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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Mystical encounters with the supernatural are results of religion in Africa, not sources of it.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.William James's 'Varieties of Religious Experience' demonstrates that mystical states exhibit noetic authority that precedes and generates doctrinal frameworks, not the reverse.
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    • 2.Across documented African traditions, founding figures like Ngunza in Kongo religion received visionary encounters that constituted new religious movements, making experience causally prior to structure.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Anthropologist Victor Turner's fieldwork among the Ndembu shows that liminal ritual experiences generate symbolic systems rather than merely expressing pre-existing ones.
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    • 2.If mystical encounters are fully determined by prior religious frameworks, the historical emergence of new African religious syntheses through prophetic experience becomes inexplicable.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.In the traditional African setting, spirituality is a heightened form of religiosity reached by certain individuals who have mystical contacts with the supernatural.
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    • 2.The encounters follow from the religious framework rather than giving rise to it.
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