There is nothing unusual about sensing the presence of things that do not really exist. Countless millions of other believers have felt or heard different gods. This is key: different god, same experience. This is a strong indication that believers are reporting some kind of psychological event that is common to the human mind rather than evidence of actually making contact with gods. The Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, animists, Rastafarians, ancient Greeks, and so forth who claimed to have made contact with their gods cannot all be right about what they experienced. The only explanation that works is that most, if not all, of the believers who claim to have heard, seen, or felt a god are honestly mistaken about what they experienced. This does not mean that people who make these claims are lying, dumb, or crazy. It simply means they are human.
Like I said before if I watch some scary monster movie I may feel that that monster is around me and yet it's just a delusion. It's actually pretty easy to delude human brain and that's why scary movies are so popular.
Like I said before if I watch some scary monster movie I may feel that that monster is around me and yet it's just a delusion. It's actually pretty easy to delude human brain and that's why scary movies are so popular.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
