Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The existence of counterfiet money isnt proof that real money doesnt exist.

I think you misunderstand the objection.  If one replaces real causes with an epiphenomenal god, then all one is doing is engaging in pointless metaphysics.  Yes this fit of epilepsy could be caused by god, and gravity could be the effect of an omnipotent machine projecting force throughout the universe, but why would you?  If you replace one cause with God then you can replace them all.  The principle of insufficient reason will cut down all such moves.   If you can replace them all, then "God" just becomes a new name for nature, and your attempt to explain the original phenomenon turns out to be nothing more than bullshit semantics.  It's the same problem with Berkeley's argument for God; all you're doing is insisting on calling nature God for Reasons[TM].

No. I was not suggesting that epilesy was a means by which any god communes. I am saying that one experience can be authentic and another inauthentic depending on the chain of events that brought* it into being. By way of analogy, the perfect forgery of a Vermeer painting can never be an authentic Vermeer.

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So for example there is Nun Anne and Matrix Jane. Nun Anne has lived a life of Catholic devotion. Anne has a prayerful brain-state prior to brain-state V (for visionary). Matrix Jane is connected an electro-helmet. Jane has any random brain-state prior to the induction of brain-state V. I contend that the experience of Nun Anne can be deemed likely authentic and the experience of Matrix Jane as clearly inauthentic based on observable characteristics of both Anne and Jane.

*Interesting how it seems so intuitive to use teleological language!