re: #570 b_sharp

I have a father and 2 brothers who say the same thing as you so I’m not unfamiliar with it. I don’t assume insanity, but I do suspect modified brain chemistry, something I’ve lived with most of my life, although mine is somewhat different.

All of the feelings you have can be artificially induced by either drugs or electrical impulse. Biofeedback has also been successful in inducing similar feelings. Atheists tend to not trust, at first blush, what goes on in the brain, which is one reason we demand external replication and validation.

Most atheists I know are highly self reflective and spend a fair bit of time trying to understand what goes on in our own heads and how those processes affect our view of the external world. We also spend a great deal of time considering and deciding on our own set of values, morals and sense of purpose. This makes the idea of faith, in the religious sense, strange to us.

It’s not just strange to you. Faith is a strange thing, period.

Your paragraph about artificial inducement is interesting. Is it a poor analogy to say that a greater understanding of the mechanism is only that, as opposed to a commentary on who or what is inducing the impression?

If i heard God with my ears, understanding how the ears work or being able to induce auditory sensations in other manners wouldn’t prove or disprive what i said i heard, right?

Is that a proper analogy?