Religious experiences, truth and opinions

Great Debates
1

What is behind experiences of religious ecstacy? Have you experienced a euphoria that you (or some) would attribute to contacting God? Have you entered some kind of religious “altered state”? Have you ever spoken in tongues? Have you ever prophesized/translated a prophesy? In short, have you experienced something “really cool” whilst in a religious setting?

Early in my life I was deeply involved in a Pentecostal church. It was almost a condition of membership (I exaggerate) that you must be “visited by the Holy Spirit” and speak in tongues. Which I did. I’ve personally experienced a number of surprising things, and witnessed others I wish I could explain.

I gotta tell you, these experiences were so real and powerful at the time, that they convinced me that God was real - as described by the chuch in which I had these experiences. I’ve since left the church and no longer believe that anything supernatural occurred, but I have not been able to fully explain these things.

Since then, I had another powerful “altered state” episode that was triggered by watching a movie I found very thought provoking.

In the interest of a short OP I will defer providing details of all of these anecdotes for now. It is my opinion that these all have explanations that do not include references to supernatural or spiritual - but I greatly respect any who disagree. I will keep an open mind.

What experiences would you care to describe? What explanations for these phenomenon do you proffer? What meaning do any of these types of experiences provide?

2

There were some declarations made in the Your Evidence For God thread from a couple of years ago. Several of the posters has wandered off, so you mayt not be able to ask them about their experiences.

3

Just wondering, was the movie What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? by any chance? I ask because some friends of mine acted like this movie was the total bees knees but I found it severly lacking. ymmv of course.

4

Not getting much traffic on this. I understand: religious debate may have reached saturation, and I imagine anyone with a story to tell may fear their experience could face disrespectful treatment.

I’ll tell one of my stories (just one, to keep it short).

The first time I experienced anything like religious ecstacy was in my early teens. Church, God, etc. didn’t factor much in my day-to-day life until a church close to where I lived received its new pastor. The pastor had a son my age (and two daughters). I became friends with the pastor’s son, and through this friendship began attending church again (I went to this church’s Sunday School many years prior).

The youth group of the church organized a campfire evening at a nearby park - fun, games, picnic, etc. That evening, around a campfire, I made a deeper committment to follow Christ.

The church happened to be a Pentecostal church (I had no idea then what made churches different from each other). Once I really started getting involved, I felt the friendly pressure to be “baptized in the Holy Spirit” the evidence of which is speaking in tongues. Every Sunday night I went up to the altar and prayed earnestly for this blessing.

Long story short: I had a sizeable record collection. Our church believed rock and roll was of the devil - literally. With gentle pursuasion they convinced me the right thing to do was to burn all my records. When I finally agreed, we held a bonfire one Sunday afternoon in the back of a buddy’s yard - the black smell of melting vinyl thick in the air.

That very night, at the altar again, I prayed again. Something was different, though. It really felt as if I had let go of something heavy. As I prayed my mind drifted. I remember my mouth was moving, but I wasn’t paying attention (very hard to describe). When I did drift back, I realized my mouth was uttering “words” I could not understand - I was speaking in tongues. This was a very moving, deeply touching, experience, permeated with penetrating warmth. It brought tears to my eyes.

Fast forward years and years, much water under the bridge. I’m now approaching middle age, and I do not believe the Holy Spirit visited me - at least not in the way described in the Book of Acts, nor how I was taught by those in the church. Even now, after having utterly rejected Judeo-Christian literalism, I can “speak in tongues” at will - the same way as when I had embraced the “explanation” when it first happened.

I don’t mean my use of quotes to be disrespectful. As I sit here I remember powerfully how real those feelings were. I have no explanation for glossolalia - but I’m convinced the explanation is prosaic.

I have been impressed with the high calibre discussions here at SDMB (along with the few yahoos - I’m probably amongst’em). What are your thoughts?

If this discussion goes anywhere, I have two or three other anecdotes with different themes I could relate.

5

I am a former Mormon, and that church strongly teaches that each person can receive a “witness” of the truth of the Mormon church from the Holy Ghost, as well as individual revelation. Once a month, usually on the first Sunday, the church has Fast and Testimony Meeting, so named because the members fast for 24 hours, and then “bare” their testimony during this meeting and also relate their other spiritual experiences. So, I grew up hearing many people talk about how God told them this or that.

The express teaching of the Mormon church is that all members are to receive personal confirmation from the Holy Ghost, and if if one doesn’t receive one, then it’s often implied that the fault is with the individual.

There were several times when I deeply felt something, and often this was during one of these Fast and Testimony Meetings. Since I’m agnostic / atheist now, obviously I don’t believe that these were from the HG. I think that people can have various experiences, and then they get attributed to a spiritial manifestation, expecially if people are repeatedly taught what to expect.

It’s like a deja vu experience. This could be attributed as a spiritual experience, if you didn’t know better.

6

I had one experience while meditating. I don’t feel like rehashing it, as I’ve told the story on the boards before. Back then it convinced me of the existence of god & my soul.

Now it only convinces me that the human brain is a powerful thing but easily deceived.

7

I never experienced anything like what was described here, even though I grew up knee-deep in it.

When I was a kid, my Mom would take me to a church that I think could be described as fundamentalist. It was called “Assemblies Of God”, if that means anything to anybody. There were pretty frequent instances of speaking in tongues, and often followed by someone going into a “trance” and translating. I remember one time my grandfather started speaking in tongues just praying with the family at home. I don’t think I had any doubt at the time (or with any other glossolalia instance) that I was witnessing a supernatural occurrence. But it wasn’t a big deal, everybody in my family (except my Dad, who pretty much never said anything about religion) was constantly talking about God and how he was with us and doing things to change and affect our lives. It was as common as a breeze, to me.

I don’t think I ever wanted it to actually happen to me, it didn’t look like fun. It looked kinda scary, actually. Also, I never saw it happen to a kid, so I figured it couldn’t happen to me until I was older. By the time I was a teen (maybe before) I was pretty much an atheist, so there was never really a window for it to happen, I guess.

There’s also theories that it’s genetic whether or not one can feel these kinds of deep religious things, and although I’m always skeptical when they say something is genetic, it would explain why I find religion/supernaturalism so devoid of reality, unlike most of the population. Maybe I got it from my Dad’s genes, who I didn’t even know was an atheist until after he died.

8

My main problem in considering such ‘religious experience’ events is that they seem to exist within all religions no matter how mundane (cargo cults) or ridiculous (Scientology). This makes me think that the events cannot be linked to any divine presance, and are more likely a mental abberation in most if not all cases.
It is possible that some religious experiences are true, but the existance of so many false forms of ‘religious experience’ means that I will consider them false unless supported by compelling evidence.

9

This does not necessarily hold true. There’s an account of how a small child was convinced that his headaches were caused by little red demons hammering on his brain, and that taking aspirin tranquilized the demons, eliminating or easing the headache. The aspirin, nonetheless, worked.

IOW, the framework you put on an encounter with God/god(s)/the divine does not necessarily validate or invalidate the actual encounter or your own conception of who and what your putative encounter was with.

Supposing the reality of an actual God of some sort, and his giving the exact same guidance to me (Episcopalian Christian), a devout Shi’a Muslim, a Neopagan who perceives him as The Male Principle of the Cosmos, and a Hindu who perceives him as Vishnu, none of our “kitting out” of our conceptions of God is thereby validated.

10

I’m not sure I could respect a God who kits himself out as L.Ron Hubbard or Prince Phillip or a Cargo Ship :wink:
Seriously, there may be an ultimate source of these feelings, and that source has not yet been proved to be physical. So they could be divinely caused. But there is no way to go from the experience towards a view that any one theory of religious truth is more correct or truthful than any other. From the evidence of the existance of ‘religious experiencse’ alone we cannot say that we should do well to go to church on Sunday, or we should sacrifice a Goat to Zeus, or we should evict our body thetans. Even if we were to live our lives fully within the doctorin of a particular religion or spirituality and we personally were to experience some phenominon we would call religious in origin, we cannot truthfully consider that phenominon to be evidence of the correctness of our particular religion. We must recognise these phenomina are common throughout religions (and several non religious or semi religious activities like fasting, meditation, drug reaction) and cannot be considered evidence for any one particular definiton of religious truth.

11

As it happens, such demons also realy enjoy alchohol. Liquor will temporarily distract them, but it always gets them riled up the next day. :slight_smile:

12

The experiences are true in that they really happened. The explanation, of course, is clearly debateable. I struggled with the title, but couldn’t think of a better description than “religious experience.” A point I’ve made in other threads is God is a handy placeholder for the unknown. A volcano erupts near a primitive society and “the gods are angry” is the reply. How did existence come to be? Dunno, must be God. An experience of this flavour occurs, must be God - especially when it happens in the framework of religious observance.

That’s why I was so surprised at my experience after having watched that movie. To answer NoClueBoy, the movie wasn’t What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (although I am intrigued and will definitely seek this movie out). It’s almost embarsssing to admit, but the movie was Waking Life. A superbly styled, intelligent movie. The experience I’m about to relate occurred after having watched it, but I doubt the movie was designed with this effect in mind :smiley:

The experience itself is very difficult to describe. This was a few years ago, long after I left the church, having adopted my present highly skeptical/agnostic view of religion/spirituality. While watching the movie I didn’t experience anything more than a movie I found to be intelligent and intriguing. Afterwards, I went upstairs to my room. There I was gripped with a sensation that stopped me dead in my tracks. It felts as if the weight of eternity compressed on me (what the hell does that mean?). It was as if I felt all of the fibres that connect everything to everything else. I felt that if I tried just a little bit harder I could step out of the physical into…??? The whole thing seemed to last 5-10 minutes.

I know how hokey this description sounds, borderline stupid (maybe not so borderline). It is my view that nothing supernatural happened, nothing cosmic, nothing spiritual. I admit though, I don’t know WTF it was! Maybe there was something in my lunch that temporarily disrupted/enchanced the production of some endorphine or whatever. Maybe I should have seen a doctor.

Although I’m very skeptical, what if there’s something to PolyCarp’s supposition? I’m with Bippy that because these experiences are so widely distributed, even in secular contexts, that they cannot indicate anything specific. While I lean towards physiological/psychological explanations, what corroborating evidence for the spiritual could we explore?

OTOH, have there been studies of this type of experience? Have we explored brain chemistry or the nature of perception sufficiently to proffer an explanation?

The thread tomndebb linked to has a post citing William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. This link is to Project Gutenburg’s copy, which has PG’s preamble. The TOC and Preface begins at line 263, and properly at line 530. I have yet to read this (I’ll try to start this weekend). Has anyone read it? How does it apply to this discussion?

13

I am not all giggles and jokes here. I do have a religious experience or three, even though my ascent into Religion involved first the (ultimately temporary) rejection of it. It was only in the cool embrace of logic and analysis that I was able to come to greater understanding.

As of yet, I cannot share my experiences with others. I have started many times to describe them, yet I am not sure other people can comprehend it. To anyone else, it would be a small, even trivial thing. They may not have even been able to notice it. But to me it was the hand of God made manifest.

14

Hi Polycarp, haven’t seen you post for awhile.

Consider the near death experience in the light of your post. Here people from all religions and no religions get the same guidance in their experiences. They don’t necessarily see the same thing or receive the same words, but the message is clear even in the less positive NDEs. It is the message of love.

15

Yes, logic is an important aspect of spiritual experiences.

On my site I have over 225 spiritual experiences, some have names to them, but most don’t. Please post your experiences on the message board there. I guarantee they will be treated with respect. Also, if they are discussed, they will be discussed with respect.

Every experiencer knows how hard it is to put into words their experiences. Quality and intensity of emotions just can not be described properly. How do you tell someone how you felt? Very hard, but please try.

16

Just what is a physiological explanation? Such and such activity in so & so structure(s) and neural networks. That comes no closer to achieving resonance.

What also matters is whether the experience is characterized as epiphanic because it’s perceived as anamolous or as positively revelatory. The indications are that it’s the latter. Correlating it to brain activity only shows that this experience too, like regular consciousness, is mediated through the brain. But its significance lies not in its immateriality, but its meaning. And neuroscience can’t entangle the web of true meaning, without being circularly presumptuous.

17

Have plenty of salt on hand, you’ll need several grains. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to explain a personal belief with current science and it falls flat. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Yes, I believe Science and Religion can coexist. I just don’t like to see things taken out of context. From either discipline.

18

Just finished watching it, then came upstairs and read your warning.

We used up about half a salt lick. Great visuals, occassional insight, somewhat engaging fictional bits, but mostly a buncha malarky in pseudo-science dress. Doesn’t add so much credibility when one of the authorities is a woman called JZ Knight, claiming to channel Ramtha of Atlantis? :dubious:

Revtim: The “Assemblies of God” is the sister organization in the US to the “Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada” the very church I attended (post #4). While I have never directly experienced the “trance then translation” it was a common feature I’ve seen many times. We called it receiving a prophesy. Sometimes the “prophesy” was in tongues, requiring translation, sometimes it was direct. Each time, though, the words were supposed to be as if direct from God, some kind of white spiritual possession by God himself.

I would be very curious if any Dopers were formerly one of the prophesiers and would describe what was going on from their perspective!

19

I think a valid question to ask is whether the religious experience is comparable to the states brought about via psychedelics.

I will attest that my first magic mushroom experience - 3.5 dried grams alone in the dark - was the most religious/spiritual experience of my life. I could write a book about what did or did-not happen that night, but I’ll save it unless anyone is intrigued.

20

You raise some good points and ask some good questions. I guess it is a bit presumptuous to suggest it’s either God or brain chemistry. Maybe it’s God manipulating brain chemistry as a mode of communication?

As I reflect, none of the experiences I’ve had could be called epiphanic, if I rightly take that word to mean “revealing information not previously known.” Well, maybe one case I’ve yet described…

After having been “baptized in the Holy Spirit” as I described, I could speak in tongues at will, but never with that same feeling as the first time. One Friday night, months and months later we were up at the altar again. It was after a youth group meeting. We were doing our enthusiastic praying thing as usual, when a feeling similar to what I described in post #4 came over me again. As before I felt I had drifted, and when I “came back” I found that my body was involunarily performing a simplistic repeating dance step. I looked down at myself in surprise, and judging from everyone’s reaction to my expression, this was an occurence that surprised many of them too.

The reason this may fall under the epiphanic category is: When I asked the pastor what the hell that was all about (in different language at the time, you understand) he pointed me to a verse in the Bible wherein people “danced in the Spirit.” I’m pretty certain until then I had never heard of such a thing. Still, it’s a pretty big stretch to say God reached down to profoundly impart unto me how to do a jig.

Getting back to “physiological explanations.” I still think if it studies show/explain what is happening in the brain to cause such experiences, then there is less of a need to reach for God or spirit to give them meaning. While highly emotional, I didn’t think they were - in themselves - very meaningful. The only meaning ever applied to these experiences were what the church overlaid onto them (except for the movie incident, but I digress).