Christian Apologetics Alliance

answering seekers, equipping Christians, and demonstrating the truth of the Christian worldview

  • About the CAA
    • Statement of Faith
    • Leadership and Ministries
      • Blog Leadership
    • Authors
      • Write for Us
    • Join the CAA
    • Friends and Partners
      • How to Partner with the CAA
    • Donations
  • Resources
    • CAA Chapters
      • CAA Chapter Leaders and Locations
        • CAA Huntsville Chapter
          • CAA Huntsville Chapter – Local Resources
      • Churches: Host a CAA Chapter
      • Chapter Application Form
    • CAA Speaking Team
    • CAA Community
    • Apologetics for Parents
    • Apologetics Bloggers Alliance
    • CAA Catechism
    • Apologetics Certificate Programs
    • Christian Apologetics Search Engine
    • Events | Ratio Christi
    • Ask the Alliance
    • Media
      • Logos
      • Banners
      • Wallpaper
  • EQUIPPED: The CAA Quarterly
  • Contact Us

Arguments from Mystical or Religious Experience

January 7, 2014 by CAA Catechism

Arguments-from-Mystical-or-Religious-Experience

[This post is a work in progress as part of the CAA Catechism.]

[Add the title only in the title field, not in the body of the post.]

Summary in 400 words or less:

Individuals have had visions of the divine and other such experiences that could only come from God, especially among those who were adamantly opposed to the faith in the beginning.. This gives credence to the existence of God as many of these experiences are not explainable by hallucinations and the like.

Scripture for YouVersion:

Short audio/video:

Three questions (1 fill-in-the-blank, 1 multiple choice, and one discussion question):

References for further reading:

Kreeft, Peter. Tacelli, Ronald. Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God.

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#18

Collaboration notes:

http://appearedtoblogly.wordpress.com/theistic-arguments/#RelExp

  • Religious Experience. Before the argument became hot in recent analytic philosophy, there was William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (1917). Essential are contemporary treatments are Swinburne and Alston (cited  in footnotes 66 and 67). Some book-length treatments include: Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge, 1993). Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Oxford, 1999). Jerome Gellman, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief (Cornell, 1997). Jerome Gellman, Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry (Ashgate, 2002). Kai-man Kwan, The Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust, and God: A Defense of Holistic Empiricism (Cntinuum, 2011). One of the best overall synopses I’ve read is in Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, & David Basinger (eds.), Reason & Religious Belief (Oxford, 2nd ed. 1998), pp. 18-42. Accordingly, a good collection of essays on the topic is in their companion, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2001), pp. 5-64. A nice presentation is also given by C. Stephen Layman, Letters to Doubting Thomas: A Case for the Existence of God (Oxford, 2007), pp. 38-78. For some of the recent history and defensive strategies, see Kai-man Kwan, “Can Religious Experience Provide Justification for the Belief in God? The Debate in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy” Philosophy Compass 1/6 (2006), pp. 640–661. Two of the best systematic defenses are Douglas Geivett, “The Evidential Value of Religious Experience,” in Paul Copan & Paul Moser (eds.), The Rationality of Theism (Routeledge, 2003). Kai-man Kwan, “The Argument from Religious Experience,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 498-552. See also William Alston, “The Experiential Basis of Theism,” (2002). Alexander Pruss, “A Religious Experience Argument for the Existence of a Holy Transcendent Being,” (2001). Travis Dumsday, “Neuroscience and the Evidential Force of Religious Experience,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008), pp. 137-163.

  • Personal Transformation. William Alston, “The Fulfillment of Promises as Evidence for Religious Belief” in Radcliffe and White (eds.), Faith in Theory and Practice: Essays on Justifying Religious Belief (Open Court, 1993), pp. 1-34.

  • Credulity-Based. Richard Swinburne, “The Argument from Religious Experience,” ch. 13 in The Existence of God (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2004), pp. 293-327. A shortened version is his “The Evidential Value of Religious Experience” in Arthur Peacocke (ed.), The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame, ed. 1986), pp. 182-196.

  • Sense Peception. William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Corness, 1991).

  • Numinous Perception. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (1917).

Collaborators: Brian Chilton
[Add your name here only if you have created this topic or contributed valuable content or editing to this topic.]

[Add a copyright-free, relevant image to the body of the post (click the Add Media button), as well as going back in and selecting it as the featured image.]

Type “YES” and contact Maryann when at least three collaborators agree this is ready to be shared with YouVersion:

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • More
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket

Filed Under: Arguments from Mystical or Religious Experience, CAA Catechism, CAA Original

Comments

  1. Joe Hinman says

    August 8, 2014 at 12:26 pm

    The Trace of God on Amazon

  2. Joe Hinman says

    August 8, 2014 at 12:25 pm

    see my book, The Trace of God: Rational Warrant for Beleif by Joseph Hinman. On Aamzon. I use a huge body of empirical studies known only in psychology of religion, these studies help to prove that religious experience if valid, not merely subjective, it’s not pathological. They put fiber into the God argument based upon religious experience. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I feel my book is ground breaking and all Christian apologists need to read it.

Connect

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Search

What Interests You?

  • The Problem of Evil, Suffering, and Hell
  • Apologetics Methods, Tactics, & Logic
    • Incarnational Apologetics
  • Arguments for God
  • Science, Reason, and Faith
  • The Reliability of the Bible
    • Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences
  • The Historicity of Jesus & the Resurrection
  • Worldviews & World Religions
    • Evaluating Islam
    • The New Atheism
    • Post-modernism, Relativism, and Truth
  • Imaginative Apologetics
    • Fiction Book, Movie, & TV Reviews
  • Contemporary Issues
  • Youth and Parents
  • Full List of Categories

Archives

Christian Apologetics Alliance is a Top 100 Christian Blog

Unity Statement

In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, in all things charity. The Christian Apologetics Alliance (CAA) is united in our Statement of Faith. The CAA does not, as an organization, have positions on many of the doctrinal or theological debates that take place within the church. Our primary concern is to promote the gracious, rational defense of the central claims of Christianity and the critique of opposing systems of thought. The CAA joyfully welcomes Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and diverse Protestant believers, and we are committed to treating all these traditions with respect in our community.

Copyright © 2011 - 2020 Christian Apologetics Alliance