This is going to seem ungenerous at best. But.
Part of the difficulty in engaging someone over the issue of the “truth” of their faith can be frustrating, especially when they leave the path of the rational, the demonstrable, the philosophical, the metaphorical, often ending up with a claim that they personally have experienced something which convinces them utterly and until you experience it, too, blindness and deafness are all you have. This actually ends debate. Once the untestable assertion of personal experience–revelation, conversion, etc–enters into it, the possibilities of alternate explanations reduce to zero and there is no way to go on.
Or is there?
We have in this and the last century a phenomenon which is every respect is identical to the religious one in its assertion without evidence, only in this case we have current, realtime experiences which can be tested against reality.
Alien abductions.
I won’t here rehearse all the stories–there are many, many books detailing the phenomenon, beginning with Incident At Exeter which chronicled the Barney and Betty Hill abduction that started the whole thing. Now, in that book, written by their psychiatrist, the aspect of the situation that continually gets overlooked is that their doctor never confirmed what they claimed happened. It remained for him a problem of extreme neurosis bordering on psychosis, complete with physiological manifestations. Starting from that book onward we have a small culture of people who have “come to know” the aliens, and it follows the same pattern as people becoming members of cults, of embracing unsubstantiatable claims…it is a religious experience.
These folks can pass lie detector tests. They are convinced. There are charlatans out there helping them to remain convinced.
Yet they offer a valuable opportunity for testing their claims and seeing the phenomenon for what it is. They have not a shred of material evidence to back up their beliefs, and in many instances they have alternate experiences which have clearly been reimagined by them as something other than what originally happened. In some cases, there is psychic trauma, but for many it is the path of those who feel perpetually dissatisfied with life-as-lived who find a way to become “special”. Their convictions are impressive…and pathetic.
One might ask–rightly–why the comparison is not obvious? Simple. The abductees are seen as crackpots by the culture at large. There is no significant public space in our cultural self-image for what they claim and so they end up relegated to the fringes. The more commonly embraced religious experience is well-grounded and built in to our culture. In that instance, it is the questioning of it that has little space in the cultural psyche.
One time I had a conversation with some people, most of whom were Catholic (but it doesn’t matter, really), about David Koresh after his and his followers’ death in Texas. Generally, these folks–all christians–dismissed Koresh as a crackpot.
“He claims to talk to god,” one of them said.
“Really,” I replied. “Isn’t that exactly what the pope claims to do?”
All but one missed my point. The one, eyeing me narrowly, said, “You mean it just matters how many people believed him?”
Well…
Whenever someone tells me that until I “experience god” I will never understand, I think of the abductees. No, I think, I do understand.
When the rapture comes, it will be in a spaceship? That would be cool. Pity it’s just a fantasy.
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