Challenges of Religious Experience

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  • Challenges of religious experience
    • Psychological challanges
      • Ludwig Feuerbach argued that the idea of God is human protection, God's attributes are our desires, we create God in our image
      • Freud believed religious behaviour was caused by childhood insecurities and a desire for a father figure
        • Religious experiences are hallucinations - product of our subconscious
      • HOWEVER, not all psychologists reject r.e = Carl Gustav Jung accepted the reality of the numinous and the the spiritual aspect was essential for psychological wholeness
    • Physiological challanges
      • Some scientists suggest that there are neuropsychological mechanisms which underlie religious experiences, these seem to show up in brain scans of mediating monks
    • Logically impossible
      • Kant argues that our senses can only experience things in the empirical realm. Limited, finite senses cannot experience an unlimited God
      • HOWEVER, William Alston argues that religious experiences are similar to our normal sensory perception and there may be an aspect of the mind to experience God
    • Sociologist challanges
      • Many sociologists such as Marx see the origins of religion to be found in society and is oppressed into society
      • Marx saw that religion was 'the opium of the people'

Comments

BillieBW

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Its a little too sparse in some details. I would include Freud's Oedipus Complex theory, and in Phisiological Challanges, V S  Ramachandran and Michael Persinger are good examples :)

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