The real religion?

[Angrboda]

All you are doing is claiming that they are different people.  If they really are different people then there should be evidence that they have changed.  But you don't have that evidence.  So you just keep repeating the claim.  Repeating the claim doesn't make it true.

Moreover, this is only evidence that different people respond to the same conditioning in similar ways.  It isn't evidence that the underlying cause lies outside themselves.  Have you heard of the 'god center' in the brain?  It appears that we are pre-wired to have religious experiences.  If that is so, then all those experiences are evidence for is that pre-wiring, not of the religious experience itself.  How do you know these 'billion' people aren't simply experiencing the same fundamental neural events having nothing to do with an actual religious experience.  I've heard Buddhists claim that their experience of meditation has changed their lives as well.  Same experience, different interpretation.  You're holding up the feelings and claiming that they are evidence of a particular interpretation.  They're not.  They're just evidence of common feelings.  Despite your claims that Christianity is unique, these same feelings pop up in all sorts of different religions.  So what we have are nothing but evidence of the feelings, which isn't unique to Christianity.

Why isn't the 'god center' in the brain further justification for the position that belief in God is properly basic? In regards to the other religions, I agree that feelings can be affected by all sorts of things--including religion--including Christianity. That does not mean that the stronger claim of a Christian to be changed by a relationship with God is false. 

The implication that a belief is properly basic carries with it the related claim that the belief is independently true. A god center could give rise to feelings that are basic without them being independently true, just as a hallucination would be basic without being true in what it tells the mind. It doesn't mean the feelings themselves are false, only the interpretation that they come from a god is. And now, are you asking me to assume the burden of proof for your claim in telling me that your claim about changed Christians has not been thereby shown to be false? It's your claim, and yours to show that it is valid. Regardless, I don't believe that belief in God is properly basic. If you do, then I can't argue with your presuppositions.

Do you believe that the mind is contingent on but separate from the brain?

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by that phrase. I believe the mind is a product of the processes of the brain. It's contingent upon, but not separate from the brain.