I’d be interested to hear more on that from you, Patrick. I cannot answer your question, because I am not an atheist, so I do not have your experience or perspective and would need someone like you to explain it to me.
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Former Christian minister Dan Barker of FFRF wrote a book on this entitled Life Driven Purpose. It mirrors Purpose Driven Life a book written by Christian pastor Rick Warren. Very similar.
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Michelle, irksome Christian here.
I struggle with the idea of using personal experiences as more than a subjective evidence for oneself. Even there I see a need to exercise caution before uncritically accepting an experience as genuine.
I would be interested to see if there are tests / classifications that could be applied to help discern what weight to apply to a given experience. Without that, I can’t see how we can expect to pursuade someone of their validity.
Examples:
- Is the phenomena found in other religions
- Is there a psychological component that is widely understood
I am not trying to be awkward here; however I hear Mormon’s use their experiences as proof, I have heard KJV only proponents describe their experience of the KJV as proof, I have seen other religions experience charismatic type phenomena such as tongues etc.
I guess what I am trying to say, is that is there a scientific or philosophically rigorous way to take the conversation further in a more objective way
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I just messaged a philosophy phd that I know who is a Christian.
He suggested the following book as a possible help in this situation, just posing it as an example of the type of thing that we perhaps ought to be evaluating. I am sue that there are cheaper and shorter options out there
Alston, W
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Hmm. If I say I don’t like duck, will you make me some awesome confit?
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But those people agree with you that duck exists, right? What if one of them said “That’s not duck. I know what duck tastes like, and that’s not it”? Would you think he could be right? After all, you can’t experience what he’s tasting. You only know what you taste if you eat the (alleged) duck.
I’m not sure if that matters so much to the analogy. If one of them didn’t think duck existed, seeing and tasting one would very quickly change their ideas on this. I think @Mark10.45’s analogy makes sense. There is going to be a language gap here when we are talking about this, and that’s okay. From what I see, @Faizal_Ali you have a pretty reasonable position, and I can see why what we are saying sounds crazy and is not convincing to you. That is why I say that it might just have to be something you see for yourself. Maybe the conversations here pique your curiosity. Maybe not. But this isn’t one of those things that I think any of us can talk you into.
That is not my analogy. Rather, I am describing a situation in which @Mark10.45 serves a customer duck, but when the customer eats it says “That is not duck. I can tell from the taste.” Since Mark cannot share in what the customer is tasting, then by his reasoning he has to accept that the customer may be correct and it might not be duck, even if the things he can sense all tell him it is duck.
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I suppose that is possible too 
. In this case, I don’t think we can actually serve you the duck any ways. So the analogy does break down, as all analogies do.
I am hungry now. That is my subjective experience after all this discussion of serving food
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Though, thinking about your story…
This doesn’t make sense. As you’ve stated it, the customer is just wrong.
Well, if he does not believe that duck exists, how can he have knowledge from tasting that demonstrates that he is not eating duck? And why should Mark accept his claim that he is not eating duck?
This doesn’t make sense to me…
Not at all. The customer is having a personal sensory experience that Mark is not privy to, and this tells the customer it is not duck. Mark is in no position to refute or deny this, since he has no idea what the customer is experiencing. If he were to experience the same thing, he might very well conclude “You’re right, this isn’t duck.”
Same way you know that you are experiencing a personal relationship with Jesus. But you say you can’t explain this, I just have to experience it for myself. So it goes in my story of the duck.
But, again, he does not deny the existence of duck. He knows what duck is, he has eaten it before. And he knows this is not duck.
I guess my analogy does not go far enough. If I were to fully reflect what Christians are telling me in this discussion, the customer will say “It’s not duck. It’s unicorn.”
Same reason I should accept your claim that you have a personal relationship with Jesus. Mark shouldn’t accept the claim, and, with all due respect, I don’t accept yours (as I suspect you are already aware. 
)
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The best essay I have read (from the atheist position) on this general topic is “The Dragon in My Garage” by Carl Sagan. It goes without saying that it may be a bit unfair to theism in places, but I have always enjoyed the peaceful conclusion that Sagan wrote:
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Well, I’ll have to think about it, though I think we might have just extended far beyond the intended scope of the analogy. Flagellum are outboard rotary motors. Or not.
Actually I would say that it is duck because I made it, I am a trained expert, I have 30 years experience and vast knowledge on the subject of poultry, I can tell the difference by looking at the meat, I purchased duck, the box said duck, it looked like duck when I opened it, I had to cure it like duck, I used specific cooking techniques because duck requires that, it cooked like duck. It is duck. You are just plain wrong in thinking it is not. If you think you are experiencing something else, you are choosing to be contrary by ignoring the knowledge and wisdom of trained professionals.
Of course, that doesn’t apply to personal experiences of Christ, there is no such thing as a trained professional. However, if you were to diagnose a patient with a mental disorder and prescribe a medication to treat it, then the patient says, “you’re wrong”, there’s not much further you can go with that patient.
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Exactly.
OK, so suppose we have the same situation in which the person is eating duck, but says he can tell from the taste that it is unicorn. There is no such thing as a trained professional in unicorn meat. So should we now take his claim seriously?
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The analogy would be better if it was invisible unicorn confit. The dish can’t be seen, touched, smelled, tasted, or measured by any instrument. People claim to have experienced eating the dish through some ineffable process, but no one can demonstrate its existence in a concrete way. There are stories in books about people seeing the actual unicorn in real life, but there is no subsequent confirmation of those stories.
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No, because he does not know the truth and I do because I personally made the duck.
It seems to me the issue here is that as a non-believer, someone who cannot possibly understand, someone not involved in the making of the duck (I can point to several bible references regarding the inability to understand as a non-believer, which I have experienced personally as truth while I did not believe)…you want to tell me, a believer who does understand, who made the duck, that my personal relationship with Jesus is false…to which I say, you’re wrong. There is nowhere else to go with the conversation. I cannot convince you and you cannot convince me otherwise.
If you are trying to say that you are the trained professional regarding the mass hysteria of Christianity, I can assure you that you are not. You are professing that all duck is in fact unicorn, to which I say again, you are wrong because I know what duck is and I am personally responsible for the preparation of my duck dish. I believe in the deepest part of my heart that I know that it is duck and there is nothing you can say to make me believe it is in fact unicorn, or something other than duck…(that is in regard to me only, I appreciate and encourage you to believe whatever you want to believe).
Bacon is a different story…mmmmmmm, bacon.
Agreed, I’ll work on a recipe.
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Being able to prepare duck does not make you an expert in unicorn, does it? Have you ever tasted unicorn? If not, how can you say that the person is not able to tell when he is eating unicorn?
That is not my claim.
No, not all duck. Just this particular instance of “duck”, and maybe a few others. Just like you are saying when you read something and understand it, you are experiencing a relationship with God, but when I do the same thing, I am not experiencing a relationship with God. What is the difference? You can’t explain. OK. Well, neither can you experience what the person eating the “duck” experiences, so you are in no position to say he is not tasting unicorn.
And I am not doubting your expertise when it comes to duck. But you have no expertise regarding unicorn, so you should accept this person’s claim, since he is quite convinced he is experiencing unicorn, just as you are quite convinced you are experiencing God.
Except that is not what people are describing in this discussion. They are describing some mundane experience such as reading a book and understanding what it says, but then say there is this other part of the experience that amounts to a “relationship with God.”
So in my analogy the person is engaging in the everyday experience of eating duck, but has at the same time a subjective experience that means it is unicorn. I realize this does not make sense. It also does not make sense to say “I read something, I understood it, and this was a relationship with God.” Someone could say that he ate the duck, and it was really, really good, better than he thought duck could possibly taste, and he now has a completely different appreciation of duck. That all makes sense. But when he goes on to say this experience means it is unicorn, that makes as much sense to me as someone saying the experience he has of understanding the Bible means he is having a personal relationship with God. It’s just a tacked on non-sequitur to the experience.
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Thanks for posting this. Reading though the comments expressed here on religious experience with Jesus made me think about the similarity of mystical experiences among religions. I looked up “Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience” which appears to examine theses similarities. I ordered the kindle version.
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