The so-called ”argument from religious experience’ plays a prominent role in today’s analytical philosophy of religion. It is also of considerable importance to richard Swinburne’s apologetic project. However, rather than joining the polyphonic debate around this argument, the present paper examines the fundamental concept of religious experience. The upshot is that Swinburne neither develops a convincing concept of experience nor explains what makes a religious experience religious. The first section examines some problems resulting mainly from terminology, specifically Swinburne’s use of (...) appear-words as success-verbs. While these problems might be resolved by a recurrence to the observer, the second and third part of our paper present problems not so easily resolved: namely, that Swinburne’s concept of experience as conscious mental events is too broad and inaccurate for its role in the argument given ; and that Swinburne does not even attempt to figure out which features of an experience, when present, turn an experience simpliciter into a distinctly religious experience. Section 4, in conclusion, outlines possible reasons for this unusual and remarkable inaccuracy in conceptualisation. (shrink)

Can religious experience justify belief in God? We best approach this question by splitting it in two: Do religious experiences give their subjects any justification for believing that there is a God of the kind they experience? And Does testimony about such experiences provides any justification for believing that there is a God for those who are not the subject of the experience? The most popular affirmative answers trace back to the work of Richard Swinburne, who appeals to the Principle (...) of Credulity and the Principle of Testimony. Since then, development of his line of reasoning has gone in a number of distinct directions. Here I propose yet another development. I argue first that the Principle of Credulity is false on the grounds that it has several implausible commitments. I then offer a Phenomenal Conservative perspective on the epistemology of religious experience suggesting a categorically affirmative answer to but a nuanced answer to which allows the possibility of reasonable disagreement about religious experience. (shrink)