Abstract

The purpose of this article is to make yet another attempt to defend and restate as convincingly as possible the argument for God's existence based on religious experience. In its simplest form the argument is an inference from the fact that men experience God to the conclusion that God exists. Experience is always experience of something, it is alleged, and if that something is of the kind to have independent, objective existence and if a given experience is really of that thing, then that thing must exist. The clearest sort of case, where this type of existential argument from experience is used, is that of normal perception: a man sees a tree, therefore the tree exists. The deduction works because the man's seeing is non-delusive. He sees the tree because it is there to be seen.