Argument from personal experience

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The argument from personal experience is an argument for God's existence on the basis of a personal religious experience. This argument is particularly common among certain branches of Christianity where things like possession and levitating have been reported.



  • Personal experiences are subjective, and are not evidence available to every person.
  • Arguments from personal experience ask that others accept these argument on inferior grounds than the person giving their personal account. One person being told that another person was given a vision of "God and Heaven" is significantly weaker evidence than firsthand visions of "God and Heaven".
  • Daniel Dennett has argued that one key to the success of arguments from personal experience is that they are personal. One could invent a story and present it as a factual account of their personal experience and one must necessarily point out that the teller of this personal experience is delusional, a liar, or allow the story to stand as evidence. As generally speaking calling somebody a delusional liar is considered bad form, the stories are often accepted as true.

v · d Arguments for the existence of god
Anthropic arguments   Anthropic principle · Natural-law argument
Majority arguments   Argument from admired religious scientists
Moral arguments   Argument from justice · Divine command theory
Dogmatic arguments   Argument from divine sense · Argument from uniqueness
Transcendental arguments   God created numbers · Argument from the meaning of life
Scriptural arguments   Scriptural inerrancy · Scriptural scientific foreknowledge · Scriptural codes
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