A person who's had spiritual experiences and tells people about them is   
   typically met with attack. There are some people who define reality as what   
   can be proven. By that standard nothing is real because nothing can be proven   
   to everyone (try proving    
   something to a person with brain damage or to a person who thinks that   
   dinosaur bones are there to test people's faith in the Biblical worldview).   
   Reality however is not what can be proven; it exists regardless of people's   
   opinions about it. Reality is    
   not rightly defined as what can be proven but rather as something that exists,   
   whatever people's views about it may be.   
      
   The scientific approach does not accept anecdotal evidence. But what is   
   anecdotal evidence? It is someone's stated experience. The things that   
   somebody has experienced would be seen as anecdotal, but it does not make them   
   any less real. Something is not    
   made not real because it didn't happen in a lab. It may not be enough for a   
   scientist; it is enough for the person to whom it has happened.   
      
   One fad, which names itself skepticism but is more correctly named bullying,   
   has been to discredit the people reporting spiritual experiences. This has   
   resulted in abuse - in many cases severe abuse. That is an inevitable result   
   of such attitudes. You    
   think that nothing spiritual can exist, you think that the people reporting   
   spiritual experiences are crazy or stupid, you become an abuser against them.   
   It is a logical outcome of the underlying belief.   
      
   And yet spiritual experiences continue to exist, as they have always existed.   
   The real issue is figuring out what they mean. Some claim these things to be   
   proof of Christianity or Islam; others claim them to mean any number of other   
   things. Genuine    
   scientific inquiry into this matter is necessary in order to provide a solid   
   contextual framework that is required to actually understand the forces   
   involved. Otherwise people who have spiritual experiences will leave   
   rationality altogether and will join    
   entities like the Christian Right that militate against science as such.   
      
   The biggest difference between the skeptic and the scientist is that the   
   scientist actually bothers to investigate things, whereas the skeptic does   
   not. There are any number of real scientists who have either had or observed   
   others having spiritual    
   experiences, and I am acquainted with a highly accomplished scientist who has   
   both personal and academic knowledge on this matter. Real scientists are also   
   open-minded and are less likely to dismiss things without investigating.   
   Finally no real scientist    
   uses the ad-hominem fallacy that is the meat and potatoes of the abusers'   
   modus operandi.   
      
   One is not made a credophile by having spiritual experiences, nor is one made   
   by them a conman, a psychotic or an idiot. For most history most people   
   believed in something spiritual or other - indeed that also is the case now -   
   and it is arrogance and    
   stupidity to claim that all of these people are delusionary or dumb. In the   
   traditional societies, the smartest people became shamans. These were in no   
   way stupid people, and much of what they came up with has benefit even in the   
   contemporary society.    
      
   As does what comes from contemporaries who likewise have had spiritual   
   experiences or been availed of one or another spiritual truth.   
      
   The abusive "skeptics" are the biggest problem on this matter; but there are   
   also problems in the academia. It is extremely hard to get funding for   
   research into spiritual and telepathic experiences, and then there's the claim   
   that "an extraordinary    
   claim requires an extraordinary level of proof." For the life of me I see   
   nothing extraordinary at all about something that most people believe in. It   
   is extraordinary to the materialist fundamentalist; it is not extraordinary to   
   most people in the world.   
      
   Is science wrong? Absolutely not; but bigotry is. And what we see with attacks   
   on the people who have spiritual experiences is bigotry. These attackers   
   haven't had spiritual experiences themselves and don't know what they are   
   talking about. That    
   something hasn't happened to you doesn't mean that it hasn't happened to   
   anyone else.   
      
   Another line of attacks comes from people who think that spiritual experience   
   is of the Satan. By that standard, every Hindu, every Muslim, every Buddhist,   
   every Jew, every secular person, who does not name Jesus his lord and savior,   
   is of the Satan and    
   is hell-bound. And that leaves one in a very large and distinguished company.   
   Most spiritual experiences that transpire do so outside of the Christian   
   framework; and among Christians themselves we also see some having spiritual   
   experience and others not    
   having spiritual experience - not at a visibly lesser or greater rate than   
   among non-Christians. Is Satan really so strong as to delude the vast bulk of   
   humanity - and God so weak as to allow him to do that? I think not. Whoever is   
   the author of these    
   experiences, it's not Satan; any more than are the dinosaur bones there in   
   order to test people's faith.   
      
   The person who has spiritual experiences has to sail between the Scylla of   
   ignorance and the Charybdis of intolerance - between materialist   
   fundamentalists who deny spirituality altogether and the Christian Right who   
   take it into a toxic place. As a    
   result, it is a difficult place to inhabit. However the more real knowledge is   
   accumulated about such matters, the more is there to make that life bearable   
   and productive. The more this is done, the more humanity stands to benefit   
   from the people who    
   have spiritual experiences and the better will be the lot of humanity.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)