What Makes An Experience Religious?

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An experience can be defined as the accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from direct participation in events or activities. Without experiences we would not be able to grow up and develop socially, academically or emotionally. Even if they seem irrelevant, our day to day experiences bring about change and without them our lives are stunted. As for a religious experience, some people would class it as a rare supernatural event which has no scientific explanation, while others describe it as a direct encounter with god, perhaps in the form of a vision. Taking a much broader view a religious experience could include more common occurrences such as feelings of peace or awe at the beauty of nature. Whether such experiences happen at all and whether it happens to a few select people or is common to all human beings depends very much on how you distinguish between an everyday experience and a religious one. Some schools of thought put forward that the only experiences which have real meaning are those which can be verified empirically i.e. using our senses, such as tasting foods or hearing music. However, even thought we might admire the sun setting through our eyes, it is the emotional and aesthetic reaction we have to the sight which gives the experience its meaning. As humans we have the capacity to respond to our experiences emotionally, and we understand that they encompass far more than mere survival. Therefore, we should not over-look personal experiences which cannot be verified by use of our physical senses and declare them meaningless, as our complex emotions are a trait of being an authentic human and is something that we learn and grow from greatly. Furthermore, an emotion itself can be seen as an experience as our minds interact with external forces. In Swinburne's “Is There a God?” he argues that if a god really exists, he would want us to have
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