Download or read book The Varieties of Religious Experience written by William James and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."
Download or read book Religious Experience written by Wayne Proudfoot and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1987-09-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is religious experience to be identified, described, analyzed and explained? Is it independent of concepts, beliefs, and practices? How can we account for its authority? Under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? Wayne Proudfoot shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices are presupposed by the rules governing this identification of an experience as religious. Some of these characteristics can be understood by attending to the conditions of experience, among which are beliefs about how experience is to be explained.
Download or read book The Epistemology of Religious Experience written by Keith E. Yandell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-11-25 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguing against the notion that religious experience is ineffable, while advocating the view that it can provide evidence of God's existence, this text contends that social science and nonreligious explanations of religious belief and experience do not cancel out the force of the experience.
Download or read book Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God written by Harold A. Netland and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many Christians, personal experiences of God provide an important ground or justification for accepting the truth of the gospel. But we are sometimes mistaken about our experiences, and followers of other religions also provide impressive testimonies to support their religious beliefs. This book explores from a philosophical and theological perspective the viability of divine encounters as support for belief in God, arguing that some religious experiences can be accepted as genuine experiences of God and can provide evidence for Christian beliefs.
Download or read book The Study of Religious Experience written by Bettina E. Schmidt and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned scientist Sir Alister Hardy approached the complex field of religious and spiritual experience in a similar disciplined and scientific manner in which he approached natural science. Asking people from the public to send him accounts of first-hand experiences with spiritual or religious powers, he established the Religious Experience Research Centre that has remained at the forefront of the academic study of religious experiences. This book will take his work forward and show how to study religious and spiritual experiences in the 21st century. The Study of Religious Experience aims to show how a range of disciplines - including anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, theology, biblical studies and history - approach the topic of religious experience, how this approach is applied and what contributions they make to the study of religious experience.
Download or read book Religious Experience Reconsidered written by Ann Taves and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-28 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the sciences of the mind can advance the study of religion The essence of religion was once widely thought to be a unique form of experience that could not be explained in neurological, psychological, or sociological terms. In recent decades scholars have questioned the privileging of the idea of religious experience in the study of religion, an approach that effectively isolated the study of religion from the social and natural sciences. Religious Experience Reconsidered lays out a framework for research into religious phenomena that reclaims experience as a central concept while bridging the divide between religious studies and the sciences. Ann Taves shifts the focus from "religious experience," conceived as a fixed and stable thing, to an examination of the processes by which people attribute meaning to their experiences. She proposes a new approach that unites the study of religion with fields as diverse as neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to better understand how these processes are incorporated into the broader cultural formations we think of as religious or spiritual. Taves addresses a series of key questions: how can we set up studies without obscuring contestations over meaning and value? What is the relationship between experience and consciousness? How can research into consciousness help us access and interpret the experiences of others? Why do people individually or collectively explain their experiences in religious terms? How can we set up studies that allow us to compare experiences across times and cultures? Religious Experience Reconsidered demonstrates how methods from the sciences can be combined with those from the humanities to advance a naturalistic understanding of the experiences that people deem religious.
Download or read book The Neuroscience of Religious Experience written by Patrick McNamara and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-06 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technical advances in the life and medical sciences have revolutionised our understanding of the brain, while the emerging disciplines of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience continue to reveal the connections of the higher cognitive functions and emotional states associated with religious experience to underlying brain states. At the same time, a host of developing theories in psychology and anthropology posit evolutionary explanations for the ubiquity and persistence of religious beliefs and the reports of religious experiences across human cultures, while gesturing toward physical bases for these behaviours. What is missing from this literature is a strong voice speaking to these behavioural and social scientists - as well as to the intellectually curious in the religious studies community - from the perspective of a brain scientist.
Download or read book Thoughts on Religious Experience written by Archibald Alexander and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Selected Writings written by William James and published by Everymans Library. This book was released on 1995 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brother of novelist Henry James, William James held views embodied in the tendency to subordinate logical proof to intuitive conviction. He was a vigorous antagonist of the idealistic school of Kant and Hegel, and an empiricist who made empiricism more radical by treating pure experience as the very substance of the world. Taking writings from The Principles of Psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism and The Meaning of Truth amongst other publications, this edition offers a comprehensive selection of James's writings.
Download or read book Women s Religious Experience RLE Women and Religion written by Pat Holden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the early literature concerning women’s religious experience is about exceptional women; those who diverged from the traditional female role to become nuns, mystics or charismatic leaders. While women were permitted to be prophets and visionaries they rarely played an important part in church organisation. This paradox is explored in this book and a number of themes emerge: in particular, the dominance of male symbolism within the great religions. The question of whether men and women apprehend religious systems and signs in the same way is also explored. In considering the contemporary scene, the book is able to look at the ways in which religion affects the lives of women in different societies and in different historical periods; this gives us a larger view of the ways in which our own perceptions of ‘femaleness’ have been constructed out of the religious world views of both the past and the present. First Published in 1983.
Download or read book Contemporary Varieties of Religious Experience written by Lynn Bridgers and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1902, William James's Varieties of Religious Experience is considered a classic in religious studies and the psychology of religion. But how has James's classic study weathered decades of development in psychology and behavioral sciences? Do the assertions about religious experience in the Varieties still ring true in light of neuro-cognitive and neuro-hormonal research, resiliency studies, studies of temperament, and traumatic studies? By extending William James's own research throughout the century since its publication this volume seeks to answer those questions. In doing so, it revolutionizes our understanding of James's own view of psychology and reveals the extraordinary value of James's perspective for religion, psychology, and spirituality today. In doing so, it offers vital insights for pastoral care and faith development at both the individual and congregational level. From the Introduction by James Fowler: Drawing on the authenticity of her own experience, Bridgers carries us into a remarkably clear and well documented account that traces William James's evolution as a psychologist, philosopher, and a deeply engaged inquirer into the dynamics of spiritual development and transformation... This book has a major contribution to make. Bridgers's study illumines the horizons of contemporary research in the study of religious experience, in all its varieties, and in the context of globalization.
Download or read book Handbook of Religious Experience written by Ralph W. Hood and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HANDBOOK OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE is generally recognized as the classic book on the psychology of religious experience. It is the gold standard against which other books in this field are measured. This monumental volume examines in great breadth and depth the nature, roots, ecology, expressions, explanations, and facilitational modes of religious experience. Ultimately, religious experience is central since it is the source, context, and validation of all religion, all religious activities, and all theories of religion. Scripture and sacrament are basically religious experiences. Religious experience is basically the encounter with God in its highest form.
Download or read book The Religious Experience written by Charles Daniel Batson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1982 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book William James and Phenomenology written by James M. Edie and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Varieties of Religious Experience written by William James and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 1902 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Varieties of Religious Experience is certainly the most notable of all books in the field of the psychology of religion and probably destined to be the most influential [one] written on religion in the twentieth century," said Walter Houston Clark in Psychology Today. The book was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in June 1902. Reflecting the pluralistic views of psychologist-turned-philosopher William James, it posits that individual religious experiences, rather than the tenets of organized religions, form the backbone of religious life. James's discussion of conversion, repentance, mysticism, and hope of reward and fears of punishment in the hereafter--as well as his observations on the religious experiences of such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Whitman, Emerson, Luther, Tolstoy, and others--all support his thesis. "James's characteristic humor, his ability to put down the pretentious and to be unpretentious, and his willingness to take some risks in his choices of ancedotal data or provocative theories are all apparent in the book," noted Professor Martin E. Marty. "A reader will come away with more reasons to raise new questions than to feel that old ones have been resolved."
Download or read book Religious and Spiritual Experiences written by Wesley J. Wildman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the value of religious and spiritual experiences within human life? Are we evolutionarily programmed to have such experiences? How will emerging technologies change such experiences in the future? Wesley Wildman addresses these key intellectual questions and more, offering a spiritually evocative naturalist interpretation of the diverse variety of religious and spiritual experiences. He describes these experiences, from the common to the exceptional, and offers innovative classifications for them based on their neurological features and internal qualities. His account avoids reductionistic oversimplifications and instead synthesizes perspectives from many disciplines, including philosophy and natural sciences, into a compelling account of the meaning and value of religious and spiritual experiences in human life. The resulting interpretation does not assume a supernatural worldview but incorporates religious and spiritual experiences into a positive affirmation of this-worldly existence.
Download or read book William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience written by Jeremy Carrette and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-05 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new companion to William James The Varieties of Religious Experience offers contemporary responses to James's seminal book from key international experts.
