In chapter 16, The Argument from Religious Experience, Groothuis argues that because man is made in the image of God makes concourse with God possible. Groothuis also notes that the Bible and Christians have claimed that God reveals himself through various kinds of human experiences.
Religious experience must be veridical which means it is truth-conveying and not deceptive. Hallucinations and mirages are not veridical. If a man dying of thirst in the desert hallucinates that there is a water fountain in front of him when none is there, he forms a false belief, and the experience in nonveridical. Groothuis states, “If I (a Miles Davis fan) hear a recording of Miles Davis at Starbucks and form the belief that ‘this is Miles Davis,’ then that experience is veridical.
Richard Swinburne’s “principle of credulity” which is an experience is correct until proven wrong, Groothuis says apples here. Swinburne’s the “principle of testimony” which states that the testimony is usually reliable also applies here.
The Argument from Emptiness and Divine Longing
St. Augustine expressed this argument in the opening of The Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
Blaise Pascal, in Pensees, believed the result of the Fall was an emptiness that only God could fill. A similar idea is found in Ecclesiastes 3:11. C. S. Lewis wrote of this truth in “The Weight of Glory.” The desire for divine to fill the emptiness is proof of the divine: A man’s physical hunger does not prove that the man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and cannot win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred in a sexless world (pp. 32-33).
Although it does not specify the exact nature of transcendence, it points toward a theistic worldview since it is based on the claim that humans desire a transcendent reality that can satisfy the human person.
Numinous Experience
Numinous experience refers to an experiencing an object that is both transfixing and frightening. Phenomenologically, there is a triadic experience structure to the revelatory event, composed of (1) the subject who has the experience, (2) the experience or consciousness of the numinous itself and (3) the numinous object of the experience. Isaiah had a numinous experience in Isaiah 6:1-5. Isaiah (who is the subject) reports what he has experienced (Isaiah’s consciousness) of God (who is the object).
Transformational Experience
The focus here is not on the conversion experience but on the personal transformation that accompanies Christian belief. Jesus promised this in Matthew 11:28. Paul referred his transformational experience in Acts 22 and 26.
While they cannot stand on their own to defend the truth of Christianity, these accounts form a vital part of the confirmation of the Christian message. The witness of a transformed life may very significantly affect those close to the one transformed. However, a life changed for the better after Christian conversion is not a sufficient argument for Christianity, as is sometimes claimed, since other religious traditions make similar claims about changed lives, and it is possible for positive change to be merely a placebo effect.
Objections to Religious-Experience Arguments.
One objection is that religious experience cannot be checked or verified in any repeatable or objective way. One of the reasons is that God is not material. He is not a physical being that can be examined. He is spirit and He reveals Himself in various ways and times. We cannot program religious experiences according to any formula. Of course, in the nature of the case, there are no positive, experiential arguments for atheism).
Worldviews must be evaluated in relationship to other lines of evidence. Mormons claim “the burning bosom” while reading the Book of Mormon. Other lines of evidence discredit Mormonism such as: lack of evidence to prove polytheism, utter lack of historical or archaeological support for the Book of Mormon, and the many revisionist claims about American history.
The Projection Objection
German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that all concepts of God, such as omniscience, are merely objectified human attributes multiplied to infinity and then predicated to a nonexistent being. Feuerbach claimed: Man is the God of Christianity, Anthropology the mystery of Christian theology. The more we worship a nonexistent God, the more alienated we become form ourselves. We should, therefore, leave deity behind and trust only in humanity. Marx and Freud also used this argument against Christianity.
There are aspects of Christianity that are not good candidates for wish fulfillment such as the doctrine of hell, which many Christians wished were not true. Also, atheists reject God because of bad relationships with fathers, as was the case of Freud.
Neurotheology: A Category Mistake
Millions of dollars in grant money goes to explaining the neurological basis for religion to be used by those who presuppose materialism and who reject the existence of God. They know God does not exist so they must come up with a neurological explanation. So religious belief is explained as illusory because of their neurological components. But we must by force of the same argument, explain away as illusory the belief that religious beliefs are illusory (there is no God) because they too are merely neurological states. Ironically, no grant money is spent to explain the neurological basis of atheism or skepticism.
Diverse Religious Experience Claims; Eastern Religions
Buddhism and Hinduism are nondualistic (everything is one) in experience. They advocate pantheism which has no personal god. Their religious experience is beyond the realm of concepts. There is no personal encounter with another divine being. Rather, one ceases to experience reality as a human personality. There are no propositional truths of a worldview to learn and better one’s life.
This Religious argument in this chapter does not stand alone but must be joined with the other arguments for God’s existences.