The Argument for the Existence of God

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The Argument for the Existence of God

It is an undisputed fact that some people claim to have experienced

God. It is these religious experiences that have been used by

philosophers to argue for the existence of God. The main way of

expressing the argument from religious experience is as follows:

P1 Someone experiences an entity

C1 The entity exists

P2 Someone has experienced God

C2 God exists

Those who champion the argument seek to differentiate ordinary

experiences and religious experiences. The supporters of this argument

argue that there are several key differences between the two types of

experience: that religious experiences are completely different from

what is normal and usual; that it is not usual to be able to describe

a religious experience; religious experience cannot usually be checked

(i.e. someone else cannot check to see whether it has happened or

not); and it gives insight into the unseen.

All religious experiences take the form of either 'a sense of oneness

or union with the divine', 'a sense of dependence on the divine' and

'a sense of separateness from the divine'. All of these are to do with

direct experience and this is what the topic of religious experience

is debated on.

When people claim to have had a religious experience, it can usually

be categorised by being non-inferential, being experienced through one

or more of the five senses and being something like the way that you

would experience people. Language used to describe these experiences

is often linked with the sense such as 'seeing' and 'meeting' God;

this is to show that the experience is personal and shows that you

have e...

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...a spiritual experience. Believers do

not think that this is a major criticism, however, because they argue

this simply proves that God designed humans with an ability to receive

religious experiences.

The argument that the existence of God can be proved by religious

experience relies on the assumption that the experience itself can

give some sort of guarantee that you are right. In conclusion, I

believe that is hard to believe in an argument that does not and

cannot distinguish between feeling that something is right and

actually being right. This is emphasised even more when we consider

that nearly every human has, at one point in their life, been sure

about something and then they have consequently been proved wrong. It

is this misplaced optimism in subjectivity that makes believe that

this argument has failed.

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