(June 29, 2018 at 3:27 pm)SteveII Wrote: I disagree. A dream can be dismissed by the "dreamer" very quickly as additional facts become available. The human mind, when functioning correctly, is capable of distinguishing what is a dream and what a Christian claims: that the presence of God is felt daily, evidenced by strength, support, peace, hope, and gentle guidance on living one's life.
Your theory depends on the normal functioning mind to make regular, lasting mistakes that are not self corrected. That seems to only apply to religious-leaning people, and if so, that is simple question-begging: Religions people don't have religious experience because religious people don't have religious experiences.
Why do you think that propaganda works?
This is religious binary thinking again. This time assuming True and False exist. When in reality no one is omnipotent. We are all given a subset of facts and perspectives and this can be manipulated in corectly functioning minds. No one is 100% correct or incorrect.
Then there are the brains which are not working properly. These are more suspectible to religious experience.
If all you know is religion then you will see the world through the eyes of the religious. But it's not as effective as relying on the minds and written and reproducible impartial observations of hundreds of thousands of scientists who are each looking out for the flaws in their own hypotheses and those of others.
