Four Marks

Critically evaluate William James’ definition of religious experience. 

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William James defined religious experience for the purposes of his Gifford Lectures, later published as “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902).  He began by limiting the scope of his enquiry, focusing on “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” p.32  In this way, James suggested that corporate experiences like those at Fatima, Medjugorje and Toronto are less credible than individual experiences.  James was influenced by Durkheim’s dismissal of religious experience as “an effervescent group phenomenon” more likely to be caused by mass hysteria than by God’s actions, so chose to concentrate on individual experiences despite the difficulty of proving such.   James went on to outline “four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical…” namely passivity, transiency, ineffability and being noetic, and this definition has been important in shaping subsequent research into religious experience.  Nevertheless, James’ definition has been criticised both for being too broad and conversely, for being too limited.  Yet, despite these criticisms, James’ definition remains the best to use when researching this topic.   

Importantly, James’ four marks define mystical experiences, which are just one type of individual religious experience.  James spends two lectures and two chapters of “The Varieties of Religious Experience” discussing mystical experiences, but these fall towards the end of a much longer project.  James begins Lecture II “Circumscription of the Topic” by warning of the dangers of rigid definitions.  He wrote: “The theorizing mind tends always to the oversimplification of its materials. This is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested.” p.24  This explains why James calls his criteria the four “marks”, suggesting that these are pointers to the credibility of an experience rather than necessary pe-conditions for discussing an experience.  Given that it is made up of “marks” or indicators of an experience being genuine, James’ definition is a useful one because it helps the student to analyse experiences and identify areas in which the experience is more, or less, likely to be controversial.  For example, the experiences of Julian of Norwich were certainly noetic, containing knowledge she did not have before, and they were also arguably transient and ineffable, despite the facts that she experienced a series of night-long experiences and described them at length in common English.  While Julian was not experimenting with drugs or sensory-deprivation in order to provoke an experience, the fact that the experiences all occurred when she was gravely ill might suggest they were not passive; it is easy to imagine that they could have had a physiological and/or psychological cause, even if Julian was not aware of it.  Of course, James’ marks raise questions about some important experiences, like those of St Teresa of Avila, which were neither passive nor really transient.  Yet this does not take away from the usefulness of the marks unless one misinterprets the marks and uses them as a rigid definition.  James suggests that conversion experiences have their own four characteristics – loss of worry, perceiving new truths, perceiving a sense of newness in all things and the ecstasy of happiness produced – and this shows that James did not intend his “definition” to be used as a benchmark but rather as a working definition as part of research.  In this way, James’ definition remains the best to use when researching this topic.   

An early critic of James’ definition was Rudolf Otto, whose “The Idea of the Holy” was published in 1917.  Like James, Otto defined religious experience in terms of solitary encounters with what subjects consider to be the divine and like James Otto argues that genuine experiences are ineffable – in order to signify this, Otto resorts to using Latin terminology such as “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” when describing their characteristics.  Nevertheless, Otto criticised James for not specifying that genuine religious experiences must be non-rational.  He wrote “William James has collected a great number of [examples of religious experience] without, however, noticing the non-rational element which thrills in them…” p37-8 While they disagreed with Otto in other aspects of their definitions, Walter Stace and Paul Tillich would both agree with his point about the necessary non-rational nature of religious experiences.  Despite this, James’ broader definition is more useful when it comes to researching religious experience because insisting that religious experiences are non-rational tends to exclude revelatory experiences, upon which religions depend, from consideration when it is these that there is a real need to study.  For example, Moses’ experience at the burning bush in Exodus 3 is one in which Otto’s “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” (the tendency to invoke fear and be compelling simultaneously) is evident, and in which Moses’ reason is shown inadequate by God’s revelation that He is “I am that I am”, and yet to dismiss the other element of Moses’ experience in which God instructs Moses to return to Egypt and explains why as a creative means of expressing something ineffable and non-rational would be to undermine the belief that Moses received and recorded God’s words faithfully.  This would be devastating to the three world religions that take the books Moses wrote as their Scriptures.  For another example, the Prophet Muhammad’s experience on the Night of Power could be described as numinal and ineffable, but it is difficult to describe it as non-rational in the way that Otto demands.  Also, Otto’s definition is very narrow in suggesting that the object of all genuine experiences is the same – the numen – and in suggesting that genuine experiences must invoke fear “mysterium tremendum”.  James’ broader definition makes no such claim and would include reassuring experiences and those associated with a sense of love and unity.  Other scholars, including Stace, Tillich and FC Happold argue that there is no need for genuine religious experiences to invoke fear of any kind.  For these reason James’ broader definition of religious experience is of more use when researching this topic than Otto’s. 

A more recent critic of James’ working definition has been Richard Swinburne.  For Swinburne, James’ four marks are useful in defining a particular type of religious experience, namely solitary mystical experiences, but these represent only one type of religious experience so a much broader definition is necessary when studying the whole topic.  Swinburne proposed a five-fold definition of religious experience as part of his “Existence of God” (1994), arguing that an experience which can be described using everyday language (e.g. a dream), an experience which cannot be described using everyday language (e.g. a mystical experience), a conviction that God has been experienced in some way despite lack of material evidence, perceiving a perfectly normal phenomenon (e.g. a sunset) or perceiving a very unusual public object (e.g. the resurrection) might all be genuine religious experiences.  Importantly, Swinburne’s definition includes corporate experiences, which James chooses to exclude from his discussion for not being “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude”, and Swinburne’s definition also includes witnessing miracles, which may not conform with James’ mark of ineffability.  Caroline Franks Davis supported Swinburne’s broad approach to defining Religious Experiences in her “The Evidential Force of Religious Experience” (1989).  However, by being so broad, Swinburne’s five-fold definition drags less credible and subjective experiences into the discussion in a way that is not helpful when studying religious experience as a stand-alone topic or as evidence for the existence of God.  David Hume warned against relying on anybody who reports seeing a miracle in “Of Miracles” (1748), pointing out that it is impossible to know that the “miracle” is such (who can know the laws of nature sufficiently to know that an event breaks them, let alone that they have been broken “by particular volition of the deity or other invisible agent”?)  Further, says Hume, these witnesses lack credibility, being most often from “ignorant and barbarous nations” so having no relevant expertise and having plenty of bias and vested interests.  Take the miracle of the sun at Fatima in 1917; Hume would dismiss the many witness-reports as more likely to be based on the mistakes or lies of gullible or greedy people than genuine experiences of God.  While Swinburne rejects Hume’s argument using his Principles of Credulity and Testimony, both depend on our assessment of “prior probability”, which Swinburne suggests should be in favour of God existing and miracles possibly being genuine… because Religious Experiences are so common.  To be clear, Swinburne adopted his broad five-fold definition of Religious Experience in order to cast his net widely and include the experiences of as many people as possible, something that he needed to in the context of his wider probability argument for God’s existence which used the prevalence of religious experience to establish that it is more reasonable to assume that their object exists than not or what Swinburne calls “prior probability”.  At the same time, he rejected Hume’s warning against relying on reports of miracles because given our assessment of “prior probability”, the Principles of Credulity and Testimony dictate that we should believe both what we experience ourselves and what others tell us in terms of miracles and religious experiences in the absence of good reason not to.  There is a circularity here; Swinburne uses the prevalence of religious experiences in order to establish “prior probability” which he needs in order to establish the prevalence of religious experiences…  In this way, Swinburne’s broader definition is less useful than James’ narrower working definition because it includes less credible experiences which undermine religious experience as a topic and as possible evidence for God’s existence.   

In conclusion, James’ working definition of religious experience is the most useful for research into this topic.  James understood the pitfalls inherent in proposing any rigid definitions in this field and accepted that his working definition was not perfect.  He wrote: “The field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly impossible that I should pretend to cover it. My lectures must be limited to a fraction of the subject. And, although it would indeed be foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion’s essence, and then proceed to defend that definition against all comers, yet this need not prevent me from taking my own narrow view of what religion shall consist in for the purpose of these lectures…” p30  In this way, James’ four marks should be understood and used as indicators and tools to analyse experiences and not as necessary criteria. 

Critically evaluate the view that religious experience is the best basis for belief in God. [40]

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When compared with the classical arguments for God’s existence – Cosmological, Teleological and Ontological – Religious Experience might seem like the best basis for believing in God, because the God revealed through well-known experiences is more obviously what Pascal called “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” than the abstract “God of the Philosophers”.  In this way, Religious Experience would better support Religion or Classical Theism than the other arguments, which seem to support deism at best.  Nevertheless, on closer analysis Religious Experience does little more to support belief in the God of Religion, a personal deity, than the other arguments.  Because of this, coupled with the unique difficulties which beset Religious Experience as an argument for God’s existence, Religious Experience is not the best – or even a good – basis for belief in God.

Firstly, as William James argued in his “Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902) genuine religious experiences are ineffable and resist description in what Ramsey called “ordinary language”.  When somebody reports having “seen” the Virgin Mary or having “heard” the voice of God, the experience is not really like other sense-experiences through the eyes or ears.  Further, the object that people experience is not really personal.  As Otto argued, genuine religious experiences are of “the numinous”, “the Absolute” rather than any anthropomorphic being.  Stace concurred, arguing that genuine mystical experiences are of “an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate.” Happold agreed, arguing that genuine mysticism is characterized by a sense of love and union with all other beings which overcomes the anxiety we all feel at being separate and alone.  For James, Otto, Stace and Happold Religious Experiences point not towards the existence of “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” but to a “higher power” which, as James pointed out, “need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self…” (Varieties of Religious Experience, Postscript) In this way, Religious Experience does not really serve to support belief in the God of Religion or even Classical Theism any more than the classical arguments do and so it is not the best basis for belief in such a God.

Secondly, Religious Experience is a weaker basis for belief in a “higher power” God than the classical arguments are.  This is because:

  1. Religious Experience is difficult to define.  While James, Otto and Stace recognize only solitary experiences, Richard Swinburne and Caroline Franks-Davis allow for corporate experiences as well.  While James, Otto and Stace suggest that all genuine experiences are beyond literal description, Swinburne and Franks-Davis allow for experiences which can be described using everyday language.  Because scholars differ about which experiences are possibly “authentic” and which are not, Religious Experience as a phenomenon is a less convincing basis of observation on which to build an inductive argument for God’s existence.  When compared with the Cosmological Argument, nobody questions Craig’s first premise “everything that begins to exist has a cause” even if they go on to criticize other premises or the conclusion of his argument. It follows that because of the difficulty in defining Religious Experience, is a weaker basis for an inductive argument for God’s existence than the classical arguments are
  2. As Swinburne points out, the argument from Religious Experience depends on assuming the Principles of Credulity and Testimony.  While it is far to say that the other arguments from observation also depend on the Principle of Credulity, Hume’s critique of Miracles in “An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding” Section X (1758) fatally undermines the Principle of Testimony as it applies to reports of religious experiences.  It is always more likely that somebody has made a mistake than that their experience, which goes against the established laws of nature, is genuine.  While it is, as Hick pointed out, bad science to ignore such reports, it is, as James pointed out, impossible to exclude the possibility that the person reporting a religious experience is mistaken because credible physiological and/or psychological explanations exist to account for everything reported.  For examples, as James discusses in his chapter on Conversion Experiences, psychiatry might account for very many of these including those of St Paul (as a response to a moral crisis according to Leuba) and of St Augustine (as a delayed adolescent crisis according to Starbuck).  While St Paul or St Augustine might themselves be convinced that their experience was authentic and be justified in believing in their object, there is no necessity for other people to believe either in the authenticity of their experiences or in what they seem to refer to.  So, because testimony always lacks credibility, an inductive argument based on Religious Experience will be weaker than the classical arguments in establishing a basis for belief in God.
  3. Finally, as Swinburne points out, accepting accounts of Religious Experience as possibly genuine depends on prior probability.  If you are what James called a “medical materialist“, reports of religious experience would be their very nature incredible.  In this way, reports of will only be entertained as the basis for belief in anything by those who are already open to the existence of that thing and the argument from Religious Experience is shown to be circular and so not as persuasive as the other classical arguments.

Clearly, Swinburne would disagree and would argue that Religious Experience is a better basis for believing in God than the other inductive arguments.  In his “The Existence of God” (1979) he set out a cumulative argument for God’s existence which employed Bayes’ Theorem to assess the relative probabilities of God and natural causes as explanations of causation, order and purpose, beauty and morality in the universe.  None of these arguments is conclusive in itself, argued Swinburne.  It takes Religious Experience to tip the balance in favour of God’s existence and provide a basis for believing in God.  Nevertheless, Swinburne’s cumulative argument has been widely criticized, not least by Anthony Flew, who compared it with “ten leaky buckets”.  A lot of bad arguments, each of which fails to justify belief in God in itself, are together not significantly better than one bad argument and so fail to justify religious belief.  Further, Swinburne’s contention that Religious Experience is the strongest argument, the argument which tips the balance of probability in favour of God’s existence, seems odd given that it depends on prior probability and so has no force without the other arguments having already established that God is slightly more probable than the natural alternative.  To what extent can an argument which is circular in itself be the deciding factor?  If the other arguments succeed in justifying an openness to the existence of God without depending on Prior Probability or the Principle of Testimony, then surely they are better bases for belief in God than Religious Experience.  For Swinburne, Religious Experience is a better basis for belief in God than the other arguments from observation even though it depends on Prior Probability and the Principle of Testimony because, as he sees it, Religious Experiences support belief in the personal God of Religion.  However, as has already been established here, this is not necessarily the case.  On close analysis, for those who have had no experience themselves, Religious Experiences can support openness to the existence of a “higher power” at most.  By contrast, the cosmological argument supports belief in a necessarily single, all-powerful creator God and the teleological argument supports belief in an omni-benevolent intelligent designer God, at least when “good” is understood in the purely Aristotelian sense.  In this way, Religious Experience is a worse basis for belief in God than either of the cosmological or teleological arguments, even when it comes to believing in “the God of the Philosophers” with the classical attributes.

In conclusion, Religious Experience is very far from being the best basis for belief in God. On close analysis, reports of such experiences fail to justify anything more than an openness to a “higher power” which would not have to have any of the classical attributes of God.  It is as impossible to exclude naturalistic explanations for Religious Experiences as it is to exclude the possibility that they have been caused by God, so the question of what they point towards must remain open.  Further, as an argument for God’s existence, Religious Experience is beset by problems of definition, credibility of testimony and circularity.  It is certainly not the decisive factor in demonstrating the existence of God that Swinburne claims, but is a bucket that is more leaky than most.

Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God! Discuss (40)

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Religious experience, whether that is the general experience of living a religious life or specific, direct experiences of the divine, is very commonly cited as the basis for religious faith.  Nevertheless, William James and William Alston have both argued that although Religious Experiences are reasonably authoritative for the people who have them – and for those people may serve as more than a pointer to the existence of God – because of plausible non-religious explanations there can be no duty on other people to accept the authenticity of religious experiences or see them as pointers to anything supernatural. Richard Swinburne went further, noting that whether one accepts religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God will depend on one’s assessment of prior probability.  Responses to the claim “Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God!” depend to some extent on one’s own relationship with religious experience(s), whether one has had a direct experience or must rely on others’ reports, but depend mostly on one’s world-view.  Atheists and materialists are unlikely to accept the claim, even if they have had an experience that might otherwise be categorized as religious, whereas those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds are more likely to accept the claim, even on the strength of anecdote.

Direct religious experiences are notoriously difficult to define or categorise.  William James identified four marks that most experiences seem to have – transiency, a noetic quality, ineffability and passivity – and yet there are well-known experiences which do not have these marks.  Thomas Merton had relatively regular experiences over a long period.   Teresa of Avila’s experiences were sustained and seemingly the result of practices designed to provoke them.  Further the Religious canon is packed with descriptions of religious experience.  Other scholars have defined religious experiences in different ways.  Scholar of mysticism Rudolph Otto took a more general approach, saying only that authentic religious experiences are those of mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  In some ways Otto’s definition accords with Martin Buber’s description of religious experiences as I-thou encounters.  Walter Stace excluded classic visions and voices altogether and argued that genuine religious experiences are non-sensuous and mystical in character.  Richard Swinburne, on the other hand, listed five different types of religious experience in two categories, public and private, in an attempt to be inclusive. The difficulty in defining religious experiences is a seemingly insuperable obstacle to using them as the basis for an inductive argument for the existence of God.

Direct religious experiences are also open to alternative, non-religious explanations. Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud both noted how religious belief tends towards wish-fulfilment.  Some religious experiences fit in most conveniently with the wants and needs of the person who has them and could be explained as creations of the subconscious mind. For example, Joan of Arc’s experiences fit in with the French nationalistic mood of the time and provided Joan with a credibility that she could never otherwise have had.  Might she have invented the experiences – or have interpreted them creatively – for her own (side’s) political advantage?  The Emperor Constantine’s vision before the battle of Milvian Bridge and the visions leading to the discovery of the True Cross on the First Crusade could be seen in similar terms. Alternatively, other religious experiences might be explained in physiological terms.  It is more common for those experiencing extreme physical stress or hormonal change to claim religious experiences – could the physiological changes associated with puberty or the suffering involved in a life-threatening illness be causing out-of-body sensations that are later interpreted as religious?  Julian of Norwich experienced visions while close to death, St Paul seems to have been an epileptic subject to grand-mal seizures and many other visionaries and mystics have exhibited physiological symptoms which might account for their altered state.  Of course it is difficult to disprove religious experiences in these ways – not least because an account of HOW the experience might have happened does not rule out God as the reason WHY it happened.  Nevertheless, the existence of non-religious explanations for religious experiences does undermine their status as a good pointer to the existence of God, both individually and otherwise.

Although Swinburne incorporated an argument from Religious Experience into his cumulative case for God, set out in “The Existence of God” (1991), he accepted that unlike accepting the natural observations that other inductive arguments start with, accepting religious experiences as even a pointer to the existence of God depends on prior probability.  People who already accept the possibility of God’s existence will accept that religious experiences are a feature of the world which require explanation while those with an atheistic world-view will reject religious experiences as delusions or at least claim that psychology and/or physiology explain away the phenomenon without any need to suggest a supernatural cause. It is fair to say that religious people, or at least those who are open-minded, will be more likely to accept that Religious experience is a good pointer to the existence of God than those who are committed to an atheist or materialist world-view and this suggests that there will always be disagreement on whether Religious Experiences constitute a good pointer to the existence of God that is little to do with the experiences themselves or what causes them.

Swinburne went on to argue that it is reasonable to accept reports of religious experiences – defined very broadly so as to include both public and private experiences – and to take them as pointers to the existence of God because of the principles of credulity and testimony.  In everyday life we believe what we see or experience ourselves and believe other people unless we have a good reason not to.  Why should these principles not apply to religious experiences?  Given the large number of people who claim to have had experiences that might be classed as religious experiences – around 1 in 3 people according to Alister Hardy Centre research – they need to be explained.  What reasonable grounds are there for dismissing either the occurrence of these experiences or the explanation proffered by those who have had them when we have no clear reason to doubt?  Nevertheless, Swinburne’s principles do little to advance his argument beyond prior probability.  Those with an atheistic or materialist world view are likely to respond to Swinburne by arguing that the very fact that somebody claims to have had a religious experience is evidence of their irrationality and good reason to be suspicious of their testimony. As Carl Sagan said “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – by their nature religious experiences are out of the ordinary and demand more rather than less evidence both to support their authenticity and their interpretation.

In conclusion, the claim “Religious experiences are good pointers to the existence of God” will only be accepted by those who are open to the existence of God on other grounds and is unlikely to persuade non-religious people of God’s existence. As Anthony Flew wrote in God and Philosophy (1966), responses to religious experiences… ‘seems to depend on the interests, background and expectations of those who have them rather than on anything separate and autonomous…” Take AJ Ayer’s conversion experience.  Even the medically documented experience of a committed atheist and expert Philosopher is explained away in physiological and psychological terms by those who see it as impossible. Ayer eventually denied his own experiences, attributing them to the effects of cerebral anoxia or shock, rather than change his prior assessment of probability.  In “The Blind Watchmaker” Richard Dawkins wrote that if he witnessed a marble statue waving its hand at him he would prefer to check himself into the nearest psychiatric hospital than accept that he had witnessed a miracle. What better demonstration can there be of the effects of prior probability on the likelihood of people accepting religious experiences as a good pointer to the existence of God?

Further Reading

Richard Gale on Swinburne’s Argument from Religious Experience