RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES (A LEVEL RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

[aimi]

you’re so entertaining it honestly doesn’t feel like an hour long video

[abbeygregory]

my first RS a level is tommorrow, you are a lifesaver

[yaasmiinxx]

Truly I appreciate these! I find it so easy to learn with your videos!!

[elainemanwa]

this couldn't have come at a better time
great video as per usual

[JohnAlexanderBlog]

As someone taking Religious Studies afresh in my gap year, this is so helpful. God bless you

[lolLol-jwyz]

thank u so much, as a alevel student doing her alevels in 2 weeks with barely any revision, these videos are helping me understand this subject that i struggle with so much.

[anjam.rommel]

Thank you so much, please keep it up, love this contribution!

[jennatheobalds]

this is a truly wonderful video as a gal stressing out over year 12 mocks! thanks ben :)

[bandoridesh]

Swinburne approach also uses special considerations that may influence and reflect on persons testimony so for example, person may be a proven liars, be drug users have mental disorders it shows the person has ulterior motivies, as Claims so Swinburne is able to identify the potential problems

[emlychappell]

love your videos you make it so easy to understand the topics !! I do ocr but these are still so helpful

[sophie-hitm]

love the videos. please can you do mind soul and body topic at some point xxx

[mmlk]

I love your videos so much I learn so well from them.
Can you please make a video on miracles

[netflixandburn]

Do you need to memorise verbatim quotes? Can you paraphrase to an extent?

[risotto]

ahh yes! thank you so much! so funny as well!!😄

[rileymatthews]

do you have any videos on plato and aristotle?

[rogerevans]

Super great lecture--very clearly voiced and with enthusiasm and with a sense of humor.

My argument that these religious experiences are indeed evidence that God exists [and that Christianity is true] is that none of these religious experiences seems to have happened prior to the first century and that they all seem to have started happening in or very close to what we now call Israel. (Is it just a coincidence that Jesus was living then and there and that He said He would send "the Comforter" soon after His death? "The Comforter" was the Holy Spirit, and it entered people beginning at Pentecost.]
These so-called "religious experiences" are either natural or supernatural. Materialists believe that they are all natural. If they are natural, why would they all begin to appear in the first century in or near Israel? Where is the evidence that they occurred earlier and elsewhere? If there is some sort of record of one occurring prior to Pilate's generation, I would like to hear about it. By the time Pontius Pilate lived, the human race was already several thousands of years old. Think of all the people throughout the world who had lived prior to Pontius Pilate in ancient China, India, and other places. Which of them had a "Damascus Road experience"? All the natural phenomena that occur today were occurring for hundreds of years prior to Pilate and in different parts of the globe, but when the history of these religious experiences is examined, they all seem to have begun occurring in the first century near Jerusalem.
Over 300 years before Christ, Aristotle in his "Ethics" never mentions any of these so-called "religious experiences" that William James mentions in the 9th and 10th chapters of his "Varieties of Religious Experience". I mention Aristotle's "Ethics" because everyone who has had a religious experience as described by William James or Starbuck relates that his or her behavior improved as a result of it.
None of the men in Plutarch's "Lives" had one of these conversion experiences described by William James or Starbuck. It is true that Plutarch only discusses generals and politicians, but they are people too.
Most significantly, even among the Jews themselves in the Old Testament, no record of these experiences exists. The ancient Jewish prophets claimed God spoke to them, but they never say that their encounters were analogous to being "born-again". It is only at Pentecost in the New Testament book "the Acts of the Apostles" when the Holy Spirit allegedly started to enter people's bodies that we start hearing about people having these religious experiences. This is not a "case closed" argument since we do not have a biography of every person who ever lived prior to the first century, but the aforementioned observations should make thoughtful atheists at least become agnostics.
From the research I have made, people in the Roman Empire did not start calling their sons and daughters "Renatus" [Latin for "born-again" or "reborn"] or "Renata" until Christianity had spread to where they were living. Today, some people are still named "Rene" [pronounced "rennay"].
No one in the Old Testament has a name whose meaning is analogous to "born-again" or "reborn" or "regenerated". For instance, the name "Ezekiel" means "God strengthens". The name "Jeremiah" means "God is high." The name "Micah" means "Who is like God?" The name "Jacob' means "supplanter". And so forth, none of the names in the Old Testament means "re-born" or "born from above" or "regenerated".
In the cult of Mithras, a religion superficially similar to Christianity and which began at nearly the same time, an initiate who apparently was always a man, was considered a soldier for Mithras and was considered "born-again" after going through a ritual. Going through a ritual is a matter of deliberate intent and is not something passively experienced. Religious experiences, as described by Williams and Starbuck occur to passive recipients. Religious experiences as described by James and Starbuck cannot be induced.
Admittedly, Dionysus was considered "the twice-born god", but this is myth concerning an imagined pagan deity, not a human being. The so-called enlightenment that Buddha received while meditating under a tree was not the "born-again experience".
I am assuming people who have had these conversion experiences that Starbuck and James discussed were not discussing drug induced visions. I mention this because Bertrand Russell thought these so-called religious experiences were the result of eating or drinking something.
Thousands of people with epilepsy live all over the world, and epilepsy predates Christianity. I have personally seen two people having epileptic seizures, and none of them created a new religion. Supposedly, Julius Ceasar had epilepsy, and he did not found a new religion. The serial killer Richard Ramirez had epilepsy, and he was a Satanist.

The only natural phenomena of which I am aware that are to some extent new and which have begun in a single place are viruses. For example, the AIDS virus does not seem to have existed prior to the 1950's, and it began somewhere in Africa. Secondly, the Corona Virus began a few years ago in one place---a certain town in China. But these examples are only partial exceptions since they are both viruses that are simply new types of viruses. Viruses per se are nothing new, and no one would call having them "religious experiences".

This is not a "case closed' argument. We do not have a biography of every person who lived prior to Pilate, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Much was lost when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed. Yet, such as it is, this is my argument. There is no record of anyone having a religious experience as defined by Starbuck and James prior to Pilate's generation, and the earliest records we have of people having these experiences were in or near Jerusalem in the first century after Christ's death on the cross. There do not seem to be any new natural phenomena.