Admitting You're a Sinner

[vulcanlogician]

He approaches religious experience alone (as the title suggests)... first he circumscribes the topic. He does his best to remove cultural precepts from religious experience and evaluate it accordingly. First he argues that religious experience has "morbid origins" (aka physiological causes) but should not be dismissed on that account. He makes some good points. I found the passage from Theologia Germanica that I quoted to Steve in there.

I'll have to dig up the quote, but he makes a case for the pragmatic utility of religious feelings to carry one through difficulties when a strictly clinical interpretation of one's circumstances may not be capable of spurring the requisite enthusiasm to overcome tribulations.

The third lecture is rather weak. It tries to make the case that religious feelings (for all we know) are caused by extant entities. He says that the holder of religious feelings can sense the presence of such an unseen entity in the same way a holder of a magnet may sense metal which he cannot perceive with his senses.

I'm into a part where he begins to differentiate "healthy minded" religious individuals from sick souls; he thinks that both types of religious individuals seek a method to overcome pessimism. That's where I'm at in the book (Lecture IV-V).

https://csrs.nd.edu/assets/59930/williams_1902.pdf