Sure, Buddhism has categorised altered states of consciousness in meditative states, but these remain subjective and personal.
No more nor less subjective and personal than Western developmental studies mapping out growth models. Obviously the concrete-operational stage will be experienced differently by little Bobby, versus Paul, versus Mary, versus Sally. But they are all sharing the same general mapped out stage of cognitive development. So saying there is subjective experience within these does not in any way, shape, or form diminish or minimize them as merely subjective. The maps are in fact objective maps of subjective experience. No more nor less than Western models are. They follow an objective pattern of stage development.
For example in the Buddhist suttas there are descriptions of the jhanas, but from discussion I know that people experience these differently in practice, so it's very much a personal experience.
Sure, and the experience of egoic self-reflexive reality is experienced uniquely by me as compared to you, but we are both experiencing the same thing, in different ways. That means nothing to the fact of its objective reality. So a Satori experience will be in fact experienced the same by two people, yet each will interpret and integrate that in their unique individuality. You have experienced love? So have I. Do describe it differently? Is it the experience of something utterly not the same like hate? Yet, we can say without reservation we both know what that experience is. It is therefore not purely subjective, and not therefore less reliable.
And of course such experiences would be described differently in other traditions, so I don't think there is some kind of subjective consensus.
Sure there is. Not a consensus on description, nor the way in which it is integrated into one's culture. But the very fact of the experience and what it points to is for all intents and purposes universal, just as it is universal to say all children move up through the same developmental stages regardless of culture without exception. Not all of course may reach the same level, or at the same rate, but the stages are the same and cannot be bypassed.
So just as with these models which take an objective analysis of subjective experience and find patterns and trends, so too with the higher states of consciousness. They are in fact, objective and can be seen repeating again and again across cultures.
Neuroscience is beginning to explore this area but much remains to be understood.
And when it has its brain maps laid out better, do you believe it will then therefore tell us the truth of these things and settle all other modes of investigation into them? I certainly do not. I see them as important contributions to a better understanding, but certain never will be one that can map out the actual phenomenological interioties of them. That only will and can come through direct immersion experientially within them, and then comparing that with other experimenters in those interior spaces. Neuroscience studies the function of the brain, not the interiority of the experience itself, just as looking at my brain does not map out my actual lived self-sense. That can only ever be done by actual lived experience within that domain itself.
The original point I made was that such experiences don't rest on the assumption of God, that's the important observation to make in this thread.
But his argument was not about that, but that religion is backwards and dangerous. I'm pointing out how that is not 100% the case, just as science and technology is not 100% dangerous either, even though it certainly can be used to destroy people and even the planet. I've not once brought God into this as an argument for religion, though I certainly could bring up positive aspects of that as well, such as holding out archetypal forms for psycho-spiritual development in 2nd person mystical awakening experience. As I pointed about before, his image of God in the question of religion is rather ridiculously unsophisticated, and the problem is starting from that rather bleak notion and saying all of us who hold some view of God are basically idiots. I think that hardly holds up to reality.
