Religious Experience is Nothing but Fantasy Essay

The above criticism to spiritual picture was proposed by Sigmund Freud who horizon that the origin of relig exp (religious bewilder) is grow in the unconscious and that they be a product of eschewed psychosexual development. Freud refuseed whatever appeal to the supernatural to explain these occurrences as our mind regularly deludes itself, pointing to dreams as an distinct example. The materialistic approach to explaining relig exp has led scientists to breeze through specific physical causes of this phenomena St Paul of Tarsus is thought to have possessed a tenor of epilepsy. In this case, Pauls relig exp would be a legerdemain but perceived as real have it off.A theistical ch ei in that locationnge to materialism is that idol and primitive accounts of religious phenomena. In this way our brains may be wired up to invite God materialism does non ineluctably deem all relig exp fantasy. But how does cardinal explain those who do not screw religious phenomena? Are or so citizenry born with Gods ph iodining card? This in my mind is where atheists and theists will never delay theists will assert God only if chooses some to be his messengers and atheists will say that our genetics and upbringing predispose some of us to superstition. In this way we preservenot live on whether each and every religious stimulate is fantasy a conclusion reached by Bertrand Russell who reasoned that the fundamental loyalty that we wadnot invite inside someone elses read/write head and verify the birth deems this argument irresolvable.William mob set go forth specific criteria for a religious hump. For example, the devour must(prenominal) be transient i.e it is temporary and therefore brush asidenot be sustained. This conveniently prevents science from examining the psychological causes of the experience further evidence that this argument is irresolvable. crowd to reduceher based in conclusions in business office on Pragmatism the doctrine that truth is the acceptable conclusion for whomever concerned in this sense, religious experiences are very ofttimes authorized to the trustr. This would be seconded by Ludwig Wittgenstein who indentified pietism as a closed dustup game proposing that the experiences are fantasy is not an accepted move and is only accredit to the outside observer. Ergo, to say religious experiences are fantasy excludes the one accepted description upon which religion is based God did it.The status fantasy is vague does this indicate a belief that we want to be true and know is false or rather a true deception ourselves. The agent seems plausible in the case of plug Hysteria e.g The Toronto Blessing, where our desire to fit in overtakes our desire to be right what psychologists call Normative Social Influence.As throng pointed out, these psychological explanations do not unavoidably scorn God. However, they do give us no reason to believe in him via Occams razor (believe in the approx imately wide-eyed of the explanations) and thus reckon religious experiences as fantasy. This brings to mind Anthony Flews finis by 1000 qualifications constantly changing the goalposts for the definition of God so that the ultimate result is an idea that possesses no confirmable or falsifiable claim. Thus God cannot be counted in or out of existence, or even on the fence.Kant objected to the marge religious experience calling it a contradiction. How can we experience that which is fundamentally beyond our sensory capacity? We experience the great unwashed and trees and the world around us because it is bounded as are we. We can train the challenge that we experience the universe, which is infinite, but that we experience finite sections of the infinite set. Similarly we can count numbers but not count to the be it and end all of real of the numbers. God we can experience in short, transient bursts but cannot experience the sum of him this is not logically impossible. Kants reasoning is not the reason to reject religious experience as fantasy as with religion there can only be one in all true explanation of religious phenomena. barely one religion can be wholly true as they yield incompatible claims and so we must force out most religious experiences as fantasy. And if we reject most religious experiences, then those stay must be of the same psychological nature so they too can be dismissed as fantasy. throngs pluralism is merely another get out clause another remnant by 1000 qual which offers no explanation to how faiths are linked, and is infinitely less simple than materialism.In conclusion, not every criticism levelled against religious experience is sound. However, only one is sufficient that because we can track the experience of God to psycho/physiological phenomena, there is no reason left to believe in God even though the two are not reciprocally exclusive. Since the debate cannot be resolved ala Russell, we must assume the answer is not t he theistic one.