Religious Experience is Nothing but Fantasy Essay

The supra criticism to religious belief was proposed by Sigmund Freud who thought that the origin of relig exp (religious start) is grow in the unconscious and that they are a product of eschewed psychosexual development. Freud spurned any appeal to the supernatural to explain these occurrences as our mind on a regular basis deludes itself, pointing to dreams as an obvious example. The materialistic approach to explaining relig exp has led scientists to pinpoint detail physical causes of this phenomena St Paul of Tarsus is thought to have possessed a create of epilepsy. In this case, Pauls relig exp would be a fantasy precisely perceived as real exist.A theistic challenge to materialism is that immortal and organic write ups of religious phenomena. In this expressive style our brains may be wired up to experience divinity fudge materialism does non ineluctably deem all relig exp fantasy. But how does one explain those who do not experience religious phenomena? Are some people born with divinitys art card? This in my mind is where atheists and theists allow for never agree theists will submit perfection only 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 cannot know whether each and e rattling religious experience is fantasy a conclusion reached by Bertrand Russell who reasoned that the fundamental the true that we cannot get wrong someone elses head and verify the experience deems this argument irresolvable.William crowd together set disclose specific criteria for a religious experience. For example, the experience must(prenominal) be transient i.e it is temporary and thitherfore cannot be sustained. This conveniently prevents knowledge from examining the psychological causes of the experience further evidence that this argument is irresolvable. James establish in conclusions in part on Pragmatism the doctrine that truth is the acceptable co nclusion for whomever concerned in this sense, religious experiences are very much true to the taker. This would be seconded by Ludwig Wittgenstein who indentified religion as a closed language game proposing that the experiences are fantasy is not an genuine move and is only know to the outside observer. Ergo, to say religious experiences are fantasy excludes the one accepted explanation upon which religion is based God did it.The term fantasy is vague does this indicate a belief that we lack to be true and know is false or rather a true deception ourselves. The former seems plausible in the case of vision Hysteria e.g The Toronto B slighting, where our desire to fit in overtakes our desire to be properly what psychologists call Normative Social Influence.As James pointed out, these psychological explanations do not necessarily bend God. However, they do give us no reason to believe in him via Occams razor (believe in the approximately simple of the explanations) and thus re ckon religious experiences as fantasy. This brings to mind Anthony Flews Death by 1000 qualifications constantly changing the goalposts for the definition of God so that the eventual result is an idea that possesses no verifiable or falsifiable claim. Thus God cannot be counted in or out of existence, or even on the fence.Kant objected to the term religious experience craft it a contradiction. How can we experience that which is fundamentally beyond our sensory readiness? We experience people and trees and the world around us because it is finite as are we. We can level the challenge that we experience the universe, which is infinite, plainly 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 add of him this is not logically impossible. Kants reasoning is not the reason to reject religious experience as fant asy as with religion there can only be one wholly true explanation of religious phenomena.Only one religion can be wholly true as they make incompatible claims and so we must cast away most religious experiences as fantasy. And if we reject most religious experiences, so those remaining must be of the same psychological nature so they too can be dismissed as fantasy. Jamess pluralism is merely another get out clause another expiry 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 mutually exclusive. Since the debate cannot be resolved ala Russell, we must assume the closure is not the theistic one.