Are miracles ongoing?

No, it an example of more than one cause for a phenomenon.

I didn’t say they were. You have misunderstood what my claim was. I have not in any way insinuated that religious people are prone to be drug abusers, I don’t believe that. Nor do I believe drug abusers are prone to be religious.

Rather, my claim is that certain religious experiences can be reproduced by taking certain types of drugs. That doesn’t mean all possible types of religious experiences by all people can be reproduced by taking any drug.

Again, the claim is that certain religious experiences can be reproduced by taking certain types of drugs, or by having electrodes placed on their head and having certain patters of electric fields passed through their brain.

This need not be true. There are several instances of people accepting christianity in India, china, the middle east etc which is in direct contradiction to cultural and religious upbringing.

Of course there are exceptions. What there are no credible examples of, however, is people with zero prior interaction with (say) Hindu culture or doctrine suddenly becoming Hindu out of nowhere.

It is entirely possible to live in a primarily christian culture, with christian friends and family, to then have interactions with Hindus and through that come to interpret your experiences though Hinduism. This is comparatively very rare. In the vast, vast majority of cases, people become and stay the religion of their upbringing (parents and siblings) and majority surrounding culture.

Not in most of the cases… some people do report visions or very strong dreams.

Yes, among them are people prone to epilepsy for example. Some people do have visual or auditory experiences. Some people even do report hearing voices. These people are exceptions.

Dreams is a different subject from religious experiences in my view. Dreams can certainly have religious content, but we all have crazy dreams. That’s neither here nor there. I’ve dreamt I can fly, that doesn’t mean I can fly.

End of the day, you are connecting religious experience with the visions seen when a person has epileptic seizures, hence my question about hallucinations.

As an example of religious experiences with known physiological causes. The prophet Muhammed was reported to have had visions of the appearances of angels in episodes that witnesses present describe in ways that are eerily similar to epileptic episodes, complete with convulsions, shaking, and so on.

I am not sure you are even looking at data here. While drugs can cause ecstasy, they also cause extremely negative experiences in many cases.

As already explained you have misunderstood what my claim about drugs and religious experiences was about. You seem to think that I was saying that all or maybe most drugs reliably produce religious experiences in most people who take them. I don’t claim or believe that.

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Oh and just to stave off more potential confusion, I’m also not saying everyone who has religious experiences is an epileptic, or that all religious experiences have identical physiological causes.

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So what? This is not the cause for religious experiences in cast majority of the cases.

Religious conversion needs exposure to religious doctrine. Again so what?
You are ascribing causes to an experience in a purely speculative fashion…

How is this even relevant. Do all people who identify with a religion have spiritual experiences to share?

I don’t know much about Prophet Mohemmwd. Frankly I don’t believe he is a prophet.
However, I have seen people have religious experiences (in certain Hindu subgroups and unfortunately in some western churches also) which include phenomenon that can be described as convulsions, shakings, contortions etc. Very few of these people are diagnosed with epilepsy. Some of these experiences in Hinduism are associated with being possessed by ancestral God’s or spirits, or recieving a Spiritual impartation from Gurus etc. If all of these people had epilepsy, we would be having a national epidemic of epilepsy.

It could be explained by natural causes. For example, it could be attributed to some kind of psychosomatic condition or self hypnosis…However nothing restricts the explanation to only natural causes except a prior commitment to materialism.

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Scientific explanations do not entail materialism. That is a common misconception.

So you are not positing good non-materialistic explanations against good materialistic explanations. Rather, you are positing “explanations” with no evidence to support them as being of equal value to explanations with lots of evidentiary support. That is not a tenable position.

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And you are proposing reductionist arguments to explain human experience.

Scientific explanations adhere strictly to naturalism.
They strictly avoid immaterial explanations such as God, Angels, demons etc.

Wrong.

Also wrong. You are conflating methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. Science (many contend) entails only the former, not the latter.

So there is an entirely plausibe physiological explanation for the fact that people have religious experiences, and a cultural and social explanation for either the contents of those experiences, or the significance the subjects attach to them. That’s my whole goddamn point.

Religious conversion needs exposure to religious doctrine. Again so what?

So it isn’t at all plausible that it is really “Jesus” who is causing people to become a certain brand of religion, rather it is the fact that people have deep emotional experiences which they interpret through the lens of their surrounding cultural and social interactions-

You are ascribing causes to an experience in a purely speculative fashion…

No, I’m really not.

How is this even relevant. Do all people who identify with a religion have spiritual experiences to share?

It’s relevant because it explains why people assign particular religious significance to their experiences. They associate the good feelings they get from their religious experiences with their already held religious beliefs. Basically if they’re fundamentalist christians for example, when they feel these deep emotional experiences, they think it’s Jesus.

I don’t know much about Prophet Mohemmwd. Frankly I don’t believe he is a prophet.

Welcome to the club.

However, I have seen people have religious experiences (in certain Hindu subgroups and unfortunately in some western churches also) which include phenomenon that can be described as convulsions, shakings, contortions etc. Very few of these people are diagnosed with epilepsy.

And they need not be. Not everyone who has these experiences are actually epileptics, not all epileptics are diagnosed epiletics, and not all these experiences are caused by the same physiological causes as epileptic seizures are. There is a range of different phenomena, of which epileptics with a clinical diagnosis are only one subgroup.

Some of these experiences in Hinduism are associated with being possessed by ancestral God’s or spirits, or recieving a Spiritual impartation from Gurus etc.

And if they’d been fundamentalist christians, they’d probably have interpreted and reported their experiences as being from the Holy Spirit, angels, or Jesus.

If all of these people had epilepsy, we would be having a national epidemic of epilepsy.

It’s not like I wrote “Oh and just to stave off more potential confusion, I’m also not saying everyone who has religious experiences is an epileptic, or that all religious experiences have identical physiological causes.”

It could be explained by natural causes. For example, it could be attributed to some kind of psychosomatic condition or self hypnosis…However nothing restricts the explanation to only natural causes except a prior commitment to materialism.

Nobody is restricting explanations here, they’re saying some explanations are much more plausible than others.

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How is it a plausible physiological explanation if most people have religious experiences without consuming drugs or fixing electrodes on their head?

Sure… but it’s also plausible that it is Jesus.

Precisely… and all you need is to have one subgroup who actually have spiritual experiences.
You can’t rule it out. While it’s evident that a large no: of people who report religious experiences don’t have epilepsy or are drug users.

And ruling out supernatural explanations in all cases is a value judgements based on prior philosophical commitments.

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Miracles are ongoing, at an increasing rate. But they have mundane explanations.

If somebody from 2,000 years ago were to see us using cell phones, they would consider that a miracle. And they would consider television and airplanes as miracles. They would see our modern medical treatments as miracles. They would see indoor plumbing and electrical appliances as miraculous.

This is a popular science myth…
I call it the asencion of man through the scientific method…
For many people who are enthusiastic about it, it usually ends in -
a) A utopia without disease,death etc
b) An AI God who creates the utopia mentioned above and wisely governs over humanity.

And it has its own origins myth too… a “multiverse” where we got lucky…
Not buying… :slight_smile: (atleast in a religious sense).

I’m not sure what your “this” refers to. I am not a Utopian and I am not an AI enthusiast. My main point was that “miracle” means different things to different people at different times. It would be better to avoid that word.

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The fact that people can induce similar experiences with drugs and external brain stimulation implies such experiences are generally based on chemical and physiological causes, as opposed to being actual evidence for the supernatural. Particularly when we look at how the contents of those experiences have cultural and social influences.

No, it’s not plausible it’s actually Jesus, because people who aren’t already convinced Christians almost never have experiences they interpret as coming from Jesus, and in the few rare cases where people of another religion do have experiences they think come from Jesus, they have had interactions with Christians and been influenced by them.

But in general, if they grew up with another religion, they think it’s from Vishnu, Odin, Zeus, Allah, space aliens and what have you. And if they’re not religious at all, they just try to describe the emotional aspects of the experience. It would be absurd to think Jesus is causing people to have experience of Odin, or have telepathic communication with benevolent space aliens on a mission of cosmic love and happiness.

And there’s certainly no plausible way why you should be able to be put into contact with Jesus by taking certain drugs or having electric fields of a particular type run through your brain.

I’m not ruling anything out, I’m saying there is a range of options from highly likely to completely implausible. The explanation that religious experiences are caused physiologically by brain chemistry, and are interpreted psychologically by religious and cultural upbringing perfectly explains the types of and geographical distributions of religious experience. The truth of any one religion does not. They’d all have to be true, but that implies a contradiction.

The conclusion is all the religious explanations are implausible because they cannot explain the geographical distribution of religious experience without combining them with lots of implausible ad-hoc hypotheses about why God/Zeus/Jesus/Thor/Allah/Space aliens would cause experiences from other religions most in people from certain geographical areas, and the fact that such experiences are more prone in people with particular neurophysiological conditions, or who take particular types of drugs, and so on.

Succinctly: The brain, human psychology, and culture, is a perfect explanation. Religion being actually true, is not, and becomes intrinsically implausible the more ad-hoc hypotheses you have to invoke to account for the distributions of religious experience.

While it’s evident that a large no: of people who report religious experiences don’t have epilepsy or are drug users.

Which was never my claim in the first place, and does nothing to argue against what my claim actually is.

But nobody does that. We aren’t ruling anything out a priori. Actual logical arguments are given that show why your proposed supernatural explanations are worse, less plausible accounts for these phenomena.

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@Rumraket

You are making a metaphysical conclusion… which is impossible to confirm.

Shamans take psychoactive substances to overcome the natural barriers limiting the experienced of mortals.

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May I take this opportunity to point out the amazing irony in your post?

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@Rumraket

I was hoping you would.

The atheist echo chamber is rather a monotone.

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You say a metaphysical conclusion is impossible to confirm. And then you provide one.

That’s ironic.

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@Rumraket

But this is a religious conclusion im offering. Its a position of conviction. And im perfectly content that i cannot prove it.

Whereas, i think you really believe your sciences prove your personal conclusions.

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So you believe something despite knowing you have zero evidence for it? Is that what you’re saying? I don’t want to straw man you here, so before we proceed I’d like some clarification from you.

Whereas, i think you really believe your sciences prove your personal conclusions.

Isn’t that what you are doing? You really just believe your personal conclusions, apparently regardless of evidence and scientific arguments?

I have to note I don’t think you’ve understood what my argument is. I’ve laid out a case for why one particular explanation is more plausible than another, and in that respect I’d like to add that in so far as we are to believe any of the offered explanations, we should believe the better and more plausible and likely explanation.

You may disagree with me about whether my offered explanation is more plausible, but hopefully we can agree that when it comes to choosing between competing explanations, we should prefer the more plausible ones, right?

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@Rumraket

You use the same flawed definition of the term “evidence” that @T_aquaticus does.

Evidence for God and God’s work is endless… but little of it is “scientific evidence”.

When more atheists do a better job of acknowledging the role of evidence other than scientific evidence, atheists will gain important credibility.

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