(Part II) Argument for the Existence of God based on Religious Experience: Proof for Religious Experience

    In this the second post on the Argument for God based on Religious experience we will consider the case for religious experiences as objective proof for something outside of nature.  Essentially, this post will be an attempt to support the premises of the argument based on religious experiences. 

   Experiences make up the backbone of the way people see the world.  We have a bad experience at McDonald’s and don’t go back.  We feel rejected by someone and “defriend” them on Facebook.  Experiences are literally how we make sense of the world.  Senses play a pivotal role in understanding everything around us.  We assume things based on experience—like if you kick a ball, it will move or that someone cannot be in two places at the same time.  Logic, science and almost every kind of study is based on experiences. 

   So what happens when you throw a wrench in the system?  What happens when someone experiences something that our experiences, or beliefs, tell us shouldn’t happen?  Like a religious experience?  Naturalists tell us that religious experiences don’t happen, or if they do than they are a figment of our imagination.  They tell us all that exists is nature.  However, some people have had experiences that nature cannot explain. 
  I will be providing the hard facts about religious experiences and arguing that, based on their propensity, something does exist outside of nature.

Paul on the Damascus Road, 1

     Religious experiences are literally the backbone of modern religion.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Muslim, a Christian or a Hindu—you probably base your beliefs on some sort of religious experience.  For example, Paul’s experience on the Damascus road changed him from a persecutor of Christians to one of the most notable figures in the Christian faith.  Many religious experiences may not actually involve seeing Jesus or God, but they do convince us of our religious beliefs.  Indeed, religious experiences may be the most basic reason for faith. 




The numbers...

   To prove that religious experiences occur, I will use the argument from numerical superiority.  In other words, I will argue that a large number of people have experienced x, thus x is true.   In What Americans Really Believe, Rodney Stark presents a Baylor poll in which two out of three respondents reported having a religious experience, with 45% claiming to have more than one experience.  The respondents answered as follows:

     Polls like this one, and there are others (including ones from Pew and Gallup), prove that a decent portion of the population has had at least one religious experience.  It should be noted that not everyone who claims to have had a religious experience has had one.  However, the widespread nature of the claims leads to a certainty that some have been true. 

  There is an important distinction to be made here; the poll is not saying that 66% of people believe in religious experiences.  It is saying that 66% of people have had a religious experience.  It’s like saying that 66% of people believe tattoos are painful versus 66% of people who have experienced having a tattoo and claim that it is painful.

    Just think about this for a second.  We base our whole lives on experience.  The primacy of experience to science is so basic that without it science wouldn’t exist.  The naturalist tells us that since we don’t experience God, as we experience the natural world, it is irrational to believe that He exists.  Thus, experience becomes the test of truth.  But wait, if the majority of people have a religious experience, doesn’t that make religion true? 

The argument…

  My argument is that since such a large number of people have religious experiences, there exists some kind of  “religious plane”.   What I mean by “religious plane” is that the human is not experiencing something inside of nature.  If the experience were inside of nature then it would be understood by our physical senses.  In other words, just as there are sensory perceptions (like seeing, smelling, feeling, etc.) which allow us to experience the world, there also exists a spiritual plain that can be sensed in a coherent way.  It is vital to this argument that these religious experiences occur outside of the person.  Just as we see a chair outside of ourselves, the spiritual experience must be “seen” outside of our brain. 

  For proof that these religious experiences are actual events that occur outside of our minds, all one must do is to point out that religious experiences occur throughout human history regardless of culture, race or religion.  In particular religious experiences are not unique to Christianity or any one religion.  It might be a different case if only “Christian Methodists” or “Hindus” had religious experiences, but far from being a single belief system phenomena, religious experiences have touched people of all faiths and all levels of intellect.  Atheists have become theists, Christians have become Muslims, Muslims have become Christians, etc. 

In the next post we’ll consider several objections to the concept that religious experiences occur outside of nature.

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