Is religious experience evidence for God? (Philosophy HL)

The big idea: Millions of people say they have felt the presence of the divine. That feeling is real to them — but does it prove anything to anyone else?

This micro asks the hard question: can a private experience count as evidence that God, or the sacred, is really there?

The challenge is that a religious experience is felt from the inside, by one person, and can't be replayed or checked. So we're asking whether that kind of private evidence can support a claim about what's actually real.

One influential answer comes from the American philosopher who took religious experience seriously as a source of knowledge.

Alston: experiencing God is like perceiving the world: William Alston argued that experiencing God is a lot like ordinary perception. You trust your eyes that there's a tree in front of you, even though you can't step outside your own senses to double-check. So — Alston says — a person who experiences the divine is entitled to trust that experience in the same way. If it's reasonable to believe your senses without outside proof, it's reasonable to believe a religious experience too.

Checkpoint — Alston: In one line: experiencing God is like seeing a tree — you're entitled to trust it, even without outside proof. Hold that — the objections come at exactly that comparison.

Two challenges press on Alston's case — one about understanding, one from the science of the brain.

The understanding problem, and the brain reply: Can you even understand it without having had one? Someone who has never felt a religious experience may hear the reports and simply not grasp what's meant — the way describing colour to someone born blind falls flat. If the evidence only makes sense to those who already have it, how far can it convince anyone else?

The 'it's just brain activity' reply. Neuroscientists can now link religious experiences to activity in particular parts of the brain, and can even trigger similar feelings by stimulating the brain directly. So maybe an experience of 'the divine' is really just the brain doing something — no God required.

Go further — higher-level insight: Notice the neat symmetry. The 'it's just brain activity' reply cuts both ways: ordinary seeing ALSO runs on brain activity, yet the tree is real. So brain activity by itself can't prove a religious experience is empty — it can only remind us that having a physical cause doesn't decide whether the experience points at anything real. Spotting that both sides share the same brain machinery is a top-band move.

Checkpoint — the objections: In one line: maybe you can't understand it without having one, and maybe it's 'just the brain' — but the brain reply also fits ordinary seeing, so it doesn't settle it.