God experience can change atheists

[viole]

In a survey of thousands of people who reported having experienced personal encounters with God, Johns Hopkins researchers report that more than two-thirds of self-identified atheists shed that label after their encounter, regardless of whether it was spontaneous or while taking a psychedelic.

Experiences of 'ultimate reality' or 'God' confer lasting benefits to mental health


Survey of subjective "God encounter experiences": Comparisons among naturally occurring experiences and those occasioned by the classic psychedelics psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, or DMT

...

As I always say the stupendous taste of mango can be known only by eating a mango.

Do these experiences depend on the culture of the person who experienced it?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Polymath257]

I can't think of one experience that is irrelevant (in what sense could it be?). Reality is nothing more than experience given the nod of truth. Even the falsehoods are relevant, for they are not falsehoods until they are discovered to be false. The illusions are only illusion when experience shows us that they are. The mistakes are only mistaken when we know them to be.

OK, perhaps a poor choice of words. The experience is relevant because it can show how we *misinterpret* things and can go wrong in our search for truth.

An optical illusion is useful because it shows how our visual system can mess up. It shows how certain types of mistakes are 'built in' to our visual system.

My personal belief is that stress, whether induced by entheogens or by meditation, can produce illusions that are quite powerful emotionally. That makes those inclined to belief more likely to accept the illusion as reality.

The experience is not the reality. Experience *always* needs interpretation, even when it is the experience of non-duality.

 

[joe1776]

I have to challenge you on one point in particular, that the unconscious mind is in touch with a "greater reality." There's actually no reason whatever to suppose that it is "in touch" with anything outside itself, nor that what it is doing is either "greater" or some other "reality." It's just different. It works differently, and it certainly is able to inform the conscious part of our minds -- one way or another -- about what is going on.

I don't believe you can support this claim with evidence. Thus far, neuroscientists are working with crude tools, like fMRI to examine the brain. On my side, I can only offer anecdotal evidence but there's a ton of it.

"Feelings" (as in Taylor's "oceanic feeling") are, in the view of many neuroscientists, little more than the outputs to various algorithms hard- and soft-wired into our brains....

If many neuroscientists are saying that, their opinion is based on their personal philosophy and not on replicated science. Such opinions don't interest me.

And Taylor herself never makes any claim to being "in contact" with anything, other than of having the noise of the dominant side of her brain silenced long enough to hear the other side, for a while.

I didn't say that Taylor made that claim. The claim was mine based on her experience, my own, and a ton of others that are remarkably similar.

 

[joe1776]

For me, the realization that a very small amount of some chemical can have such massive effects of the psyche confirmed that consciousness is a process in the matter of the brain.

The point is that no experience carries its own interpretation. Just because you have had a feeling of non-duality or a feeling of transcendence doens't mean that is the actual fact of the matter. It is a perception, along with all the other types of perception we can have.

I suspect the ability to have this perception of non-duality is a common thread for many religions and a common human possibility. But that commonality doesn't make it true and more than a common experience of an optical illusion makes the illusion true.

I agree that no experience carries its own perception. The computer monitor I'm looking at might only exist in my mind. But since I have no other concept of existence, I believe it exists.

So, let's assume I am one of the many people who have felt a loving presence within them. I agree that it's not intelligent to add my own interpretation to the experience. I should not assume it's God. However, it would be silly to jump to the conclusion that the feeling was merely a delusion simply because delusions are possible.

It's equally silly for anyone else to jump to the conclusion that such experiences are delusions simply because it wasn't their own experience and delusion can be raised as a possibility.

 

[wandering peacefully]

I don't believe you can support this claim with evidence. Thus far, neuroscientists are working with crude tools, like fMRI to examine the brain. On my side, I can only offer anecdotal evidence but there's a ton of it.

If many neuroscientists are saying that, their opinion is based on their personal philosophy and not on replicated science. Such opinions don't interest me.

I didn't say that Taylor made that claim. The claim was mine based on her experience, my own, and a ton of others that are remarkably similar.

Actually, when viewing brain activity in meditating subjects, the same area of the brain lights up. So it is not totally subjective on the part of neuro scientists.

I can induce these feelings and perceptions of non-dualality and oneness with everthing pretty much whenever I want to. I see them as using my brain in a manipulative way through meditation to achieve the perception. It is very peaceful, feels amazing to lose the ego and clears my thinking but I don't arise from the experience and start thinking I have experienced God. That is not my worldview. But I can easily see how a person who does include gods in their worldview could easily interpret the experience as just that.

 

[sealchan]

Without experience we would know nothing, true. Yet all experiences are subjective, and are susceptible to inaccurate self interpretation.

A God experience would have to be irrefutably true, and that takes reasoning about the experience. There would be no room for doubt. No experience is infallibly 100 percent absolutely clear as to its accurate and complete truth. Perhaps a certain percent of personal experience is as is, but the interpretations of experience always can be questioned and it would be rare indeed to get an infallibly true self interpreted personal experience; where you know that you know that you know that what you are experiencing is God.

I would never claim that a subjective truth is infallible. Quite the contrary, subjective truths in general are very fragile as they tend to run afoul of practical reality. If I were to believe that I no longer needed to eat so long as I drank out of a specific "holy" cup then I would soon discover the protest of my stomach and body if I didn't come to believe otherwise.

There are more subtle subjective experiences which are deeply formative of one's own sense of meaning...they way a parent treats a child, how a first love interest relationship works out, whether one wins a fist fight with a bully, etc...these things expose us to our sense of ourselves as subject to the consequences of our reality and experience on a deeply personal level and address such questions as:

• Am I respected/respectable?
• Can I have success?
• Am I loved/lovable?

In general terms these are value questions which we rationally determine based on our experience of life. We realize that our actions, our character, our value is a matter of rational assessment and we are frequently comparing ourselves to others or being comparable to others in an effort to determine that level of value. The ability to objectively and fairly assess our personal worth against those of others, to have faith where we are found wanting (and remember as a child just how much that assessment is dependent on the determination of one's parents and later peers) to handle well when we are gifted...all these things are not answerable to science as much as they are answerable to the input of others in one's environment and one's own self-determination. To find one's value amidst a throng of objectively like others (in the context of a more or less democratic society) is to try and understand why "I" should have when others don't or why "I" should go without while others don't.

William James the American psychologist studied and classified types of religious experience and found that in varied cultures and contexts there were common identifiable patterns of experience that people claimed they had and those experiences shared qualities objective in nature. Even as those experiences created a sense of value in those who had them (and sometimes they didn't), they often were not experiences those individuals chose and as such they were experiences that happened to them. How they interpreted those experiences often would have to do with the community that would and could interpret those experiences or provide a language and frame for doing so.

It is possible to have an intense personal dream or vision which so deeply impacts one's sense of meaning and estimation of the value of creation that one cannot sincerely dismiss that experience as a subjective hallucination. To do so would so corrupt an appreciation for the world, a tolerance of its evils and a sense of value in one's self as to be almost suicidal to one's integrity. This is not to say that such experiences are an excuse to devalue others who have not had these experiences, to devalue science and other forms of objective knowledge or to abandon one's sense of responsibility to others because one is personally "saved". In fact most religions teach against this very thing although, with deep irony, we see so many act otherwise.

Self-interpretation, in the end, happens in a group (family, peers) or community (cultural, religious) which fosters a certain set of mirrors or metaphors for how one sees one's self. That mirror is itself subject to an individual's evaluation and very often not based on factors that are entirely relevant. To the extent this is true we all face the prospect of recognizing cracks in the glass and obscuring soil on its surface. Sometimes the mirror is, through the course of a rational evaluation of experience, largely abandoned. And sometimes one is handed a polished surface so neatly suited to an individual that it persists because of its uniqueness and value to that individual. They can go to work, solving peer-reviewed problems in science by day, and read fantastic tales from their spiritual books by night and never be troubled that the two don't literally correspond.

If you have ever walked out of a theater with a renewed sense of yourself, your potential and that of your society, then you have had a religious experience...one that provides you a sense of appreciation for the world you find yourself in, an understanding of how you should act in that society, and an understanding of what you may become in your future. The surviving religions may need to undergo some serious changes to maintain their role as a healthy contributor to modern life, some more than others. But in terms of coming to a deep appreciation of one's self in spite of all the suffering that one can and is often subject to, there is no better science than religion.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

As I always say the stupendous taste of mango can be known only by eating a mango.

Do you think that the only way we can tell that a mango exists at all is by tasting it?

 

[sealchan]

I agree that no experience carries its own perception. The computer monitor I'm looking at might only exist in my mind. But since I have no other concept of existence, I believe it exists.

So, let's assume I am one of the many people who have felt a loving presence within them. I agree that it's not intelligent to add my own interpretation to the experience. I should not assume it's God. However, it would be silly to jump to the conclusion that the feeling was merely a delusion simply because delusions are possible.

It's equally silly for anyone else to jump to the conclusion that such experiences are delusions simply because it wasn't their own experience and delusion can be raised as a possibility.

I would frame this differently...you are free to understand that your experience is subject to multiple interpretations, but so long as you retain this understanding you should also feel free to explore your subjective experience to your own sense of personal benefit. Call it "the pursuit of happiness".

If you find that in your life your favorite color is blue and another's is red, does that mean you are deluded? Or that the other person is deluded? Given a choice are you being silly for choosing a blue shirt over a red one because you feel it would "lift your spirits" more?

Our subjective truths are not to be cornered and subjected to intense interrogation to the exclusion of a sense of personal humanity and only allowed "out" if they are proven objectively sound. While it is true that we should retain an open mind and a deep appreciation for diversity, we should also make room for our uniqueness and celebrate that which is native to our own sense of things.

 

[joe1776]

Actually, when viewing brain activity in meditating subjects, the same area of the brain lights up. So it is not totally subjective on the part of neuro scientists. ..

The poster I replied to wrote: "Feelings" (as in Taylor's "oceanic feeling") are, in the view of many neuroscientists, little more than the outputs to various algorithms hard- and soft-wired into our brains....

I read this as implying that such things as the oceanic feeling were illusions in the opinion of scientists. I reasoned that they could not possibly know this with the tools available to them. Merely, watching the same part of the brain light up during meditation only informs them that the same area of the brain lights up during meditation. It doesn't help them interpret the effects of meditation.

I liked your post. That's very interesting.

 

[joe1776]

I would frame this differently...you are free to understand that your experience is subject to multiple interpretations, but so long as you retain this understanding you should also feel free to explore your subjective experience to your own sense of personal benefit. Call it "the pursuit of happiness".

If you find that in your life your favorite color is blue and another's is red, does that mean you are deluded? Or that the other person is deluded? Given a choice are you being silly for choosing a blue shirt over a red one because you feel it would "lift your spirits" more?

Our subjective truths are not to be cornered and subjected to intense interrogation to the exclusion of a sense of personal humanity and only allowed "out" if they are proven objectively sound. While it is true that we should retain an open mind and a deep appreciation for diversity, we should also make room for our uniqueness and celebrate that which is native to our own sense of things.

I might be missing your point.

I don't think the discussion is about subjective truths. I think we have a disagreement about facts, true or false, where there is insufficient evidence to make a persuasive case either way. I think my opponents are jumping to conclusions when they write off so-called "God experiences" and such as delusions.

 

[ChristineM]

In a survey of thousands of people who reported having experienced personal encounters with God, Johns Hopkins researchers report that more than two-thirds of self-identified atheists shed that label after their encounter, regardless of whether it was spontaneous or while taking a psychedelic.

Experiences of 'ultimate reality' or 'God' confer lasting benefits to mental health


Survey of subjective "God encounter experiences": Comparisons among naturally occurring experiences and those occasioned by the classic psychedelics psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, or DMT

...

As I always say the stupendous taste of mango can be known only by eating a mango.

I can't see this happening to atheists, without belief in god what is a god experience?

An agnostic could think, ok i can count that experience as known, at least by me, so maybe there is something in this god thing.


What the statistics tell us that while most religions are loosing adherents, none belief is gaining ground.

 

[atanu]

Very few atheists I know would claim they'd be an atheist if they met God...

No doubt. But that 2/3 of the sample atheists converted suggests that most atheists are not dogmatic .....

 

[atanu]

Again, the experience does not equal believing in god.

True. But is that the point??

 

[atanu]

Not at all surprising. Since there is absolutely ZERO verifiable evidence for any god or gods, it's safe to say that any 'evidence' anyone has for a god or gods is a purely subjective experience that cannot be duplicated for anyone else.

Yes. Not at all surprising that experience makes some people change.

 

[atanu]

But it is also quite possible to have experienced this and have found it to be irrelevant. ...

Why not? Some self declared atheists did not change.

 

[atanu]

So it wasn't a *real* mango because he disliked it?

Ha ha. Who knows? Some are averse to good taste.

 

[atanu]

Clearly something that you have accomplished, though I doubt if anyone but you and a passing few few others, who have similarly pursued the abandonment of reasoning skills, would style as "better."

I am sure chemicals decided to gift better reasoning skills to you. Pride will go surely.

 

[atanu]

Y
Problem is with how many drug users compared to non-drug participants shows those experiences are far more chemical induced fantasies. I am sure the drug users also had great experiences with tomatoes and flashlights too.

Without chemicals, it is difficult and is a lifelong endeavour (or as we believe of many lifetimes). It is not easy to maintain attention on one's own mind without a bit of wavering.

 

[atanu]

Can you remove all deepities so that I understand what you are saying?

Ciao

- viole

I gave you a winner point. I will try.

 

[atanu]

Do you think that the only way we can tell that a mango exists at all is by tasting it?

We are not talking of name-form.