Religious Experience Paperback – September 14, 1987

If you approach Religious Experience intent on debunking authoritative perspectives on what religious experience consists of, you won't be disappointed by Proudfoot's deconstruction of Schleiermacher, James, and others. The vast majority of the book concerns itself with citing these other thinkers and explaining why none of their paradigms holds up to close scrutiny. Proudfoot's scalpel is sharp and polished, but the dominance of slicing over building results in a handful of scraps that would benefit from a better reintegration and innovation than Proudfoot is able to offer. Regardless, an illuminating and entertaining read.

Proudfoot's study of religious experience remains the modern locus classicus for investigation of this topic in philosophical perspective. The author surveys the history of investigation into religious experience from Jonathan Edwards and Friedrich Schleirmacher, to Rudolf Otto and William James, to modern philosophers of religion such as D.Z. Phillips. According to Proudfoot, the tendency of many who have investigated religious experience--particularly Schleiermacher, Otto, and James--has been to see it as (1)prelinguistic and preconceptual, and (2)a human universal that transcends the particulars of religious tradtions (in other words, the same "something" is being experienced by Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, etc.). Through careful argument, Proudfoot demonstrates both of these perspectives to be false, and shows that they have been used as what he calls a "protective strategy" to shield religious experience from analytical criticism in the light of science, psycholgy, or sociology. The authors he cites have defined the religious experience in such a way as to guarantee that, tautologically, only experiences of something "real" that is religious can be seen as religious experiences.Following Wittgenstein, Proudfoot argues that religious experiences, far from being preconceptual or prelinguistic in the manner of direct sensations, are formulated in and through an existing conceptual and linguistic grammar. The Catholic has a mystical vision of the Virgin Mary because of the cultural conditioning that he has received through his tradition. If religious experiences are so conditioned, they do not represent some kind of pure sensation immune to examination through the lenses of philosophy and the sciences.Proudfoot takes on the very common contention that reductionism in the study of religion is always problematic and to be avoided. He distinguishes between two different types of reductionism. Descriptive reductionism, he notes, is methodologically incorrect--it involves attempting to ignore the subject's own interpretation of her experiences in endeavoring to craft a scholarly description of those experiences. Any legitimate description of an experience must be situated in the context of the subject's own descriptive framework. Explanatory reductionism, however--that is, the practice of investigating the actual causal mechanisms behind an experience, which may or may not coincide with the subject's interpretation--is, according to Proudfoot, not only permissible, but is a necessary part of all scholarly investigation.A very important work for philosophers of religion and scholars in religious studies.

Wayne Proudfoot investigates the relatively brief and tumultuous development of the idea of "religious experience." He finds difficulties in the way it has been described, resulting from efforts to render religion invulnerable to critique. Many have tried to show that religious experience is a primary phenomenon, like feeling or sensation, completely prior to thoughts or beliefs. In other words, they have claimed that religious experience is in no way a product of our own intellectual processes, but comes to us much like sensation or feeling. But Proudfoot proves that religious experiences are in fact shaped by the beliefs we bring to them. They are not independent of our mental processes. A Catholic's experience of Mary, for example, is conditioned by what is expected of a religious experience of Mary. To a certain extent religious experiences are created by what we believe will be experienced.Proudfoot's insight bears directly on comparative religion, an activity in which nearly all modern pagans take part to some degree. His opponents, such as Schleiermacher and Otto, who claimed religious experience was prior to beliefs, deplored "reductionism" in comparative religion. In other words, they railed against attempts to "reduce" religious experience to psychology, social forces, evolutionary imperatives, or anything else other than religion itself. Since religious experience is entirely sui generis, or unable to fit into any other category, it can only be explained in its own terms. In this way, they attempted to fend off critics of religion. According to them, comparative activity could only be conducted within the framework of specific religions and their theologies. However, Proudfoot attacks this position. He says that an ambiguity has been exploited as a protective strategy. "Reductionism" is not all of one kind. Rather, there are two types: descriptive and explanatory.Descriptive reductionism means describing a subject's experience in terms other than those that may be plausibly ascribed to that subject. A Buddhist's experience can only be described in Buddhist terms, not in Hindu terms, Born Again Christian terms, Secular Humanist terms, or any other besides Buddhist terms. Any attempt otherwise will end up describing something other than the experience. For this reason, such description is unacceptable. Schleiermacher, Otto, and the others were quite right to deplore this tactic. Descriptive reductionism is to be avoided.However, explanatory reductionism is different. This type of reductionism does not aim to describe the experience, but rather to explain how it came to be identified by the subject as a religious experience. It explains why the experience had significance for the subject, and why it was seen as religious. A Celtic druid might encounter a great oak in the Rockies, feel an overwhelming presence, and take this as a communication from a Gaelic god. Why did this druid identify the experience as a divine presence, rather than a moving but secular appreciation of nature? Why did the druid feel it was a Gaelic god, rather than a North American Indian spirit, or some other power? These sorts of questions ask how it comes about that a religious experience is identified as such. The druid may explain it by saying that the Gaelic god wanted to send a message. But an analyst reviewing the subject's experience is under no obligation to agree. The analyst may point to the druid's religiosity, and explain that it was therefore more likely that the experience would be interpreted religiously than if the subject were an atheist. Likewise, the analyst may point to the druid's Celtic path, and explain that the experience was more likely to be viewed through a Celtic lens than any other. Thus, the druid's beliefs shaped the experience. Such an analyst reduces the explanation to terms other than the subject's own, yet does not do an injustice to the experience itself. The analyst offers a contrasting point of view, but does not thereby misrepresent or destroy the subject's point of view. Thus, this type of reductionism is permissible. Schleiermacher, Otto, and the others correctly assessed the faults of descriptive reductionism, but extended this attack to all reductionism whatsoever. This, according to Proudfoot, was a grave error. Their mistake still influences comparative religion today.Through this type of reasoning Proudfoot topples traditional arguments against reductionism, by revealing them to be over-extended and in service of a protective strategy that silences all criticism. The understandings of religious experience offered by the likes of Schleiermacher and Otto go with it. In their place, he suggests how we ought to explicate "religious experience":the distinguishing mark of religious experience is the subject's belief that the experience can only be accounted for in religious terms. It is this belief, and the subject's identification of his or her experience under a particular description, which makes it religious. (p. 223)In other words, we do not need to look for some fabled sui generis experience, irreducible to any other explanation. Rather, we should look at the subject's beliefs about the experience. In particular, we should take note of the subject's belief that the only way to fully account for it is by recourse to religious terms. If we go back to the example of the druid's experience in the Rockies, we can identify it as a religious experience because the druid did not find it sufficient to explain it as a deeply moved appreciation of nature. It was not enough, from the druid's point of view, to explain it in any other way than as a divine communication. The analyst need not agree with the druid, but need only attend to the druid's beliefs. That is enough to identify it as a religious experience.The analyst may then go on to describe the experience. For this task, the terms used must be plausibly ascribable to the druid. It cannot be described using terms or beliefs that the druid does not likely possess. To do so would be to describe something other than the experience.Finally, after a satisfactory description has been achieved, the analyst may offer an explanation for the experience. Again, at this point is permissible to use terms other than those of the subject. The task of explanation is as follows:What must be explained is why they understood what happened to them or what they witnessed in religious terms. This requires a mapping of the concepts and beliefs that were available to them, the commitments they brought to the experience, and the contextual conditions that might have supported their identification of their experiences in religious terms. (p. 226)As pointed out before, the druid in the Rockies might explain the experience as caused by the will of the Gaelic god, but the analyst might just as well put forward that the experience was at it was because the druid was likely to view the experience in religious and specifically Celtic terms. To do so, the analyst would have to show that these beliefs were available to the druid, identify the druid's explanatory commitments, and bring to bear the conditions that supported the druid's conclusion about the experience. This is what the analyst ought to do in order to explain religious experiences, according to Proudfoot.This is the central message of Proudfoot's book. In order to demonstrate his points, he roves over a range of disciplines, including comparative religion, hermeneutics, psychology of emotion, and philosophy of mind. His style is hard-nosed, un-romantic, and at times difficult, but it is also rewarding. Through this strict, multi-disciplinary approach, Proudfoot sheds light on areas that have long been (often deliberately) shrouded in darkness. With this book, religious experience re-enters the realm of understanding.

The intensity, privacy and ineffability of religious experience are widely attested and would appear to place this special kind of experience beyond scientific inquiry. Wayne Proudfoot is not discouraged. In this fascinating book, he treats religious experience as a natural phenomenon capable of study. He also explores its historical context to explain why the idea has been so influential in religious thought over the past two centuries. One reason for its success among apologists continues to be its use as "a protective strategy" to block sceptical inquiry into religious belief.Acknowledging the reality and importance of religious experience does not entail endorsing the claims made by a believer. "Were we to require the existence of the object or the accuracy of the subject's embedded claim as a criterion for the identification of an experience as religious, then the very existence of religious experiences would depend on the existence of God, Krishna, or other objects people have claimed to experience." A similar position is taken in anomalistic psychology (see, for example,  Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience ), where research into, say, alien abduction does not require us to share the abductee's beliefs about aliens.Proudfoot gives the following example: "If someone is afraid of a bear, his fear cannot be accurately described without mentioning the bear. This remains true regardless of whether or not the bear actually exists outside his mind. He may mistakenly perceive a fallen tree trunk on the trail ahead of him as a bear, but his fear is properly described as fear of a bear." This kind of experience is easily reinterpreted: the perception of the object ahead as a bear is one explanation, which can be replaced by a better explanation when more information becomes available (an example of Bayesian reasoning). In the case of a religious experience, of course, there's often a strong pull away from naturalistic explanations and towards interpreting the events as signs from a higher power. The history of religion is replete with conversion experiences involving the labelling and explanation of anomalous bodily states and activities in spiritual terms.This example helps distinguish between two types of reductionism. Descriptive reductionism misidentifies the emotion, and the experience is described, wrongly, as fear of a log when it's still fear of a bear, even though the bear doesn't exist. Explanatory reduction accepts the experience as described but still seeks a naturalistic explanation. Clarity on this issue is useful when rebutting the familiar charge of reductionism, not least because the "neglect or refusal to distinguish between descriptive and explanatory reduction constitutes the core of an apologetic strategy."Alongside these psychological and linguistic insights, Proudfoot provides an historical sketch of the intellectual climate at the end of the 18th century, which is especially relevant to understanding religious experience. Philosophers such as Kant and Hume (and before them Spinoza) were challenging traditional justifications of religious beliefs, and the scientific revolution itself was showing no signs of slowing down. Proudfoot suggests that the "turn to religious experience was motivated in large measure by an interest in freeing religious doctrine and practice from dependence on metaphysical beliefs and ecclesiastical institutions and grounding it in human experience."A key figure in this movement was the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who wanted to avoid "conflict between religious doctrine and any new knowledge that might emerge in the course of secular inquiry". This might seem a tall order given the breadth and pace of that inquiry into all areas of knowledge, but he was remarkably, and unfortunately, successful.According to Proudfoot, "Schleiermacher was the earliest and most systematic proponent of the autonomy of religious experience and of religious judgments and doctrine." Religion is governed by its own rules, about which science has nothing to say, an idea which predates by a couple of centuries Stephen Jay Gould's notion of "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). There are still some scientists who make use of this strategy, which is endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. (In  Evolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist , Robert Asher tries to reconcile his evolutionary and Christian beliefs by appealing to the NOMA strategy.)The immediacy of a religious experience leads many believers into thinking that it's "not dependent on other cognitions" - a confusion that lies at the heart of Schleiermacher's programme and which continues to this day (people continue to "see" ghosts, for example, unaware of the power of top-down processing). If "feeling is the deeper source of religion" (as William James put it), then not only can science be sidelined but philosophical and theological formulations also become secondary. Both sceptics and organized religion should be concerned, for different reasons.Strength of feeling and sincerity of belief are, however, no guarantees of truth. Witnesses "in a courtroom often testify sincerely regarding what they have seen, only to have evidence introduced that shows them to be wrong." (For more, see  Eyewitness Testimony  by Elizabeth Loftus.) Intuitions are not self-authenticating but "corrigible beliefs" capable of revision.In her history of swearing ( Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Mohr, Melissa (2013) ), Melissa Mohr distinguishes between a word's denotation and its connotation. Swearwords, for example, don't have to mean very much in order to have an emotional impact. Similarly, for a non-believer observing someone in thrall to a religious experience, the term "God" is not a proper noun that refers objectively to one being among others: it functions as a placeholder without any representational role. A placeholder "is prescriptive and evocative rather than descriptive or analytical" and its "opacity maintains a sense of ineffability." No wonder tackling religious experience from a sceptical point of view is like nailing custard to a wall.In  The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion is True , John Loftus observes that religious experience is "the most psychologically certain basis for believing in a particular religion or divine being." This in part may explain its continued power in an age of unprecedented scientific knowledge. Indeed, since science often properly emphasizes uncertainty, and since much of science is beyond the grasp of even the well-educated, the appeal of apparently unmediated religious experience is only likely to increase for those without sufficiently sceptical defences.Wayne Proudfoot shows that religious experience "has become the chief strategy for protecting religious beliefs and practices from the possibility of conflict with the conclusions of science." The attraction for the apologist is clear: this tactic ensures "that the subject's own explanation of his experience is not contested". The task for the non-religious is equally clear: to raise a sceptical voice to contest such claims where there is good reason to doubt the truth of these beliefs or the wisdom of these practices. Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and ExperienceEvolution and Belief: Confessions of a Religious PaleontologistEyewitness TestimonyHoly Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Mohr, Melissa (2013)The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion is True