How to Authentically Experience God

[amw79]

I can't quote you any studies I'm afraid, just anecdotally I'd say that the 'oneness' the religious claim to feel with god during prayer, seems to me to be linked to the stripping away of 'the self' associated with deeper forms of meditation. But this is admittedly conjecture on my part. I'm extremely interested in this side of religion as atheists can never win the long term argument with the religious so long as there's denial that people can have life-changing, or life affirming spiritual experiences or seek to reduce the validity of said experiences.

The road to atheism can have life-changing effect on a spiritual level. Drugs can. My first gaze through a telescope did. The birth of my children was. I do not see your point. Why should we validate religious experiences on a different level?

I didn't necessarily mean we should validate them certainly not on 'a different level (bad phrasing on my part, sorry). More that they should not be dismissed as merely delusional, which is often the first instinct of some atheists. I believe that once 'religious/spiritual experiences' are more fully understood, the associated 'supernatural' aspects of these experiences can be removed, and we'll simply be left with states of mind that are acheiveable, potentially beneficial, and available to all, without the need to assign theistic dogma to what is a physiological occurence.

Incidentally, I agree that all sorts of things can have life changing effects, but I think that prayer and meditation both allow the mind to settle into a singularly specific state, fundamentally different than those you have mentioned (i.e. looking through a telescope). Again, this is admittedly assertion on my part, and could well be off the mark, however the writings of some of the Eastern contemplatives, point to a level of experience unlike that of the day-to-day familiarity. This is not to say that this experience is better, or higher; simply different.