Qabasat

Qabasat

The Challenge of Contradictory Religious Experiences for the‘Demonstration of Religious Experience’ and an Investigation on the Solutions

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Abbas Yazdani 1
Mohammadali Mirbagheri 2
1 associate professor of philosophy of religion, Tehran University
2 Ph.D. graduate of philosophy of religion, Tehran University
0297
Abstract
The ‘demonstration of religious experience’ tries to prove God’s existence through the epistemological reliability of religious experiences. The intuition of God is a reason for His existence just as the observation of material objects can be a reason for their existence.  There are some challenges against this demonstration including the challenge of ‘contradictory religious experiences’ (which may be one of its most difficult challenges). The point of this challenge is that different religious experiences, formed in the context of various religious traditions, are so different from each other that it is not possible for all to be true and thus cannot be put together. The purpose of this article is to investigate and evaluate the solutions presented by the defenders of ‘religious experience demonstration’ to overcome this challenge.
The result of this research shows that none of these solutions are capable of giving a complete answer to the challenge of ‘contradictory religious experiences’; although it seems the interpretivism solution is more defendable compared with other solutions. It is also concluded that religious experiences cannot be considered as proofs for God’s existence because they do not have the necessary and enough strength; rather they can be [seen as] affirmation for God’s existence. Therefore they still can be used as an approval for the existence of God. This research is done using library research method and is descriptive-analytic.
Keywords
the Demonstration of religious experience
the Demonstration of God’s existence
Contradictory religious experiences
Interpretivism

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