Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
This actually has been studied, but I can't give the reference off hand. In every generation some number of people experience "theophanies"; IIRC the number amounts to a few percent of the population. Whether you, personally, accept such experiences as being "really from God" or feel there's some mundane cause, such experiences can be very convincing to the people to whom they happen. Some of those who are so "touched" then tell others about what they perceived as a _direct_ demonstration of God's existence; such witnessing is likely to be quite convincing, since it's first-person. And so we have a ripple effect, and each such experience may convince several people that there is a God.
These events are very common, especially in response to stress. In some primitive societies, young men are cast into the wilderness without food or water and told they will not be allowed back into the tribe until they experience a revelation. They always do, and I expect it is genuine in most cases. Modern people seldom experience such extreme stress except in war, hence the expression: "there are no atheists in foxholes." That is generally true although I have known a few WWII vets who were atheists even in battle, especially when their side lost. (However, it is not a true of populations in cities who are bombed. In Europe and Japan the civilian populations largely abandoned religion as a result of World War II.)
I had an interesting discussion about this with my mother just before she died, when she was still somewhat lucid. I wrote a letter about it to a professor. He wrote:
"Note that I am not demanding that God interact in a scientifically verifiable, physical way. I might potentially receive some revelation, some direct experience of God. An experience like that would be incommunicable, and not subject to scientific verification -- but it would nevertheless be as compelling as any evidence can be."
My comments:
I think your example is out of date, or technically inaccurate. When a person "receives some revelation," he is experiencing a physical event in his brain. The fact that X caused your brain to feel a holy revelation does not mean X is actually God -- even if you think it must be. The revelation might have a mundane cause. It might even be a symptom of disease. For example, people who have suffered severe syphilis sometimes decades later develop feelings of rapture or intense sexual desire.
Since the brain is often subject to delusions and malfunction, the only proof of God's existence that I personally would trust would be something external and independently reproducible. I do not think I would trust my own brain, as unlikely as that might sound. You might think a person must, willy-nilly, believe such experiences, but that is not so. Toward the end of her life, my mother suffered from delusions and hallucinations induced by drugs and Parkinson's disease. These were intensely realistic while they occurred. For example, she would become convinced that long dead relative was in the next room or "upstairs," although she lived in a one-floor house. She would take a nap, wake an hour later and remember these thoughts, and instantly dismiss them as delusions. She knew a lot about medicine and had a lifetime of scientific training, and she was not about to turn her back on it because of a few intense hallucinations. A person with a fundamentalist bent might have concluded that angels from heaven were hanging around, or talking to her from "heaven" (upstairs). My mother was religious but strictly in a rational, Unitarian sense -- not the sort of sect that countenances the voices of angels.
A rational person tries to integrate the aggregate of their experiences into a coherent whole, and they accept the picture which results as being "reality". Someone who has experienced a "theophany" must integrate that into their picture of reality, too; such people may be led -- quite rationally -- to have an absolute faith in the existence of a supernatural power.
It is quite rational, but the conclusion you reach depends upon your preconceptions, background, training and expectations. In my mother's case she integrated it into her pre-existing picture of reality and concluded it must be a clinical problem rather than a supernatural revelation. Actually, even if she had experienced a genuine supernatural revelation (assuming such a thing as possible), I expect she would have dismissed it as a clinical problem. I sure would! As I said, I cannot transcend my own culture, even though I have a great deal of experience living in other people's cultures.
- Jed
