Title:	The New Frontier of Religion and Science
Authors:	Hick, John
Keywords:	Psychology, Religious
Issue Date:	2006
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	The central focus of this book is on the religious or transcendental or numinous experience of ‘ordinary’ people, whether they think of themselves as religious or not. According to all the published research approximately a third of the population have either once or more than once had such experiences. In the United States a 1975 National Opinion Research Center inquiry in which people were asked ‘Have you ever felt as though you were close to a spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?’ found that 35 per cent of those asked said that they had, and a Princeton Research Center (a subsidiary of Gallop Polls) survey in 1978 also recorded 35 per cent. In Britain at the same time a National Opinion Poll of a sample of 2000 reported 36 per cent. (For detailed tables for different age groups, religious affiliations, educational backgrounds, etc., see Hay 1982, ch. 8). In the majority of cases each individual reported only one such experience in the course of their life, although some reported several. All such surveys are limited in scope and are also subject to problems of definition. But nevertheless it does seem likely that something like a third of these populations has experienced awareness of a ‘spiritual’ dimension to reality of which we humans are sometimes, usually only fleetingly, conscious.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/73026
ISBN:	9780230507708
Appears in Collections:	History

Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.