Well, except in my case I started out believing that supernatural experiences were valid - but just the kind that proved MY special brand of conservative evangelicalism. I didn’t start out disregarding all of them, just some of them.

After that, I tried to look at the sum total of anecdotal experience in as objective a manner as possible and evaluate them neutrally.

Boy, that’s for sure. What do you say when someone tells you, very sincerely, about their encounter the night before with their long-dead grandfather? Or the “bright light” that entered the room and gave them a feeling of peace? Or the time Jesus audibly answered their prayer?

In my case, I choose to respect the idea that they are sincerely relating what they experienced. Whether they were actually just dreaming about grandpa, or misinterpreting as supernatural some car headlights, or listening to a voice in their head and believing it to be audible - who knows? All those kinds of misinterpretation are clearly documented and possible, but again it seems arrogant to suggest that.

So without having been there myself, I reserve judgment on their particular experience, while I remain skeptical about the empirical validity of such experiences in general as being useful “proof” of anything supernatural.

That’s the only respectful way I have come up with to deal with them. If anybody else has a better suggestion, I’m open to hearing it.

Yet in my entire Christian life I have always heard that when you commit your life to Jesus, it changes you - just ask President Bush the 2nd. I would expect then, if one has had this “experience” or a “relationship” I would see an overall difference between Christians and non-Christians. All of our data tells us that any difference is minuscule and not in the favour of the Christ followers (even in distinguishing “moderates” from “evangelicals”.

Yup, exactly. This is another post I’ve been mulling over. A friend of mine once suggested that there should be SOME measurable difference between HSF (holy spirit filled) Christians and non-Christians, if the bible promises are true.

You know how statisticians can filter out all the other variables and still find measurable economic and social advantages for people who graduated college vs those who didn’t? It seems like there should be something like that available.

And yet it doesn’t seem to be there. And like I said in another thread, why aren’t more Christians demanding to know why it’s not?

** I would expect then, if one has had this “experience” or a “relationship” I would see an overall difference between Christians and non-Christians. ** I completely understand where you’re coming from in this. It all comes down to the fruit of the Spirit — I can find someone having love, joy, peace and whatnot without ever being Christian.

The anecdote of an isolated individual is worth very little. Many people who testify to a similar experience, across cultural and linguistic boundaries, across the span of time, speaking from different religious backgrounds — anecdotal evidence of that sort carries significantly more weight. That’s my argument.

Karen:
I grant your point about UFO anecdotes. That’s a case where Tanglethis’s point about quantifying the data would be helpful. How many make this claim? How widespread are such claims, in terms of universality across cultural, linguistic, and temporal boundaries? That’s an important consideration in sifting worthless anecdotal evidence from worthwhile anecdotal evidence.

On your other point: Yes, Roman Catholics tend to use Mary as an explanation of their experiences where Protestants do not. I’ve already spoken to that issue in my earlier comment to Tanglethis. There is (a) an experience and (b) an interpretation. Interpretations follow people’s religious presuppositions. But that doesn’t invalidate the experience itself, which is not limited to Roman Catholics or Christians.

Positivists make the mistake of supposing that they begin from a neutral starting point. It isn’t so: no one’s starting point is neutral. If you begin by regarding all experiences of the supernatural as bogus, you’ve predetermined your conclusion. Don’t turn to me then and say, “There is no transcendent realm; I know because all the evidence for it is bogus.”

I think it goes a bit deeper than this, though. Yes, watching someone be judgemental and cruel while claiming to follow Jesus would be a cause. But another reason for me is that I do not like how heaven is the only thing that comes across as mattering. You could be beaten, starved, raped, whatever — and all of that isn’t “important” compared to having the right belief structure. It just seems so … callous.

The issue of personal spiritual experience is a problem for any scholar, or for any outside interpretor. In everyday language it is a conversation stopper. In scholarship, it is data. Just as in the study of psychology or sociology, the religious studies scholar uses these experiences as data in as many forms as it comes: testimony, brain patters, linguistics, etc.

When it comes to theological argumentation, it goes back to the conversation stopper. I “know” because I “feel” it. I “experience” it. This has so many problem it is incredible, some of which you, Karen, described.

It is interesting that when you push a Christian about what the “relationship” means, you end up getting a bunch of synonyms to “relationship.” I have been surrounded by evangelical Christians my entire life and I have yet to see any “results” of their “Christness.”

I remember when I was a kid I loved DC Talk. At the start of “What If I Stumble?” they wrote,
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world
today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with
their lips, then walk out the door,
and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an
unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Its true - and it voids any observable reality of longterm religious experience.

Once when I made this argument about spiritual experiences not being valid to determine the truth or falsity of Christianity, someone responded that only Christians report a “personal relationship” with Jesus, and so that somehow made Christian spiritual experiences unique and more valid than other religious experiences.

My response was first, how do we really know what spiritual experiences other religious people have? They could very well have “personal encounters” with Mohammad, or Buddha or Krishna as far as I know. I haven’t studied those religions in depth from an objective perspective.

And second, what is a “personal relationship” with a 2,000-year-old dead person anyway? How does that really even happen?

And finally, why is a “personal relationship” encounter inherently superior to another kind of spiritual encounter? Again, it seems very arrogant to assume that evangelical Christian terminology or descriptions are better than those of other religions. And even Christians didn’t use the “personal relationship” terminology until the 20th century, so that seems even less important overall.

I didn’t get very satisfactory answers, however. If I remember, the person I was communicating with just kept asserting that a relationship with Jesus was the be-all and end-all of religious experience.

Ewww… that would be fun. I’m down.

There has to be something out there like this. I’m thinking William James’s “Varieties of Religious Experience,” from 1902. I tried reading it but it was SOoooo dense and I have little patience for philosophy. Anybody ever get through it?

We actually would sometimes pray for bad things to happen to people so that they’d “hit rock bottom” and turn to god.

This is probably based on this scripture:

1 Corinthians 5:4-5
When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

Never understood how someone can hand another person over to Satan. This is a passage that just never fit.

Paul