The nature of religious experience from the viewpoint of William Alston and its application in education

This study was conducted to investigate the nature of religious experience in William Alston's viewpoint, and the possibility of its application in education. In terms of Alston, religious experience is a kind of perception that in addition to having a common structure with sensory experiences, it plays an effective role in justifying the religious beliefs. The distinction between Alston's perspective and other philosopher's is the necessity of having (internal) immediate intuition to God. Therefore, in this respect, communication and interaction with God is considered as the aim of human creation, trying to justify the true beliefs with a trust-based approach. This research seeks to answer basic questions including epistemological principles and the nature of religious experience, the consequences of its application in education and criticisms to Alston's view. It seems that this approach can be useful in religious experience in at least three domains: educational objectives, and teaching–learning methods that resort to spiritual intelligence. It was a theoretical and philosophical study and its methodology was descriptive–analytical. Alston's opinions and the translated articles and books on this subject were studied as the primary and secondary sources related to this topic. The criticisms against Alston's view on similarities between religious and sensory experience were investigated. The result of this study was a model that was suggested based on some propositions -with the aim of having a spiritual connection with God and by considering the principles of sublimity, the perfection of the student and the universality of the possibility of experience. Such an approach requires educators with spiritual qualities that pledged to the methods like discussion and the participation of students in the education process.