What Is Religious Empiricism?

“Religious experience”, in its broadest sense, is either an innerexperience or an objective event that has religious meaning for thesubject. In philosophy of religion, however, a narrower meaning of theterm is at issue: an experience taken by the subject as experientialawareness of God; in which one directly perceives the presence of God(or a divine being). Religious empiricism is an approach which tries tojustify or reconstruct religious beliefs on the ground of “religiousexperience”. In this paper, after a short review on the historicalbackground of this attitude, I will propose two different meanings forreligious empiricism. Then, considering Schleiermacher's and James'sviews, I will discuss religious empiricism in its contemporary andperhaps most important formulation developed by Swinburne andAlston. Religious empiricism could be understood as a religiousreaction to the criticism of religion in the modern time. It tries to stayand act within the framework of modern philosophy that emphasizes onthe significance of experience. In their intellectual efforts, theadvocates of this stream have expanded the boundaries of the notion ofexperience. On the other hand, “religious experience” has a differentmeaning and function for each of aforementioned philosophers. So, toevaluate this approach we need to understand these differences indepth.