← Religious, Moral & Philosophical Studies syllabus

ScotlandReligious, Moral & Philosophical Studies

Religious Experience

4 dot points across 4 inquiry questions. Click any dot point for a focused answer with worked past exam questions where available.

What are the strongest challenges to treating religious experience as evidence for God?

Challenges to religious experience: psychological and physiological explanations (Freud, neuroscience), the problem of conflicting claims across religions, and verification and the privacy of experience.
The challenges to religious experience in SQA Advanced Higher RMPS. Covers psychological explanations (Freud), physiological and neuroscientific explanations, the problem of conflicting claims across religions, and verification and privacy, with how to evaluate them against the argument.
14 min answer →

What is the relationship between religious experience and religious belief, and can experience justify faith?

Religious experience and belief: the role of experience in grounding and sustaining faith, public versus private evidence, the value of the effects of experience, and whether experience can justify belief for others.
The relationship between religious experience and belief in SQA Advanced Higher RMPS. Covers how experience grounds and sustains faith, the difference between justifying one's own belief and others', the value of the effects of experience, and whether religious experience can justify belief, with evaluation.
13 min answer →

Can religious experience provide evidence or an argument for the existence of God?

The argument from religious experience: the inductive argument that experiences count as evidence for God, Swinburne's principles of credulity and testimony, and James's empirical case.
The argument from religious experience for God in SQA Advanced Higher RMPS. Covers the inductive argument that experiences are evidence for God, Swinburne's principles of credulity and testimony, James's empirical case from The Varieties of Religious Experience, and how to evaluate it.
14 min answer →

What is a religious experience, and what are its main types?

The nature and types of religious experience: mystical, conversion, numinous, corporate and revelatory experiences, with key examples and the features (ineffability, noetic quality) that mark them.
What religious experience is in SQA Advanced Higher RMPS. Covers the main types (mystical, conversion, numinous, corporate, revelatory), James's marks of mystical experience (ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, passivity), Otto's numinous, and key examples, with how to analyse them.
13 min answer →