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WHAT DO WE EXPERIENCE IF WE HAVE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?

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انگلیسی

WHAT DO WE EXPERIENCE IF WE HAVE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?

[Article]

Peter Antes

Leiden

Brill

The starting point of the paper is the historical fact that people who have special forms of religious experience such as seeing saints, angels, gods or goddesses can always say whom they saw. They never met anyone totally unknown to them. The question is why. The answer that the paper proposes and invites to discuss is that having experience means to identify what is happening with what is known as pattern of interpretation. The knowledge of those patterns is due either to socialisation or to further studies in favour of, or against, those patterns, yet, it is unlikely that something totally new will ever be discovered through those forms of religious experience. The starting point of the paper is the historical fact that people who have special forms of religious experience such as seeing saints, angels, gods or goddesses can always say whom they saw. They never met anyone totally unknown to them. The question is why. The answer that the paper proposes and invites to discuss is that having experience means to identify what is happening with what is known as pattern of interpretation. The knowledge of those patterns is due either to socialisation or to further studies in favour of, or against, those patterns, yet, it is unlikely that something totally new will ever be discovered through those forms of religious experience.

2002

336-342

Numen

49/3

1568-5276

Peter Antes

10.1163/156852702320263954

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y