The Epistemology of Religious Experience

Keith Yandell argues against the notion that religious experience is ineffable, while advocating the view that strong numinous experience provides some evidence that God exists. He contends that social science and other nonreligious explanations of religious belief and experience do not cancel out the evidential force of religious experience.

This book addresses fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion. Can religious experience provide evidence for religious belief? If so, how? Keith Yandell argues against the notion that religious experience is ineffable, while advocating the view that strong numinous experience provides some evidence that God exists. He contends that social science and other non-religious explanations of religious belief and experience do not cancel out the evidential force of religious experience. The core of Yandell's argument concerns the formulation and application of an appropriate principle of experimental evidence. A final chapter considers the relevance of nonexperimental, conceptual issues. An attractive feature of the book is that it does not confine its attention to any one religious cultural tradition, but tracks the nature of religious experience across different traditions in both the East and the West.