What the God debate is really about

[Whateverist]

Even though dreams vary person to person, science accepts that dreaming during different phases of sleep is a real phenomenon.

But you don't require science to know that you do dream, do you? We don't know that we dream because science has checked it out. We know that we dream because we experience them directly and, if we write them down upon waking, can remember doing so.

Lots of subjective experiences can be verified through first person experience, like emotions, feelings, intuition and creative impulses. As with dreams, science can study these from the outside and deduce which physiological responses correlate with each one. What science cannot do is directly study that which we actually experience.

For example, science has found that while in dream sleep, a person will often exhibit rapid eye movement. If we wake them, they can probably tell us what they were dreaming. What they won't tell you is that their eyes were flitting about. Rapid eye movement wasn't what they experienced first hand; it is only what dreaming looks like from the outside. What they can tell you is what happened in the dream, something which science cannot directly verify.

I suspect for the person who in prayer feels they are in the presence of a god, the situation is the same. Their direct experience is what it is and is not available to science to verify or discount. Now if the person who feels a connection to god makes claims about that god's effect on the physical world, those can be tested.