Christians: How can you consider personal experience reliable considering how easy it is to fool the brain?

Question

The human brain is well-known for it's propensity toward hallucinations, pattern-seeking, wishful thinking and misinterpretation. How often have you been wrong or misinterpreted something? How can anyone say that your personal experience is solid evidence?

Jinenglish: How is that a condemnation of atheists? Most of us hold NO belief toward the existence of God. We understand that personal experience can be unreliable and usually talk in probabilities instead of absolutes. When I talk in absolutes it's related to logic which never fails.

Eartha: I use personal experience because that's the only way to get information about the world outside of myself, it's just that I don't assume it's RELIABLE.

Of course I'm generalizing. I know not all Christians do this. There wasn't enough room to say "Christians who consider personal experience reliable:"

LabGrrrrl: Dreams are hallucinations. Daydreaming is hallucinating for some. Anyway, the other ones I mentioned are definitely more applicable. You are correct, but my point is still valid.

Answer 1

That's silly. Anyone who has studied Neuro knows that the brain very rarely hallucinates once or twice without cause. Either you're taking something that causes hallucinations, experiencing something (like a high fever) that causes hallucinations, or you are hallucinating REGULARLY.

If you are not prone to hallucinations, nor in a state that causes one, and you have an interaction with deity that does not conflict with reality, there is no reason to doubt it.

It is when UPG* is used to exert control on others that the problem occurs- any deity that would tell you to do something involving only yourself without leaving any kind of evidence is okay by me, but if s/he wants you to change the views of others, s/he has to give you some irrefutable evidence.

We can't hold religious experience as less real than physical TASTE, another unverified and unverifiable personal experience.

Answer 2

you are obviously misled , misinformed and maybe just a tad unintelligent to just go around generalizing! I don't say anything about my believes or personal experience as being solid evidence of anything! I am even going to be so bold to say I wouldn't share anything with you any time soon! but it is solid evidence that you are not out there to just ask a question! and it is very clear that you try to be inflammatory! that isn't a hallucination at all!

you obviously are wrong and you must be misinterpreting a lot of things in life to come to the stupid conclusions above!

peace out!

Answer 3

Wow the age old saying IS true. An atheist would rather doubt his senses than acknowledge a miracle. Should Scrooge have continued to doubt his senses?

Answer 4

Without attempting to answer that one (apart from the fact that my brain has been consistantly "fooled" for nearly 41 years now),
could the same question be asked, say, of atheists?

Answer 5

perhaps we are all fooled then....all these fooled people...happy people...and i like being happy.

If sadness is a discomfort our bodies throw on us, it must be because our bodies feel we are lacking something... a way to communicate with us, the same way you are scared when you are in trouble,
so if I'm happy I must mean I'm not lacking that????

Answer 6

you have to prove that a brain will halucinate without help.

and you have to prove wishful thinking does always make a halucination.
my personal experience is that things happen only because they are Pushed into existence.

Answer 7

That's what YOU use isn't it?
But we have other proofs, archaeological, trustworthiness of the bible along with historical and documented evidence.

Answer 8

If anything, that's more of a condemnation of atheists than Christians.

We have faith.

Answer 9

Good point, but whose brain is fooled, mine or yours?