A Case of Scheler vs. Skepticism: Religious Experience

Question

This concerns a problem I myself have with Scheler, and am not sure where to go with it. Scheler argues in On the Eternal in Man that one cannot dismiss religious experience (or as he calls it, "revelatory experience") wholesale. That is, revelatory experiences are sui generis, and are to be judged on their own internal standards, and not to be dismissed on the standards we apply to sensory experiences. His argument is a classic phenomenological move, in treating different kinds of experiences as having their own "sense" or "logic" to them.

The problem is, and this is probably a leftover empiricist bias on my part, are religious experiences really that different from other experiences that we cannot judge religious experiences from a standpoint external to them? My concern is that Scheler is deeming religious experiences as unique and irreducible to any other kind of experience on a priori grounds that may not be formulated clearly enough (at least it isn't crystal clear to me).

However, Scheler has a point: if we dismiss religious experience wholesale, is this move not unlike the radical skeptic who dismisses sensory experiences?

Question: Is there another way between the dichotomy of Scheler's view that religious experiences have an a priori integrity to them, and a skepticism that rejects all such experiences? If so, how would one formulate this "third way" while recognizing the merits of both Scheler's position and the skeptic's? How do we balance the need to meet different experiences on their own terms while still wanting a synoptic view and comparison of them?

Answer 1

An important nitpick: skeptic atheists don't "dismiss" religious experience, as such. We accept that someone had an experience, we just don't accept the explanation someone gives for that experience.

If you classify religious experiences as unique in principle, this seems to already accept (or at least strongly bias you towards) a supernatural explanation for them.

If this classification is a conclusion, that may be reasonable (in theory, anyway). But if that's your starting point, that would just be a very flawed epistemology.

If we care about believing as many true things and as few false things as possible, we should consider various explanations and determine which one best explains the data. This may involve:

• Not (starting from) classifying religious experiences as unique.
• Considering what those experiences actually demonstrate. If you just see some light, that doesn't really tell you much of anything.
• Considering how they relate to other non-religious experiences. People have had experiences outside of any religious context that they consider comparable to religious experiences they've had, which brings into question the religious element.
• Considering how this would be compatible with religious experiences from other religions or from those who hold religious beliefs that contradicts yours. If someone has a religious experience which validates to them that apples are evil, and someone else has one which validates that apples are good, then all that would show is that those experiences are unreliable for determining what's true.
• Considering how any given explanation fits into reality as a whole, as we observe it.

With these (fairly basic) considerations, one should reasonably conclude that religious experiences are supernatural, if they were indeed supernatural. But we don't seem to have gotten there yet.

Answer 2

I don't know about Scheler, but your question seems to allow me to respond anyway. But my answer focuses on your final question "How do we balance the need to respect different experiences while still wanting a synoptic view of them?"

The fundamental issue is the question in what ways, if any, religious experiences are special. Obviously, they must involve reference to a God or at least some supernatural phenomenon. And they are certainly special to the experiencer. So the question becomes whether we should also treat them as special.

Certainly, there's room for scepticism about which, if any, of them actually come from God. But it is also clear that discussing the issue is unlikely to be constructive.

But that may be because the self-certifying certainty they carry with them makes people very persuasive when they talk about them. So they are clearly special not only in their association with religious beliefs but also in the importance that those who have the experiences attribute to them.

The tricky bit is that religious experiences often carry religious beliefs with them.

(At this point, I wonder whether Scheler includes all "mystical" experiences as religious? Or only those that specifically involve God? That might make quite a difference because ineffable experiences arguably won't lead to beliefs.)

Still, one has to respect other people's beliefs, even if one does not accept them and even if they are not held on rational grounds. (But such respect needs to be mutual.)

So part of the answer is that insofar as the experiences lead to effable beliefs, it should not be a superhuman project to develop some sort of synoptic view of them.

Indeed, in a way, given that the experiencer, presumably, is living in a world that contains other people, we have to develop a way of living with them.

Things get more complicated when religious experiences lead to actions - and many of them do.

However, I don't see a problem with the orthodox approach which is not to intervene unless the person is a danger to themselves or others.

In fact, I'm not sure it is entirely clear that, if someone is a danger only to themselves, one has a right to intervene. But it is hard not to.

I am sure that if someone is a danger to others, one has a right to intervene. If people I am close to or myself were threatened, I think I would not worry whether I had a right or not. (But self-defence trumps most other rights.)

Often these beliefs don't result in direct harm, but do lead to mission to spread the word. Those are tricky, but again, it is a question of whether there are harmful results.

Underlying all this is, of course, the question of what is harmful and who decides, which is very difficult indeed. But it is a problem in other spheres as well, not just in the case of religious experiences, so perhaps it doesn't need an answer for the purposes of this question.