I’ve been thinking about how NDE testimonies and spiritual experiences can be used to prove existence of a transcendental, supraphysical reality with great ease, making materialistic atheism untenable.

However, there’s quite a step from there to using it to prove any particular theology.

If anything, it seems to disprove certain religions, like Islam; the character of God as seen in NDE experiences and mystical experiences is exactly the opposite from Allah as revealed by Muhammad, the recommended way of life is opposite to Islamic (formality is irrelevant, religious conflict is unimaginable, a believer/unbeliever dichotomy is irrelevant, basically everything Islam is, is irrelevant or wrong). The fact that some kind of God does exist doesn’t mean that religions that believe in God are validated. Religions that believe in a vengeful, spiteful bully crybaby God are in fact completely invalidated by a God who is love, wisdom, understanding, clarity and, basically, high consciousness. The entire theory that says that if there is a God, religions must be right, is in fact indefensible, because the fact of existence of something doesn’t say anything about its nature or character. So, basically, according to the reality check, it’s better not to believe in any kind of God but be a loving person who treats others with kindness and aspires to greater knowledge and higher consciousness, than to believe in one God but think that unveiled women are fair game for rape, that infidels should be killed or subjugated and that God cares anything about how much you bow before him. A paradox is that NDE experiences validate Buddhism, which doesn’t necessarily believe in any kind of God, and they invalidate Islam, which believes in God and heaven, because a God of NDE experiences essentially is a Buddhist.

Some will say that some NDE experiences, as well as the spiritual experiences of some religious converts, directly confirm Christianity, but I would rather say that this means that Christianity has the “mandate of heaven”, that its basic tenets of love, forgiveness, faith and universal kindness are supported by the spiritual beings in charge. You could expect the same thing within the Hindu paradigm, where God would take the form that is closest to the person and reveal the most useful truths in that form, which is easiest to understand, or from the Buddhist paradigm, where a dakini would take some form that is the closest equivalent of transcendence in the mind of the person in order to manifest a spiritual message.

You see now why I think it’s very difficult to use spiritual experiences as proof of some specific theology; it’s because the experiences validate a certain spectrum of religious beliefs, while invalidating religions from another spectrum, but when you get to the specifics, it’s wiser to conclude that they don’t matter all that much, than to waste time nitpicking. That’s why I don’t waste time defining myself in terms of religious beliefs – it’s an exercise I leave to those with nothing better to do. I stand for certain principles, for certain general things, and against certain general things. I do certain things that are in accordance to my beliefs, and I avoid doing things that oppose them. That’s why I can function just fine with people whose beliefs and practices are of a certain spiritual spectrum, regardless of their adherence to some formal belief system, but it’s also why I’m at war with people whose beliefs and practices are from an opposed spectrum. You can’t think that a guy who approved enslaving and raping prisoners of war is a prophet of God and be on good terms with me, because I’m your sworn enemy. I’m the friend of those enslaved and raped, because God is with the victims of evil, never with the villains.

There’s a historical tale that I like a lot, about a medieval Hindu warlord who waged guerrilla warfare against the Muslim occupiers, I can’t remember the name, but basically at one point he captured a Muslim princess of some sort, and she expected to be enslaved and raped, because that’s what the Muslims would do to the “unbelievers”. However, the guy wasn’t a Muslim, so she was in for quite a surprise, because Hindu scriptures order men to treat all women other than their wife as they would treat their mother. He told her “it’s a pity that my mom wasn’t as beautiful as you, because I’d probably have turned out better” and basically treated her like an honored guest.

So basically, if you have evidence of powerful spiritual beings who commend treating others kindly and lovingly, Christianity would get a pass, Hinduism would get a pass, and Buddhism would get a pass, because, guess what, their religious scriptures say you should treat others kindly. Even Satanism would fare better than Islam, because according to Satanism you should treat others kindly unless they really fuck with you. If they do, you should tell them to stop. If they don’t, you should tell them again, more forcefully. If they still fuck with you, destroy them. Since this is basically reasonable, a practicing Satanist could actually fare rather well in the eyes of God, but a Muslim, who is told to lie to the “unbelievers” and to deceive them, then to subjugate them, enslave them, rape them and kill them, he’d get really, really screwed when he meets the actual God for whom there is actual evidence, unlike their Allah which is basically a hallucination of a madman based on distorted hearsay of Bible. Now don’t tell me that a Muslim can be a good person. I know he can, but he can’t be a good person and a good Muslim at the same time, because Islam is inherently evil and spiritually corruptive.

Religions tell us that the most important thing for salvation is to believe in a certain kind of God and to belong to their sect. As it turns out, nothing could be less important. What’s actually important is what you are and what you do, and what you should aspire to, essentially, to be like those spiritual beings of light from the NDE experiences – to radiate understanding, loving kindness and knowledge, to be the clarity that calms the disturbed minds of others and introduce knowledge and light, to be the light of God that shines in the world and leads others from darkness. That’s the purpose of life.

A friend yesterday remarked that my article about faith and skepticism doesn’t really deal with the kind of faith that the religious fanatics have.

But of course it doesn’t. I’m not defending the religious fanatics. In fact, they are a part of the same problem as the skeptics, because skeptics summarily reject perfectly sufficient evidence just because they don’t like it, and the religious fanatics choose to believe in things for which no good evidence is provided. So the choice isn’t really between those two, it’s between them and a reasonable approach, where you believe in things based on the evidence that you personally have, but without expectations that others need to accept this evidence.

But first, let’s quantify faith.

Type 1 faith is the faith I have in the fact that my car is still parked in front of the house, if my wife didn’t take it to go somewhere. There’s always a possibility that it was stolen, or that the aliens abducted it, or maybe I’m completely crazy and I’m deluding myself that I have a car, but the reasonable assumption is that it’s where I left it. I can’t verify it from where I’m sitting right now because my workplace is across the building, but I believe it’s there based on my memory and application of reason. If you don’t have this kind of faith, you are mentally ill and you are incapable of performing any kind of common tasks, because in almost everything we rely on memory, and we don’t constantly go around the house to re-check that the kitchen is still there just because we don’t see it from the bathroom. If there is no valid reason to assume that something changed from the last time we established the facts, it’s reasonable to have faith that the gravitational constant is still what it was ten years ago, as well as the speed of light.

Type 2 faith is when you have two possible, equally valid interpretations of the same facts, and you need to choose one based on something other than reason. Reason brought you to the point where you can’t know for sure whether option A or option B is true, because in both cases the same facts remain valid, both solutions will have weak points, and in both cases you will need to ignore or disregard some problems in order to solve others. In order to solve the dilemma, you need to make a leap of faith in one direction or another, and proceed from there. If it turns out that you were wrong, you need to change your mind and admit you chose to believe in the wrong option, but since additional evidence brought you to that point, you actually made progress and you are no longer stuck at the same spot. This is the kind of faith people needed to have in order to adopt the heliocentric system when evidence for its validity was insufficient to make the model work. If you don’t have it, you can’t make progress in science.

Type 3 faith is when you believe in things contrary to evidence, based on strong belief in something that has no rational grounds. This is the kind of faith religious fanatics have, and in order to block the voice of reason that warns them that they are on less than solid ground, they resort to hysteria and borderline madness.

Type 4 faith is when you don’t know what the reality is because your brain is so severely malfunctioning, you’re hallucinating. In this state, you can have faith in things that are not only irrational, but they would be irrational to a type 3 believer.

Applied to religion, type 1 faith is when the disciples believed what Jesus told them because he just saw him rise from the dead, talk to them comfortingly and then ascend to heaven. The degree of confirmation of his supernatural power was such, that it would not be rational for them to doubt his statements. If the statements later proved not to be true in the expected way, they would conclude that they misunderstood him, not that he lied. This is the kind of faith in God that you have when you saw him, but you can’t repeat the experience at will. You trust your memory.

Type 2 faith is what people have if they didn’t directly experience God, but they believe it’s possible that someone did, they just can’t be sure. They therefore make a leap of faith and accept that God is real and can be experienced by some, and it would be great if everybody could do it, but it obviously isn’t that simple and one can’t just verify something like that at will, just like one can’t just decide to verify Moon landing at will, because it’s impractically expensive. You can’t go there yourself to verify, you can’t see someone go there right now because it’s impractical, but there are credible witnesses and documents and it is more irrational to doubt them than to trust them. But this kind of faith can only get you so far. You can’t really make life-altering choices based on some scripture written thousands of years ago if you don’t have a more personal, direct reason to believe it’s all true. This is why type 2 faith is not completely rational, nor is it completely irrational, but is a necessary transitional step from lesser to greater knowledge. It contains a risk of error, but without acceptance of this risk there is no possibility of change and learning.

Type 3 faith is irrational, but not completely insane. This is the kind of faith people have when they decide to become suicide bombers in order to get their virgins in afterlife. You can talk to them, but it won’t do much good, because people snap out of this only because when something changes in their internal reasoning and their inner motives for embracing the irrational faith subside. This is not really religion, it’s fanaticism and hysteria.

Type 4 faith is pure madness, and there’s not much one can say about that. It’s the kind of faith you have when you’re so stoned you see dragons in the kitchen.

The problem with the atheists is that they assume that religious people have type 3 and type 4 faith, because this is easy to ridicule. They occasionally argue with type 2, but they are on loose ground there and they usually argue as if they are talking to a type 3 person, using emotional arguments. They completely dismiss the possibility of type 1 faith in religious matters, because if they accepted that, they wouldn’t be atheists, they would be type 2 believers.

You can notice how I never mention certain knowledge as an option? You’re right, I don’t. Because there’s no such thing, or almost. Even when you directly perceive something, there’s the question of interpretation. So even in that case you need to have type 1 faith that you understood it correctly. Certain knowledge is the domain of type 3 and type 4 lunatics.

A short guide to understanding religious texts for atheists.

When a religious text mentions that a snake told someone something, it’s a metaphor. Nobody thinks that an actual snake talked. A snake is a metaphor for a dangerous, sneaky, untrustworthy entity which gives crafty advice that is to be the downfall of those who embrace it.

When I say “embrace advice”, I don’t literally mean to hold it against my body with my arms.

When I say “crafty advice”, I don’t mean advice related to carpentry and masonry.

When “hand of God” is mentioned, it doesn’t imply that God is an ape-like entity with hands. It means “influence”.

Human language is complex, and it used to be even more complex in the ancient times, where literal and metaphoric meanings were so deeply interconnected it is difficult to tell them apart, and the best example of this is a myth.

A myth is something that never happened but keeps occurring. No Cain ever killed his brother Abel and said “I’m not my brother’s keeper”, but things like that keep happening. However, some things can be based on factual history and are later mythologized. An example of this is the great flood; it keeps occurring in so many places in mythological form it is quite likely one of the earliest racial memories of mankind, of the great meltdown at the end of the last glacial period, when the global sea levels rose by about 125m.

When Odysseus is said to have heard the voice of Athena counseling him, it is the poet’s way of saying that the guy had a clever, strategic idea on how to solve a conflict to his advantage. Psychological activities and states were anthropomorphized; when one was ruled by sexual desire, it was said that he’s under the power of Eros or Aphrodite. In war, when one was experiencing a certain pattern of bully/coward behavior, it was said that he’s influenced by Ares. If one approached war and problem solving strategically, he was said to be under the influence of Athena. The natural phenomena were anthropomorphized in similar ways; for instance, the known, familiar sea was thought to be under the influence of Poseidon. The unknown, wild sea beyond their reach was thought to be under the influence of Titan Okeanos, in a “hic sunt dracones” manner of the medieval maps.

When it is said that Eve talked to the snake, it means that an evil external spiritual force created a line of thought in her mind, and that she succumbed to temptation.

The fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil isn’t an apple. It’s suffering the trials and consequences of choice. Similarly, the fruit of sin isn’t a cherry. It’s punishment. If you think a tree of knowledge of good and evil grows in a garden and bears fruits that can be eaten physically, you’re stupid. If you think religious people believe that, you’re much more stupid than you think they are.

Not all religious imagery comes from the same place. Some of it is a metaphor for emotional states. Some of it is a personification of natural phenomena, like weather. Some of it is a lesson in ethics, and some of it is an attempt to say something about the nature of reality. Some of it is silly, like the cult of Priapus, the god of erect penises. Some of it is quite sophisticated, like the cult of Hecate, goddess of magic and illusion. In all cases, it is meant metaphorically, in the same way in which colors of the quarks are not meant literally, and “red matter” isn’t really red, and there’s nothing really charming about the charming quark. There is also nothing remotely amber about an electron.

When it is said that Jesus rose from the dead, it doesn’t mean he’s a zombie. A zombie is a dead body animated by an external magical influence. The Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead because he’s God, in order to show disciples that his power reigns supreme over death. This conveyed a very deep meaning that was absent in antiquity, that afterlife offers a form of existence that is not a mere shadow of the physical one, inferior in every way (as Achilles says to Odysseus who called his ghost, “it’s better to be the slave to the lowest peasant in life, than to reign over the dead”), but is in fact glorious and full, the true life to which this one is merely the cave of Plato, the existence of hints, guesses and hopes, and not the fullness of knowledge.

The Christians don’t see Satan as an ugly, repulsive goat-like entity. They see him as a powerful spirit that seduces one to evil, and you can’t seduce one if you take on a repulsive form. In fact, they think he is quite capable of looking like one of the angels of heaven; that is, holy and beautiful. They also don’t think Satan lives in hell. They think he is the prince of this world and has temporary dominion over it, and that hell will be his final destination after the hour of final judgment.

They also don’t think that good people will experience only good things and that evil things will happen only to evil people. They think this life is the valley of tears, filled with suffering and injustice, and if one is to survive all this and keep faith in the Lord, that fullness of true life awaits him on the other side, in eternity beyond space and time.

If you have a problem with understanding those basic concepts, you’re too stupid to offer any kind of commentary on religion, and furthermore, I would place you firmly on the autism spectrum. Personally, I am tired of intellectual and emotional invalids who attempt to claim the smug position of superiority. Also, the religious people who don’t understand the metaphoric imagery of their own religion are too stupid to be religious, and their emotional age is 7. When they reach the emotional age of 8, they’ll become atheists, and when they reach emotional maturity they’ll be able to understand religion. I’m not saying they’ll necessarily adopt it, but they will at least be able to understand it.