Buddhist<\/a>, you might characterize it as a glimpse of enlightenment. Whatever your current interest, religious or secular, there\u2019s a frame and a label that you can put around the painting.<\/p>\nBut those are all contrivances. They are all unnecessary add-ons. The experience needs no \u201cmeaning\u201d outside of itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Richard is correct that most people interpret \u2018spiritual\u2019 experiences in the frame of their preexisting religious beliefs, but he doesn\u2019t make a persuasive case that atheism is the better frame, or that the letter-writer shouldn\u2019t be troubled about this phenomenon. \u00a0In fact, Richard\u2019s explanation, in which everything is contextual, doesn\u2019t provide any sense about why these experiences should be considered positive, or if these experiences reflect the intrinsic value of their triggers, or whether such experiences could be wrongly directed and ought to be opposed.<\/p>\n
Reading Richard\u2019s explanation, the atheist\u00a0explanation\u00a0of these emotional events, taken in isolation, is no more persuasive than the Christian one. \u00a0And that\u2019s no surprise.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not impossible to come up with several possible theories to explain currently existing evidence. \u00a0Looking at any isolated data point, every contending theory ought to have an equally persuasive case to explain it, or they need to hire new PR flacks. \u00a0The test is whether their explanations of different events can cohere into a plausible system that isn\u2019t a wretched, tortured mass of contradictions. \u00a0Bonus points if this system can make predictions about yet-to-be-observed phenomena which turn out to be accurate. \u00a0It lowers the odds that your metaphysics have been skating along on the strength of clever apologists.<\/p>\n
Richard would have done better to tell the advice seeker to consider the evidence that had led him to reject Christianity. \u00a0Do his spiritual experiences make him doubt that evidence? \u00a0Why? \u00a0The letter-writer might reasonably conclude that his spiritual experiences constituted weak evidence for Christianity, but that they were not enough evidence to outweigh whatever other evidence led him to atheism. \u00a0Or he might have decided he was wrong to leave his former faith.<\/p>\n
Atheists don\u2019t need to believe that there is no evidence that supports the opposing side or that no evidence is ambiguous, merely that atheism is the best explainer of the evidence considered in toto<\/em>. \u00a0We go wrong when we assume that, if we are correct about the larger facts, we ought to be able to win each smaller argument. \u00a0Richard is too certain that he and the letter-writer\u00a0are correct to take the alternate hypothesis seriously.<\/p>\nThat kind of thinking can lead us to overstate the evidence in a particular data point, if we bring our beliefs about the larger system to bear on a small case study. \u00a0It\u2019s better to judge the relative probabilities of each explanation being true conditional on our newest data point in isolation before we try to reconcile that conclusion with the beliefs and evidence we already have. \u00a0Otherwise, our arguments become sloppy and unpersuasive.<\/p>\n
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