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Introduction to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience

by Mark Oven Webb

Religions 2022, 13(9), 803; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090803 - 30 Aug 2022

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Abstract

In this Special Issue of Religions, we have tried to bring together new research that can shed light on epistemological problems faced by accounts of religious experiences together with empirical research about its nature and qualities [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

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12 pages, 930 KiB

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The Unique Concept of God in Donghak (東學, Eastern Learning): An Emanation of the Religious Experiences of Suun Choe Jeu

by Haeyoung Seong

Religions 2022, 13(6), 531; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13060531 - 8 Jun 2022

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Abstract

The religious experience of Suun Choe Jeu (水雲崔濟愚, 1824–1864) was a decisive starting point for the Donghak (東學, Eastern Learning) religion. This paper illustrates how Suun’s religious experiences—which are both dualistic and monistic—are foundational to the Donghak conception of God and are [...] Read more.

The religious experience of Suun Choe Jeu (水雲崔濟愚, 1824–1864) was a decisive starting point for the Donghak (東學, Eastern Learning) religion. This paper illustrates how Suun’s religious experiences—which are both dualistic and monistic—are foundational to the Donghak conception of God and are integral to Donghak’s unique religious and ethical framework. Whereas the dualistic experiences are manifested both in Suun’s first encounter with Sangje in 1860 and in Cheonsa mundap (天師問答, “conversation with the Heavenly Master”), the monistic experiences are demonstrated in Suun’s Osim jeuk yeoshim (吾心卽汝心, “my mind is your mind”). Suun’s monistic and dualistic experiences emerge as the monistic and dualistic aspects of Donghak’s conception of God. In Donghak, God is both the object of a dualistic relationship with a human being and the object of a monistic or mystical union that confirms the ontological identity between God and humankind. Acknowledging the relationship between Suun’s religious experiences and Donghak’s concept of God reveals the weakness of the view that Donghak is merely a syncretism of Eastern and Western religions. Rather, Suun’s religious experiences are formative to Donghak’s unique conception of God; therefore, they are crucial to appreciating its religious and ethical creativity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

12 pages, 271 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Near-Death Experiences and Religious Experience: An Exploration of Spirituality in Medicine

by Jonathan Kopel and Mark Webb

Religions 2022, 13(2), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020156 - 11 Feb 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 10028

Abstract

There has been a continuous discussion of religious experience since William James, culminating in a rich and varied literature on the epistemology of religious experience in the late twentieth century. There has also been a burgeoning literature on near-death experiences (NDEs), largely on [...] Read more.

There has been a continuous discussion of religious experience since William James, culminating in a rich and varied literature on the epistemology of religious experience in the late twentieth century. There has also been a burgeoning literature on near-death experiences (NDEs), largely on neurology and physiology and sometimes as possible counterevidence to naturalism. One important subject is largely missing, and that is a discussion of NDEs as religious experiences, and what light that might shed on their epistemic status. This paper is an attempt to fill that gap. In part one, we will delineate the topic of NDEs and what medical science has to say about them. In part two, we will lay out a general view of the epistemology of religious experience. In part three, we will apply that understanding of religious experience to NDEs and draw what lessons we may. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

13 pages, 277 KiB

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The Ecology of Religious Knowledges

by Juan Morales

Religions 2022, 13(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010011 - 23 Dec 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2724

Abstract

Different religious traditions, beliefs, and experiences claim to have epistemic contact with the ultimate source of reality. However, this epistemic claim has encountered one of its most significant obstacles in the initial incompatibility of its multiple accounts. I argue that from the ecology [...] Read more.

Different religious traditions, beliefs, and experiences claim to have epistemic contact with the ultimate source of reality. However, this epistemic claim has encountered one of its most significant obstacles in the initial incompatibility of its multiple accounts. I argue that from the ecology of knowledges, the idea that intentions, body, and physical and social environments are constitutive elements of our experience and knowledge, we can understand both the veridical, as embodied and extended, and pluralistic, as essentially limited, nature of religious experiences and knowledges. I characterize the mystical religious experience as a state of consciousness that (allegedly) allows direct epistemic contact with the supreme reality, articulating its essentially non-ordinary nature on the basis of the radical otherness of the sacred realm, namely, its character of being eternal, infinite, and with supreme ontological, ethical, and aesthetic value. According to this proposal, the different religious perspectives are understood as different epistemic approaches dealing with these numinous features in a gradual continuum from their most impersonal to their most personal specifications. I conclude that the cognitive relevance of any religious knowledge implies explanations and interventions that, although compatible with, go beyond those of both other religious knowledges and the knowledges of the non-sacred domains. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

16 pages, 277 KiB

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Psychedelic Epistemology: William James and the “Noetic Quality” of Mystical Experience

by Ron Cole-Turner

Religions 2021, 12(12), 1058; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121058 - 29 Nov 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 10450

Abstract

William James proposed in 1902 that states of mystical experience, central to his idea of religious experience, can be identified based on their ineffability and their noetic quality. The epistemological category of the noetic quality, modified by W. T. Stace in 1960, plays [...] Read more.

William James proposed in 1902 that states of mystical experience, central to his idea of religious experience, can be identified based on their ineffability and their noetic quality. The epistemological category of the noetic quality, modified by W. T. Stace in 1960, plays a central but somewhat confounding role in today’s biomedical research involving psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. Using scales based on James, it can be shown that psychedelics “reliably occasion” intense subjective states of experience or mystical states. It is debated whether these states are necessary for the wide range of possible mental health therapeutic benefits that appear to follow. This paper reviews what James said about the noetic quality and its relationship to religious experience, epistemology, and states of mystical experience. It explores how the noetic quality is measured in today’s research, addressing a growing list of concerns that psychedelic science can be epistemologically biased, that it is hostile to atheistic or physicalist views, that it injects religion unduly into science, or that it needs to find ways to eliminate the mystical element, if not the entire intense subjective experience altogether. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

13 pages, 267 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Diversity and Interpretation. Toward a Pluralist Realist Description of Religious Experience

by Carlos Miguel Gómez Rincón

Religions 2021, 12(10), 848; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100848 - 9 Oct 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2131

Abstract

This paper attempts to offer a pluralist realist account of the diversity of religious experience. In the first part, I show that an influential trend in contemporary philosophy of religious experience and religious pluralism is based on the mediational image of knowledge and [...] Read more.

This paper attempts to offer a pluralist realist account of the diversity of religious experience. In the first part, I show that an influential trend in contemporary philosophy of religious experience and religious pluralism is based on the mediational image of knowledge and a problematic notion of interpretation, which generates irresoluble problems. I then attempt a redescription based on an extension of Heidegger’s theory of understanding as pre-theorical engagement with the world, which allows for the conciliation of the diversity of religious experience with its claimed epistemic force. To develop this argument, finally, I present the experience of diversity proper of the contemporary world as a type of spiritual experience in which the traits of a pre-theoretical religious understanding can be found. As a result, the paper suggests a move from epistemology to spirituality for a better understanding of religious experience. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

12 pages, 242 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Epistemic Parity of Religious-Apologetic and Religion-Debunking Responses to the Cognitive Science of Religion

by Walter Scott Stepanenko

Religions 2021, 12(7), 466; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070466 - 25 Jun 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2274

Abstract

Recent work in the cognitive science of religion has challenged some of the explanatory assumptions of previous research in the field. Nonetheless, some of the practitioners of the new cognitive science of religion theorize in the same skeptical spirit as their predecessors and [...] Read more.

Recent work in the cognitive science of religion has challenged some of the explanatory assumptions of previous research in the field. Nonetheless, some of the practitioners of the new cognitive science of religion theorize in the same skeptical spirit as their predecessors and either imply or explicitly claim that their projects undermine the warrant of religious beliefs. In this article, I argue that these theories do no additional argumentative work when compared to previous attempts to debunk religious belief and that these recent debunking efforts are very much motivated by methodological commitments that are shared with canonical research. I contend that these argumentative strategies put debunkers very much on an epistemic par with religious apologists: both advocate responses to the cognitive science of religion that are primarily motivated by methodological commitments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

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10 pages, 233 KiB

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Religious Disagreement, Mystical Experience, and Doxastic Minimalism: Critical Notice of John Pittard’s Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment

by Kirk Lougheed

Religions 2021, 12(9), 673; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12090673 - 24 Aug 2021

Viewed by 1800

Abstract

In his recent book, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment, John Pittard challenges J.L. Schellenberg’s rejection of mystical experience as worthy of enjoying presumptive doxastic trust for two main reasons. First, Pittard holds that Schellenberg wrongly focuses only on avoiding error while placing no [...] Read more.

In his recent book, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment, John Pittard challenges J.L. Schellenberg’s rejection of mystical experience as worthy of enjoying presumptive doxastic trust for two main reasons. First, Pittard holds that Schellenberg wrongly focuses only on avoiding error while placing no emphasis on gaining truth. I argue that, contra Pittard, Schellenberg’s account nicely balances the competing epistemic goals of gaining truth and avoiding error. Second, Pittard thinks that Schellenberg’s criteria for presumptive trust in that of universality and unavoidability are arbitrary. I counter that Schellenberg’s criteria are not arbitrary since they are the best way of achieving these goals. I conclude that despite not enjoying presumptive doxastic trust, this in itself does not entail that mystical experiences are never trustworthy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Epistemology of Religious Experience)

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