This talk will consider the implications for religion of Ray Billington’s contention that“Experience is the only evidence there ever could be, and if experience seems to be contradicted by some philosophical or scientific theory, then it is the theory which must be changed or abandoned”.
The talk will explore the difference between experience of the interior, subjective, kind, and experience of a shared exterior world that is usually described as objective. I will seek to identify not only the value of both types of experience but also the dangers arising from their confusion. I will argue that the twinned human experiential capacities require different formative strategies for optimal development, for which strategies some settled idea of purpose is necessary. I will suggest purposes, and will reference my own spiritual experience in a discussion of the successes and failures of organised religion in the inculcation of particular experiential capacities.
Having set religion its purpose, the talk will consider whether discharging this purpose does or does not require religion to make implausible ontological claims that transgress on the territory of objective experience, thus contradicting Ray Billington’s proposition. The answer here is not obvious. Can we have experience of concepts, for example?
Finally, I will examine a different question: whether religion, to meet its purpose, must wield powers over the lives of individuals that are unacceptable in modern society. In the answers to these questions may lie the best philosophical advice to current or potential adherents of religion!