Is Religious Experience Enough for Proof of the Existence of God?

Before I start discussing some quarrels of religious experiences, it is important that we understand what exactly this is. Religious experiences can also be known as sacred, spiritual or mystical experiences. A religious experience is a phenomenon that someone may have that they believe is divinely inspired. This, for the individual, is proof for the existence of God. To read more on religious experiences visit the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Some people believe that because they have a certain religious experience, that is enough proof for the existence of God, we will find that this is a false testimony, insofar that these experiences are interpreted differently through different people.

The importance behind religious experience for religious pluralism is different from a rational interpretation of religious experiences. According to John Hick, in his book The Problems of Religious Plualism, when asked the question of which religious experience is liable, or that the situation is indeed as one describes it, he answers “that he does not profess to know this, if by knowledge we mean infallible cognition. Nor indeed can anyone else properly claim to have knowledge, in this sense, of either the exclusivist or the inclusivist picture. All of them are, strictly speaking, hypotheses” (1). If Hick is concluding that no one is capable of having infallible knowledge, I would certainly disagree. As I have shown earlier, we have discovered what can be known about the Eternal through general revelation. It is possible to know fallacies to certain experiences with our ability to rationally interpret them. Religious experiences have meaning to the individual that they occurred to, but “interpretations of a given experience that contradict the nature of the eternal are not valid interpretations” (2). Hick asserts, “that there is in fact a good argument for the rationality of trusting one’s own religious experience, together with that of the larger tradition within which it occurs, so as both to believe and to live on the basis of it” however, he fails to demonstrate this argument (1). Hick also acknowledges the fact that if one is to treat one’s own religious experience as absolute, then that person must also accept that members of other religions will also have religious experiences in a different form, and that they are just as real as his own.

It is no doubt in my mind that people of different religions have different experiences of the Eternal, but what is of concern is how these experiences are interpreted. Someone of the Hindu or Buddhist religion may interpret an experience that is a contradiction to the nature of the Eternal I have thus far proved. The focus on the interpretations of these experiences is that they need to be less self-centered and more reality-centered. This way we can develop a common, rational interpretation that can be a form of “infallible cognition.” It is evident that this sort of interpretation is not being done today as a result from not knowing the Eternal through general revelation. This is evidence that people are not taking into the account of the reality of sin and the need for redemption revelation. This shows us that the “failure to draw the correct interpretation, and the failure to be reality-centered are faults that require redemption” (2). Because people have sinned and not sought to understand the need of general revelation, there is a necessity for scripture. Because we know from general revelation that something is eternal (in contrast to ‘none is eternal’ or ‘all is eternal’) we are then required to be aware of this, and not deny the truth and clarity of reason.