Part II. The Problem with Religious Experience

By the close of Part I, we covered a lot! We said that the exclusivist can save the revelatory view, but only with a complete non-experiential defense readily on hand for a particular religion. That’s a hefty prerequisite. Another view called universalism is on the table, and already we have one reason to prefer it over exclusivism. If the universalist strategy succeeds, it’ll do so without needing a full case for a religion. Thus, it could also preserve Plantinga and Alston’s original hope – that religious experiences could be useful within a case for Christianity, and not enjoyable as evidence only after the work is done. But there’s a reason why I decided to discuss exclusivism first. Our look at universalism is going to have some fun twists and turns. A worthy deep dive, no doubt, and if you’ve already read Part I then props to you! Just be sure to buckle up for this last showdown.

Human Error in Describing Experience

I’ll start by delivering on a promise I made in Part I. Let’s have a more nuanced discussion of what it means for two experiences to “conflict/contradict.” I mentioned this can be a complicated question. That’s because “being contradictory” is a property that can only be applied to statements, strictly speaking. But experiences are not statements! They are just a moment in our conscious lives – the raw and direct ways that things seem to you in a particular moment. Once we have an experience, then we can describe it to ourselves and others, thus translating that experience into a bunch of statements. Our descriptions can be more or less accurate, capturing the raw content of the experience better or worse. But likely some of the content is always lost during this translation stage, and prior to it, it’s less obvious how two experiences might “conflict.” I do think the raw content of experiences can be compared, and so explanations could still be made for how conflict might arise this basic level. But whatever the case, when many of us talk about “conflicting experiences,” we are using shorthand for “contradictory, as-accurate-as-possible descriptions of experiences.”

All that to say, it must be admitted that in this gap between having an experience and forming a description, there is room for subjectivity. Two people having the same experience could give differing descriptions. As you can guess, universalists try to leverage this fact – as they should – to explain away contradictions in the reports people give about their religious experiences. Insofar as our descriptions fail to track how the experience actually felt, we might be attributing contradictions where there are none, or seeing consistency where there is actual conflict. All of this seeds doubt into on how accurately we can put our conscious lives into words.

That said, I think optimism here is the right attitude. We seem to be getting by aright. I can tell you about an experience I had at some restaurant, and if you visit it later, you probably won’t come back wondering what planet I was on. Granted, describing an encounter with the Ultimate Reality is bit harder than describing a Taco Bell. But to say that all attempts are hopeless would only advance the skeptical view. The universalist strategy needs there to be ample room for human error, sure, but not so much room that religious experiences can no longer be trusted. Even as a skeptic, I am optimistic that believers could form accurate-enough descriptions of at least most of their religious experiences. Universalists and exclusivists alike, if they want to succeed, would do well to agree with me. Yes, it does aid the universalist that this translation stage isn’t perfect. Human error in forming descriptions could indeed to be the source of some conflict. Still, to avoid skepticism, the universalist must carry on assuming that the translation stage, however imperfect and coarse-grained, can generally be trusted.

Human Error in Shaping Experience

We aren’t done yet, though. The source of human error doesn’t stop at forming descriptions. Subjectivity can enter in even before the post-experience translation stage, during the experience itself. Remember when I said experiences have both a subject and objects? Well so far, I have mostly been speaking as if objects have the active role in forming an experience, and subjects are a passive audience. But this picture is far too simple. Met with the same object, different subjects will notice or miss different facts about it. Some facts won’t even have a chance to be noticed, as subjects will lack the right faculties. Ultraviolet light, being outside the visible spectrum for humans, has been missing from every experience I’ve had of the sun! And of the facts that can and do become noticed, subjects will color them with their own concepts, expectations, and overall psychology. To again quote Hick, “Such a recognition of the variety in our human response to the Transcendent depends upon the epistemological principle propounded by St Thomas, ‘Things known are in the knower according to the mode of the knower.’”¹ (27)

The takeaway here is important. Given the real-time filtering and interpretation we do during every experience, it’s more accurate to say that both us subjects and the object have active roles. In every religious experience, there would be contributions from both the human and the Ultimate Reality. Exactly who would be doing the most work is debatable, but clearly neither gets all the credit. This means for every accurate description of a real religious experience, at least some of the statements will be based on the Ultimate Reality’s contribution, and others on the human’s contribution.

A Contradictory Ultimate Reality?

So when contradictions arise, who’s contribution is to blame? Most believers (exclusivist and universalist alike) will quickly point the finger at humans. They argue that the Ultimate will never present Itself in ways that are self-refuting. If there are contradictions, it must be our fault. Absent the distorting effects that us humans introduce into mystical experiences, there would be no disagreement in their content. We are the source of contradictions, not the Ultimate. That’s a doctrine common to perhaps all notable religions, and it’s a sensible principle to hold. How about we give it a name – the “consistency principle” – and definite it more rigorously as follows: All statements that accurately describe the Ultimate Reality’s contribution in religious experiences do not contradict.

Sound good? Hope so. Later on, this principle will become very important. So important, in fact, that I’d rather us not have to take it as an assumption. Here’s two quick arguments I’d give for the consistency principle. First, suppose it was false. Suppose that the Ultimate Reality is presenting itself in radically different ways to people. If that’s what’s going on, then we’d have very interesting situation. The claim of many religious that the Ultimate Reality is constant and changeless would be shot. If the Ultimate Reality turns out to be a conscious being(s) Who is aware of Their actions, we would question Their benevolence – likely no one good would play such tasteless prank. By knowingly presenting Themself in vastly different ways to humanity, it seems like They would be deceiving humanity and pitting us against each other theologically. A good God wouldn’t cause needless deception and conflict. Taken together, that’s one argument for the consistency principle: A contradictory Ultimate Reality would violently clash with the teachings of likely all notable religions.

Here’s an even better argument, though: If the Ultimate was Contradictory, we’d have no way of telling this situation apart from the one put forward by the skeptic. There would be no detectable difference between a case where religious experiences irresolvably seem to contradict, and another where religious experiences are all accurate encounters of a contradictory Ultimate Reality. Both explain the phenomena, sure. But one is clearly more preferrable by Ockham’s razor, and the other – despite making religious experiences out to be accurate – is likely incompatible with every current religion, which is a perplexing combination. If the Ultimate Reality’s nature really was contradictory, we would be more warranted just being a skeptic. Given these two arguments, likely no believer would have any interest in the hypothesis of a contradictory Ultimate Reality. I think that’s a good enough defense of the consistency principle for our needs. We will carry on believing that if religious experiences contradict, the Ultimate Reality isn’t to blame. The fault lies only in the human contribution.

Here’s another principle worth making explicit: For a theological claim to be directly backed by religious experience, it’s got to be a statement accurately describing the Ultimate Reality’s contribution in that experience, not the human’s contribution. Call this the “ultimate-only principle.” Suppose a Christian says their belief that the Ultimate Reality is a personal being is based on real religious experience. If they’re right, then that statement must be correctly describing the portion of their experience that was from the Ultimate Reality. It can’t come from the parts added or warped during the human process of interpretation. That’s the ultimate-only principle.

Universalism’s All or Nothing Standard

Okay! We’ve now got the consistency principle and the ultimate-only principle. These two rules, when combined with the universalist thesis that real religious experiences happen under all notable religions, quickly start to cause trouble. If you don’t see where I’m headed with this, you definitely will after an example. Notice that according to Christian universalists, Buddhists are having real religious experiences too. That includes those Buddhist experiences that suggest the Ultimate Reality is impersonal. Yet, Christians experience the Ultimately Reality as personal. Both of these claims cannot be based directly on religious experience. That’s because to be based in religion experience, a claim must be a part of an accurate description of the Ultimate reality’s contribution (the ultimate-only principle), and the Ultimate reality can never make contradictory contributions (the consistency principle). Thus, the Christian and the Buddhist cannot both back their claims with religious experience. Logic dictates that at most, only one of them can. But to the universalist, it’s actually worse than this. The universalist will have to go further and conclude that in this case, neither the Christian nor the Buddhist is backed by religious experience in their theological claim.

After all, what would it mean for a universalist to say that only the Buddhist or only the Christian is backed by religious experience on this claim? This would be a logically consistent position, sure. But if a universalist goes this route, suddenly their view collapses into exclusivism. When it comes to the personal or impersonal nature of God, they would have to say only the Christian had a real religious experience, or only the Buddhist had a real religious experience. We’ve already discussed the pros and cons of exclusivism, and the hefty price for its success. No need to repeat that here. But if a defender of the revelatory view wants to stick with the universalist program, they will have to say that for competing theological claims, no one religion enjoys the unique backing of religious experience. It’s all or nothing. On the personal/impersonal nature of the Ultimate Reality, neither the Christian’s nor the Buddhist’s claims can be based on religious experience. That claim must be a human contribution from each. Call this the all-0r-nothing principle.

Universalism’s Dilution of Religious Experience

Okay. We’re done setting everything up. Enjoy a sigh of relief. Finally, I can make my main objection to the universalist strategy, and you can decide how silly it is. I’ll put the objection as a deductive argument the best I can. I’m sure there is a more elegant way to do this. Nevertheless, here we go:

1) If a claim is supported by religious experience, it must be based on the Ultimate Reality’s contribution in that experience. (ultimate-only principle)

2) In all real religious experiences, no contributions made by the Ultimate Reality can be contradictory. (consistency principle)

3) Thus, in any contradictory set of claims, at most one can be supported by religious experience. (from 1 and 2)

4) No one religion offers experiences more real than those had under any other religions. (universalist thesis)

5) Thus, wherever the claims of notable religions contradict, none of the claims are supported by religious experience. (all-or-nothing principle, from 3 and 4)

6) Almost no claim about the Ultimate Reality is universally agreed on by the notable religions.

Conclusion: Thus, for almost all claims made by notable religions about the Ultimate Reality, none of them can be supported by religions experience. (from 5 and 6)

That’s the argument. I’ll refer to it as the “dilution argument.” However complex the syllogism might sound, its conclusion is just this: religious experiences can tell us almost nothing about the Ultimate Reality. Now, that sounds really close to the skeptic’s view. And with a bold enough premise six (perhaps one that says “No claim about the Ultimate Reality is universally agreed on by the notable religions”) we indeed would end up with the skeptic’s view as the conclusion.

I commend universalists when they say real religious experiences happen under all notable religions. But in their excitement, universalists end up diluting the Ultimate Reality’s share in these experiences. As the contradictions pile up, less and less theology can be credited to the Ultimate Reality, and more and more must be pinned on human imagination. The result is that almost all theology becomes human-made. Not only is this highly heretical in many religions, but it also lands us in a similar place that exclusivism did. If most of theology is not from the Ultimate Reality, then it’s not based on real religious experience. That’s not to say such theology is false – just that if it’s true, it can only be argued for on non-experiential grounds. Turns out exclusivists and Universalists seem have about the same work cut out for them. They both need a defense for their particular religion that at no point relies on religious experience.

Experiences of Parts, not the Whole

No so fast, though. Let’s give the universalist a chance. There’s a popular counter-objection that would be unfair to ignore. You might already be thinking of it. The idea is that religious experiences can be of different parts of the Ultimate Reality, rather than of the entire whole. Take the famous parable from ancient Southern Asia, which narrates a group of blind men as they come across an elephant. Surprised, they start inspecting the elephant by touch. One man reaches for the tusk, another for the trunk, a third pats a leg, and a fourth man finds the elephant’s ears. Being blind, they each assume what they feel is true of the whole elephant. So, the men walk away debating whether the elephant was a sharp spear (tusk), a snake (trunk), a palm tree (leg), or a waving fan (ears). “Each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!”² The message here is that Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and so on, could be giving true descriptions of different parts of the Ultimate Reality, rather than mutually exclusive descriptions of the whole. As William Alston puts it in reference to the personal/impersonal conflict, “Why shouldn’t the same Ultimate Reality have both personal and impersonal aspects? You and I do. We have both weight and size, and also thoughts and emotions.”¹ (47)

I think this is a clever and insightful response. Yet, any honest universalist would have to admit it only goes so far. First, there is a worry that many claims made by notable religions just must be claims about the whole. For the blind men, it was logically possible their descriptions were each of different parts of a whole, and indeed that was the case. But for some theological claims, that might not be a logical possibility. Suppose one of the blind men said, “This thing is eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient.” Attributes like that seem a bit harder to limit to a single part. Sure, God having both personal and impersonal aspects might sound plausible. But what about being both triune and not-triune? Both conscious and not conscious? Primarily self-revealed to Christians and to the Muslims? How these claims could be true of only one part of the Ultimately Reality is more perplexing.

But even the universalist can pull this off and explain how every conflicting claim only applies to one piece of a whole, there’s another problem. We’d still have to wonder: Why is the Ultimate Reality consistently only showing one side of itself to each religious tradition? You’d think Buddhists could experience the personal part of the Ultimately Reality, and likewise Christians with the impersonal. Do we have an Ultimate Reality that always presents itself in radically different ways to different faiths, never allowing one tradition to see what the other does? If so, this is sounding identical to the hypothesis that the Ultimate Reality just is contradictory. We already discussed that one earlier. As argued, if we’re going to think the Ultimate is contradictory and reject the consistency principle, we might as well be skeptics. No current religion would have us, and the skeptical view explains the same situation more favorably by merits like Ockham’s Razor. I’m going to assume you reject this hypothesis. And if it turns out that instead, all these traditions are only seeing one side of the Ultimate Reality due to human contributions made in religious experiences, well then we’re right back at the dilution argument. The parts-not-whole argument doesn’t go far either way.

One Last Stand for Universalism

After all of this, an exhausted universalist might just bite the bullet. They might agree with the dilution argument and say that almost no theological claims are backed by religious experience. Still, whatever’s left is surely better than nothing. At the very least, all notable religions agree that Something is out there, right? Can we at least trust this one nonconflicting experience of “Something,” as vague as that may be?

This bullet-biting, last-ditch universalism is a highly interesting position, I think. But I worry people won’t understand how bleak it is. What’s left are only the claims about which no notable religions disagree. That’s a very small number of claims. Experiences that paint the Ultimate as conscious, personal, primarily self-revealed to one tradition, loving and good, a presence or an absence, and so on – perceiving these attributes must all be products of human imagination, says the bullet-biting universalist. The only thing that isn’t disagreed about (and hence the only thing supported by religious experience) is that there is Something mystical out there. C.S. Lewis coined the phrase “Mere Christianity” to represent the minimal set of claims necessary to consider Christianity true. Perhaps the singular claim that “Something mystical is out there” might be thought of as mere religion. And however disappointing it looks when compared to less vague theological claims, a universalist might understandably think this is worth saving. Sure, the dilution argument may have drained the Ultimate’s contribution from everything else. But all notable religions agree in mere religion – that Something mystical is out there. And that can still be supported by religious experience.

I’ll end this paper with three short challenges to this last-ditch universalism. First, even an idea as vague as “Something mystical is out there” might turn out controversial. Some traditions, such as some schools of Buddhism, see an absence as the Ultimate Reality. To them, there is perhaps Nothing (which is very much not Something) “out there.” As Mark Webb explains, “Some subjects of religious experiences report experience of nothingness as the ultimate reality.”³ Considerations like these tempt me to push for a bolder Premise six in the dilution argument – that among the notable religions, there are no universally agreed on theological claim about the Ultimate Reality. A friend of mine pointed out, however, that there is a logical puzzle if Buddhists are literally experiencing nothing. I defined experiences as being of an object, and literal nothing must mean “no object.” Given this puzzle and also my criminal lack of knowledge on Buddhist theology, I cannot endorse this as a counterexample to the claim that “all notable religions hold Something mystical exists.” But if such a counterexample can be given, then last-ditch universalism would fail. Until then, we can at least say Buddhism makes “mere religion” less clearly unanimous than universalists might hope.

A second challenge is that, bluntly put, this last-ditch universalism is pretty heretical. At least, it likely is under traditional understandings of most notable religions. Not only does calling any claim beyond the Ultimate’s bare existence a “human construct” severely demote the work of theologians, but it also implies that the Ultimate has presented Itself equally across all religions, revealing nothing extra or special to any particular faith. These two ideas won’t jive well under traditional understandings of most religions. Plus, things only get worse for theists, who now must wonder why God is being so shy. Why is the Ultimate only choosing to contribute the fact that They exist, and nothing more? Surely God would know if presenting so little of Themself will trigger overactive imaginations, and spiral us humans into wildly different theologies. It’s almost like God is intentionally teasing us in this scenario. The problem of Divine Hiddenness suddenly becomes very relevant here, and we might again question such a God’s benevolence.

The third challenge brings us full circle. It goes like this: Last-ditch universalism is less immune to the quick sort of argument I noted in Part I of this discussion. I’m referring to the popular jab that all so-called religious experiences are plausibly caused by just natural phenomena, and we ought to prefer that explanation to a religious one. Since a universalist who accepts the dilution argument already believe so much of religious experience is human imagination, it’s not so far of a leap to just credit all of the experience to humanity. Such universalists are, in a way, closer to a naturalist skeptic than a full supporter of the revelatory view. Most of the work of explaining religious experiences away has already been complete. The only thing left for these universalists to categorize as “human contribution” is just the idea that Something mystical is out there. And if everything else could be imagined, why not this?

Conclusion

To recap, we have seen Alston’s and Plantinga’s successful argument that both religious and sense experiences can tell us about the world, unless and until there is reason for doubt. However, in the case of religious experience, there is a reason for doubt: the fact of religious diversity. This reality poses a serious epistemic threat to the view that religious experiences can reveal anything about the Ultimate Reality. Two possible remedies – universalism and exclusivism – were proposed.

Exclusivists preserve religious experiences as usable as evidence, but only after a complete non-experiential case for a particular religion. Thus, it loses Plantinga’s original hope for an experiential defense of religious belief. Meanwhile, universalism dilutes the Ultimate Reality’s contribution so greatly that almost all theology becomes human construct. This leaves us at a place very close to the skeptical view, if not identical to it. And either way, universalists are left in a similar place as exclusivists. Believing almost all theology is human made, they’ll have to craft a complete non-experiential defense also for those claims. In the end, I think the more intuitive and defensible view is the skeptical one. Religious experience cannot be used in a defense for a particular religion. And until we have such a defense on non-experiential grounds, such experiences can tell us nothing about the Ultimate Reality either.

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