I've enjoyed this little exchange and have learned a thing or two. Unfortunately, I'll have to stop after this post. (Let's hear it for mid-term assignments.)

I'm still struck by how religious experience doesn't seem all that different from typical experiences. I acknowledge that there are differences - it seems at least true, as you said, that "With a religious experience, not everyone can/does experience it and many would debate whether it really happened." But, nevertheless, there are similarities that make discounting religious experiences less easy.

Both types of experiences involve a personal knowledge that is externally unverifiable (except with something like a CAT scan). Both types of experiences involve comparing a personal knowledge with the similar experiences of others: a religious person would say that your statement "when we can see them touch it and touch it ourselves, it is reasonable to infer that they have a similar experience to us" applies to religious experience as well as typical experience (hence the existence of religious congregations). And both types of experiences can occur even in the face of improbability - the phrase "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it" is used often in reference to typical, not religious, experiences. (To use music as an example, again - there's plenty of music out there I would've never believed existed if I hadn't actually heard it.)

Might there not be a difference, then, between typical experiences and religious experiences (barring, of course, some future revelation from brain-scanning research)?

Just found this site and am very impressed. Like anything else in life, one has to whip through a lot of chaff to find the good grain...

That said, I would like to submit that perhaps we need to see people like Sullivan in a different light. You said:

"Andrew Sullivan, after all, is not the problem. He does not want a theocracy." You then said he has a problem with those that do, but doesn't have any answers.

I submit that Andrew Sullivan is as guilty as any pederast priest, any adulterous pentacostalist, and any hypocritical homosexual behind the pulpit. As I have gathered from Harris' rather strident stand, it is the middle of the roaders, the quiet believers who do not publically and actively police their fringe freaks who are ultimately responsible for letting this go on.

Sullivan allows that a book of poorly plagiarized fairy tales is good enough for him, so it should be okay to let the hate it promotes go unprotested. Sullivan, Fallwell, ANY person who puts stock in an invisible guy in the sky IS part of the problem and they need to be set straight and exposed for the magical thinkers they are.

I have always enjoyed Sullivan's columns but I am glad Harris is showing us that even 'benign believers' need to be held up to the same standard as any fringe freak.
To think that there are people not only walking around on this planet but breeding as well who allow their emotional feelings about an invisible guy in the sky to dictate their entire approach to life makes this human ashamed to be on the same tree...

Anyway, congrats on a beautiful, thoughtful, and hopefully long-lived site.

Yours in freethought,

Otto

Thanks for continuing to discuss this with an open mind.

In your example, the stove unquestionably exists in the real world. Perhaps we can't be sure (without a CAT scan) that the experience of it exists in someone else's mind, but when we can see them touch it and touch it ourselves, it is reasonable to infer that they have a similar experience to us. If they touched it and didn't recoil in pain we might come to the conclusion that they were having a very different experience.

With a religious experience, not everyone can/does experience it and many would debate whether it really happened. Meanwhile for those who have had a religious experience it will seem utterly real even if they know such things to be improbable. They may feel like a fool to admit that their mind was playing tricks on them and they believed it, but anyone's mind can create convincing illusions. I don't think it's fair to expect people to be convinced by the illusions going on in someone else's mind.

My point in bringing up the notion of experiential knowledge is that I'm not sure if externally verifiable signs exist for all there is to know.

I'm not sure the stove experience is an example of this and I can't think of any.

Re: Proof. Doesn't really exist in the real world. Some say proof is for mathematics and alcohol. All we have are theories which are consistent with observed evidence.

It seems that you're viewing the hot stove as someone standing back and watching people approach and touch the stove. Call it an external point of view. I'm wondering about an internal point view: the perspective of an individual as he or she approaches the stove and touches it. (Ignore the presence of other people and, again, skin marks. Neither are required for experiencing or learning from experiencing the hotness of the stove.) James said that knowledge gained through personal experience still could be evidence based: i.e. a person has a theory about the stove and tests that theory by touching it. The person's theory remains inaccessible to everyone but him or her, because, at the moment it's only an internal mental construction (that's what I meant by not being able to show the theory to anyone). The experience itself of the stove's hotness is known only by the person having the experience. Sure, other people can see the effects of the stove, or watch the person touch the stove, or hear the person comment about the hotness of the stove - but only the person who actually touched the stove will have knowledge of his or her particular experience with the stove.

The person touches the stove and interprets it as hotness - or, rather, the person interprets his or her experience as one wherein he or she touched a hot stove.

Now, if a person has a religious experience, it seems that we can't deny that an experience happened - the experience itself, after all, is knowable only to the person who had the experience. What's debatable is the interpretation of the experience, i.e. whether the religious experience was an experience of divinity or of laced muffins. I don't think any of this is controversial; it seems that this is just the nature of experience and experiential knowledge.

When people talk about "proof," they seem to want some externally verifiable sign of something. My point in bringing up the notion of experiential knowledge is that I'm not sure if externally verifiable signs exist for all there is to know. (The key word, I guess, is external.) Perhaps this is what Sullivan had in mind. Maybe he wasn't convinced by "proof"; rather, maybe he was convinced by experience. Cases against his Christianity, then, must not only trump his arguments - they must also trump his experience.

Experience is used to argue for both sides. What to make of it? Atheists say religious believers are deluded, and I've heard Christian presuppositionalists say the same about atheists. We can't separate ourselves from experience, nor can we separate ourselves from even immediate interpretations of experience.

No answers here. Just hopefully worthwhile thoughts.

In that case, we'd just have to say "It's just that way" about meaning, that some physical processes carry non-physical appearances (i.e. my brain only makes me think I'm having a special, meaningful reaction to music).

No, you are having a special and meaningful reaction to the music. That is obviously true and will be true regardless of what we discover about how the brain works. What neuroscientists seek to explain is the physical basis for that reaction. Just because we explain the cause of a mental phenomenon, that does not mean that that phenomenon does not exist; very much the contrary.

I cannot show anyone my theory of the stove's hotness, nor can I show anyone the evidence (other than bodily marks) of my test of the stove's hotness.

On the contrary: you can build a thermometer or some other measuring device that will reliably detect the stove's temperature, and independent observers can use that device (or build one of their own based on your instructions) to obtain the same results when they repeat the test.

And for that matter, why wouldn't a burn or a blister be evidence? If you were so inclined, you could set up a bizarre experiment where some people touch the stove and others don't, and an independent observer who wasn't present to observe that would then try to determine which people had touched it by examining their fingers. It's an event that leaves evidence available for any objective person to examine.

You've said that my experience was a form of evidential testing. But how should others know that?

Because your test is repeatable under specified conditions. When it comes to hot stoves, you don't have to tell people that they'll perceive the heat only if they have enough faith, or under rare and mysterious conditions that neither you nor anyone else can ascertain in advance. Turn the dial, let the stove heat up, and if you touch it you will be burned. None of this is applicable to religious experience.

So, as our ability to catalog brain-states improves, we should be able to explain reactions of meaning to objects. I suppose we should have faith that this will happen because neuroscience has already begun to explain other once-puzzling aspects of our cognitive lives. But I wonder where science will one day have to say "It's just that way."

Our brain interprets certain light waves as color. Is it the same for experiences of meaning in general, that our brain just happens to interpret certain things as having meaning to us? Science could eventually step in and more thoroughly explain how and why our brain interprets certain things as having meaning. But what is meaning? Certain wavelengths equal, for us, the color red - there's no more to it than that. Yet meaning has deeper implications; meaning, for us, touches the question of what is it to be a human person. Colors seem trivial, a mere physical interaction with the world. Things that have meaning seem less trivial, a bit more than a mere physical interaction with the world. But, I guess you're right: a detailed-enough understanding of the brain could explain all cases of meaning. In that case, we'd just have to say "It's just that way" about meaning, that some physical processes carry non-physical appearances (i.e. my brain only makes me think I'm having a special, meaningful reaction to music). So maybe it is a scientific question. But science's answer seems disappointingly far off.

Going back to the hot stove - I think you're right that it is a test that involves evidence. But now you've raised the point I think I was initially trying to get at: the evidence and testing is available only to me. I cannot show anyone my theory of the stove's hotness, nor can I show anyone the evidence (other than bodily marks) of my test of the stove's hotness.

You've said that my experience was a form of evidential testing. But how should others know that? Bringing it back now to the original discussion - how do we know that religious experiences aren't genuine religious experiences? It seems that my experience of the hot stove would be accepted, but if I had a religious experience, it would not be. What's the difference? And I'm trying to focus on experience itself. What "proof" is there, in fact, to directly support any experience? It seems that proof (as bounced around among people) only affects interpretations of experience. I think it's an important nuance.

Please tell us more about the devil. For example, why is it that God saw fit for the devil to exist?