(July 3, 2018 at 10:48 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:(June 30, 2018 at 7:20 am)SteveII Wrote: For any of this to be valid, you would have to show that science has disproved/called into question religious experiences. It has not come even close, not a little, at all.
Has science disproved religious experiences? No. Has it called them into question? That's a different question. Why do you believe that science has had zero success toward that end? The popular view is that scientific evidence does a lot to impugn the reliability of religious experience as a way of interpreting reality. Do you feel that's wrong?
Since experiencing the supernatural (the proposition) is by definition not natural, science would not be able to detect if the experience was really supernatural. Science therefore can't prove the proposition correct. Can it prove it incorrect? No, I don't think so for three reasons:
1. The more modest claim is that science can find mechanism and propose theories, but by definition cannot rule out the proposition.
2. Related to #1, successful opposition to the proposition carries a very high burden of proof because of the nature of the question. The proof must be sufficient to undermine individual intuitions that the proposition is true. I don't think this higher burden of proof can be achieved.
3. A stronger position is that science can look at the brain and it's mechanisms. The proposition is about the mind and I believe entails a dualism that sets up a barrier which science cannot cross. You can have theories, but they are not really testable because you are dealing with the far side of the mind-body connection.
If you have an article or link on the scientific evidence, I will take a look and give you my thoughts.