NOTE : THESE QUESTIONS ARE BASED ON THE COURSE NOTES FOR RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE THAT CAN BE FOUND HERE. SEE ALSO HERE, AND HERE.
THIS TEST (AND MANY OF THE OTHERS ON THIS SITE) SHOULD ALSO BE OF USE TO STUDENTS FOLLOWING OTHER ADVANCED LEVEL RELIGIOUS STUDIES COURSES.
BEAR IN MIND THAT THESE TESTS ARE MEANT TO BE DIFFICULT. FOR THIS REASON THEY SHOULD BE ATTEMPTED AFTER THE AFOREMENTIONED NOTES HAVE ALREADY BEEN CAREFULLY REVISED. HAVING SAID THAT, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ERRORS MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE DURING THE CREATION OF THE TEST. PLEASE USE THE CONTACT FORM TO LET ME KNOW IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE SPOTTED ONE.
THE LANGUAGE USED IN ALL BLOG POSTS AND IN THE FOLLOWING TEST HAS NOT BEEN SIMPLIFIED. THIS IS BECAUSE EXPANDING YOUR PERSONAL VOCABULARY IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WISH TO ACCESS THE HIGHER GRADES AT ADVANCED LEVEL.
FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS, SCROLL DOWN TO THE END OF THIS BLOG ENTRY.
1. A____________ experience is one which causes a person to completely change their previously held basic beliefs.
a. corporate
b. conversion
c. numinous
d. mystical
2. A _____________ experience is one which happens to a group of people at once in the same place.
a. corporate
b. conversion
c. mystical
d. numinous
3. A ____________ experience is one which involves a sense of oneness with or non-separation from God or some higher power.
a. numinous
b. corporate
c. conversion
d. mystical
4. A _____________ experience is one which involves an overwhelming sense of awe and wonder which results from finding oneself in the presence of God.
a. mystical
b. conversion
c. numinous
d. corporate
5. An example of a corporate religious experience is…
a. The Buddha achieving enlightenment or Nirvana
b. The Toronto Blessing
c. Moses at the Burning Bush (see Exodus Chapter 3 of the Bible)
d. St Paul on the road to Damascus
6. An example of a numinous experience would be…
a. Moses at the Burning Bush.
b. The children of Medjugorje seeing and hearing the Virgin Mary
c. The Buddha achieving enlightenment or Nirvana
d. A Hindu yogi experiencing the non-separation of atman (the soul) and Brahman (the universal Spirit)
7. The theologian who claimed that religious experiences are numinous was…
a. Steven Katz
b. Rudolf Otto
c. Thomas Aquinas
d. John Hick
8. A problem with the claim that religious experiences are numinous is…
a. That Christians do not typically have this kind of experience.
b. That numinous experiences do not occur in the Bible
c. That some non-theistic experiences cannot be categorised this way
d. That not all religious experiences include visions.
9. Another problem with the claim that religious experiences are numinous is…
a. That not all religious experiences are ineffable
b. That not all religious experiences are transient
c. That not all religious experiences involve revelation
d. That not all religious experiences involve fear.
10. William James found that mystical experiences often do not last. The word he used to describe this is…
a. passive
b. noetic
c. ineffable
d. transient
11. William James also found that religious experiences involve the disclosure of new knowledge. The word he used to describe this was…
a. noetic
b. transient
c. passive
d. ineffable
12. If all mystical experiences share the four features mentioned in the previous two questions, James concludes that this could mean...
a. that these experiences prove that God exists.
b. that these experiences suggest that there may be some wider, spiritual environment which we are not usually aware of.
c. that these experiences confirm the claim that they are always numinous in character.
d. that these experiences always follow from years spent in regular prayer or meditation.
13. A second conclusion that could be drawn from James’s research is that…
a. mystical experiences are genuine, even though they are private.
b. because mystical experiences are private, they do not prove that God exists.
c. there may be a common core to the mystical experiences reported in the major world religions.
d. there is probably an entirely physiological basis to mystical experiences.
14. Which of the following is NOT a criticism of James’s research?
a. He overlooks descriptions of Eastern religious experiences which are neither transient or passive e.g. the Buddhist experience of Nirvana which sometimes involves a permanent transformation that is actively pursued through meditation.
b. James completely fails to acknowledge the positive effects that mystical and other types of religious experience have on people that have had them.
c. James does not consider the possibility that ineffable experiences may be very different from each other e.g. the ineffable Brahman may be very different from the ineffable Allah.
d. As mystical and most other types of religious experiences are private, they cannot be used as evidence for God or some higher power because it is impossible to confirm or deny them.
15. Two philosophers who claimed that religious experiences are a kind of wish-fulfilment and a product of human urges or desires that we are not always aware of are…
a. Marx and Freud
b. Freud and Katz
c. Katz and Marx
d. Katz and Maus
16. Which of the following is NOT a possible non-religious explanation for corporate religious experiences?
a. They are projections from the human psyche of unconscious needs and desires e.g. the children of Medjugorje experienced visions of the Virgin Mary because their society had been torn apart by war and they needed to feel protected by a mother figure.
b. The people who have these experiences were said by Freud to be expressing and projecting an unconscious death drive out onto the world.
c. They are products of mass hysteria.
d. They result from clever manipulation and encouragement within the group by someone who is a trusted authority figure e.g. a guru or prophet.
e. In cases like the Toronto Blessing, the Freudian id has been given permission to express itself by the priest (who represents the superego).
17. TRUE or FALSE? Conversion experiences frequently involve the brainwashing of the person who converts.
18. TRUE or FALSE? Starbuck’s study of conversion led him to conclude that this type of experience typically involves the successful resolution of an identity crisis similar to that often experienced by older people who are close to death. .
19. TRUE or FALSE? Michael Persinger’s research on the temporal lobes suggests that religious experiences are ‘all in the mind’ in the sense that they tend to arise in people with overactive temporal lobes.
20. TRUE or FALSE? Persinger designed a ‘God Helmet’ that stimulated the temporal lobes of those that wore it, inducing in a majority an unsettling experience of a ‘sensed presence’, that there was a being of some sort in the room with them.
21. TRUE or FALSE? Support for Persinger’s perspective comes from the research of neuroscientist Professor V.S. Ramachandran who is an expert in brain disorders. He found that his patients with epileptic seizures sometimes had intense religious experiences.
22. Which of the following is NOT a possible criticism of Persinger’s research on the temporal lobes?
a. Attempts to replicate Persinger’s study by other researchers have failed to produce the same results.
b. A study of Hindus practising yoga found that parts of the brain other than the temporal lobes were involved in their religious experiences e.g. there was found to be decreased activity in the parietal lobes. This entails a loss of sense of self that is often reported in mystical experiences.
c. A lot of people who say that they feel in the presence of God are not scared by the experience like many of the people who wore Persinger’s helmet. Their experiences would also not conform to Otto’s description of the numinous experience which includes ‘awe inspiring terror’ as well as awe and wonder.
d. The God Helmet did not work on Richard Dawkins when he wore it.
23. TRUE or FALSE? More recent research on the use of psychedelic substances like psilocybin in clinical trials involving patients who are struggling with a terminal cancer diagnosis, addiction, and depression, suggests that the mystical experiences induced by these substances can have profoundly transformative, therapeutic benefits that tend to confirm William James’s view that – in the absence of being able to make conclusive judgements about the veridicality of such experiences – they should be be judged by their ‘fruits’, their beneficial effects.
24. TRUE or FALSE? fMRI scans of the brain activity of patients under the influence of hallucinogens in the aforementioned clinical trials are different from scans taken of advanced meditators. This lends additional confirmation to philosopher Steven Katz’s claim that drug experiences are not the same as mystical experiences.
ANSWERS
- b – conversion
- a – corporate
- d – mystical
- c -numinous
- b – Toronto Blessing
- a – Moses at the Burning Bush
- b – Otto
- c
- d
- d- transient
- a- noetic
- b
- c
- b
- a
- b
- False – there is no psychological test that can distinguish between a brainwashed and non-brainwashed person. This leads most academics to reject the brainwashing explanation for some conversion experiences.
- False – Starbuck’s study of conversion led him to conclude that this type of experience typically involves the successful resolution of an identity crisis similar to that often experienced by adolescents.
- True – though sceptically inclined, Persinger has stated in interviews with two journalists (Ian Cotton and John Horgan) that he is not trying to ‘dismiss God’ but simply trying to understand the part of the brain that is implicated in religious experience.
- True
- True
- b – It was brain scans of Buddhists doing meditation and Carmelite nuns in prayer that revealed this, not Hindus practising yoga. Note also in relation to d that although Dawkins did indeed try Persinger’s helmet and it failed to work on him, his experience is not especially significant because it is that of one individual.
- True
- False – the fact that brain scans of Christian Carmelite nuns in prayer are similar to those of Buddhist meditators (a discovery made by the neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman) further suggests that Katz may be incorrect about there being a lack of a common core to mystical experiences, though this commonality can only be said to exist at the neurological level.