Handling the argument from personal experience

[pineapplebunnybounce]

I like how you dealt with the question, my take is you're not so much trying to argue with someone about how their experiences aren't real, but you're trying to help others who hear about these experiences understand why it does not necessarily correlate with reality (in this case god's existence).

To add on to the placebo effect, if you use an opioid blocker, placebo effect cannot be felt and is not observed. Meaning placebo effect is actually a measurable molecular response of the body, where your endogenous (means produced by your body, for those who aren't bio people) molecule binds to the opioid receptor and help you with pain relief. This is the placebo effect for pain relief, I'm not sure how it works for other types of medication.

As for the prayer study, I hear it's because those who have been prayed for feel like if they don't get better they're letting down those who prayed for them (and possibly god), so that could be why they perform worse.

For me, I have a lot of friends and family who have personal experiences that pertain to buddhism and now I know people who have these experiences pertaining to christianity. I think that's the strongest evidence I need. It is hard to examine how your own brain works, but by look at how others' work, you can deduce that if there is a common factor, that common factor cannot be the god of one religion. And since any explanation is probably simpler than positing a telepathic being, I once again see no need for the god hypothesis.

[max-greece]

Pineapple,

Sort of yes but there is an element of attempting to open a person's eyes to the fact that they might be fooled or worse, fooling themselves.

In some ways it reminds me of the old logic story of the 3 philosophers asleep under a tree. A joker comes round and paints their faces. When they awake they each start laughing at the others and then suddenly stop when they realize that their own face must be painted - all entirely through logic of course.

To that end the most powerful argument should be that followers of another faith claim the same extraordinary interventions by their God as is claimed by each and every one of these faiths. As followers of one faith are very strong on the idea that all other faiths (and even variants of their own) are wrong they must face the probability that all followers are equally deluded. This is self evident to the atheist.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

Probably because atheists tend to be outside observers, so to speak

[MindForgedManacle]

I made a thread on this as well a couple of weeks ago. My main point was that personal experience of something alone tells you nothing about the cause or not of that experience. This shows that the argument from personal experience can't even get off the ground, because theists using have to make at least two claims that they aren't (likely) able to justify:

That their personal experience was legitimate

and

Only they and their fellow ideologues are able to correctly ascertain the nature and cause of that experience.

That last one in particular is important. How can theists say that other theists of different religions are wrong about the cause of their experience of their god(s) while they are correct? They can't appeal to their experience itself, because the other theist can do the same just as validly. That's why the argument is completely unusable. I don't doubt theists have these experiences. When I was a Christian, I had them. But claiming deeper knowledge of these experiences because of the experience itself just seems inconsistent.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Pineapple,

Sort of yes but there is an element of attempting to open a person's eyes to the fact that they might be fooled or worse, fooling themselves.

That is a lot harder to achieve.

Most people think that they are truly themselves. By this I mean their idea of themselves includes all of their experiences, all of it add to their identity. Instead of understanding that it's a physiological machine (the brain) that constructs this idea of self through perception that is quite often faulty. So when they have an experience, they truly believe in it, a lot of people are less likely to think, "oh, my brain probably got that one wrong." They think, "no, this is a special experience, it must be real, it feels so real."