The argument from religious experience seems to state that we can experience God and therefore God must exist, for surely what we experience must be real. William James, American psychologist and philosopher, worked to expand on and validate this topic. James defined religious experience as ‘The feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatsoever they may consider divine.’ He then identified the four types of mystical experiences: ineffable, noetic, transient, passive. An ineffable experience is one that cannot easily be articulated. It is too big a thing for words and therefore not necessarily understood by those who have not experienced it.
Religious language is the way of communicating ideas about belief, faith and God. Religious language can be interpreted in different ways by each individual. The logical positivists were a group of people who belonged to the Vienna Circle in the 1920s-30s. They believed that any assertion made which was meaningful has to be verified with a fixed conclusion. They treated claims made about God as cognitive, meaning that the assertions made are meant to be taken as facts or universal truth claims rather than non-cognitive meaning on a personal level for believers.
Second, conduct a comprehensive recollection and healing of the past events that led to the present problem (s). Third, emphasize the spiritual dimension of life while paying little attention to rational approach to life. Fourth, attribute the cause of feelings on the problem to personal thoughts and initiate behavioral changes to the teachings of the Holy Spirit, which include prayers and total dependences on God for solutions. Other major components of CBT are focused on factors related to religion, families, culture and society ensuring that methods used are based on the truth of Scriptures, and they lead to holiness and application of result-based methods of research prior to articulating importance of CBT. Christian CBT is mainly based on clear integration, which involves direct use off divine resources.
Islamic and Buddhist Religious Worldview School of Psychology and Counseling Abstract Religious perspectives vary according to culture, ethnicity and worldviews. This paper will identify Islam and Buddhism as two of the world’s major religions then name and discuss the tenets of each. It will also compare and contrast these tenets with Christian theism. This paper will also discuss how a Christian counselor could use this knowledge to counsel a person of who holds a different religious belief. Islamic and Buddhist Religious Worldview A complex institution of diverse teachings, beliefs, and rituals; religion provides people with a greater sense of reality.
Examine the strengths and weaknesses of the argument for the existence of God based on religious Experience? The argument for the existence of God using the idea of religious experience is an a posteriori argument in the sense that it is based on people’s personal encounters and experiences with God. As opposed to other ontological arguments, this argument is based on a direct link to God - because if we can show that God is experienced then we surely cannot deny his existence. In this essay, I am planning on examining the different strengths and weakness of Within the classic account of experiences (The Varieties of Religious Experience, XVI), William James identified four common characteristic to prove the existence of religious experiences and feeling from transcendent beings in the material world. Such experiences are indefinable; this is due to the fact that, they are so uncommon that it is almost impossible to define the feeling in ordinary terms as.
The classification of religious experiences by William James, Rudolf Otto and Richard Swinburne all support the view that religious experiences have a common core. James claims that religious experiences occur when one surrenders themselves to the divine; their experience is passive, ineffable, noetic and transient. Otto states religious experiences share a common core in the numinous, claiming that religious experiences take place as a result of our interactions with the numinous world. Swinburne also defines religious experience as an interaction with the divine sharing a common core in the theistic God. Again this shows good grasp of the topic – clearly the student has understood that all three thinkers supported a common core.
These differences in answers stem from each individual’s personal beliefs and morals. These beliefs and morals in turn stem from that individual’s history and culture. Thus, religion plays an important role in answering this question. At the most basic level, the religious person would answer that the purpose of being human is to “do onto others as you wish to have done onto you”. However, as society becomes less and less religious and consumerism increases in importance, this foundational rule, the golden rule, is being replaced with an
Some philosophers such as Aquinas believe that it is possible to talk meaningfully, truthfully and factually about God whereas others like Ayer believe this to be impossible. Philosophers have suggested that there are four ways that religious language might make truth claims about the reality of God and whether it can succeed in doing this – Via Negativa, Analogy, and Myth. The ‘via negativa’ or negative way is an attempt to prevent people from misrepresenting God. It claims that the only way we can talk about God is by saying what God is not. God is so beyond our ability to understand that the only way of seeing the reality of God is to continue saying what God is not, God is more than anything we can say of him.
Paul Tillich thought that metaphors and symbols help bring understanding about God. Tillich believed that religious language tries to “interpret” or “communicate” a religious experience and described it to be “closer to poetry than prose” as a result of this interpretation/ communication between them. Tillich identified that in religious language there has often been a misunderstanding, or lack of the ability to distinguish between sign and symbol. To fully assess the role of symbol is religious language we need to give it a clearly defined definition. The definition of a sign according to Tillich in this sense is something that can either point you in right direction, an example of which would be a street sign or the term sign can also be defined as something to which people make a response to, an example being a red traffic light, the response being from the person to stop, this response however is not a response that is deeply meaningful to them.
It’s important to address this danger, and although faith can certainly create the benefits described in How God Changes Your Brain, it’s irresponsible to ignore that faith, being a psychological tool, can be used for both positive and negative means. A good part of How God Changes Your Brain is the author’s respect for people who do not share their beliefs. The book is more an explanation for why people like religion, rather than an argument for religion’s existence. Changes Your Brain doesn’t use literary prowess to emphasize a strong tone, but rather keeps a level and clear voice throughout the book, it has the opposite the tone of a preacher. I wish that the book addressed why some people firmly reject or accept faith, on a psychological basis.