Hi George,
You wrote:
Please note I said support; not prof.
The, "artificial religious experience " (perhaps another acronym like ARE
is required? ... JUST KIDDING!! :-) ), is -- without question -- caused by
the experimenter and not by God. (Assuming God isn't working through the
experimenter!?) Hence, the conclusion that the ARE :-) is ONLY in the brain
is extremely reasonable since it is controlled and no "God" is measurably
present to effect the reaction. Agreeably, the logical step to "God never
existed" does not follow form the ARE (sorry :-) ). However, as I'm sure
you'll agree, there is a qualitative difference (i.e., in kind) between the
ubiquitously physically present barionic chair that reflects photons to the
retina and a stimulus "caused" by an ambiguous and unphysical being
composed of ill-defined "spirit". The former is "there", i.e. exists in
(space,time) = (room,now), as is easily proven with other criteria, e.g.
pain upon it being removed when one attempts to lounge in it, where as the
latter is not measurably "there" or anywhere.
Thus, to your alternative, I would answer: yes, it does necessarily imply
that it is all in your brain and that a chair is not there and hence,
doesn't exist outside of your brain. The key word is "memory". To remember
the chair implies a former experience which presumably involved other
physical senses located ... well you know where. In short, a chair is
existent outside the presence of the subject because it has been repeatedly
observed to be so. God, however, is not repeatedly observed to exist
anywhere.
Hence, I still insist that the ARE experiments ( sorry :-) ) do strongly
support an atheistic would view. I would be willing to relax this to
supporting the weaker agnostic position, but that opens another set of
potentialities.
[My response]
An atheist may very well believe that it is strong support, but that is only
because of his/her presuppositions that bias the conclusion. If I do not
allow for the existence of a realm beyond the natural, then religious
experiences are reducible to brain activity. For the theist, however, it
really isn't support for anything other than the fact that we can produce
certain types of experiences in people by stimulating parts of the brain
electrically. At this point, we cannot even predict not control what those
experiences are going to be, because it varies with the individual. So, the
argument of support really depends on who you are talking to.
Adrian.
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