ABSTRACT
A small group of people have a religious experience, but their reports are not believed. As it was in St Thomas time, so it has been for nearly two thousand years. Many individuals and groups have claimed many different types of religious experience some people have accepted their reports but many others have been sceptical. It is all too easy to talk of religious experience in general, but there are many different types. Richard Swinburne provides a helpful analysis. Swinburne's analysis suffers from the defect of making religious experiences appear very similar to ordinary experiences. He has little feeling for what Otto described as the numinous or an apprehension of the wholly other. Religious experiences normally occur within faith rather than act as a foundation for faith. Reports of religious experiences may point to the existence of a creator God if the existence of such a God is, in the absence of such reports, not improbable.
