PP111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Truevisions, Religious Experience, Atheism
Document Summary
Religious experience: traditional arguments for the existence of god (cosmological, ontological, teleological) aim to give indirect" proof of god"s existence, religious experience is meant to be direct" evidence of god"s existence. Two kinds of experience: mystical experience, atheists can have these, of the unity of all things, of the unity of the self with non-self, religious experience, of god. Of all impossibilities, the most impossible is that these true visions should be the work of the imagination they far transcend what we can comprehend on earth (161) What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes . An illusion is not the same thing as an error (162: religious experiences, if derived from wishes for security and comfort, may explain belief; but they do not justify it. Three clarifications: natural evils vs. moral evils, definition of god": all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, creator of everything (god is never weak, ignorant or malicious)
