An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Robert Sharf (1953–)
Religious experience as a meaningful concept is critiqued by Robert 
Sharf. He considers the terms religious and mystical experience, often 
used to describe what many people feel to be the most important and 
even fundamental aspect of religion is in need of reappraisal. While Asian 
religions have been seen as experience-based, Sharf feels that this has 
come about through Asians who made use of Western scholarship and 
concepts to formulate the experiential side of religion and to promote it. 
When analysed, the experience per se disappears as only the account is 
available, which already involves language, culture and an interaction 
with the external world. Along with Daniel Dennett, Sharf does not accept 
that 
qualia
, subjective experiences, exist, considering that individual 
experiences of taste or colour are in fact extrinsic or outward, relational 
properties, not events in the individual brain.
Sharf compares accounts of mystical experience with accounts of alien 
abductions, which he assumes normal people would discount, despite the 
proven sanity of the ‘experiencers’. We may not understand what is going 
on, but we can be sure that the beliefs of the ‘experiencers’ are false. Here, 
for Sharf, is a clear case showing there is no ‘originary event’ but a narra-
tive which is culturally generated and often induced by therapists. He 
compares accounts of these events with reports from mystics, showing 
that we never deal with unmediated inner experiences, only with condi-
tioned narratives, and in fact they are all that exist.
Richard Swinburne (1934–)
In his most celebrated work, 
The Existence of God
, Richard
 
Swinburne 
considers the many arguments for belief in God. While he concludes 

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Interpretation of Experience
249
that none of them are deductively valid, and so cannot conclusively decide 
the matter, he suggests that religious experience tips the balance in favour 
of belief as part of a cumulative argument. He formulated two principles 
which are important in the evaluation of religious experience, the ‘Principle 
of Credulity’ and the ‘Principle of Testimony’.
The assumptions that things are (probably) as others claim to have 
perceived them has two components. One is the Principle of Credulity 
– that (in the absence of special considerations) things are (probably) 
as others are inclined to believe that they have perceived them. The 
other component is the principle that (in the absence of special consid-
erations) the experiences of others are (probably) as they report them. 
This later principle I will call the Principle of Testimony. I used this 
principle in claiming that (on the basis of what they tell us) that very 
many people have religious experiences.
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These two principles offer a foundation for the acceptance of the verac-
ity of religious experiences, and support the case that theism is more prob-
able than not. Swinburne does, however, suggest that a person’s lifestyle 
gives supporting evidence of the veracity of the report of religious experi-
ence, in other words, the fruits of the experience should be evident.