I had a religious experience the other night

[Catholic_Lady]

It occurred to me that in the same way that Carl Sagan came up with his Baloney Detection Kit, we could come up with list of questions that you should ask if you think that you have had a religious experience to determine whether it was just  a product of the mind.

• Did anyone else experience it?
  
• Was it indistinguishable from your own imagination?
  
• Did you see, hear or feel it tactilely?
  
• Did it occur when you were falling asleep, waking up or during your sleep or at a point of exhaustion?
  
• Were you intoxicated at the time?
  
• Were you taking drugs at that period of your life which alter your perception, whether recreational or medication, and which can stay in your system for a long time?
  
• Have you had similar experiences in the past which were not religiously or spiritually themed?
  
• Had you been thinking a lot at the time about religious or spiritual matters? e.g. considering converting? Watched a film etc
  
• Is there a history of relevant mental illness in your family?
  
• Would the experience have otherwise been a normal incident were it not for the fact that you challenged a deity to reveal itself?
  

Anything else to add?

I think that's probably a good list to go by to weigh out the possibility of an experience having been a completely natural occurrence vs a supernatural one.

As for myself, here are my answers:

[*]Did anyone else experience it? Yes
[*]Was it indistinguishable from your own imagination? Yes, unless the other person and myself both imagined the same exact thing at the same time, first separately, and then together.
[*]Did you see, hear or feel it tactilely? It was one of my senses, yes.
[*]Did it occur when you were falling asleep, waking up or during your sleep or at a point of exhaustion? No. Middle of a perfectly normal day.
[*]Were you intoxicated at the time? Neither myself nor the other person were.
[*]Were you taking drugs at that period of your life which alter your perception, whether recreational or medication, and which can stay in your system for a long time? Neither myself nor the other person.
[*]Have you had similar experiences in the past which were not religiously or spiritually themed? No. Nothing else has ever happened before or since that day. Same for the other person.
[*]Had you been thinking a lot at the time about religious or spiritual matters? e.g. considering converting? Watched a film etc? Not at all. Just another normal day, thinking about the boy I had just started seeing (now husband lol)
[*]Is there a history of relevant mental illness in your family? My half sister had mild depression for a phase in her life, and I have a cousin with high functioning autism. But other than that, no.
[*]Would the experience have otherwise been a normal incident were it not for the fact that you challenged a deity to reveal itself? Nope.