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Religious Experiences Prove There’s a God

Autor:   •  March 18, 2018  •  949 Words (4 Pages)  •  698 Views

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Furthermore, even Kant a Cristian theologian criticises religious experience saying that we only experience the physical world through our senses, as a result we are unable to experience the transcendent world as we lack the ability to do it. As a result of this we cannot have a religious experience as we are unable to experience God in life. This must mean that religious experiences must be due to Psychological and physiological reasons. However Descartes would argue that since we have the pineal gland that connects our mind and soul we actually do have the ability to experiences God as we have the ability to do so. However, there is no anatomical evidence for this pineal gland therefore Descartes argument must be dismissed. The fact there is even Christian theologians arguing against religious experience adds gravitas to my case that religious experiences are the product of man.

Karl Marx offers a persuasive sociological argument against religious experience he says that religious experiences provide a false sense of meaning and fulfilment for life and that religious experiences only occur as they are a manifestation of the misery of man being subjected to a capitalist society and them trying to escape to the world of imagination to try and escape this misery. However, Swinburne would argue with his principle of credulity, that we should trust people’s experiences as we should trust thigs as we experience them. However, this doesn’t counter the fact that religious experiences may be common to people as we all live in capitalist societies and as a result people experiences a similar misery so there experiences aren’t necessarily true. However Swinburne would counter this by using his Cumulative argument saying that due to other arguments for the existence of God; for example the ontological argument. It would be logical to say God communicates though us via religious experiences. However, Flew criticised this by saying that if the Arguments for God are flawed it would not logical to say religious experiences come from God, he also likens the argument to a leaky bucket as if u put many Lecky buckets together you do not end up with a water tight container. So therefore you can not use pervious arguments for God to prove religious experiences. Furthermore, it also makes it a circular argument as you are proving God which prove religious experiences which proves God.

I conclude that religious experiences are a product of psychological or physiological effects therefore religious experience are not experiencing the divine but merely a human invention. As a result of this religious experiences cannot be used to prove God as they are Human inventions and have no relation to God what so ever.

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