Dear Atheists

[ParagonLost]

I don't think it's fair to compare vampire or unicorns with God.

Sure it is fair.

They all fall into the set of beings who's existence is unsupported by evidence.

For example there aren't many people who say they experience unicorns or fairies.

How would we go about figuring out if people that claim to have experiences with a god, are actually having an experience with a god?

How would you go about discerning the difference of a misinterpreted natural brain state or a god?

I think they are brain states Simon, but all you have to do is read various religious traditions and understand what they are saying. I mentioned knowledge because of it's pragmatic benefits. In turn you receive empathy, compassion, happiness. Again the model can be theistic or non.

---

The next reason is a ideational quality or conceptive. It's a feeling but it's so much more beyond. It turns the experience into a state of knowledge, a kind of comprehension. It does this because your mystical experience is receiving revelation, presage, but whats strange is this experience has a hold of you it has authority. Power and control. But mystical states have impermanence. They don't last long, this is why i believe the Lord Jesus Christ appears to the disciples but the next instant he disappears!

(emphasis mine)

We are used to treating certain phenomenological aspects of experience as veridical without qualification.  The feeling of certainty is one of these aspects.  It is possible to "feel" that you are receiving revelation from an empty experience that is devoid of any real, true information.  I have had a psychotic illness most of my life, and one of the truths I was convinced of before getting on medication was that I needed to kill myself to return to my original plane of existence.  Though this belief had the feeling of knowledge, that was just an emotional signal gone wrong.  Experiences can "seem" to be revelatory without actually yielding anything.  This is a trap we fall into when we automatically assume the truthfulness of such experiences which carry with them the feel of authority.  That feel is just an emotional signal and it can be wrong.

Hi Jormunganr, I think if the body is mentally unprepared or sick mystical experiences wont make much sense. They might be a disaster. But I'm not referring to psychosis or an impaired relationship with reality and all its symptoms. The problem is that hallucinations are interwined with mystical experiences and personality disorders that they are judged now with so much scrutiny.