[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]Amidst all the healthcare brouhaha, you may have missed the story of an airplane hijacked in Mexico just as it was leaving Cancun. Thankfully, the 100 passengers were safe and the hijackers were arrested. What makes the story newsworthy is the lead hijacker’s motive. Apparently, preacher Jose Mar Flores received a divine revelation to hijack the plane as a way of warning President Felipe Calderon of an impending earthquake. Mr. Flores apparently told police that Sept. 9, 2009, (9-9-9), is the Satanic number 666 turned upside down. This could all be dismissed as the result of a sad case of deluded thinking and tenth-rate numerology, but it actually illustrates a rather hefty question: Why, and how, do we put trust in religious experiences?

Here’s an analogy. A person is walking home one night and sees a strange, mysterious light in the sky. It zigs, it zags, it’s unlike any “normal” plane. Conclusion: Aliens are visiting our planet. Of course, the conclusion doesn’t follow. Yes, the person saw something unusual. That doesn’t mean that what he or she saw was an alien spacecraft. It could have been any number of natural or human phenomena. Clearly, the next step would be to investigate, to collect data that will lead towards an explanation. Or, in the absence of sufficient information, to withhold judgment. The “U” in UFO, after all, only means “unidentified,” not “extraterrestrial.”

Setting aside our discomfort with the unexplained – a rain god, apparently, is infinitely preferable to admitting ignorance of the water cycle – the UFO analogy illustrates how we often draw conclusions about what we’re experiencing solely from the experience itself. Here’s another example: You put a spoon in a glass of water and, presto, the spoon bends. That’s what we see, anyway. But further investigation reveals that the spoon isn’t bent. It’s merely that water refracts light differently than air. The bending is an illusion. So the only way to confirm the validity of our sensory experiences is through more sensory experiences backed by a solid, rational framework. The scientific method, in other words.

Standards of Truth

But what about religious/mystical experiences? Culturally, holding these experiences to the same standards of truth that we hold other kinds of experiences – like UFOs – ranges from mildly taboo to a death sentence, depending on where you happen to live. However, as the hijacking exemplifies – and what about the tragedy of Sept. 11? – how people interpret what seems to be a religious experience can have profound consequences for the rest of us. How do we know that Mr. Flores had a divine revelation? Was it really God? Or perhaps a more malevolent influence? Was it really an experience of the supernatural? Or was it a hallucination, whether drug-induced or the result of a neurological disorder? This is assuming, of course, that Mr. Flores really did have an experience and isn’t a fraud trying to deflect responsibility for his criminal actions.

Before dismissing Mr. Flores as a mere cake short a few fruits, consider that Al Qaeda is filled with religious fanatics who believe their terrorism is sanctioned by God. The issue of Israel and Palestine is infected by the belief that particular ownership of the land is divinely sanctioned. The bombers of abortion clinics and murderers of doctors who perform abortions also believe they are carrying out God’s work, just as the terrorist militias in Ireland in their decades-long struggle. This isn’t to single out religion as wholly corrupt or harmful because many good acts have obviously been performed out of religious experiences. The question is whether we are willing to examine the nature or truth of religious experiences.

The story of Saul of Tarsus’ conversion on the road to Damascus is a good example. After a career of persecuting Christians, he has a vision of Christ after which he goes blind until cured by a disciple named Ananias. Goodbye, Saul the persecutor, hello, Paul the Christian missionary. But on what basis can we believe that he actually saw Jesus? I’m not saying that he didn’t have an experience that profoundly changed his life, although in all honesty there’s no knowing whether he really did. After all, most of us read translations of the Bible, with all the problems inherent in translating from one language to another, and the Bible itself has been subject to editing, manipulation, pulling and pushing according to various authors and religious authorities. In fact, the only thing we know about Paul’s conversion is what we read. There are no eyewitnesses, no empirical test results – and we are generations removed from Paul’s existence on this planet to truly evaluate his claims. Whether the faithful like it or not, there is a strong, crippling element of uncertainty in the Pauline conversion. Maybe it wasn’t Jesus he saw but the product of a misfired neuron that he interpreted as a sign to embrace rather than harass Christians. The brain, after all, is a pattern-seeking organ.

We could ask similar questions of any major religious figure and — surprise, surprise — get some agreement from other religious folk. For example: Jews don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah, Christians don’t view Mohammed as the Prophet, Muslims don’t accept Bahaullah as the last messenger of God. All claim to have something to tell us about “God,” yet the religious are (selectively) skeptical about whose religious experiences they will believe. Atheists, by contrast, are skeptical of them all. No evidence, no credence.

In the end, it’s telling that we never refer to people’s religious “truths” or their “knowledge.” We call them religious “beliefs” and “faith.” A mere turn of phrase, or an implicit acknowledgement that there is a problem in what religion tells us about the natural world…and how to behave in it? The next airplane flight may depend on the answer. And while atheists are certainly as prone to flawed moral reasoning as the religious — we shouldn’t pretend otherwise —  at least those errors aren’t compounded by starting from the unprovable foundation of a subjective experience.

Frédérik invites you to discuss this week's column at his blog.