Rationality and religious experience: A study of the epistemic status of religious experience

Jeffrey James Jordan, Purdue University

Abstract

Religious believers have long claimed that religious experience plays a central role in the grounding of both their belief and doctrine. In recent philosophy of religions itself, the notion of religious experience has played a major role in the thought of philosophers such as Richard Swinburne, John Hick and William Alston. Can religious experience serve as evidence for the epistemic justification of theistic religious belief? Or is it too subjective, too ephemeral a phenomenon to play a decisive epistemic role of providing a rational grounding of belief? What, concisely put, is the epistemic status of religious experience? In 1939, C. D. Broad presented an argument from religious experience for the claim that there exists a god. This neglected argument, suitably modified, can withstand the objections brought forward by Antony Flew, William Rowe, William Forgie, Anthony Kenny and others. As it stands the modified argument does not demonstrate the existence of God; but it does establish the propriety of believing that the theistic god exists. That is, the rationality of some theistic belief is established. Subsidiary theses of the dissertation include an analysis of the notion of evidence into two types: (1) propositional and (2) nonpropositional. The notion of epistemic justification is, then, analyzed in a parallel two-fold fashion: (1) deontic justification and (2) evaluative justification. These notions are then applied to the case of religious experience. Also, the legitimacy of considering certain types of religious experience as cognitive activities is argued. Finally, there is an argument that if an adequate naturalistic explanation of religious experience could be given, then that, contra William Wainwright, would be good reason to think religious experiences to be probably delusive vis-a-vis any purported perception of God. Overall, the general thesis is that certain types of religious experience provide the theist with an adequate, albeit nonpropositional, ground for some of her religious beliefs.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Rowe, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Religion|Philosophy

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