A religious experience can be described as one which enables God to be seen as a direct object of that experience. It is a non-empirical occurrence which can appear to be supernatural and drives the recipient to become closer to God although there are no ways to prove it. The experience is usually undergone by an individual which makes it difficult to prove as it is personal to that person. There is even evidence to show that members of the bible underwent religious experiences both in the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament Abraham convinced that he had encountered God through the burning bush and in the New Testament God is experienced through human life. Evidently there are many different forms of religious experience, classified by their end result. There are Mystical experiences, which involve the spiritual recognition of truths beyond normal understanding. There are Prayer experiences which are brought about during reflection and meditation. There are experiences which can be life changing usually called conversion experiences.

Religious experience as an argument for the existence of God is an a priori argument. I

An experience which is life changing is often referred to as a conversion experience. The conversion usually transforms a non believer into a believer and leads them to adopt a religious way of life. The advantages of trying to prove the existence of God from a conversion experience is the fact that the change in a person’s life is evident and the change can be verified by the people who are close to that person. The problem lies in the fact that the cause of the conversion cannot be proven. There is no proof to say that the conversion experience was brought about by God. The change in the persons life could be caused be psychological reasons. There could be a shift in the focus of a person’s thought which happens to rest on a religious view but this was not necessarily brought about by God himself. It is often thought that a person sees the present wrongness in their life and feels that the change they have undergone was inspired by the divine, but there could just be a shift in the persons morals, where they feel forced to change their lifestyle. The change could also be a social conversion which is taking place slowly in the subconscious, followed by a rapid and sudden conscious experience, often called ‘subconscious incubation’. This does not obviously lead back to the existence of God.

Swinburne believes that different types of religious experience can lead to the conclusion that God exists but since each is perceived in a different way, the conclusion that God exists may be more easily reached in one than another. He put the five different t

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