IB Philosophy 5.3.2 the Value of Religious Experience Notes

Can We Understand Religious Experience Without Having Had One?

1. Topic 5.3.1 examined the types and characteristics of religious experience: mysticism, near-death experiences, prayer, and the qualities of ineffability, transcendence, and personal nature. This topic shifts from description to evaluation, asking whether religious experiences have genuine epistemic value and whether they can be understood by those who have not had them.
2. Is it possible to understand religious experience without having had one?
   1. If religious experiences are ineffable (as William James argued in 5.3.1), then those who have not had such experiences may simply lack the right frame of reference to understand them.
   2. This parallels the knowledge argument in philosophy of mind: just as Mary the colour scientist cannot know what red looks like until she sees it, perhaps one cannot know what God's presence feels like until one experiences it.
   3. This raises the question of whether religious experience provides a distinct kind of knowledge by acquaintance: the kind of direct, first-hand knowledge you cannot get from any description, only from the experience itself (like knowing what strawberries taste like rather than reading about them).
   4. If religious experience works like this, then philosophical analysis of religious experience can never work because it captures the structure of the experience but misses its essential character.
3. However, the claim that religious experience is inaccessible to outsiders faces objections.
4. We regularly understand experiences we have not personally had.
   1. A physician can understand a patient's pain without experiencing it.
   2. A historian can understand the experience of soldiers in battle without having fought.

Evidence, Faith, and the Limits of Understanding

1. Understanding does not require identical experience. It requires adequate concepts, empathy, and evidence.
2. As established in 5.3.1, James’s ‘fruits not roots’ criterion holds that what matters is the practical effects of an experience, not its causal origins. This principle becomes a powerful defence against the critical perspectives examined below.
3. The question connects to the overarching Unit 5 question: "Could religion be seen as a purely social phenomenon?"
   1. If religious experience can be fully explained by social, psychological, or neurological factors, then its value may be entirely human rather than divine.
   2. If religious experience points beyond itself to a transcendent reality, then it has a value that naturalistic explanations cannot capture.
4. The distinction between faith and evidence is central to evaluating religious experience. For many believers, religious experience is the foundation of faith: they believe in God because they have experienced God's presence.
5. For sceptics, the experience itself requires explanation and cannot serve as its own evidence. The debate mirrors the broader question of whether experience can be self-authenticating (whether an experience can prove itself reliable simply by feeling very real and vivid) or whether it always needs independent verification from outside.
6. This topic examines three dimensions of the value question:
   1. the role of religious experience in generating faith and belief;
   2. the contrast between going through the religious motions (social conformity) and a genuine, personal religious commitment; and
   3. the critical perspectives (from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology).
   4. These challenge whether religious experience tells us anything real about God.

Faith, Motivation, and the Role of Social Conformity

1. Faith and religious experience exist in a complex relationship.
   1. For some believers, faith precedes experience: they participate in religious practices because of beliefs acquired through upbringing, tradition, or intellectual conviction, and religious experiences (if they come) confirm and deepen those beliefs.
   2. For others, experience precedes faith: a powerful encounter with the divine transforms their worldview and generates belief where none existed before.