[guicen]

What I find interesting is that the line between a religious experience and a brain chemistry event seems a lot thinner than we usually think. The clergy didn’t lose their faith after taking psilocybin. Instead, they seem to hold their beliefs a bit more loosely and focus more on what they feel in the moment. In some ways, this feels like something humans have always done. Whether it's prayer, meditation, fasting, or psychedelics, people keep looking for ways to quiet the noise in their heads and feel connected to something bigger. The methods change, but the need stays the same.

[keiferski]

People often assume that a spiritual experience is by-definition somehow supernatural, but it makes sense to me that it would need to functionally have a wiring system in order to actually work.

In other words, even if you assume that the vision of God/feeling of divine presence/etc. is valid, there are two methods of implementation: either it’s done in a supernatural way that defies physics and logic; or it’s done in a way that accords with the structure of reality (as in, chemically.)

The latter seems a lot more elegant to me, IMO.

[anon291]

The entire premise of supernatural is wrong. Anything that occurs in this world is, by definition, natural.

Other definitions of supernatural really fail to be complete or useful. One definition is 'not predictable' , but by that metric, every moment of a newborns first few moments of life is supernatural.

Of course, there's another definition, which is experiences that do not take place in this world and unobservable to us. In which case, sure but then we cannot experience them here on earth. The moment such a thing is experienced by a human, it becomes natural

I honestly challenge people to explain what they mean when they say 'supernatural'.

[kayodelycaon]

I’m a Christian and here’s my perspective.

There’s a physical realm we exist in defined by space and time. Everything outside of that is the supernatural.

God is not bound by time and His true nature is not something we can fully understand. He is in our world, but not from it.

The Bible makes references to angels and demons, entities that cannot be seen or measured unless they choose to make themselves known. They can affect still affect the natural world. These effects can be observed, but it would be difficult to reproduce any experiments because they are an unknown variable.

Science has trouble differentiating between an effect without a cause (a miracle basically) and an effect with a mechanism we haven’t accounted for.

[anon291]

I'm a Christian too and while I agree with everything you said, any time anything outside our 'world' interacts with our world, the phenomenon we see is... Natural.

[geye1234]

> there are two methods of implementation: either it's done in a supernatural way that defies physics and logic; or it's done in a way that accords with the structure of reality (as in, chemically.)

Why not both?

Everyone agrees that brain chemistry-stuff happens when you have a supernatural experience, just as brain chemistry-stuff happens when you eat a steak. The disagreement is whether that's all that's happening. Pointing to the existence of brain chemistry-stuff as an argument against the existence of the supernatural is like pointing to it as an argument against the existence of the steak.

Also, the 'supernatural' does not defy physics or logic; it is perfectly logical, and outside the scope of physics.

[Winsaucerer]

My own view is an idealist style one, where I think God impresses experiences upon us, and the experiences we have are determined by physical states. On this view, it's impossible to have a religious experience without there being appropriate physical states in place. In other words, agreeing with your conclusion.

[leptons]

>the line between a religious experience and a brain chemistry event seems a lot thinner than we usually think.

George Gurdjieff wrote about this many, many years ago (1890 – 1912). He called it "The Fourth Way". This is the relevant passage from the book "In Search of the Miraculous":

“So that when a man attains will on the fourth way he can make use of it because he has acquired control of all his bodily, emotional, and intellectual functions. And besides, he has saved a great deal of time by working on the three sides of his being in parallel and simultaneously.

“The fourth way is sometimes called the way of the sly man. The ‘sly man’ knows some secret winch the fakir, monk, and yogi do not know. How the ‘sly man’ learned this secret — it is not known. Perhaps he found it in some old books, perhaps he inherited it, perhaps he bought it, perhaps he stole it from someone. It makes no difference. ‘The ‘sly man’ knows the secret and with its help outstrips the fakir, the monk, and the yogi.

“Of the four, the fakir acts in the crudest manner; he knows very little and understands very little. Let us suppose that by a whole month of intense torture he develops in himself a certain energy, a certain substance which produces certain changes in him. He does it absolutely blindly, with his eyes shut, knowing neither aim, methods, nor results, simply in imitation of others.

“The monk knows what he wants a little better; he is guided by religious feeling, by religious tradition, by a desire for achievement, for salvation; he trusts his teacher who tells him what to do, and he believes that his efforts and sacrifices are ‘pleasing to God.’ Let us suppose that a week of fasting, continual prayer, privations, and so on, enables him to attain what the fakir develops in himself by a month of self-torture.

“The yogi knows considerably more. He knows what he wants, he knows why he wants it, he knows how it can be acquired. He knows, for instance, that it is necessary for his purpose to produce a certain substance in himself. He knows that this substance can be produced in one day by a certain kind of mental exercises or concentration of consciousness. So he keeps his attention on these exercises for a whole day without allowing himself a single outside thought, and he obtains what he needs. In this way a yogi spends on the same thing only one day compared with a month spent by the fakir and a week spent by the monk.

“But on the fourth way knowledge is still more exact and perfect. A man who follows the fourth way knows quite definitely what substances he needs for his aims and he knows that these substances can be produced within the body by a month of physical suffering, by a week of emotional strain, or by a day of mental exercises—and also, that they can be introduced into the organism from without if it is known how to do it. And so, instead of spending a whole day in exercises like the yogi, a week in prayer like the monk, or a month in self-torture like the fakir, he simply prepares and swallows a little pill which contains all the substances he wants and, in this way, without loss of time, he obtains the required results.

https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.5892/page/49/mode/2up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way