How to Authentically Experience God

[amw79]

However, clearly this issue comes up in atheist/theist discussion, and is used as a corroboration of theist beliefs. Many, admittedly not all, atheists take the position of dismissing religious experience as delusion, and this is the position I am stating is weak.

Agreed, imo,as a general proposition that position is both intellelectually arrogant and ignorant.

Of course that's not arrogant. Then it would be arrogant to deny the schizophrenic that the voices they might hear in their heads are genuine. It all comes down to verifiability of these claims from other sources. It would be arrogant if we had clear indications that these talks with god really yield new information. After hundreds of years of these claims there has not been one such verified event. The only conclusion can be that the arrogance is on the side of the believer that is making these unverifiable claims. It is not arrogant to demand verification, it is arrogant to claim without substantiation. Requiring verification is not arrogance, it is a sensible epistemological approach that is adopted by the scientific method. If we drop this criterion you will have to believe all the Derek Ogilvies, the schizophrenic, the alien abductees, 9/11 truthers, the thieves and conjurers that roam the planet, on their word alone.

The circumstantial evidence is not in favour of genuine religious experience. Never a prediction from it has been tested to hold, quite the contrary, numerous predictions about the end of the world revealed in such a way were contradicted by actual facts. Never essential new knowledge about nature or diseases has been revealed this way. Never these alleged conversations with god have yielded any substantial information that could not have known otherwise.

I'm not talking about religious experiences such as miracles, or people who say they know when the world will end through revelation. Quite right that these type of claims require verification, which is inevitably not forthcoming.

However what is clear is that through prayer or meditation, people can have truly life-changing experiences, and for atheists to dismiss those experiences, puts them in a weak position.

As an atheist who has practiced meditation (with no religious undertones or connotations) for many years, there is a state of consciousness to be achieved which many would describe as spiritual (although personally I hate the word for the religious baggage it carries). This state is what I assume religious people are tapping into, for want of a better expression, and then claiming to know the mind of god. Prayer I believe, touches in the same area as meditation. The irony being that they don't need churches, middlemen, worship or faith to acheive this state.