# How I explain my religious experiences (long Opening Post) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2009, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297 "2009-11-12T08:54:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/61 "2009-11-14T00:37:24Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Ever see a global warming rally? For that matter have you ever heard songs such as John Lennon’s Imagine, which could be called a atheistic worship song. Global warming isn’t atheism any more than driving a car is christianity. And stating there’s no god is not the same as _worshipping_ the, er, no-god, any more than saying “God exists, but he’s a heinous bastard of evil” is worshipping your diety. > [@kanicbird](#): > > It depends on where you place them, lets go to the medical profession instead, Are you depending on the Dr for a medical cure? Or are you depending on the Holy Spirit to guide you to the person that He want to heal you through? Do you credit medical science to man’s ability or to God working through His children. If you have to move the golaposts to make your point, then your point was wrong, then, wasn’t it? But then, I don’t worship my doctor any more than my mechanic - because my doctor _is_ a mechanic. The machine he’s working on just has more squishy bits, is all. So if your example doesn’t work on mechanics, it doesn’t work on doctors, either. > [@kanicbird](#): > > Do you work to serve your boss, I do, but His name is Jesus, when I am sent by man to a jobsite, it is Jesus who I am working for and who provides my pay - through who He chooses. If you serve your boss, that is a act of worship. I work to get paid - I serve no one. Unless you worship every person you ever exchange money for goods or services with? Do you worship Walmart? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/62 "2009-11-14T00:51:02Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I work to get paid - I serve no one. Unless you worship every person you ever exchange money for goods or services with? Do you worship Walmart? Jesus speaks of serving money as a master in Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13, so yes one can set money as a god instead of the boss. > [@](#): > > However, science (possibly all of science) could, in theory, be incorrect and illusory lies being propogated by a god. This is stated as explicitly happening in the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion. (Naturally, any such god doing this must be very very consistent about its lies, but it remains possible, at least theoretically.) I want to say that I am surprised that you did mention that this is at least possible. Science has the ability and has proven itself to dramatically change the world. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/63 "2009-11-14T00:59:56Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Jesus speaks of serving money as a master in Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13, so yes one can set money as a god instead of the boss. I’m pretty sure he’s talking about being _obsessed_ with money (which certainly happens to some people). I’m talking about paying a dude to give you a haircut. You’re exchanging money for a service - is that worship? In some ways you’re his employer while he cuts your hair. Is he worshipping you? Are you setting yourself up as a false god by paying case for a service? (This could limit you pretty bad once you realise you that buying anything is paying for the service of having it shipped into the area.) > [@kanicbird](#): > > I want to say that I am surprised that you did mention that this is at least possible. Science has the ability and has proven itself to dramatically change the world. Well, I personally can change the world by picking up a rock and moving it to the other side of the yard. Science is just the same thing writ large, is all. And it’s simply a fact that the FSM supposedly manipulates scientific results with His noodly appendage; I’m merely reporting the fact. (Note that actual atheists don’t believe in the FSM; that’s the Pastafarians.) More generally, an honest atheist must _allow_ for the posibility that there is an Evil Wizard monkeying with our reality, Matrix-style. We just don’t believe it’s _actually happening_ - there’s no evidence that suggests we should believe it, so we don’t, any more than we do in unicorns or FSMs. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/64 "2009-11-14T01:15:57Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > I also invite theists to explicitly state whether I _might_ be right (repeat, _might be_, not _ **am** right_, since you wouldn’t be a theist in that case!). Can you bring yourself, when you next pray, to seriously question whether you _are actually_ talking to yourself? When you next sit in church, can you genuinely entertain the notion that there actually _are no gods_ and you are engaging in a ritual for its own sake? Could you, even more bravely, rationally examine the _possibility_ that there is no heaven at the funeral of a loved one? I have explicitly stated that God _might_ be responsible for my experiences, and that your worldview may be right while mine is wrong. Do you return that courtesy? > > For what it’s worth, I still consider many of the parables of Jesus to contain sound moral principles by which I try to live my life. Indeed, I would find them _more_ compelling if it turned out that he was a **man** who effectively committed suicide by deliberately making quasi-revolutionary statements under a brutal Roman occupation in order to appear to fulfil Old Testament prophecies and thereby ensure his legacy after successfully bringing about his own execution. I would not object to being called a “Christian Atheist”, and would enjoin other atheists to identify the _precise_ aspects of the theistic worldview that they reject instead of issuing a blanket “all of it”. If you get to write a long OP, then I get to write a long response, particularly since I’ll be drawing in some issues from that other thread we’ve been working on, which seems to have run its course. I’ll tackle the two paragraphs quoted above first. I can entertain the possibility that there is no God easily and I do so frequently and, after all, I was an atheist for the first 23 years of my life. And not just any atheist; I was a particularly headstrong and outspoken atheist, somewhat similar to how **Der Trihs** is now, and as I always say, you can verify that by searching for posts I made in religious debate in this forum during my first few years here. (Roughly 2001-4) So I do consider the possibility, yet whenever I consider I keep returning to the same train of thought, which goes roughly like this. Let us suppose, for a moment, that Jesus Christ was a great and brilliant teacher, but that he was not actually God and was physically just an ordinary human being. Let us suppose that all of his claims to be God were either part of an enormous self-delusion or an elaborate campaign of deception. Let us suppose that he somehow tricked both his followers and large crowds of observers into believing that he had the capacity to perform miracles. Let us suppose that his words and actions were immense enough that people did flock to him by the thousands and eventually the supreme authorities in his area took an interest in him. Let us suppose that after they arrested, tried, and killed him, some combination of hallucination and fakery lead many people to believe that he had resurrected from the dead. Now all of that _could_ have happened, I would never deny it. And it _could_ also be true that some of the events in his life were distorted or exaggerated in the gospels, written 30-60 years after his death. All within the realm of possibility. But I always feel that it would be highly unusual and strange if all that happened while simultaneously he was one of the greatest teachers in human history. There’s much less internal tension and contradiction in a tale of a great teacher who’s also a great person than in the tale of a great teacher who’s a lousy person. Further, of course, the story of Christianity goes on after Jesus dies. Next come the apostles. They surely believed in the resurrection firmly and worked hard to convince others of it. And as [N. T. Wright has written about at length](http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm), the apostolic view of the resurrection could not have been copied from current Jewish or Pagan beliefs, because it just doesn’t match up. So there’s more tension in the issue of why the apostles would believe in the resurrection. Next come the first generations of Christians, the church fathers, the martyrs, and on and on. And so, if I am to believe the materialist view, then I have to believe that every vision was a hallucination or a deception, every miracle a fake of some sort, and so on. Plus, given how often mystical events were experienced or verified by large groups, I’d have to believe in a number of large conspiracies and hypnosis and all kinds of other things, in order to completely explain away all of it. And I’ve only just begun to study these issues in the last year or so, and I’ve no doubt that I’ll learn much more about it in the years to come. So again, the materialist explanations _could_ have happened, but the more I learn the higher the improbabilities get. In the final analysis, though, it makes no practical difference to me in terms of what I do. I find the moral teachings of Jesus so great that I will follow Him no matter what. Even if he was completely wrong about his claims to godhood, even if there’s no God and no afterlife, even if whatever crank inspired the Prophet Mohammed was actually right, I would still follow Jesus. And if at the moment of death no one and nothing appears before me, I won’t have any regrets. Now as for the scientific claims made in your OP, my position hasn’t really changed from what I said in the other threads. I simply don’t approach the issue the same way you do, and I don’t place my trust in the same people and institutions that you do. You mentioned that the word ‘skeptic’ derives from the Greek word for inquiry. Well, I like etymologies too, but they don’t prove anything. “Politic” once meant “wise and prudent”, but still our politicians don’t have those qualities. So I find that skeptics in general are not a terribly good source of balanced and unbiased inquiry. (I’m speaking of professionals like Michael Shermer, not of you.) So, for instance, look at Shermer’s columns in Scientific American. I’ve been reading them for about 10 years and nearly every one features a claim about how our psychological makeup was shaped by evolutionary pressures our ancestors faced hundreds of thousands of years ago. And you know what else? Not a single time can I recall him offering any evidence to back up those claims. Hence Shermer falls far short–ridiculously far short, of the standards that he’s always bragging about. Of course someone can insist that focusing on Shermer is small-minded, but I don’t see any changes when I expand the circle. Take the common veneration of peer review. If a skeptic honestly believed that human thinking was misshapen due to genes we got from our caveman ancestors, peer review would do nothing to fix the problem since the peer reviewers would have the same genes as everyone else. But all that’s really beside the point. The way that Shermer-type skeptics think is that they have some things they’ll readily believe in: trees, cows, Barack Obama, electrons, the asteroid belt, etc… Other things they won’t believe in: God, miracles, ghosts, extraterrestrials, etc… If I claim to observe something on the first list, Michael Shermer will accept my report without question. If I claim to observe something on the second list, he’ll go shopping around to every psychologist, psychiatrist, and neurologist he can find until someone sells him an explanation that explains away what I saw. In other words, his thinking is shaped by his biases as much as anyone else’s is, and is just as likely to lead to incorrect results. If he were to attack his own claims about evolutionary origins of social psychology and things like that with half ferocity that he launched at other people’s claims, they would not stand up for a minute. But you were really asking about is for instances of religious experience that I felt were unexplained. Here are a couple. [Blessed Alexandrina da Costa](http://www.blessed-alexandrina.com/page_booklet_english.htm) was a Portugese woman who lived from 1904 to 1955. From the age of 14 onwards she was paralyzed from the neck down and she spent her entire adult life in the hospital. Beginning in about 1930, she began having a series of visions that would continue throughout her life. She claimed that Jesus Christ spoke to her frequently, saying very specific things to her. Among other things, Jesus told her that she would have to suffer greatly for her sins and the sins of the world. In 1938 she began experiencing ecstasies during which she would move about an re-enact the suffering of Jesus. (She remained paralyzed the rest of the time.) Numerous doctors and psychologists observed her and all agreed that she was mentally healthy and that no part of her mental condition was a fake. [Jakob Lorber](http://www.jakoblorber.co.nz/) was an Austrian man who died in 1864. He grew up in poverty. At the age of 40 he was offered a job teaching music in a prestigious school, which would fulfill a lifelong dream of his. He was just getting ready to begin the job when he heard a voice speak, saying “take up a pen and write”. He wrote what he heard the voice saying for the next 25 years. Many observers came to watch him, and while no one else heard the voice, everyone agreed that Lorber appeared sane and healthy, and that what he recorded, totally about ten thousand pages, was very clear, organized, and forceful, not at all like a rambling internal dialogue put on paper. Those are the types of cases that I’m thinking about when I think about religious experiences that haven’t been explained. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/65 "2009-11-14T01:28:53Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Science generally has a starting premise of no God. No it certainly doesn’t. Science starts by examining evidence. If there was any evidence for any God, then there would be acceptance by scientists. > [@kanicbird](#): > > People depend on science and discovery for their hope of the future (prophecy), read about it in newspapers, journals, TV, internet which are scriptures, commentary and services, and it has it’s ‘priests’ and other public figures. Science is the explanation of the world that many Atheists depend on and look to. A completely false analogy. Anyone can be a scientist. Anyone can test science and see it work. Science is an explanation of the World, because it is true. There is only one version of the truth in science. Scientific theories are constantly tested. Religion is the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/66 "2009-11-14T01:32:39Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Do you work to serve your boss, I do, but His name is Jesus, when I am sent by man to a jobsite, it is Jesus who I am working for and who provides my pay - through who He chooses. If you serve your boss, that is a act of worship. Once again I will ask this question. How do you know that your god is the right god? There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of gods that have been worshiped through the ages. The people who worshiped those gods knew _as certainly as you do_ that they were worshiping the right god. How do you know you are right and they are wrong? Slee ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/67 "2009-11-14T03:52:07Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > No heaven/hell, above us only sky, no religion > And note I said it _could_ be called a atheistic worship song. No, it can’t. Lennon was only asking you to _imagine_ there is no heaven; _imagine_ there is no hell below us; _imagine_ that above us, only sky. It’s easy, if you try. ---
**Author:** ![lightwait](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@lightwait](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lightwait)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/68 "2009-11-14T06:09:17Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > **lightwait** , please read the OP again, thoroughly, clicking on all the links. If you cannot tell me then do not expect me to be at your beckon call… If you do not know what you mean, say so, and be done with it. I am here to have a polite conversation — I am not here to be bullied by your snide disregard. Do not require anything of me. Answer or disregard — I will not play games. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/69 "2009-11-14T07:21:10Z")
**lightweight** , I am close to your age. I’m not a scientist, but I value scientific processes. I also value the religious experiences – some similar to what **Sentient Meat** has described. I am not at all threatened by the idea that these experiences may be based on internal structures rather than external. (I buy into the idea from **The Incredible Shrinking Man** that the infinitely small and the infinitely large are the same.) And I write that sort of with a smile. I don’t take things apart too much anymore. I do believe that the truth of science and the truth of the spirit will make sense _together_ someday. The borders of religions will blur. I don’t believe in the devil or evil spirits or demons. There is just darkness and misunderstanding and old hatreds and ignorance instead. They won’t last forever. I think that math is an absolute. Maybe the only one? It’s a key that I don’t know how to approach at all. Not in this life. It must be something of great beauty to understand. I can’t imagine! ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/70 "2009-11-14T14:12:00Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > How does this explain the exhortations to charity? Charity often goes way beyond mutual cooperation. Some charities can be likened to insurance policies - ‘Some day, I or someone about whom I care may be in need of their help’ - but others are clearly not, and the exhortations to charity in many religions go well beyond that anyway. Thanks for your kind words, **Quartz**. And, yes, I wasn’t really hoping to explain every aspect of human morality in a two-sentence bullet point! But your question is interesting in that it highlights that a “selfless” morality seems to be unlikely to emerge naturally. As Matt Ridley writes on p.143 of the [book I linked to](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0140264450/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used): “_What most needed explanation, it seemed to me, was not why some people are criminals but why most people are not … When a person is disgusted by injustice or cruelty he is drawing upon an instinct. For example, even if you dismiss charitable giving as ultimately selfish – saying that people only give to charity in order to enhance their reputations – you still do not solve the problem of why other people do applaud charitable activity … A world without obligations to reciprocate, deal fairly and trust other people [is] simply inconceivable.”_ When I said we were ‘wired for’ cooperation, I mean of course that we receive emotional ‘rewards’ for not defecting, since otherwise the benefits of defection would never be balanced and cooperation would be confounded. And once those rewards are neurologically in place, one cannot then easily predict the precise kinds of activities that will trigger such rewards. Charitable giving to complete strangers may be one of these activities. > [@kanicbird](#): > > In your case you had a few ‘small’ spiritual encounters which could be explained, I can understand how one can get swayed, but I reached a certain point that it is not reasonable to accept physical world explanations. So your request is asking a lot more of me then what you have done. I assure you, my spiritual experiences were as big as they come. You are simply saying I’m not a [True Scotsman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman), since you would fear for your mental health if I really _had_ experienced episodes as dramatic as yours and still considered the scientific explanations more convincing. > [@kanicbird](#): > > You do seem still open, you IMHO were just steered to atheism at a time of your spiritual growing. Steered by whom? My considerations of the alternative explanations were as honest and balanced as it felt possible to embark upon. And I repeat, I feel I have grown “spiritually” to a much _greater_ extent as an atheist. > [@kanicbird](#): > > And you are correct, I can handle scientific facts (and take them for what they are, what man can prove), not scientific truths, as truths come from God, not man. So, you feel that to even consider the _possibility_ that scientific facts are actually scientific truths would bring about an episode of neurosis or psychosis. I feel blessed that my happy optimism, inner peace and awesome wonder at my existence are not threatened so, and that my mental health does not sit on such a precarious knife edge. > [@kanicbird](#): > > SentientMeat let me ask you along the lines of your courtesy you asked, could you accept the possibility that atheism is just another religion, one with a actual (invisible) god in control, and really no different then any other religion (as they all have some god/gods as their head)? Well, the dictionary definitions don’t work very well, but **yes** , I guess I could enclose the terms in inverted commas mangle their meaning enough to accept such a possibility. Obviously, irreligion is not a religion any more than 1-1=1, but you could call atheism a “religion” in that it is a _philosophy_ or _worldview_. And believing there are no gods is clearly not believing there _is_ a god, but I guess I could stretch “god” to mean, say, the _universe_ if I were feeling particularly perverse and delighted in confusing people unnecessarily. So, yes, it’s entirely possible that atheism is just another worldview which believes that everything is controlled by the laws of nature. See? Open-mindedness is easy. It’s a shame you can’t open your mind for fear that it will become ill. > [@ITR](#): > > Let us suppose, for a moment, that Jesus Christ was a great and brilliant teacher, but that he was not actually God and was physically just an ordinary human being. Let us suppose that all of his claims to be God were either part of an enormous self-delusion or an elaborate campaign of deception. Or [innocent misattribution](http://www.dur.ac.uk/c.p.fernyhough/papers/Ferny04AVHs.pdf) > [@](#): > > Let us suppose that he somehow tricked both his followers and large crowds of observers into believing that he had the capacity to perform miracles. [Easy](http://noolmusic.com/videos/james_randi_debunks_peter_popoff_faith_healer.php), but also unnecessary – the _stories_ of such miracles could have been exaggerated in the decades after his death. > [@](#): > > Let us suppose that his words and actions were immense enough that people did flock to him by the thousands and eventually the supreme authorities in his area took an interest in him. Which happens _all the time_. > [@](#): > > Let us suppose that after they arrested, tried, and killed him, some combination of hallucination and fakery lead many people to believe that he had resurrected from the dead. Again, no hallucination or fakery is necessary. It just needs people who _really, really, want to believe it_ to unwittingly filter their perceptions enough for a **myth** to grow. And myths are _universal_ in human societies. > [@](#): > > Now all of that could have happened, I would never deny it. And it could also be true that some of the events in his life were distorted or exaggerated in the gospels, written 30-60 years after his death. All within the realm of possibility. But I always feel that it would be highly unusual and strange if all that happened while simultaneously he was one of the greatest teachers in human history. There’s much less internal tension and contradiction in a tale of a great teacher who’s also a great person than in the tale of a great teacher who’s a lousy person. Ah, but these kinds of hero-worshipping tales grow up _all the time, in all cultures,_, especially over decades, and _especially_ under the murderous oppression of the kind carried out by the Romans. > [@](#): > > And so, if I am to believe the materialist view, then I have to believe that every vision was a hallucination or a deception, every miracle a fake of some sort, and so on. Not at all. The game of Chinese Whispers (“Telephone” in the US?) does not need hallucinations or faked miracles, just _honest mistakes_ in repeating things. > [@](#): > > Plus, given how often mystical events were experienced or verified by large groups, I’d have to believe in a number of large conspiracies and hypnosis and all kinds of other things, in order to completely explain away all of it. Read the paper on collective effervescence in the OP – I assure you, it is quite powerful. > [@](#): > > And I’ve only just begun to study these issues in the last year or so, and I’ve no doubt that I’ll learn much more about it in the years to come. So again, the materialist explanations could have happened, but the more I learn the higher the improbabilities get. Well, I hope that what you learn from me might bring down those probabilities slightly, but it’s not really important. All I asked of you, which you have kindly granted me, is that you don’t consider my worldview _impossible_ – that there is no Gap which God is **necessary** to fill. Everything else is just personal preference, really. > [@](#): > > In the final analysis, though, it makes no practical difference to me in terms of what I do. I find the moral teachings of Jesus so great that I will follow Him no matter what. Even if he was completely wrong about his claims to godhood, even if there’s no God and no afterlife, **even if whatever crank inspired the Prophet Mohammed was actually right** , I would still follow Jesus. And if at the moment of death no one and nothing appears before me, I won’t have any regrets. You know what? I pretty much agree with you, since I feel I’m following the most important teachings of Jesus _as an atheist_. I would, however, look askance at the bolded statement of yours. The story of Islam isn’t so different from the story of Christianity, yet you label one a ‘crank’ and the other the Messiah. (You then seem to be arguing with Michael Shermer. You may find him easier to debate than me, but the problem is, he doesn’t post here. ) Finally, the stories of Alexandrina de Costa and Jakob Lorber seem to me to be clear instances of temporal lobe epilepsy and/or alien voice syndrome. You seem to think that these conditions only arise in mentally ill individuals. This is **just not so** – many people with these conditions are mentally _healthy_ and indeed derive a great measure _of_ their mental health from such conditions. That does not mean that there is no clinical neuroscientific explanation for their condition. **lightwave** , here, I’ll quote it for you: > [@SentientMeat](#): > > I also invite theists to explicitly state whether I might be right (repeat, might be, not am right, since you wouldn’t be a theist in that case!). Can you bring yourself, when you next pray, to seriously question whether you are actually talking to yourself? When you next sit in church, can you genuinely entertain the notion that there actually are no gods and you are engaging in a ritual for its own sake? Could you, even more bravely, rationally examine the possibility that there is no heaven at the funeral of a loved one? I have explicitly stated that God might be responsible for my experiences, and that your worldview may be right while mine is wrong. Do you return that courtesy? Apologies for having the audacity to ask you to actually read the OP. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/71 "2009-11-14T15:32:18Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > No heaven/hell, above us only sky, no religion > And note I said it _could_ be called a atheistic worship song. It actually says imagine there is no heaven. It does not say there is no heaven. That is almost like saying there is a heaven, but imagine what it would be ;like if there weren’t one. That is far, far from atheistic. You are twisting shamelessly , yet again. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/72 "2009-11-14T15:39:17Z")
[Religion Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion) here’s the definition of religion. I am sure once you read it you will understand that atheists meet zero definitions. They do not believe in a supernatural being. They do not have meetings or teachings. They do not have anything resembling a church. ---
**Author:** ![lightwait](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@lightwait](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lightwait)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/73 "2009-11-14T17:23:44Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > **lightwave** , here, I’ll quote it for you: > Apologies for having the audacity to ask you to actually read the OP. Are you talking to “lightwait”? — If this is how you pay attention to details, I wonder from where you are coming. I read it many times — now what are you asking? — without a smart mouth…maybe? Please be specific — I am old. > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by **insincerityMeat** > I also invite theists to explicitly state whether I might be right (repeat, might be, not am right, since you wouldn’t be a theist in that case!). Can you bring yourself, when you next pray, to seriously question whether you are actually talking to yourself? When you next sit in church, can you genuinely entertain the notion that there actually are no gods and you are engaging in a ritual for its own sake? Could you, even more bravely, rationally examine the possibility that there is no heaven at the funeral of a loved one? I have explicitly stated that God might be responsible for my experiences, and that your worldview may be right while mine is wrong. Do you return that courtesy? When you cannot approach me accept in passing, To tell the truth — I can only consider… * * * Please comment on my Posts…\*\*\* ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/74 "2009-11-14T18:13:22Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > I dunno about him, but atheism can’t be a religion becuase it doesn’t worship anything. Buddhism doesn’t worship anything either. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/75 "2009-11-14T18:20:24Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > Not at all. The game of Chinese Whispers (“Telephone” in the US?) does not need hallucinations or faked miracles, just _honest mistakes_ in repeating things. I honestly don’t understand why skeptics pin so much hope on the Chinese whisper game. The game depends on speaking very quietly, also called “whispering”, and on the fact that when someone is whispering it’s very hard to hear them accurately. But as we have no reason to believe that the early Christian communities were speaking in anything other than a normal voice, it’s irrelevant. As for the notion that the claims about Jesus were passed from mouth to mouth and had many chances to be altered over many decades, it simply is not true. It is particularly untrue for the central claim of the resurrection, which is present not only in the words of the apostles and in the gospels which were most likely based on the words of the apostles, but also on creeds that were written very soon after the death of Jesus. (The earliest probably being the one in 1st Corinthians.) There simply is not a long chain of oral transmissions before the written transmission begins, no matter how much Richard Dawkins claims there is. Well, I hope that what you learn from me might bring down those probabilities slightly, but it’s not really important. All I asked of you, which you have kindly granted me, is that you don’t consider my worldview _impossible_ – that there is no Gap which God is **necessary** to fill. Everything else is just personal preference, really. You know what? I pretty much agree with you, since I feel I’m following the most important teachings of Jesus _as an atheist_. I would, however, look askance at the bolded statement of yours. The story of Islam isn’t so different from the story of Christianity, yet you label one a ‘crank’ and the other the Messiah. > [@](#): > > (You then seem to be arguing with Michael Shermer. You may find him easier to debate than me, but the problem is, he doesn’t post here. ) Nonetheless, your OP does mention stable strategies, coalitional psychology, and such, very similar (though he uses different words) to what Shermer rests all his claims on. > [@](#): > > Finally, the stories of Alexandrina de Costa and Jakob Lorber seem to me to be clear instances of temporal lobe epilepsy and/or alien voice syndrome. You seem to think that these conditions only arise in mentally ill individuals. This is **just not so** – many people with these conditions are mentally _healthy_ and indeed derive a great measure _of_ their mental health from such conditions. That does not mean that there is no clinical neuroscientific explanation for their condition. Ah, the good old temporal lobe epilepsy, handy because it explains away everything. It just doesn’t explain things away very well. What I know about it is based on [this](http://www.epilepsy.com/epilepsy/epilepsy_temporallobe). The differences between the cases of Lorber and da Costa and and what’s described as symptoms of TLE are huge. Firstly, time. Seizures during TLE are short, much shorter than what Lorber experienced. He would be writing for many hours and sometimes even days at a time. Second, the TLE seems to typically cause confusion, a series of widely varying sensations, sometimes unconsciousness as the seizure spreads to other portions of the brain. This is the polar opposite of what Lorber and da Costa experienced. I simply don’t see any evidence at all backing up your claim that it’s a “clear instance”. Most important, though, is that both these individuals wrote thousands of pages detailing carefully what they saw and heard during visions and locutions. Hence we can evaluate, and make judgements about whether it seems to be the sort of thing that would arise from a random firing of neurons. In my judge, based on what I’ve read and heard about these two individuals, it is not. (Obviously I’ve only read a very small part of the total in both cases.) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/76 "2009-11-14T18:39:41Z")
**lightwait** , I’ve moved several of your posts into a new thread because they’re off topic. Also: do _not_ change the names of other posters inside quote tags. ---
**Author:** ![lightwait](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bcef8e/32.png) [@lightwait](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lightwait)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/77 "2009-11-14T21:56:45Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > **lightweight** , I am close to your age. I’m not a scientist, but I value scientific processes. I also value the religious experiences – some similar to what **Sentient Meat** has described. I am not at all threatened by the idea that these experiences may be based on internal structures rather than external. (I buy into the idea from **The Incredible Shrinking Man** that the infinitely small and the infinitely large are the same.) And I write that sort of with a smile. > > I don’t take things apart too much anymore. I do believe that the truth of science and the truth of the spirit will make sense _together_ someday. The borders of religions will blur. I don’t believe in the devil or evil spirits or demons. There is just darkness and misunderstanding and old hatreds and ignorance instead. They won’t last forever. > > I think that math is an absolute. Maybe the only one? It’s a key that I don’t know how to approach at all. Not in this life. It must be something of great beauty to understand. I can’t imagine! I agree with you. Also, I believe God is absolute. The beginning and the ending of the way of the world is the big bang leading man to rule man with the big bang of the bomb — all based on our mathematics. I see it this way however — I believe math should be based on where we are going and not in the context of an historical paradigm. As to the OP, when our thoughts and our spirits and our minds eye are raised above that which is created, and we see the beauty of eternity in the light of the cosmological system, and we pattern our endeavors accordingly, there will only be life. Man has been given the ability to live forever, if, and only if, we look toward the light that is in and is the basis of every particle of matter and the very same light in which every particle resides. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/78 "2009-11-14T23:00:52Z")
> [@lightwait](#): > > The beginning and the ending of the way of the world is the big bang leading man to rule man with the big bang of the bomb — all based on our mathematics. I see it this way however — I believe math should be based on where we are going and not in the context of an historical paradigm. And I am beginning to believe that one should have proper training and/or a license before practicing mathematics in public. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/79 "2009-11-15T06:16:30Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > As for the notion that the claims about Jesus were passed from mouth to mouth and had many chances to be altered over many decades, it simply is not true. It is particularly untrue for the central claim of the resurrection, which is present not only in the words of the apostles and in the gospels which were most likely based on the words of the apostles, but also on creeds that were written very soon after the death of Jesus. (The earliest probably being the one in 1st Corinthians.) There simply is not a long chain of oral transmissions before the written transmission begins, no matter how much Richard Dawkins claims there is. Then why do the gospels differ so greatly in what should be very important details? Jesus’ last words on the cross, who was at the crucifixion, the occurrence of miracles, etc. The gospel of Matthew claims that the dead rose from their tombs after Jesus’ death and went to people in the city. You’d think someone besides the Christians would have written about that. If the works are divinely inspired, were written down very soon after occurring and not passed down by word of mouth, then why the huge number of contradictions, personal slants, and mistakes? ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297/80 "2009-11-15T06:22:22Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Let us suppose, for a moment, that Jesus Christ was a great and brilliant teacher, but that he was not actually God and was physically just an ordinary human being. Let us suppose that all of his claims to be God were either part of an enormous self-delusion or an elaborate campaign of deception. Let us suppose that he somehow tricked both his followers and large crowds of observers into believing that he had the capacity to perform miracles. Let us suppose that his words and actions were immense enough that people did flock to him by the thousands and eventually the supreme authorities in his area took an interest in him. Let us suppose that after they arrested, tried, and killed him, some combination of hallucination and fakery lead many people to believe that he had resurrected from the dead. Now all of that _could_ have happened, I would never deny it. And it _could_ also be true that some of the events in his life were distorted or exaggerated in the gospels, written 30-60 years after his death. All within the realm of possibility. But I always feel that it would be highly unusual and strange if all that happened while simultaneously he was one of the greatest teachers in human history. There’s much less internal tension and contradiction in a tale of a great teacher who’s also a great person than in the tale of a great teacher who’s a lousy person. > > Further, of course, the story of Christianity goes on after Jesus dies. Next come the apostles. They surely believed in the resurrection firmly and worked hard to convince others of it. And as [N. T. Wright has written about at length](http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm), the apostolic view of the resurrection could not have been copied from current Jewish or Pagan beliefs, because it just doesn’t match up. So there’s more tension in the issue of why the apostles would believe in the resurrection. Next come the first generations of Christians, the church fathers, the martyrs, and on and on. And so, if I am to believe the materialist view, then I have to believe that every vision was a hallucination or a deception, every miracle a fake of some sort, and so on. Plus, given how often mystical events were experienced or verified by large groups, I’d have to believe in a number of large conspiracies and hypnosis and all kinds of other things, in order to completely explain away all of it. And I’ve only just begun to study these issues in the last year or so, and I’ve no doubt that I’ll learn much more about it in the years to come. So again, the materialist explanations _could_ have happened, but the more I learn the higher the improbabilities get. I’m not going to debate this. Rather, I will point you in the direction of things I think you would find it profitable to study. Biblical criticism is, of course, an enormous subject, on which a great deal has been written. The mainstream view, though, is that the process by which the Gospels were compiled was a great deal messier than you allow in these two paragraphs. For example, you seem not to be aware that the earliest extant copies of Mark (the oldest Gospel) do not include a physical resurection. Paul’s letters, which actually predate the Gospels by a couple decades or more, speak often of a resurection, but it sounds more like a spiritual resurection than a physical one. Indeed, there’s very little about a physical Jesus in Paul’s letters - no Mary, no miracles, no parables, no Pontius Pilate, etc. FWIW, the Jesus Seminar ended up concluding (among other things) that the physical resurection probably isn’t historical. That’s as far as I’m going to go in a post on the Dope. Frankly, I’m not an expert, so there’s no reason for you to give my statements and opinions much weight. But there are lots of experts in the field and, as I said, they’ve written lots of books. Two I would particularly recommend are Burton Mack’s [Who Wrote the New Testament](http://www.amazon.com/Who-Wrote-New-Testament-Christian/dp/0060655186/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258263740&sr=1-4) and Richard Price’s [Deconstructing Jesus](http://www.amazon.com/Deconstructing-Jesus-Robert-M-Price/dp/1573927589/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258263837&sr=1-5). After that, I leave it to you to develop your own reading list. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-explain-my-religious-experiences-long-opening-post/517297.md?page=5)