Qabasat

Qabasat

A Critical Examination of the Pathological and Pathologizing Approach to Religious Experience

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Hamidreza Shakerin
Professor, Department of Logic of Understanding Religion, Islamic Culture and Thought Research Center .Qom, Iran.
10.22034/qabasat.2026.734923
Abstract
Religious and mystical experiences are among the spiritual, transcendent, and inspiring dimensions of human life, serving as a means of connecting to higher realms, with a history as long as human existence on this earth. This phenomenon provides a suitable capacity for demonstrating certain truths of the unseen world and for expanding scientific literature relevant to the theology. In this intellectual contest, naturalistic currents, citing certain scientific data, have affirmed the unreality of religious experiences and have generated challenges in this area. Among these challenges is the pathological and pathologizing approach to religious experience. The rational foundation of religious beliefs and truths necessitates the examination of such perspectives and their evaluation in accordance with precise logical conditions and standards. Accordingly, this paper aims to discuss the aforementioned approach and its credibility in discrediting religious experiences. The research method is based on library-based data collection and an intellectual-analytical evaluative approach. The findings indicate that the pathological and pathologizing approach to religious experience is not scientifically valid, is problematic in various respects, and is prone to multiple fallacies. Consequently, this approach is incapable and unsuccessful in defending or supporting the unreality of religious experiences.
Keywords
Religious Experience
Mystical Experience
Neuropsychology of Religious Experience
Medicalization of Religious Experience
Pathological Approach to Religious Experience
Unreality of Religious Experience google is broken
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