Interpreting vs. Explaining: A Rejoinder to Robert Segal

Robert Segal writes that the "religionist interpretation of religious experience is not separable from the religionist explanation of religious experience." He writes that naturalism "translates" the experience into a "reinterpretation". While it is perfectly appropriate for naturalism to provide an explanation of an experience, for it to "translate" a religious experience into a naturalistically "reinterpreted" form almost certainly results in a reinterpretation that radically changes the character of the experience as originally described by the religious subject.