Science · Objection
Mystical and religious experiences are produced by brain states, so they cannot be evidence of anything outside the mind.
Why people find it persuasive
Neuroscience can induce feelings of presence through stimulation of the temporal lobe, and meditation or psychedelics can create experiences of unity, so religious experience appears fully explained by natural causes.
Important distinctions
- • Correlates of experience versus causes of experience.
- • An explanation of how we experience versus whether the experience is veridical.
- • Genetic fallacy versus real defeaters.
Christian response
- • All perception has neural correlates, including seeing a tree. The existence of a brain process does not show that the object is unreal.
- • Michael Persinger's lab results about the 'God helmet' have not been successfully replicated in blinded studies.
- • Philosophers like William Alston and Richard Swinburne argue that religious experience, like sense experience, is prima facie evidence absent defeaters.
- • If naturalism makes brain states undermine all beliefs, it faces a self-referential problem; the real question is whether there are specific defeaters.
Strongest version of the objection
Mystical and religious experiences are produced by brain states, so they cannot be evidence of anything outside the mind.
Christian counterresponse
Christians can reply that differing interpretations do not cancel a common core of encounter with the sacred, and that the concern applies to all human cognition.
Remaining questions
How to weigh the diversity of religious experiences against claims of exclusive truth remains contested.
Related arguments
For further study
Primary and secondary sources on both sides of this question. Reading the strongest opposing case is part of the work, not a concession.
The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life — Luke Barnes
A working cosmologist's survey of the fine-tuning data, careful about what the physics does and does not license.
A Fortunate Universe — Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes
Two cosmologists (one theist, one not) argue the interpretation out in the open — a model of honest disagreement.
The Territories of Science and Religion — Peter Harrison
Shows that the modern 'science versus religion' framing is itself a recent historical construction.
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion — Ronald Numbers (ed.)
Historians of science dismantle the popular conflict stories from both directions.
The Blind Watchmaker — Richard Dawkins
The clearest popular statement of the case that biological complexity needs no designer; engage it directly rather than secondhand.