Religious Experience overview: SQA Advanced Higher RMPS
A guide to the Religious Experience optional area of SQA Advanced Higher RMPS: the types of experience, the argument from religious experience (Swinburne, James), the challenges (Freud, neuroscience, conflicting claims), and whether experience justifies belief.
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Religious Experience is one of the two optional areas of Advanced Higher RMPS, taken alongside the mandatory Philosophy of Religion. It asks whether the vast body of human experience interpreted as encounter with the divine can serve as evidence for God, and is assessed by an extended essay. This guide maps the area; the dot points take the types, the argument, the challenges and the question of belief in detail.
The types of religious experience
The area begins by classifying experiences: mystical (union with the divine, with James's marks of ineffability, noetic quality, transiency and passivity), numinous (Otto's awe before the "wholly other"), conversion, corporate and revelatory. Precise classification, especially keeping the numinous and mystical apart, sets up the rest.
The argument from religious experience
The inductive argument holds that widespread experiences are best explained by a real divine object. Swinburne's principle of credulity (trust your own apparent experience) and principle of testimony (trust others' reports) shift the burden onto the sceptic; James's empirical case stresses breadth and good effects. The argument claims to raise the probability of God, not to prove God.
The challenges
The argument faces naturalistic challenges, Freud's psychological illusion and the neuroscientific correlation of experience with brain states, the conflicting-claims problem (experiences support incompatible objects across religions), and the problems of verification and privacy. The key reply is the genetic fallacy: explaining the cause of an experience does not show it is false.
Experience and belief
Finally, the area asks what experience does for belief: it can ground and sustain faith, but it justifies belief strongly for the subject (via credulity) and weakly for others (who rely on testimony). James's test of fruits gives some reason to take experiences seriously, though good effects do not prove a true cause.
How to use this module
Learn the types and the argument, then drill the challenges and replies, since evaluation is where the marks are. Practise distinguishing the first-person and third-person cases for justification, and judging how far naturalistic explanations and conflicting claims undermine the argument. Always revise from the current SQA course specification, specimen and past papers, because the essay wording and marking are board-specific.