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The Principle of Credulity and Religious Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael Martin
Michael Martin
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Boston University
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Extract

In The Existence of God Richard Swinburne argues that certain religious experiences support the hypothesis that God exists. Indeed, the argument from religious experience is of crucial importance in Swinburne's philosophical theology. For, according to Swinburne, without the argument from religious experience the combined weight of the other arguments he considers, e.g. the teleological, the cosmological, or the argument from miracles, does not render the theistic hypothesis very probable. However, the argument from religious experience combined with these other arguments makes theism more probable than its rivals.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 79 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

page 79 note 1 Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979), chapter 13.Google Scholar

page 79 note 2 Ibid. pp. 290–1.

page 80 note 1 Ibid. p. 254 n. I.

page 80 note 2 Ibid. p. 255.

page 81 note 1 Ibid. p. 268

page 82 note 1 Ibid. pp. 268–9.

page 82 note 1 Ibid. p. 267.

page 84 note 1 Ibid. p. 263.

page 84 note 2 See Giere, Ronald N., Understanding Scientific Reasoning (New York, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), pp. 88–103.Google Scholar

page 86 note 1 Swinburne, , op.cit. p. 267Google Scholar

page 86 note 2 See Stace, Walter T., The Teachings of the Mystics (New York, The New American Library, 1960), p. 126Google Scholar; Katz, Steven T., ‘Language, epistemology and mysticism’, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. Katz, Steven T. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 27.Google Scholar

page 87 note 1 There are also differences in the same culture; for example, Meister Eckhart tended to describe his religious experience in pantheistic language, some other Christian mystics did not. See Stace, , op. cit. p. 139Google Scholar

page 87 note 2 Swinburne, , op. cit. pp. 258–9.Google Scholar

page 87 note 3 Ibid. p. 267 n. 1.

page 88 note 1 Pike, E. Royston, Encyclopedia of Religion and Religions (New York, Meridian Books, 1958), p. 219.Google Scholar

page 92 note 1 Sheaffer, Robert, ‘Do fairies exist?’, The Skeptical Inquirer, II (1977), 45–52;Google Scholar see also Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, The Coming of The Fairies (New York, Samuel Weiser, 1921).Google Scholar

page 93 note 1 Swinburne, , op. cit. chapter II.Google Scholar

page 93 note 2 See O'Connor, David, ‘Swinburne on natural evil’, Religious Studies, XIX, I (1983), 65–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 93 note 3 Martin, Michael, ‘Is evil evidence against the existence of God?’, Mind (1978), pp. 429–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar