If you believe that material existence is all there is, then you will naturally try to explain or understand all phenomena in those terms.
This is where religionists so often trip themselves up, by assuming that everyone follows their same mental process (essentially equation begging and confirmation bias).
The reason why we suspect or accept (not "believe") that material existence may be all there is, is because that is what all the evidence points to. (Note: I am talking about actual evidence here, not personal opinion and anecdote).
When evidence comes to light that suggests something else, then our position will change accordingly.
Ironically, it is the religionist who assumes there must be something else, and bases their position on that baseless assumption.
I understand that modern science has made considerable progress in monitoring the way sensation, experience, and response to stimuli register in the brain. Clearly, this does not mean the experience originates in the brain, nor that the entire kaleidoscopic range of human experience can be viewed purely as a neurological function. .
All the evidence points towards consciousness being a product of the physical brain. Every attempt to demonstrate otherwise has failed.
At the very least, you must accept that the measurable neurological response originates normally as a result of sensory stimuli. The brain is responding to something, it is not manufacturing the experience itself; except, as you argue, in the case of hallucination
You appear to be getting confused here. Of course the brain responds to stimulus, but that response appears to be manufactured by the brain.
And yes, the stimulus that the brain is responding can indeed be manufactured by the brain itself. Or do you think that the nightmare that frightens the child actually exists out there somewhere, independent of the child's brain?
Hallucinations are generally accompanied by a range of other pathologies.
Not so. They can occur due to a range of reasons, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes without any other indication of any condition. They can even be induced to order in an entirely healthy brain and body.
When a person betraying other symptoms of psychosis tells us they have been receiving messages from God, we can perhaps dismiss this as a hallucination. When a person tells us that they have had a profound spiritual experience which has led them to a new, infinitely more satisfying and productive way of living than they had been capable of before, we would do well to at least look at the evidence with an open mind.
Indeed. That is what the rational thinker always does. What they don't do is assume that messages from god are a thing in the first pace.
So, are you claiming that any personal moment of realisation that leads to a change in behaviour must have an external, divine source?
"...Confined in a hospital [our friend's] gorge rose as he bitterly called out: "If there is a God, he hasn't done much for me!"
But later, alone in his room...like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out all else:
'Who are you to say there is no God?'
This man recounts that hs tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the Presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love..."
Cool story bro. Not sure why you think that contains any "evidence" though.
Easy enough to dismiss the experience above as a hallucination if you are so inclined. But consider this; the man who had that experience walked out of an institution whose doctors had pronounced him a hopeless case, and never went back there. Instead, a once hopeless drunk, he went on to lead a full and productive life characterised by love and service towards others. If his experience was really just a hallucination, wouldn't we expect it to have led him in the opposite direction - not out of a psychiatric ward, but into one?
So you
are saying that such epiphanies and changes of heart must be assumed to be caused by something external to the brain.
You should really reserve judgement until there is something more than just your desire for it to be true.
That man's experience is by no means a one off be, I've personally met and spoken with many like him. History and literature is replete with other examples;
But at the end of the day, you are still just assuming that an event that can be perfectly well explained through the internal workings of the brain must somehow be evidence of a god.
Tolstoy's account of Prince Andrei's epiphany at the dressing station during the Battle of Borodino being imo one of the most transcendent passages of writing in the Western canon.
And how, exactly, is a fictional character's experience evidence for a god orchestrating such moments of clarity?
Though now I say it, it does sound like a sneaky way to have some fun, or get a shoeing of course.
