Atheism

[I_am_not_mafia]

That Middle Easterners had different divine experiences than people from India or China is par for the course. It's what we'd expect if those experiences have more to do with brain chemistry than an omnipotent supernatural influence.

If there's a God, it can certainly contact you. But you can't know your experience was genuinely from God. All you've got to go on is 'feels', and anything that could contact you could probably make you feel any way it wanted to about it. And drugs can provide similar experiences (not to mention schizophrenia), which I find telling.

In context, I can a be reasonably certain. Additionally, confidence in your experiences are not in a vacuum -- every individual has a slightly different cumulative case undergirding their beliefs.

Context actually often tells us how divine experiences aren't actually divine at all. For example, it's interesting how people's religious experiences reflect the religious culture that they are already immersed in. My 'religious experience' where I heard a demonic voice behind my head just as I was getting to sleep mirrored the role playing experience I had that same evening.

Point is, people are using the same brain to determine what is a response to a sensory input, a religious experience or a momentary imbalance of function. The brain is very active and dynamical system with different parts very finely balanced. You cannot trust the same brain to tell the difference. This is why we require impartial observers.