Deck 8: The Argument From Religious Experience

Question 1

According to your text, an experiential dimension lies at the heart of religion.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

C. D. Broad and Gary Gutting are advocates of the strong justification position.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Religious skeptics, such as Walter Stace, acknowledge that if you feel like you've experienced God, then that gives you adequate justification for God's existence, but others have the right to be skeptical.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Sigmund Freud said that religious experience was the result of the projection of the father image within oneself.

Question 5

William James's view would be an example of the strong justification position.

Question 6

C. D. Broad use the fact that religious mystics are typically psychologically abnormal and sexually repressed to argue that they are suffering from a delusion.

Question 7

According to your text, some people have religious experiences without experiencing a God.

Question 8

According to your text, religious experiences sometimes lead to false predictions.

Question 9

According to your text, the Freudian interpretation of religious experience is not as coherent an interpretation as the theist's account.

Question 10

The text concluded that there are so many problems with religious experiences, that one should never believe his or her own experiences of this sort.

Question 11

The major problem with religious experience mentioned in your text is that

A) it is typically private and, so, hard for others to verify.
B) it is often so emotional that people abandon their rational faculties.
C) it tends to make people dogmatic and intolerant of those who have not had the experience.
D) all of the above

Question 12

The weak justification position claims that the evidence from religious experience

A) is too weak to provide anyone with evidence for God's existence.
B) is sufficient evidence for the one who has had the experience, but not for others.
C) is evidence that should be convincing to anyone, even though it is weaker than some of the other arguments.
D) is provided only for those whose faith is weak and need some sort of sign from God.

Question 13

The sort of religious experience that posits the unity of all reality or the unity of the subject with God is known as

A) supernatural religious experience.
B) natural religious experience.
C) mystical religious experience.
D) ordinary religious experience.

Question 14

In an analogy, C. D. Broad compares those who are have extraordinary religious experience with

A) those who have a fine ear for music.
B) alcoholics who see pink elephants.
C) those who project a father figure onto the cosmos.
D) those who always see the glass as half full instead of half empty.

Question 15

Gary Gutting claims that a sign of genuine religious experiences is that they

A) are repeatable
B) experienced by many people in diverse cultures.
C) produce morally better lives.
D) all of the above

Question 16

The text criticizes the strong-justification thesis by pointing out that

A) religious experiences of different people are sometimes contradictory.
B) one's interpretation of religious experience will depend on prior religious convictions.
C) religious experience cannot be confirmed in the same way as perceptual experience.
D) all of the above

Question 17

An important fact noted in the text is that when the religious experiences of Christians and Hindus are compared, we find that

A) the experiences of Hindus are strikingly similar to those in the Christian tradition.
B) each person has experiences that tend to conform to his or her unique religious tradition.
C) a person's religious background has no influence on what he or she reports experiencing.
D) they both lend convincing support to the Freudian interpretation.

Question 18

C. D. Broad argues that "there is an enormous unanimity [agreement] among the mystics concerning the spiritual nature of reality." How does the text attempt to refute this claim? Who do you think has the strongest case?

Question 19

What is the difference between the strong-justificationist thesis and the weak-justificationist thesis? Which position is the most defensible or are neither of them plausible? Why?

Question 20

What was Sigmund Freud's interpretation of religious experience? How might a religious believer respond to his claims?

Question 21

Gary Gutting claims there are criteria for determining whether or not religious experiences are genuine. What are they? How does the text critique Gutting's criteria?

Question 22

The text argues that religious experiences cannot be confirmed the way perceptual experiences can. Is this a problem or is the method of confirmation simply different? How might a defender of religious experience respond to this criticism?