(February 2, 2018 at 8:39 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: I think it would be a mistake to overlook the importance of prayer being communion with another "person." Our minds/brains treat interaction with another consciousness differently than just interactions with objects or nature. From Sartre's "the other's look" to studies' results showing that people are more honest if they feel they are being observed (even if only by a painting), the interaction with another activates brain circuits that aren't active when we're alone. The idea of communion with a superbeing must have serious ramifications for what parts of the brain are active, and what neurotransmitters are released. And that's not even to consider the areas of the brain that are sensitive to spiritual experiences (the appropriately named "God center"). It's a principle of neurology that circuits that fire together, wire together. Thus priming the centers of the brain devoted to spiritual experience in combination with those governing interaction with others probable encourages the sensation of such spiritual undertones alongside ordinary interaction with others. When you start to associate the two centers with each other, you create the groundwork for a profound change in the way you experience the world and the way you experience social interaction with others.
I definitely agree that the assumption of agency behind an interaction makes a powerful difference to how it's perceived. For instance with Sofia in the AI thread... or even less than that... how easy it is to instinctively assume agency and how much of a difference that makes to how something is perceived and treated (such as, with Sofia, thinking about and referring to it as a she, or responding emotionally to it etc). So in the question of god-belief, if there is real assumed agency, then yeah, it could be a different character of experience... an instinctively social experience; both in prayer, and like you say, the feeling of being watched etc... and perhaps even more powerful on account of that interaction/relationship being all-pervading in life... ie the belief that god is with you at all times, constantly watching over you, and constantly communicating with you (in the sense of signs etc)... rather than only communicating at times of 'official' prayer as it were.
