Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief / / Jerome I. Gellman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Gellman, Jerome I.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)

Jerome I. Gellman observes that the mystic experience of God's presence, a sense of having direct contact with the divine, often compels belief in God's existence. On the basis of widely accepted principles connecting appearance with reality, Gellman contends, the claims people make of having experienced God show that belief in God is strongly rational, meaning that such claims are sufficient in number and variety to support a line of reasoning making it rational to believe that God exists and irrational to deny God's existence.Gellman considers challenges to his thinking based on epistemological grounds and challenges growing out of the diversity of religious experiences across the range of world religions. He thoroughly evaluates reductionist explanations of apparent experiences of God and finds them incapable of invalidating his view.Finally, he directs his attention to the two most compelling arguments against the existence of God: the charge that the idea of a perfect being is logically incoherent, and the threat to theism based on the existence of evil, in both its logical and probabilistic forms. Until and unless stronger objections come along, he concludes, personal experiences of God constitute sufficient evidence of God's existence.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. “Experience of God” -- 2. The Argument -- 3. On Not Experiencing God—Objections to the Argument -- 4. God and Religious Diversity -- 5. Reductionism -- 6. Evidence against God’s Existence I -- 7. Evidence against God’s Existence II -- Bibliography -- Index