and take them closer to Jesus.

• Help Others Grow

Help others in their faith journey through discipleship and mentoring.

• Leadership Training

Develop your leadership skills and learn how to launch a ministry wherever you are.

• Language Resources

View our top Cru resources in more than 20 languages.

• Quizzes & Assessments

Have some fun taking various quizzes and assessments to learn about yourself and others.

Helping students know Jesus, grow in their faith and go to the world to tell others.

Reflecting Jesus together for the good of the city.

Partnering with urban churches to meet physical and spiritual needs.

Striving to see Christ-followers on every team, in every sport and in every nation.

Equipping families with practical approaches to parenting and marriage.

• High School

Reaching students and faculty in middle and high school.

Bringing hope and resources to military families worldwide.

• Locate Cru Near You
• Mission Trips

Volunteer abroad this year on a short term global missions trip offered by one of the best, most-reliable Christian missions organizations in the world.

• 1-Year Full-Time Internships

Internship opportunities with Cru's ministries.

If you're looking for the best Christian jobs and careers, check out Cru's ministry job openings for full- and part-time missionaries and professionals.

• Go International

Live in another country building relationships and ministries with eternal impact.

• Volunteer Opportunities

Would you like to give your time to work with Cru? We need you.

Find a Cru event near you.

• Explore Your Interests

Use your hobbies and interests to find the best place for you to serve.

How we seek to journey together with everyone towards a relationship with Jesus.

• Donor Relations

Answers to questions on donations, financial policies, Cru’s annual report and more.

• Statement of Faith

What we believe about the gospel and our call to serve every nation.

• Our Leadership

Learn about Cru's global leadership team.

• Cru Partnerships

When the global church comes together then powerful things can happen.

Leading from values so others will walk passionately with God to grow and bear fruit.

• Oneness in Diversity

Cru’s position on oneness in diversity.

• Sexuality and Gender

Today we encounter a wide variety of questions related to sexuality and gender. As followers of Christ, we want to navigate LGBT+ questions in a way that is compassionate to people and faithful to scripture.

Showing God in action in and through His people.

Hear what others are saying about Cru.

• Start A New Gift
• Missionaries
• Featured Opportunities
• More Ways to Give

Your Account

• Your Giving
• Payment Methods
• Donor-Advised Funds
• Stock and Non-Cash Gifts
• Cryptocurrency
• Planned Giving with Cru Foundation

You Can Honor a Woman of Influence!

Your Generosity Can Change Women's Lives!

My Story: How My Life Changed

• What is the Meaning of Life?

Can I Find Peace?

Will i ever be good enough, will i ever be free, can i be forgiven.

• Cru22 Recorded Sessions

We All Have a Story

The stories God writes for us take us down various paths. No matter where you are on the journey, there is a plan and a purpose to what you experience. 

If you are struggling, take comfort in knowing you are not alone. We hope you will be encouraged to read about the experiences of others who have seen the transforming work of Jesus in their lives.

READ THE STORIES OF THOSE WHO HAVE ASKED ...

What Is the Meaning of Life?

You are not alone if you have ever wondered about the meaning of life or about the purpose of your own. Here are the testimonies of some who received answers to these questions.

It’s human nature to pursue happiness by trying to rigorously work your way there. Here are the stories of some who found true peace by doing just the opposite.

Ever wonder if true love actually exists? Or if you’ll ever be accepted for who you really are? Many of us have found ourselves pondering these questions. Here are the stories of some who once asked the same.

Many people think you have to change before you come to God, but the opposite is true. Here are the stories of lives that were snatched from the grip of darkness and brought into the light.

In Luke 7, Jesus explains that the more a person is forgiven of, the more grateful that person will be. Here are the stories of some who know that to be true.  

Stories From Other Religions

From Judaism to Christianity

From Hinduism to Christianity

From Buddhism to Christianity

From Mormonism to Christianity

From Atheism to Christianity

Would You Like to Know God Personally?

What does it take to begin a relationship with God? These principles will explain how you can personally begin a relationship with God, right now, through Jesus Christ.

What Is Your Story?

Everyone has a unique story about coming to Christ.

Learn how to prepare, write and share yours here.

Organize and Build Relationships With MissionHub

Your life and your story are full of people you care about. Many of them may not know Jesus yet. MissionHub is a free app designed to help you choose steps of faith to take with someone you live, work, study or play alongside.

©1994-2024 Cru. All Rights Reserved.

Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Religious Beliefs — My Idea of Religion and Faith: Personal Reflection

My Idea of Religion and Faith: Personal Reflection

• Categories: Existence of God Faith Religious Beliefs

About this sample

Words: 466 |

Published: Aug 14, 2023

Words: 466 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Religion

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1532 words

2 pages / 1028 words

1 pages / 513 words

1 pages / 536 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Religious Beliefs

Islam is one of the major world religions, with over 1.8 billion followers, making it the second-largest religion globally. It is a monotheistic Abrahamic faith based on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as recorded in the [...]

Globalization, the process of increased interconnectedness and interdependence among nations and cultures, has had a profound impact on various aspects of human society, including religion. This essay explores the intricate [...]

We all encounter different situations where we build up negative issues and feel the need to clear the clutter out in order to grow. For that, we all need some help from the people who surround us. This clearing process is what [...]

Plato. (n.d.). Allegory of the Cave. Republic, Book VII. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Retrieved from https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and Blankets by Craig Thompson are coming-of-age stories that primarily focus on the religious beliefs of their respective authors. Winterson grew up in an Evangelical [...]

In the 21st-century ethics as far as religious doctrines are concerned has taken a modernity turn. In the classical period religion was solely relied on to dictate morality but due to contemporariness catalyzed by education [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Reflective Essay On Religious Experience

Religious Experience Reflecting on one’s religious experiences growing up can be a rigorous task but can also provide a self-reflection if the one reflecting looks at the events in a non-bias manner. I grew up in a non-structured home when it came to religion. My first experiences of religion came from my Dad’s stepdad. He owned a farm out in Bolton and when I was little I would go to the farm on the weekends and assist them on the farm and maybe see my cousins while I was there. At first, I didn’t go to church with my grandfather, but I would watch the religion channel since they only had one tv and it was on what he wanted if it was on at all. Memories are still engraved of watching sermons of John Hagee and others. He stuck out the most to me because he kind of reminded me of my grand …show more content…

Events, miracles, and beliefs match the Egyptian setting so well it told me it was a remake or rebirth of a dead following. Most Christians holidays fall on Pagan days of worship. Example: Christmas is December 25 and during the Pagan holiday season it is winter solstice. the shortest day of the year is December 21 and on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th the sun sets at a stagnate point and on the 25th of December the days are starting to grow longer. I also found sometime ago that Easter is original time where the Days or over powering the Nights and its is also time of fertility hence the rabbit icon with Easter and the old saying fuck like rabbits. I also find it difficult for it to be around the time of the enlightened philosophers and for none of them to mention Jesus in their writings. Granted the world wasn’t as connected as it is now but if a boy brought his dead friend back to life that fell off a roof, to prove his innocence of murder, then people would be talking, and those trade routes would have carried the stories all over. Thus, bringing in powerful parties to take hold and utilize such

Significant Events And Or Wars That Shaped The Culture

(http://www.aldokkan.com/religion/religion.htm) Egyptian religion was a mix of beliefs and practices; In which, their religion would include mythology, science, spiritualism, herbology. As in most Ancient cultures, religion played a significant amount in every aspect of the lives of the Ancient Egyptians. They had these Gods that were characters in myths the ancient Egyptians believed that had a role to explain the universe. All of these myths were influenced by things the Egyptians would see: water, sun, nature and animals.

Impact Of Religion In Ancient Egypt

The religious beliefs centered on the worship of numerous deities who signified various features of ideas, nature and purposes of power. Religion played a part in every aspect of the lives of the ancient Egyptians because life on earth was seen as only one part of an eternal journey, and in order to continue that journey after death, one needed to live a life worthy of continuance. So, the information about what did religion affect and how did religion affect the lives of the ancient Egyptians will be provided in this paper. First of all the belief in many gods and goddesses was crucial part of everyday life in ancient Egypt.

Summary Of On The Idea Of A Christian College By Dr. Timothy Larsen

Plenary Keynote “On the Idea of a Christian College” - Dr. Timothy Larsen (8:30 session) “Knowledge is an end in and of itself” In this discussion, Dr. Timothy Larsen discussed the calling and the mission of a Christian liberal arts college and how a college like Northwestern allows us as students to connect our faith, purpose, intellect, and service. Throughout the speech, Larsen argued against the critics who believe that a liberal arts education is worthless and that students who attend such colleges are “being scammed” because they are taught things that they will never otherwise use in their careers and/or life. These critics of a liberal arts education do not believe there is a utility-maximizing point for the widened array of required subject study offered at a liberal arts college.

Dbq Essay On The Role Of Religion In Everyday Life

There are very many religions that exist in the world today. Religion plays such a major role in people’s everyday lives, and it’s not surprising why it is such a major focus in the way choices and decisions are made. Each of the world’s major religions has certain differences that set themselves apart from others and that make them unique. Most religions, however, all follow the same morals and guidelines that are quite similar to each other’s.

Egyptian Mythology: What Are The Egyptian Belief?

What are the Egyptian belief? The Egyptian Mythology changed other religions because, it created an understanding of how things worked in the world. The Egyptian belief was they are gods, and these gods were a way to explain a phenomenon that they couldn't understand. This is why there are so many different gods.

Subject Bi Religion Analysis

Three subjects had intriguing responses to inquiries dealing with their religious ideology. Background Subject A is an African-American adolescent who resides

Compare And Contrast Egyptian Empire And Byzantine Empire

The Egyptian Empire and Byzantine Empire Developing Egyptian Empire, Africa. The Egyptian Empire is the most prosperous season in the history around 16th century BC and 11th century BC. It is known as the ancient Egyptian the peak as the myth that leads to the magic that benefited from the world.

Essay On Spiritual Discernment

Personal Position Spiritual discernment is a process that integrates prayer and knowledge of the Bible within decision-making, taking the process of strategic thinking beyond what is rational or political, to the level of the sense of the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Characterized by listening to God and putting situations into biblical context, spiritual discernment is a discipline viewed as a transformative process of divine-human cooperative imagination, while discovering and choosing decisions that lead to actions (Mellon & Kroth, 2013). According to Horton (2009), there are three major approaches to spiritual discernment: the bull’s eye approach, the wisdom approach, and the relationship-formation approach. Individuals who adopt or practice the bull’s eye approach believe that God has a perfect detailed plan for their lives and they are responsible for discovering that plan and following it. By making the right decisions, that are gradually revealed by

Analysis Of Born A Crime By Trevor Noah

In his memoir “Born a Crime,” Trevor Noah describes his mother as being a “deeply religious woman” (5). Noah’s mother’s faith plays a huge role in her life and is a common theme in this book; however, religion has been an important aspect of my identity. I was raised as a Hindu, and for a while, I was happy to be a part of the religion. Both my parents are from India, where a majority of the population is Hindu, so it isn’t surprising that they still follow the faith they grew up with. On the other hand, I was raised in the US, and so I am slightly culturally different from my parents.

Argumentative Essay On Religious Experience

These experiences are concerned with three topics. 1) “Similarly between religious experiences and how do they support the existence of God? 2) What philosophical problems are there that these experiences can give us knowledge about God? 3) Is there alternative explanation for experience?” William James described religious experiences as the heart of every religion.

The Gospel Of John

This approach to the narrative of Jesus creates a radical mindset, for the canon at least. It is not very popular with the main religions at the time. John focuses heavily on the miracles Jesus performed using his own power. It

Definition Essay On Religion

2. Religion 2.1. Definition of Religion Religion is a set of beliefs, morals, and values that people practice to guide their lives in a spiritual manner. Religion entails traditions, customs and cultures that influences people to live a life of morality and can be shared among communities and societies. It is a linkage to our inner beings and through the belief of God to dedicate our lives in helping others and in the pursuit of self happiness.

Essay On Culture And Religion

Culture and Religion seem to be working hand in hand in society, when looking at culture we look at characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, food, social habits (things that are done natural e.g. saying please and thank you), music and arts. With religion people often use the word to mean the worship of a god or gods. However, some religions do not have gods. One thing that all religions have in common is that they help their believers to find meaning and comfort in the world by using some aspects from that particular religion. With culture and religion playing a big role in our everyday and life choices contraceptives go against a lot of cultural and religion choices and

Essay On Ethics And Religion

Ethics and Religion The human views on ethics are greatly influenced by certain beliefs, such as religion or philosophical ideas. Philosophy and religion are similar in this sense; they both are morally influential. However, if a person did not have such views, he/she is still capable of having good morals. Though religion is very impacting in many people’s ethical standings, and a majority of human morality is derived from some belief in religion or supported by philosophical reasoning, it is not the only way a person can be moral.

Narrative Essay On Christianity

Transitioning form one church to another is no easy feat. Especially when diverging from a consuming and binding religion such as Mormonism. My parents alike were raised in the tight grip of the church, left with little room to think for themselves or make their own choices. In adulthood, they gained the opportunity to develop a mature perspective on the life style; In consequence, a drastic change followed. After months of discussion, familial disapproval and personal conflict, they concluded that their children were not going to experience adolescence under the same pressure they did.

More about Reflective Essay On Religious Experience

Related topics.

• Christianity

A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Religious Experience

Edexcel Philosophy

William James

James was a philosopher and a psychologist who claimed that religious experiences occur in different religions and have similar features. People who have and try to have religious experiences are often called ‘Mystics’ and their experiences are intense and totally immersive. Their experiences are called ‘Mystical’.

James’ four criteria which characterise all mystical religious experiences:

• Ineffable – the experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words to accurately described.
• Noetic – some sort of knowledge or insight is gained
• Transient – the experience is temporary
• Passive – the experience happens to a person; the person doesn’t make the experience happen.

James’ argument is that there must be some objective explanation of the cross-cultural similarity of religious experiences being defined by these four criteria, since it is astronomically improbable that it is due to chance. James’ explanation is that religious experiences are the core of religion, whereas religious teachings and practices were ‘second hand’ religion, i.e not what religion is really about. This makes James a pluralist, meaning he thinks all religions are true in that they point to a higher spiritual reality. All religious experiences have similar features no matter the religion of the experiencer. The ‘differences’ between religions are more superficial cultural additions onto that core.

James’ Pragmatism. James was most interested in the effects religious experiences had on people’s lives and argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects. This is because James was a Pragmatist – a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us, that is evidence of its truth. James pointed to the case study of an Alcoholic who was unable to give up alcohol but then had a religious experience, after which he was able to give up the alcohol. They were unable to give up the alcohol before the experience, implying they lacked the power. After the experience, they had gained that power they lacked before. Where did it come from? James would argue that this is evidence for the validity of the experience, meaning it was probably ‘true’. Though again, James would only think this was evidence for the validity of ‘the spiritual’, not necessarily whichever God that alcoholic happened to believe in.

Alternative explanation: Cross-cultural similarity of the features of religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation, however. It could be that all human brains hallucinate similarly because they evolved similarly.

James argues that religious experiences cannot be mere hallucinations, however, because of their life-changing effects (pragmatism).

Counter to pragmatism: Although it’s not that not all hallucinations are life-changing, that doesn’t mean some aren’t. If a hallucination happens to fit with certain beliefs a person might have then it might be life-changing even though it isn’t real. Furthermore, arguably the alcoholic happened to hallucinate Jesus because his mind’s preconceptions made that more likely. If an Atheist hallucinates a person walking down a road, that won’t change their life, however if a theist hallucinates an angel, it might be life changing but only because of their beliefs about its significance which their own mind is supplying, it’s not coming from some higher spiritual reality, it’s just a hallucination.

Rudolf Otto

Otto defined religious experiences as “numinous”; feelings of awe and wonder in the presence of an all-powerful being. Otto described the numinous experience as follows:

It is an experience of something ‘Wholly other’ – completely different to anything human.

The revelation of God is felt emotionally, not rationally.

Mysterium – the utter inexplicable indescribable mystery of the experience

Tremendum – the awe and fear of being in the presence of an overwhelmingly superior being

            Fascinans – despite that fear, being strangely drawn to the experience

Otto claims Numinous experiences are the core of any religion ‘worthy of the name’. For Otto, it is fundamental to true religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with the divine. This means that Numinous religious experiences are the true core of religion, whereas the teachings and holy books and so on are not the true core of a religion.

Otto was a protestant who clearly advanced religious experiences as a direct line to God in opposition to the Catholic view that the church was a necessary intermediary between common people and God. Otto tried to identify what made an experience religious rather than just an experience.

Otto thought too much focus had been placed on the idea that God could be known through logical argument or sensory experiences.

Persinger was a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which physiologically manipulated people’s brain waves and often caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings. If this is the case, arguably religious experiences originate from the brain, not God. Religious experiences are just an unusual state of the brain. Regular religious experiences are just examples of that.

Criticism of Persinger: However, maybe that brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience. Also, we know we can cause hallucinations by manipulating the brain with drugs like LSD. This shouldn’t necessarily count against the validity of religious experiences that occur without such manipulations.

Defence of Persinger: Arguably Persinger at least demonstrates that religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation. Therefore, supernatural explanations are unnecessary.

Criticism of Otto #2: It also seems difficult for Otto to rule out alternative naturalistic explanations of religious experience such as Mental illness, Epilepsy, random brain hallucinations, drugs, alcohol, fasting, sleep deprivation, etc.

Swinburne on credulity and testimony

Swinburne  argued that religious experiences are evidence for God. His argument involves the principles of testimony and credulity. The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to. The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to. Swinburne is an empiricist who argues that an experience of God should count as evidence towards belief in God, although it doesn’t constitute complete proof.

Swinburne argued that whenever we gain some new evidence, we can’t dismiss it for no reason – that would be irrational. It is only if we have other better-established evidence which contradicts that new evidence that we may rationally dismiss it. This is the rationale behind the principles of testimony and credulity. If we see a tree, that is evidence that the tree exists. Unless we have some other evidence suggesting the tree doesn’t exist, we would be irrational for dismissing the evidence of our experience. So too is it with God. Experiencing God is evidence for God, unless we have some other evidence to justify dismissing that experience.

Naturalistic explanations are always a reason not to believe. Any religious experience could be explained by mental illness, epilepsy, random brain hallucinations, fasting, drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, etc. So we will always have a reason not to believe any religious experience.

Defence of Swinburne: We could defend Swinburne by pointing out that we could check for the presence of physiological and psychological causes of hallucinations. If none are present in a particular case, then we have no reason not to believe the experience in that case. In such cases, we cannot rule out random brain hallucinations or unknown medical causes of religious experiences, but we have no evidence for those explanations and therefore must accept such cases as evidence for God.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: However, is a mere experience of God sufficient evidence to justify belief in God? Arguably the existence of God is an extraordinary claim which therefore might require extraordinary evidence.

Freud’s critique of religious experience

Freud called religion an ‘obsessional neurosis’ and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces. The first is the fear of death. We have an instinctual animalistic fear of death which we can’t control but we can control our human thoughts and cognitions. While animals only have their fear of death triggered when in a dangerous situation, humans are the only animal that constantly are aware that they are going to die. We have the animalistic part of ourselves, but have since developed cognitive processes, which then unfortunately constantly trigger the fear of death on our animalistic side. So the solution is to manipulate those to believe that death is not the end. Also, Freud argued that the reason Christians call God ‘father’ is because they have a desire to be a child forever. It’s a desire for eternal innocence in the face of the painful reality of the world. Freud thought these psychological forces were so strong that they resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience.

Freud’s account of religion is unscientific, overgeneralised and overly-reductive. There seem to be plenty of non-neurotic religious people. The problem with psychological arguments is that while they could be true for many maybe even the majority, it’s hard to argue they are true for all and even if they don’t work for one person, that’s one person they can’t explain.

Freud is currently regarded by psychologists as being too unempirical in his methods for his theories to count as real science. He studied a small sample size which was not representative of society and had no method of experiment. Popper argued that Freud’s method was unfalsifiable.

Freud’s analysis seems to ignore mystical religious experience and its sense of unity with something infinite and unbounded. These seem to go far beyond the wish-fulfilling hallucinations of a neurotic. Arguably it is these ecstatic immersive experiences which are the foundation of religious belief, not wish fulfilment.

Freud admitted that this challenge was a difficulty for his theory. His response was to argue that intense mystical experiences are actually reliving of childhood experiences before the ego or ‘self’ had formed. This explains the dissolving of the sense of self and resultant unity with everything in mystical experiences. Freud argued that reliving experiences of selflessness is simply a feature of the mind and only later came to be arbitrarily associate with religion, but in essence has nothing to do with it.

Conversion experiences from one religion to another can’t be explained away as wishful thinking or a fear of death. The person having the experience already believed in a God and an afterlife, so whatever wishful thinking for an afterlife they might have had would already have been satisfied by the religious beliefs of the religion they were already in. E.g. St Paul on the road to Damascus saw Jesus and was converted from a Jewish persecutor of Christianity to a Christian.

Criticism of the case of St Paul: However arguably it could still be explained by mental illness. Much of Paul’s description of his experience – eg seeing a bright light, falling to the floor, being paralysed, are symptoms of epileptic siezures.

Defence of conversion experiences: It is hard to diagnose people based on writings from thousands of years ago though. Conversion could also be explained away by wishful thinking if the person’s previous belief was somehow unsatisfying. However it’s hard to argue this is the case with Paul, unless his killings were startling to weigh on his conscience.. but perhaps they were.

Corporate religious experiences

Corporate religious experience is when multiple people share the same experience. E.g Toronto Blessing or speaking in tongues (Pentecostalism). In the Toronto blessing, the congregation felt unusual emotions, some falling around crying, others laughing hysterically. They attributed this to the presence of the holy spirt, which they claimed to feel. The strengths of corporate experiences is that they can’t be explained by criticisms that could only apply to individuals – like mental illness, drugs, alcohol, fasting, or attention seeking.

Psychological group dynamics: there are peculiar psychological dynamics to crowds or groups of people such as mob mentality, mass hysteria and social compliance. In the middle ages, an entire village would form an angry mob who were all convinced they had seen a witch cast a spell, and would then execute some poor woman. We could even say the same of today regarding groups of people who think they have seen Aliens. So clearly group delusion is possible. This could then be claimed to be the case in corporate religious experience.

The multiple claims issue

Hume’s multiple claims argument. Any belief in the action or intervention of a God, such as a miracle or a religious experience, has the problem that similar claims are made by other religions. Most religions involve the claims that their particular God(s) intervene in the world and in human experience. Hume argued this means their claims ‘cancel each other out’. All religions cannot be true. At most, one could be true and the rest false, or none of them could be true. So, any religious person’s claim that divine intervention happened could be false.

One could reply with pluralism – the view that all religions are just different cultural manifestations of the divine, therefore all are true. This view is held by William James and Hick. James thinks that mystical religious experience occurring in all religions shows that they are all true. Hick argues that the different religions of the world are like blind men each touching a different part of an elephant. They each report they are feeling something different, yet that is because they are just too blind to see how they are really part of the same thing.

Hick argued that faith is a way of interpreting reality in a religious experience or “experiencing-as”. Hick thinks perceiving God is neither a “reasoned conclusion or an unreasoned hunch”. Hick was influenced by Kant to think that we only perceive a particular interpretation of reality. So experiencing God It is an interpretation of our experience just like anything else we see.

Home / Essay Samples / Religion / Catholic Church / My Experience at a Church: A Personal Reflection

My Experience at a Church: A Personal Reflection

• Category: Religion , Life
• Topic: Catholic Church , Church , Personal Experience

Pages: 2 (717 words)

Views: 1054

• Downloads: -->

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

Humanity Essays

Adversity Essays

Empathy Essays

Kindness Essays

Hope Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->