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[Frosty]

> Instead, the conversation is about the difference of religious experience from sheer imagination. I am supporting the position that religious experience is potentially as valid as any other experience.

Okay, but saying "potentially as valid as any other experience" is such a vague sentiment that it is rendered basically useless, so let's be more specific.

I actually spoke on a podcast with two Christians recently who asked me to speak to them about the nature of my unbelief. Both of them claimed to have had experiences in which a disembodied voice literally spoke to them, and they identified this voice as God. They said they knew the voice was God.

Do these experiences have objective differences from my chair example? Yes. They cannot access this voice at will. They cannot confirm the presence of the voice with a separate party. They cannot further inquire into the nature of this voice.

Every personal religious experience that has been personally shared with me has been nearly identical to that. Most involved a voice, some involved a feeling. I'm sure some people have or claim to have had more concrete experiences, but since I've heard so many that follow this trend, I will stick with it for the sake of this discussion.

The problem is, these people have no way of knowing the voice represented an actual being who was external to them, or their own imagination. They are literally just guessing that it was the deity they already believed in. Or the "holy spirit" that some have described when reading the Bible as proof of God, as if an emotional sensation could be validated as divine? However, many people of various religions have had such experiences even though these religions can't be true at the same time. Were their religious experiences representative of an interaction with a divine being too? Are the Muslims who have heard a voice or felt a feeling interacting with the Christian God or Holy Spirit, who inexplicably acts in such a way that reaffirms their commitment to Islam? You could say that for the sake of argument, but personally I find it pretty absurd.

I'm wondering what sort of evidence in this situation you would consider to be valid. How can science even enter this conversation? I fear that if it tries, it is no longer doing science, and so self-defeating. But I'm truly curious what your answer might be.

If I witnessed Moses part the seas, and was part of the tribe that was with him, and I could do something like talk to another person who also witnessed it, that would do it for me. If I saw Jesus turn water into wine, or come back from the dead after watching him be literally crucified and stabbed to death, that would do it for me. I think the idea that empirical evidence couldn't exist for God is kind of silly, because the Bible is chock full of incidents which -- if they occurred today in public -- would fundamentally change humanity's understanding of reality.

> You've chosen to identify two severe negatives. Let's not forget the positive benefits of religious belief as a balance to your chosen examples.

My point is not to paint religion as a bad thing, I'm simply emphasizing that the validity or invalidity of religion is a serious matter, and that it is not unreasonable to say that it isn't a matter that can be settled with the kind of casual acceptance that we would lend to someone saying they had the hiccups. It doesn't matter if it's not true and I believe it anyways.

[jimwalton]

Swinburne's point (tracing back to my original response in the post) is that you, as an outsider, have non objective or reliable criteria to assess whether that person did indeed hear the voice of God or not. And, with plenty of evidence that the other individual is sane, rational, and of sound mind, on what basis can you or do you conclude that their experience and assessment are either insane, irrational, or of an unsound mind?

I don't see where it's different from any particular thought that comes to your mind. From where does this thought come, and on what basis can you judge it as sound, rational, or reliable? What makes it so? It's a feeling, an intuition, a "thought"—but you cannot inquire into the nature of this episode.

Let me offer this long quote (sorry) from Alvin Plantinga:

We can infer the existence of God in the same way that we “know” the existence of other persons. We know that we are not alone in the world because we know there are other persons in it. We also believe that each person, generally speaking, has a mind that can reason, feel, remember, intuit, etc., just as ours can. Yet we have absolutely no concrete evidence of anyone else’s mind. We can never really tell if they think, what they are truly feeling, if their pain is real and what it is like, etc., and yet we suppose it’s true. We can never determine by observation that someone else for certainty is in a particular mental state. Yet I can reasonably construct a sound inductive argument for the conclusion that I am not the only being that thinks and reasons, or has sensations and feelings. How do we know that other people think, similar to the way I think, and feel things similar to what I feel? When it comes right down to it, other minds are inaccessible to me, and their attributes are similarly inaccessible. I have no observational proof of them; the best I can do is assume or believe what I am told by that person. And yet we live life fully convinced that there are other people, that they have thoughts and feelings, and that our perceptions and analyses of such things are both reasonable and to varying extents accurate.

"I can’t scientifically prove to you what another person is thinking, or even that they are thinking, or if they are feeling pain. And yet there are cues, clues, and evidences that tell me such things. Scientific evidences ultimately fail in this regard. With so many variables, what the analogy holds here is that I have no direct arguments of true proofs of other people or of what their minds are doing, but at the same time there are no convincing arguments against those realities. Without that evidence against them, it is more reasonable than not, given the total evidence, that these other persons exist, think, and feel. The bulk of my commonsense beliefs about these other minds and their mental states is more probable than not. I have evidence that other sentient beings exist, but that’s not enough to scientifically confirm that they experience anger, joy, depression, and pain, as well as hold beliefs. Yet it’s neither necessary nor possible that I must have scientific proof in my observations of other people to be able to assume the truth that they exist and that their minds think and feel."

Given that, on what basis do you conclude these individuals' experiences of the voice of God are illegitimate, fanciful, or sheer imagination?

[Frosty]

> on what basis can you or do you conclude that their experience and assessment are either insane, irrational, or of an unsound mind?

You've got it wrong. I am asserting that the nature of their experience is an unknown quality, and its nature cannot be assessed by way of external validation. However, if we are given the challenge of "establishing the primacy of imagination over divinity" I think it's not as high a bar as maybe you expect.

Similar to the hiccups example, we know that minds can play tricks on us. It is very common, completely independent of religious circumstances, for people to have weird sensations, hear things that no one said. Don't mistake my meaning, I am not referring exclusively to those with severe clinical disorders, this happens to "regular" people as well. However, even those disorders are a good proof-of-concept of how the brain can create these things.

So we have a baseline acceptance of the concept of an imaginary voice. It is not an outrageous concept to think that someone had such an experience. However, using this extremely ambiguous circumstance to validate something that no one has ever seen or proven, like the idea that the voice is authentically originating from an extradimensional deity, is certainly not the most credible explanation for why they heard a voice.

> I have no observational proof of them; the best I can do is assume or believe what I am told by that person

I mean sure, but our understanding of our own minds, and the basis for them (our understanding of the brain) can be reasonably extrapolated to other human beings who share the vast majority of our genetic makeup.

It's great and all, the idea that we can accept things for which there is not absolute proof, but not all unproven claims are equally valid or okay to accept. And he did not establish what basis we have to infer the existence of God.

> Given that, on what basis do you conclude these individuals' experiences of the voice of God are illegitimate, fanciful, or sheer imagination?

I've touched on it earlier and in other comments, but I'll present it in an easily readable format:

1. The fact that imaginary voices due to abnormal brain activity is an established and understood concept, and is known to exist outside of religious contexts.

2. The fact that followers of incompatible religions all have these experiences, but never in such a way that causes them to inexplicably convert to a different religion, or to religion from atheism. (I have no doubt that, through the course of human history, there are examples of this -- possibly in multiple directions -- but the fact remains that the vast majority of these experiences simply confirm pre-existing beliefs of a diverse set of religious people and that is problematic, as a concept, because it means we must either believe that all non-Christian religious experiences are imaginary, or that all of these experiences are actually Christian in nature but never in a way that is obvious to non-Christians, which is similarly preposterous -- with such an extreme emphasis on the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, it seems obviously outrageous that God would impart an experience upon someone which drastically affirms their faith to the contrary -- such as in Islam)

3. The fact that the alternative source proposed for these experiences relies on something that we have never seen, proven, nor do we understand the alleged nature.

[jimwalton]

It's been a good discussion, and I appreciate both your intellect and your candor. I'm not sure anything else I can say will take the conversation any further.

I do have one additional comment/response, though. In #2 you said "but never in such a way that causes them to inexplicably convert to a different religion, or to religion from atheism." Actually, contrary to that, in recent years there have been multiple instances of Muslims having visionary experiences of Jesus, and hearing a voice, such that they convert from Islam to Christianity. You can google it and view many such articles.

Thank you for the stimulating conversation. I've enjoyed it.

[Frosty]

> Actually, contrary to that, in recent years there have been multiple instances of Muslims having visionary experiences of Jesus, and hearing a voice, such that they convert from Islam to Christianity. You can google it and view many such articles.

Yeah, this kind of thing is why I put the stuff in italics that I did. I know that there are instances of both happening (Christians and Muslims converting to the opposite religion due to spiritual experiences like the ones you describe) but the vast majority of experiences simply affirm the pre-existing belief. But to be clear, both have occurred.

I do not reject the possibility of a god, but I do reject the idea that these vague experiences can be fashioned as proof. They happen far too often in non-religious contexts for us to rely upon them that way, and I also believe it's a case of Christians trying to "have their cake and eat it to." As often the response to "why doesn't God just prove he exists" can provoke an almost identical response from many Christians about the implications on free will and that this is a test and faith, but will simultaneously believe that they, or someone they know, were personally spoken to by this same deity who obscures the fact-of their existence for the sake of our uninhibited free will or for the integrity of this spiritual testing ground. These positions, in my opinion, clearly contradict each other.

> Thank you for the stimulating conversation. I've enjoyed it.

Likewise.

[jimwalton]

> I do reject the idea that these vague experiences can be fashioned as proof.

I agree, and I never posited experience as proof. I think experiences are valid evidences for oneself when one is weighing positions (You know, the "I know what I saw!" kind of thing), but by themselves they don't qualify as proof.

[Frosty]

The problem is, all you know is that you heard something. The assertion that the source of the voice was divine isn't an experiential validation. It's post-hoc theorizing about an experience which -- stripped bare of presuppositions -- is simply an audible transmission of some kind.

[jimwalton]

Yep, I hear ya. I would assume there are four primary options in a situation like this: A hallucination (and all things under the category of mental deficiencies that create voices in our heads), our own thoughts (that we attribute to a voice), one's imagination (it didn't even really happen, but we will it into being), or a spiritual reality. Can you think of others?

It's possible that when a solid thought pops into the head of particular Christian, he/she is predisposed to consider it as the voice of God to them. Christians do believe that God speaks to people through their thoughts, but it's definitively unverifiable. That doesn't mean it wasn't the voice of God, but who's to know, really.

In conversation with two individuals in particular, they said to me they heard a voice, and actual voice, in their ear, like in the room. Frankly, I'm dubious of such a claim, and it's not verifiable, but again, Christians believe that God does such things. Its nonverifiability doesn't exclude it from being the voice of God, it's just that there's no way for anyone else to know whether it actually happened, and, if it did, was it the voice of God.
These aren't matters of science, nor subject to verification, but that's not the criteria for truth. The only criteria for truth is "Did it actually happen?", but there's no way anyone can know that except the person who had the experience, and even then, it's their interpretation.

I've had conversations on this forum before where I asked, "Suppose you were in your room alone, and God appeared to you. I mean, REALLY appeared to you. And suppose you could tell is was God, and that this was real and not a dream, psychotic event, or hallucination. And suppose you asked him to prove it by whatever means you designed and God did that to prove it to you. What would you think?" And they answered, "I still wouldn't believe it. I would still think my mind was playing tricks on me."

A response like that seems to leave us, in our very good conversation here, out in limbo-land. If even if you experienced it you would come up with a different interpretation for it, then even a valid experience in and of itself accomplishes nothing. But if someone else truly has a valid experience, it is clearly left to interpretation as to who believes or not. But neither of those interpretations governs reality. The question at hand is, "Are such things possible?" If they are, then people could legitimately have them, regardless of unverifiability. But it's still possible that someone could have a legitimate experience and deny it, or interpret it differently. Yet if such things are not possible, then all such experiences are imaginative or delusional.

[Nothing Clever]

> If His existence were too evident, man’s freedom would be vastly curtailed.

What's this about? Its not hard to imagine that a god might exist, but also I have a bunch of freedom.

[jimwalton]

I think what Swinburne is getting at is that if God were too obvious, everyone would feel constrained to comply and obey, and that's not the kind of relationship that fits love and choice. That's would be my guess.