The claim that religious experience can tell us nothing about god, because it is all in the mind strikes at the heart of the problem of religious experience. The study of religious experience, which took off with William James' definitive study in 1902, has put the topic at the forefront of current theological debate, with the fields of neuro-theology and psychology making considerable contributions. Despite the potentially decisive challenge which religious experience has been forced to face, its significance for religious believers remains undisputed. As Peter Donovan observes: 'Awareness of God, oneness with God, the sense of his presence...is vital for religious belief. It has kept it alive in the past and makes it plausible for millions of people today...What such experiences do is generate a sense of knowing God.'
             To establish the truth of this claim, a clear understanding of religious experience is crucial. Religious experience is essentially an encounter with the divine which serves to increase the person's knowledge and understanding of God (or other manifestations of the divine). However, there are many varieties of religious experience – personal, private and individual, mystical or visionary experiences, corporate charismatic experiences, indirect or interpretative anti-realist experiences; intuitive awareness of God, and many others. William James' study indentified four characteristics which he suggested were shared by all genuine religious experience: noetic (revealing new knowledge); ineffable (inexpressible); passive (not generated by the one experiencing the event); and transient (not long lasting). Rudolph Otto famously coined the term 'numinous' to encapsulate the feelings of awe and wonder generated by religious experience. Above all, however, for our purposes, religious experience generates a sense of presence and closeness to Go
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