| Thanks for taking the time to respond! I wasn't sure you'd see it since I got to this thread late. Glad to be engaged in a respectful discussion on a contentious topic that is dear to me. >This is broadly the issue when citing individual, personal experience as evidence: it is most often collected by those with an existing bias to the results Yes, I agree here. Maybe I bungled it, but I was not attempting to prove God exists through this one person's experience. Just examining it as an example of a repeatable experiment. >reproducible in a devout atheist
I would disagree here. A devout atheist presumably has a very strong bias against finding out God exists or interpreting an experience as something supernatural. So maybe "reproducible in a [dispassionate, neutral party]"? >To this end, we have to design our experiments knowing that our brains will see causality where there may be none, and mis-remember data according to both our hopes and our doubts. I just wonder if this is an excuse people use for never trying it out at the individual level. A person can say in their heads or out loud "God, are you there?" and observe the results. Of course, there's the question of how long one needs to go through with this. But scientists are often patient and willing to go to great lengths to prove something[1][2]. I don't blame anyone who is not willing to go through with the effort in something they see as pointless as long as they don't take the failure of one or two attempts as proof that God does not exist. E.g., Higgs et al. in a parallel universe quitting before decades passing and before having a multi-billion dollar machine doesn't prove that the Higgs boson doesn't exist. Maybe my experiment as stated isn't it, but I think there can be a convincing and repeatable experiment along those lines. Millions of people have repeated it and experienced something convincing (to them) (I'm not trying to use "Millions of people" as proof that all of us are right or anything. Just that it can be/has been repeated). But, for sure, it is unknown whether the millions of people and I interpreted the outcome according to their hopes. I think that's why it's worth it for every individual to try for themselves. >his experiment just shows that he can have a strong emotional reaction to a text he reads late at night while praying that he has some reaction to the text he's reading. It is true that even very real spiritual experiences can be explained in other ways. So, you're right, the experience still has to be accepted by the observer as from God. Because I believe in an omniscient God who knows you personally, I think you'll experience exactly what you need to experience exactly when you need to experience it. I won't claim it will be irrefutable proof, but maybe it'll be enough to make you want to keep digging. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory |